Xi Jingping + China Going Global Meet...Harlan Coban + the NY Book Expo?
China Is Going Global, it has been for many years, yet not everyone (in business, academia, politics) fully understands what that means for their professions, their businesses and the world we all share.
This year appears to be the launch pad for a massive, multi-faceted, decades long, global engagement for Beijing on all the aforementioned fronts and more.
For example, this is the year China became, for the first time, a next EXPORTER of investment, after decades as a leading importer of foreign direct investment. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
In 2002 China invested about $2.7 billion on acquisitions and new projects overseas. In 2013 the total had increased to $108 billion. In 2014, China’s outbound investment reached $116 billion. If Chinese firms’ investment through third-party financing is included, the total investment would amount to $140 billion. In 2015 I expect that to increase to between $180-$250 billion.
Beyond pure investment, China Going Global has taken on several other forms. There are State Owned Enterprises like Sinopec, China Mobile and Bank of China, expanding overseas and there are massive private companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Fosun, Huawei and Dalian Wanda buying foreign companies, creating global brands and engaging in global partnerships.
Chinese travelers are more numerous (likely 150 million in 2015) and are the biggest spenders ($6,000 per capita per trip) in the world. Chinese consumers make about 30% of all global luxury purchases, but now they make 60% of those purchases outside mainland China. China is also sends more students per year to the US and Europe than any other country.
Chinese
small and medium sized enterprises are expanding overseas as well,
demonstrated by manufacturing companies opening shops in South East Asia
and North America.
Chinese culture, language,
art and business theory are also expanding globally as evidenced by the
more than 500 Confucius Institutes and the six Confucius Institute’s for Business attached to universities the word over.*
Everywhere I go I see
evidence of Chinese businesses, investors, ideas and politics going
global, so I am not usually surprised by what I see, but I was certainly
surprised last Thursday.
I attended the Book Expo 2015 show at the Javits Center in New York
City. The show is the premier industry event for the book publishing
industry.** It is where new books are launched, deals made, and
luminaries like Harlan Coban, Stephen King and Joseph Ellis rub
shoulders.I was invited by China’s largest publisher and by my colleagues at Beijing Review to attend the book launch ceremony for President Xi Jingping’s new book “The Governance of China”. What I found there was astounding. The China pavilion was the largest international delegation and presence in the show’s history. China related booths and floor space amounted to almost 1/16 of the total of the show.
All of the convention center doors were covered with China pavilion ads, as were the walls where three massive China related banners hung.
For the book launch ceremony a specially invited audience was treated to a speech by Mr. Cui Tankai, China’s Ambassador to the United States and by the Chinese Consul General in New York, Madame Zhang Qiyue.
Prior to its official release in the United States President Xi’s book has already sold 4.5 million copies world wide.
This was China Going
Global writ large. It was a demonstration of the confluence of business,
consumption, culture and politics that is making China into a new kind
of world power and a further example of why all businesses, public,
private, small and large, will increasingly have to contend and engage
with a world where China continues to spread its wings.
A China that has moved beyond the Consumer Electronics show, to the Book Expo, is going global in a whole new way.
