China’s Future, Your Strategy

by Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future
A contribution to the Summit for the Future - May 3-5, 2006

The Asian Development Bank has forecast that China could be the world’s largest economy as early as 2025. Given an event horizon of less than 20 years, how should we be responding?

Could 2006 be the year when individuals, companies and governments across the planet will start to embrace the likely breadth, depth and style of long-term impact China could have on everything from investment flows through to scientific research and voting models for the United Nations?

I’m in the midst of writing a book on China’s future and thought I’d take the opportunity to draw on the interviews and research to date to share some of the key views emerging. In the thought piece below I’ve tried to outline some of the key perspectives emerging on China’s future and posed a series of critical starter questions for those charged with developing China Strategies for their organisations.

A Nation on the Move
The question should not really be “why take notice now?” – but rather “Why have you taken so long?” Wherever one looks, the evidence is inescapable that China is a country on a rapid development path. When reviewing official statistics, government plans, investment commitments, analyst projections and company forecasts, three key macro drivers emerge:

1. China’s growing economic power and presence in global markets
2. Development of domestic consumption
3. An increasing capacity for innovation.

[...]

Conclusions
Faced with these differing perspectives, for those responsible for China, the priority should be to focus on accelerating the internal learning process, with the aim of answering at least the following five questions:
- What are the size, shape and outlook for our sector in China?
- What are the relevant government plans and policies that apply to the sector?
- What are the broader ‘environmental’ factors that could affect our business and our ability to operate in future?
- What have we learned from our own experience in China? / Who do we know with experience of the China market that we can learn from?
- How do we create a learning dialogue on China inside the organisation?

There may be an understandable temptation to start with an analysis of competitor activity in China. However, a broader analysis of the market and operating environment may provide useful lenses through which to assess competitor actions.

Entering the Chinese market may feel like trying to mount a moving train while blindfolded. Developing early insight may just free up one eye!



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