The Real Top 3 Things to Do Business in China

When I chat with a very nice and knowledgable guy today, I was asked about the Top 3 Things to Do Business in China Successfully. Do you want to know the truth? Be prepared that the result may shock you. Take it as a joke or rumor or anything that you think is reasonable. Also, although I used the title, it is a typical title a book will use, I mean only some of the companies are doing this way. Anyway, I am not an economist and only some private, smaller company in IT industry appeared in my sight. You have read my warning, havn’t you? Let’s go.

1. Be Unethical

If you are too evil, sometimes you are caught and put into jail. If your companyy stick to the the ethic business conduct, your company can be very successful, but not super successful in the financial perspective. To do something that others don’t want to do, the company take the advantage of others. Let me give you some example.

3721 is the company with very bad reputation (Sorry. At least in my eyes). They sell “Chinese keywords”, so that people can type in a Chinese term in the address bar of a browser and they are directed to the website. To make sure it works, you know they must install some software to your computer. Only after they install enough numbers of client can they agressively sell their keyword service at around 500 RMB or 60 USD per year. They paid for many smaller sites to put the script on their web page. So when user access these sites, the software is either automatically installed (if your security settings in IE are low) or prompt you to install. Most people with IT knowledge will avoid clicking YES, because there is no easy way (besides edit the registry with REGEDIT tool) to remove the software (spyware?). It even appeared on the error page whenver you type a wrong URL in brower. That is the reason why people celebrated when Norton and Symantec identified the software as virus. How to remove the 3721 viruswas a very hot topic that every IT Pro should master.

Well. When it has passed, nobody will remember this history. After bought by Yahoo, the same behavior continous, under a new name.

There are much more evil things happens. SMS was HOT, because it is easy to make money on it. There are companies who just deducts money from the user’s account without any subscription or service. Millions of dollars flow into someone’s pocket in one day with the help of insiders. The users’ money was deducted before he/she ever noticed. I remember in the middle of last year, when China Mobile claims to cut all the illegal SMS fee deduction, the about 40% drop in SMS revenue of major NASDAQ listed companies revealed the problem.

Spams and fraud also be a big problem in the current market.