China insider talks about how writing books can help to expand your business and personal brand

Hello and welcome to the Rich Robinson Show.

I'm your host, Rich Robinson. Over the past 25 years, I've been an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and professor here in Asia. After nearly a quarter of a century in China, I'm now based here in Bali, Indonesia, the island of the gods. Asia is my home now. 60% of the world's population also lives here, but I would contend 80% of the world's dynamism and opportunity is right here in the region. On the show, you'll hear candid and fun conversations with some of my friends and colleagues, people I've met along my journey, entrepreneurs, operators, experts, It will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial agility that actually defines it. This first season, season 1 of the Rich Robinson Show, is titled At the Speed of China. Like, wait for it, at the speed of light. Things happen fast in China, and in this season 1, we're gonna Take a deeper look at that. The rapid economic development over the past few decades, as well as the speed and cycles of innovation taking place all day, every day, right now.

Let's go, Jio! Sean Ryan, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the pod, my friend, wearing his Tommy Bahama shirt, rocking it in Shanghai. Welcome.

Good to see you, Rich. Normally I'm in a suit, but because you're in Bali and I'm very jealous, I wanted to sort of feel like I was sort of on the beach as well.

Indeed. Excellent. So I really appreciate you jumping on the pod today. Really have enjoyed your thought leadership. In China. And, you know, as we were discussing a little bit, you know, funnily enough, you mentioned that you had gone to the same high school a year behind Tim Ferriss, who's prolific author and, you know, leading podcaster. And Tim inspired me in part, and you as well too, with your writing to get a book out there. And my idea is like, let's do a podcast and interview thought leaders. And through that process, the same way that Tim did, like Tools of Titans, you know, extract nuggets and change directions and get insights. So that's the reason why I've put this podcast together. And every year I intend to write a new book and every season will be a new podcast, a new title. For people that don't know you, I'd love you to introduce yourself. And then also first question is like, what do you wish you knew before you started becoming a prolific author yourself? So I'll leave it to you to just bring people kind of an introduction and then later we'll deep dive into your origin story.

Yeah, that's a great question, Rich. So I've written 4 books. A lot of people only know I've written 3: The End of Cheap China, The End of Copycat China, and The War for China's Wallet. These were 3 business books, and which is what I'm best known for. I also wrote sort of a self-help book, Sean Ryan's Guide on How to Get into Harvard. I wrote that in 2003. The Vietnamese edition just came out at the end of 2020.

The Vietnamese edition.

That's one of the great things about writing books. You write something and it's your legacy because you can go into a library, you know, in Africa or in Vietnam and your books are there. And it's so cool because you write it one time, kind of like Rich Dad Poor Dad, and you're still getting some sort of recurring revenue. Very small actually when it comes to book writing, but it's really cool that 18 years later my books are still selling foreign editions.

That's amazing. And some Vietnamese mom was like, Oh my God, this book is so good. Getting Our Kids into Harvard. We got to translate this into Vietnamese. Right?

Exactly. But now when your first question of what do I wish I knew? I think it's a very solitary experience and it's a lot harder than people realize because you sit down and you have a timeframe, whether it be 3 months, which is how long it takes me to write my books, or 1 year or 2 years for most people, it's just you and the computer. And I don't use a ghostwriter. I write everything myself, and I sit there for 10 hours a day. I typically go off to Thailand, Bali, and I just write. And so it's very lonely. But what I think a lot of people don't realize is that writing the book is only 10 or 15% of the overall process. The bigger part is the marketing. Because today, publishers don't really put much marketing muscle behind a book unless you're somebody like Tim Ferriss Or like Hillary Clinton, and then they'll push from day one. Typically what they'll do is the big publishing houses will find 100 authors, sign them up, and whichever one does well, starting in month 6 or in year 1, they start pushing. So you have to really focus, Rich, not just on getting great content, but also on marketing, marketing, marketing the book. And this sort of gets to what our conversation was before. I make about $1 per book sale. I don't make much money from a book. You are a huge bestselling author and you sell a million copies a year, that's only $1 million US. That's a lot of money, but it's not that much money. So you need to use the books as a stepping point, and that's what Tim Ferriss did, right? He was able to use The 4-Hour Workweek in order to become an angel investor through throughout Silicon Valley. I use my books to do 3 things. One, to get speaking gigs. So in 2019, I went to almost 40 countries doing speeches, and I charge about $50,000 US a speech. The other bit is to get consulting gigs for my day job. I'm the founder of the China Market Research Group. And so I use the books as a marketing avenue. And then third, access. You know, I was in Turkey a couple of years ago giving a speech, and one of the richest billionaires there said, I've heard of your book. I hadn't read your book because nobody ever reads your books, but he loved my book, and so he invited me in to meet with him. And so you can get a lot of other business deals on the side. So understand, Rich, writing is a small part of the process. A big part is going to be the marketing you do once the book is released. Don't be upset if no one buys your book. It doesn't matter. Nobody reads it anyway. Use the book to open up doors for other business ventures.

Fantastic.

Wow.

Thanks for sharing and being so, you know, honest and open, Kimono. You know, I took on a coach last year. I think everybody should have a coach, right? I did a stint with a 73-year-old guy named Alan Weiss. He's the rock star of consulting. I was just like, you know what, I'm going to do a little bit of like more serious advisory consulting work with taking my experience with startup and working with large organizations. You know, I was doing stuff with the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, the $100 billion antidote to the World Bank and teaching them like startup mindset and, you know, learning from Alan along the way, but Alan told me something, you know, he makes a couple of million bucks a year in his consulting practice. And he's like, it's mostly because of books. He's written 60-something books. He's like, I get it to 80% done and then I'm done. And I don't self-edit and I don't try to be too precious with it. I get it out there. And then I have an event and he's like, I'll charge $2,000 for 150 people to come. Uh, $2,000 for 2 days, $1,250 for 1 day. I packed the place out. Most people were going the 2-day and 140 of the people I talked to at the door said, I found out about you because I bought your book. They bought his book, right? And then he's like, yeah, maybe 20% of those 28 people actually read my book. And then after the 2 days, I realized 10% of those people, 3 people actually read and understood it, but who cares? He just made a quarter of a million bucks in that event, right?

So not to put you on the spot, Rich, but we've known each other for about 20 years now. Have you read any of my books?

Oh, I'm sorry. The internet is breaking up. Is that, is there something? I have not, my friend. And really feel like a shithead, like talk show host. Yeah. And you're not even offended. You're on my podcast because of the books, not because I—

My wife has not read any of my books, I don't think. You know, I don't think any of my employees. I was actually talking with one of my guys who's been with me for 4 years last week. And he said that he reads 30 books a year. And I said, have you read any of my books? And he kind of, you know, so it's okay. You write the book, get a great book title, and use it as a stepping stone. And nobody reads your book. Sometimes I'll have people come up to me after I wrote my first book, The End of Cheap China, and they would say they read my book, they listened to me give a keynote, and they'd come up and say, Shawn, that was the best book I've ever read. That was a great speech. Can I ask you a question? I'm like, sure. And they'll say, do you think now's the time for the end of cheap China?

No.

And I'm like, that's the title of the book. So the reality is like, just have a great title, use it for networking, use it for door opening.

Terrific. Yeah. So the title of my book is At the Speed of China, like at the speed of light. And, you know, the whole idea is that, you know, people can question, especially in what I've been focusing on, the tech industry, right? Did China build the chipsets? China didn't build A lot of the software and, you know, maybe some of the business models are derivative, but there really is innovation happening, I think, now in, you know, fintech and medtech and edtech, et cetera. But, you know, people can debate that if they want to. I really do believe there is, you know, true innovation coming out of China, but you cannot deny the incredible pace and pulse of innovation and speed in China. And for better or worse, it's not. All Skittles and beer and gumdrops and roses and unicorns and rainbows. But, you know, there's this one quote by Elon Musk that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the pace of innovation. And I think that's true. And the pace in which China is innovating is changing. My thesis is roughly, it's like a 4 to 1 ratio, 4 years in the West, a year in China, 20 years in the West, a generation, half decade in China. And things are happening so fast. People can't even, you know, So I'd love to dig into like your thoughts and ideas around that. But before we do, tell us a little bit about your origin story and your path to the Middle Kingdom.

Sure. Well, I think your book title is good. That's something that people are going to remember and that's important. You know, we're going to say speed, speed, speed. And breaking down your idea of innovation, I think you and I agree. It's at least 4 to 1, maybe 5 to 1. I mean, when I go back to the United States, I feel like I'm in the dark ages. When it comes to mobile apps, you know, you can't buy anything. You can't do anything. You know, in 2014, I wrote a book called The End of Copycat China. At the time, this was 7 years ago, I predicted that China was going to become the most innovative nation in the world.

That was contentious back then. I remember that.

Yeah. Only Marc Andreessen, he endorsed my book. He was very nice, but I got a lot of hate mail from Silicon Valley. But when you look at it in 2010 to 2014, the innovation taking place in China for the most part was business model innovation. They weren't coming up with invention or new forms of technology. But from 2014 to 2020, you actually started to see application innovation and the growing seeds of true invention. What I'm excited about, Rich, and especially since you're more of a tech expert than I, but over the next 10 years, you're going to see more indigenous innovation in China. And part of it is because of China's speed, but part of it is do or die. Because of the Trump regime's policies on China, where they're trying to contain or destabilize Huawei, ZTE, FaceTime, the rest of the tech sector, you now saw that the Chinese semiconductor sector said, we have to innovate, we have to be able to grow, otherwise we're going to die. So So it's really quite exciting when you talk to venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in China right now. They want to do true innovation, not business model innovation anymore, not application innovation like WeChat or Alipay. They want to go into true invention. And it's really quite exciting to see what's going on in China right now.

Yeah, excellent. Thanks for framing that. Yeah.

Part of that, I think, is the rest of the world is going to be shocked at how much Rides have taken place during COVID I was stuck out of China for 6 weeks from January 24th to March 9th of last year. I was in Africa and I couldn't get back to China. And in those 6 weeks, China moved so fast that I felt like I didn't have a good pulse on what was going on just in 6 weeks. But in the last year, because China so far has contained COVID relatively well, The hub and energy in the tech, in medical sectors is really changing very fast. And the rest of the world doesn't see it because they're not here. You don't have people exchanges. Unfortunately, you don't have a lot of media, Western media in China anymore because the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, a lot of their journalists were pushed out. So people are going to be surprised how fast China's changed.

Sure. And even worse, whoever's left, a lot of the media is, you know, very lopsided. In that, you know, it's covering aspects of China that I understand the West needs to understand, you know, all sides of China, but I don't think they're really getting the full picture. And that's partially like, you know, China's had the Sputnik moment. Hey, we better create our own chip technology. Otherwise, we're going to be left behind. And I hope that my aspiration for this book is that some people wake up in the West as well and go, wow, we need to compete. We can't just try to engage with China and we can't just block things. And of course, anything. Doing with, you know, sensitive, you know, military information or any sort of straight up theft, that's beyond the pale. But, you know, everything else, there's a very, very, very wide swath where the West needs to compete with China. And even if you don't want to come to China, China's coming to you. I had Alvin Tse from Xiaomi on the podcast recently, and he recently moved to Jakarta here in Indonesia to take over Xiaomi for Indo, billion dollar company. And he's like, oh, our biggest competitors are all Chinese here. It's not really Samsung. It's not really Apple. They're competing against, you know, Vivo, Oppo, Huawei. So it's like interesting that China's now competing against itself in like other markets and coming into all the markets around the world.

Absolutely. So about myself a bit, I'm 43 years old. I first came to China in 1997 to study Mandarin at Shanghai University. I am an American and I love the United States, but right now it's very difficult to say I love America and I love China.

Yeah.

I would like to see a strong America and a strong China cooperate together. But if you say that, you know, in DC power corridors, they go hysterical because they're looking at trying to contain, destabilize, or hurt China. And it gets back to your point that the American media is not presenting an accurate vision of how China really is on the ground. And that's why we need books from people like you, if people actually read them.

They're going to read the title.

It really is. You can look at an example. In 2011, again, way before the Trump regime, okay, this has been a longstanding issue. Congress and NASA blocked China from using the International Space Station. So the US was working with Russia. They were working with many different countries. Only mainland China was not allowed to send taikonauts, which are the Chinese name of astronauts, up there. So over the last 10 years, China had to build its own space station. And so now you saw yesterday, 2 of China's taikonauts went outdoors for the second time for a 7-hour spacewalk. The problem that's happening in the United States right now is because they just blocked China, China is now going to surpass the United States in space exploration and innovation. Right now, it's all the fight in America is between Richard Branson And Jeff Bezos to see who's going to go into space fastest, while the Chinese are actually doing hardcore serious research through the space station. So I think the word that you said is compete, right? The United States should compete fairly with China, not try to destroy its technological capabilities. It's not fair to China, and it's not going to happen. It only means that China is going to spur more indigenous innovation. So as I mentioned, I've been here most of my life since 1997. And aside from saying speed is incredible, you cannot argue at all that the quality of life for the vast majority of 1.4 billion Chinese has gotten tangibly better in the last 24 years since I first flew into China. You can't argue that. And shockingly, The U.S. media, the New York Times, does argue against that. It's quite scary, the skewed vision that some of the U.S. media players are showing of China. If I was American and I only got my information from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, I would hate China. I would think it's—

Yeah, sure. You know, I went to North Korea and Cuba in 2001. I was in a big rush because I had studied at Cambridge University in '88 and I traveled around Europe. And then that, that year, '88, '89 was when the wall fell in Berlin. And I missed my opportunity to go to Eastern Europe before the wall fell. So I said, I better go to Cuba and North Korea. They're the last 2, that and Albania. So I went to North Korea, I went to Cuba and, you know, I felt bad and I feel bad for the North Korean people. Like they don't have it good. It's like there was cannibalism when I was there 20 years ago. And even now they have a radio and the radio's got one button and that's it. They don't even know what's going on outside. And sometimes I feel like people that have never engaged with China feel that way about China. Like they're just like, oh, I feel bad for the Chinese people because they're under terrible circumstances. And it's like, wow, even though China borders North Korea, it's not even remotely close. And I think a lot of people that just have ignored China, you know, look at China now and they have this idea that they should sort of like feel bad for Chinese people. Actually, Chinese people are incredibly optimistic about their lives and about the government, right? So that's not like being a shill for the Chinese government.

Absolutely, but they'll say you're brainwashed or the Chinese people are brainwashed. You know, I run a market research firm and it's clear 80-85% minimum of the people that we interview are very optimistic that the quality of their lives is going up and they support the general direction the central government is taking the country. But let's look at some hardcore numbers. In 1989, the average per capita GDP for India and China both was $300 in 1989.

Wow.

Now India's $1,800 a year while China's has passed $10,000. And the gap is gonna be even greater since India's in the middle of the Delta variant of COVID while China's gonna grow 6% this year. When you look at the hardcore numbers, something that the Chinese Communist Party in combination with the Chinese people are doing Is working for the Chinese people. People 25 years ago struggled to eat meat sometimes. When I interviewed people, they said meat was a relative delicacy. Now there's obesity. You know, meat consumption is going up. They actually reported that sales of American beef was soaring to China last week because Chinese are no longer buying Australian beef. The tension between Australia and China. American views, but it's clear something's going well and Chinese are not oppressed. It's not like North Korea where they're literally, you know, I don't know North Korea, but there's cannibalism, as you say, potentially. Chinese are thriving. And that's why you see so many Chinese go to the US to study and they say, America's great, but I want to go back to China because opportunities to work here.

Terrific. And you have some Asian heritage?

Yeah. So ethnically, I'm half Chinese, half German Jew. So my mother's side, we're Cantonese, but I'm 5th generation born in the United States. My family went to work in California in the gold mines. I come from a very poor background on my mother's side. My father is historically, they're German Jews and moved to the United States. So I'm a mix of many different things.

What a powerful combo. I love it.

Chinese like that. They say you've got the hardworking ability of Chinese and you've got the money-making ability of Jews. So they use stereotypes in a good way in China. They Love Jews.

You know, people are pro-Semitic, as I am as well too, right? But anyway, that's an honor.

The Telegraph, the British tabloid, Sophia Yan, a reporter, wrote a couple weeks ago that Jews in China were scared and being oppressed.

Really?

You know, it's just ridiculous. Like, Jews are super welcomed in China.

Yeah, I've even had a lot of them say that they thought I was, and I'm just like an honorary member of the tribe. I will take it. It's great. And then after Chinese people find out I'm not, they're like, ah. You're just an average barbarian. So whatever, but yeah, that's funny.

Wow.

Great.

And then you land here in China, like it's been many decades now. What first kept you busy when you got here? What's your path to now?

So originally between '97 and '03, I was here 3 to 6 months a year and I was doing a couple of things. One, I was studying Mandarin at Nankai University. I also hired a tutor to teach me one-on-one for 3, 4 hours a day. I think it's To understand China, you really need to try to learn the language. I've spent a lot of time on it. I still do not consider myself fluent. I do business meetings in Chinese. I'm proficient, but it's a very hard language to learn. But so I studied Mandarin. I also started a company in 2001 in Tianjin, China. It was an English language training company where I taught 5-year-olds to 14-year-olds English, and the positioning was every feature So great marketing. I had hundreds and hundreds of people sign up, but I ran into some problems. One, nobody from Harvard wanted to work in Tianjin, China. Two, China was really corrupt then. I mean, on day one, people came around and said, we want protection money. And I said, I'm not giving protection money, and they shut our business. So on day one, we actually had to move. So, you know, China was really corrupt in 2000, all the way up to when Xi Jinping became chairman or president. There was clearly a difference between the well-connected and the non-well-connected, the have-nots and the haves, and corruption was really part of daily life. So I ran that business for over 3 years and made about 50,000 RMB. It was a complete failure. I could barely afford a ticket to fly home. I learned what not to do in China. I think it's good to fail. Frankly, indeed. And then in 2003, which is when I think I met you, I was in venture capital. So I was working for a VC firm called InterAsia Venture Management, which was China's first venture capital firm. They brought McDonald's to China and Asia, they brought IKEA to Asia. And I think we were introduced, I think it was on ACL Wireless, which was a tech company. And that's how we got to know each other. And so I was looking at IT investments and education training investments for the firm. In 2003, I tried to put money into a company called WebCT, which was an e-learning software company, and the company said, we don't want your money, why don't you join us and run our mainland China, Taiwan, and South Korea operations? So when I was 26 years old, I left venture capital and I wanted to get an operating role. And I ran WebCT until we sold to another company called Blackboard for $170 million. So I left that operation in 2005, and I was trying to decide what do I want to do now. And so in 2005, I set up CMR actually to do angel investing. I was going to go out and invest my own money into startups, and a few months in, I thought you know, it can take 10 years to make any money from angel investing, and that's even if you're lucky. Maybe I should do some research on the side to help pay the bills. So I sort of put out my shingle in 2005, and Apple called and said, we need a strategy for China. And then Lane Crawford called, the luxury retailer, and DuPont called. And so DuPont said, You're going to be competing against McKinsey and Bain for a 5-year growth strategy. We beat McKinsey, we beat Bain, and that's when I realized we have a real company.

That's great. Tell me about that pitch. What was the thing that closed it? Do you recall?

Yes, I recall very well. That's interesting. So one of the big management consulting firms— I don't want to say which one— said to DuPont, we respect you, so we are going to send 2 of our managing directors from Boston to live in China for 6 months. They know chemicals better than anybody else in the world, and so they're going to tell you what to do. It's a very compelling pitch. I went in and I said, I don't know anything about chemicals. I've never heard of the ingredients you're talking about. If we work together, we're going to have to spend a week or 2 where you train my team and me on exactly what it is that you do. What we're going to do is I know how to do research in China. I know how to craft a marketing sales strategy in China. But DuPont, you know chemicals better than anyone else in the world. So we'll take your chemical expertise, our China expertise, and work together. Now, the head of DuPont who chose us said to me, Sean, this is what I said to the Boston guys. F you. I'm DuPont. I know chemicals better than you do. And you're in the United States. Screw off. They chose us simply because if you're running DuPont, how do you know about China? How do you know how to do research here? So we take a more collaborative effort when we work with clients, which is why we have about an 80% win rate against one of the big management consulting firms, one of the biggies from Boston because of our collaborative strategy.

That's great. Yeah. I grew up in Boston and I think if you say F you to somebody from Boston, they love it. And they're probably still telling that story. It's a term of endearment, but that's terrific.

You're right.

Because what do they know about China? Right. And like, the fact is that China's even back then shifting so quickly. Right. And you have to really uncover the nuances of the competitive landscape and what the opportunities are. Yeah.

And that's one of the issues where, you know, before the Western companies were the best in business models, they would basically say, we helped these companies in America. We're now going to shift the business model to China. And I'll tell you 2 things on this, Rick. The first is right now I'm pitching to a Chinese company that hired one of the Big 3, and they said our sales dropped 70% in 6 months after we implemented what one of the Big 3 consulting firms told us what to do, because the market in the United States was so completely different from the market in China that it just didn't work. So they fired and had to go back to their own business model. But more importantly, as I was talking with a very senior executive from Accenture IT consulting firm, and he actually quit recently. And he said, Shawn, why should I work? Because our whole business was, we're Accenture, we know America, we're the lead in technology. We will then implement the strategies in China. And he said to me, but you know what I found out, Shawn? The Chinese companies are now ahead of Accenture. They have better business models than the American technology companies. So we went in with outdated business models and the Chinese firms said, we don't want to work with you anymore. And that's the change. You're going to see some incredible innovation coming out of Alibaba, Tencent, you know, ByteDance, and some of the newer, smaller companies, especially with the crackdown on the tech sector, which I think is healthy and is going to create more innovation and competition because the Chinese are moving so fast and the Americans are not, especially with COVID Fascinating.

Yeah, I used to help Chinese companies go on their kind of zoo tours to America. Like I want to go to New York and also maybe LA, but really Silicon Valley. And I want to go and smell what's going on there. And I think, you know, I had Gang Lu, the CEO and founder of TechNode on the pod. And he's like, you know, even I haven't been to Silicon Valley since 2018. I just kind of felt, you know, like I'm sure there are many things to learn from Silicon Valley, but in the consumer and mobile tech sector, there's just not as much. Right. It's just not, not as compelling. And I've been leading some tours. I did it sort of as an aside, like there were some billionaire families from Brazil and they want to come to China and kind of smell all of the innovation in China. And it was a blast. I really enjoyed it. I was able to harvest and refresh and expand my network and take these, you know, keen outsiders like into these tours of what's actually happening in innovation in China. And it's actually. You know, great for me to also learn and then expand my network globally. But I only tell that story because there was a group of Chinese people that were in the US right before COVID It was like the end of 2019. And they were on a tour of Silicon Valley and they went to the Visa payment innovation. And it was almost like they were going to like get pitchforks and torches and just like protest. They were like, is this the Visa payment museum? They're like, we're China. We haven't even used cash in probably 5 years. And you're taking us to this payment innovation center. It's just fascinating how quickly the turntables have turntabled and, you know, things get dusty.

I don't want to go to the US on these zoo tours anymore. Now, a big part of my business before COVID was giving speeches to all of the American and European and African executives who had come to China and want to adopt innovation. But when you look at it, like I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve Visa card. And that was a great innovation in the United States. Chase used a metal card, and that got everybody excited because it was no longer plastic. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's like, you know, 19th century technology. China, it's all using mobile apps, you know, whether it's Alipay or WeChat Pay or paying through Meituan. It's light-years ahead. And incidentally, I also think it's China's fintech, which is one of the reasons that helped stop COVID.

Indeed. Indeed. Yeah.

Because everything became so just passing out apps and cash and, you know, it's, I believe that COVID was sent out that way.

Indeed. Wow. Great. Yeah. So when you think of the speed of China, like what are some companies or anecdotes or just some examples that come to mind that bring it home for you?

It's a good question. I think for me right now, top of mind is Tibet, because I just got back from Tibet in May. I hadn't been to Tibet since 2001, and I actually— I have a documentary coming out probably this month or next month. We did it together. And when I went there in 2001, Tibet was so poor, it's hard to express. I mean, I just remember being on dirt roads. A lot of the people there told me they only bathed when they were born and then when they died. They were wearing the same clothes over and over again, and it was a real struggle. When I was there in May, I told my team, I'm going off for a couple weeks to film this documentary. You might not be able to reach me. I might not be able to have phone access. I might not have internet. You know, my gosh, Rich, the speed of change and improvement in Tibet. was just mind-boggling. The roads were incredible. The roads in Tibet were better than anything you get in the United States. They just opened high-speed train in Tibet. Everybody was using 5G. I was in the middle of the mountains, you know, with oxygen all over my body because I had really bad high-altitude sickness. I still had 5G on my phone and was able to communicate, unfortunately sometimes with my team back in Shanghai. But it was that speed. You go from really looking at people whose lives hadn't really changed that much in 100 years to now people in Tibet are living, you know, access to incredibly quality of life. I went to some high schools or vocational schools there where they were learning drone building, where they were learning graphic design. They had maker centers, you know, the innovation labs all over the place in Tibet. So it's just the speed. When you hear people talk about, you know, sometimes journalists or government officials, maybe they were in China 5 years ago, but even China 5 years ago is nothing like China today. It's basically like saying what America was like today and what America was like 50 years ago. It's a 10-to-1 ratio for me in terms of quality of life for Chinese. Versus the United States, maybe even more than 10 to 1.

Fascinating.

Yeah. And you know, 70% of China in poverty previously, and now it's less than 1%, right? It's pretty miraculous, miraculous growth. And yeah, funnily enough, I heard that a Tibetan monk moved to Beijing and opened up a pizza place. And he said, anybody can come in and I can make them one with everything. Thank you. Good night.

I think the last time I saw you was at a pizza place. The last time I saw you in person was at Annie's Pizzeria in Beijing.

Our go-to Italian comfort food indeed.

I miss Annie's pepperoni pizza.

Wow, that's great. Congrats on the documentary. You know, all the 24 years I spent in China, I never had a chance to get up to Tibet, but I hope to visit someday. What about there in Shanghai? I mean, everybody knows the before and after photo of Pudong in 1990 to now. It looks like Blade Runner after putting a few drops of water and just has exploded. I mean, on the real estate side, but what are some of the other Other things that you have experienced or you've seen?

Well, the real estate. I mean, in 2003, I took people around this area and everyone said it was a lemon. My office is in Lujiazui, or no one was going to be there. Now it's one of the most expensive real estate areas in the world. You know, Google has a huge operation just next door. But I think also the speed just comes from the confidence. is another thing that's really quite important. When you look at it, I actually interviewed a 27-year-old recently from Wuhan, and he told me, Sean, you know, before COVID I didn't think about the Communist Party. I didn't care about the Communist Party. But after COVID, and I saw them contain it so far so well, I really do support them now. And I think that shift and change And that shift in patriotism is something that brands and governments need to realize. There's a lot of support for and unification around the government. I'll give you some numbers. In 2011, my firm interviewed 5,000 consumers in 15 cities. At the time, 85% of consumers said they would always buy a foreign brand over a local brand.

85%.

This was in 2011. In 2016, we replicated the research. And this time, 60% of consumers said they would always buy a local brand over a foreign brand. Last year at the height of COVID we didn't do the research, but other research firms found that about 80, 85% of consumers said they would choose a local brand over a foreign brand. So from 2011 to 2021, We went from 85% of Chinese preferring 40 foreign brands to 85% of Chinese preferring local brands. That's fast in a decade period, and that's going to have great ramifications for Adidas, which I think is in trouble in China as China wants to buy Li Ning or Anta. It's going to have issues on where people go to school. They're not going to want to go to the United States as much. They're going to want to stay in China for their studies. Vacations— why go to Thailand or Bali when you can just go to Hainan? I was in Hainan all last week. Sanya is gorgeous. Speed of change in patriotism and a stoppage of that aspiration of the Western brand and Western lifestyle.

Yeah, and I think that's a very real occurrence that's manifesting in real time. And by the way, I've been to Sanya a bunch of times too, and I enjoy the place, but I can give you 20 reasons why you should come to Bali instead of Sanya, but then that's a whole nother thing.

I want to live in the villa you're living in, you know, which just sounds absolutely incredible at a fraction of a price of one night at the Park Hyatt Sanya where I was last week.

Scott Galloway, you know, Prof G, if you follow him at all, right? He's like, COVID is the ultimate accelerant, right? It's not so much of a change agent, but now it's 2031. And of course we can all live and work anywhere. So. You know, I think I'll be back and forth to China a bunch. It's a same time zone as Bali and a direct 3.5 hours to Hong Kong and 6-something to Beijing. So I could do that flight, you know, a lot because there's no jet lag. So there will be direct flights, but I think, you know, it's probably 2023 before, you know, things get back to abnormal. Right. But I think once things do correct—

Maybe you can reserve a villa next door for me and I'll spend a month or two a year in Bali because I do really like it.

Lovely. Wow. Great. And what about like what's next for you? Do you have another book in the works or is there something that, you know, specifically is, you know, really drawing your interest?

So I think business-wise, I'm thinking about another book and I'm laying out the plans for that. Probably about time that I write another one. I'm going more and investing in companies again. So I've got CMR, the consulting is doing very well. But what I'm also starting to do is help Chinese companies as they go abroad, especially in capital raising and in doing M&A activity. So that's taken up a lot of my time the last 6 months because Chinese firms are ambitious and they're growing well. But the third is I'm increasing my direct investments. And that's where I've spent most of my time the last 9 to 12 months, because I think you have this really cool hub and really cool ecosystem of Chinese firms. And again, the exciting part is they're no longer cheap, but good enough. They're as good, if not better, than Western brands. And they've shown themselves in the last year in China, say in beauty care, as being really top line, and now they want to go abroad. So what I've been doing most of my time is looking for really cool investments and getting back to what CMR originally was, which was investing as an angel investor.

Great. And what are some of the qualities of the entrepreneurs or of the management teams? Like, what do you think sets them apart? And what do you think are some of the learnings about how people move more quickly or innovate in different ways that organizations can learn from outside of China?

I think 2 things. The first is China takes a mobile first on everything. And people are doing mobile in the United States and Europe still. But you got to remember, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of these apps were created on a PC environment, and they tried to shove that into a mobile app. So it doesn't work as well. The Chinese create everything from the mobile first because a lot of Chinese never had a PC. And so that's why I think that ecosystem is so much more seamless in China than it is in the United States. But I think what's most interesting to me as an investor and is interesting for you as an author of a book on speed in China is the speed now that you can start to trust Chinese entrepreneurs. So 15 years ago, I didn't really trust people. And honestly, I made very little angel investing because it was a rough environment. People cheated you, you know, you couldn't trust them for anything. But what you've seen in the last 5, 10 years is much more trust. People don't cheat you as much as before, and part of it is because the courts are much better at IP protection. The laws were always good, but the enforcement's good now. But more importantly is people, I think, in China now understand if you're trustworthy and you're somebody that can cooperate with others, everybody can get rich. So you see how Jack Ma, Pony Ma, you know, Zhang Yiming, all these guys are multi-billionaires. Because they're trustworthy. It's better to be honest and have integrity and not steal IP because you can make $50 billion. That's better than just pirating a handset and doing a fake Apple product. It's better to create OPPO and Vivo and become a billionaire, or do what Xiaomi did and become a billionaire, than try to do Shanzhai phones. And so I think from an operating standpoint, trust Don't be blind, but it's a lot better now than it was even just 5 years ago where I went into every negotiation or business meeting really worried if I was being cheated. That just doesn't happen as much now.

Yeah, I think that's also, you know, something that has changed so rapidly, the trust culture, but also like you said, like, you know, doing piracy, right? The piracy of movie or music or other content. And now There are these platforms and Steve Jobs once said, if you're pirating something or you're, you know, paying a subscription for something, paying a price both ways, right? You're either doing it through, you know, putting extra time in and getting, you know, a shittier product if you're pirating it, or you just pay the cost and don't think about it. And I think a lot of Chinese consumers are just saying, you know what, I'm just going to pay for games and music and movies and I'm just going to get a cheap It's almost impossible to pirate DVDs now.

Chinese go on to iQIYI or Tencent or Himalaya and they pay a subscription, while it's typically foreigners who are buying pirated DVDs or pirated Louis Vuitton. And this is interesting, Rich. So my son is 14 years old and he's a budding entrepreneur. He's building a company right now.

Excellent.

And tomorrow— I'm not joking— tomorrow we're meeting with a patent lawyer to patent his inventions. And that's not something that would have happened 10 years ago, but China is taking IP protection seriously. So my 14-year-old, I'm taking the day off from my work and we're meeting a patent lawyer and it's going to be a 4 to 6 month process. His products.

That's excellent. Love it. Love the apple not falling far from the tree. And yeah, for all of you out there in podcast land, if you're thinking of coming into China, You know, one of the things that you see, or you have seen over these past few decades is that if you have a trademark, then first to register, not first usage. So somebody sees you're getting traction. If you haven't already registered yet, somebody else can kind of hold it hostage in a way, right? So I think it is more important to cover your ass, so to speak, you know, copyright and trademark and patents as well.

Absolutely. China's government, you know, I think if you look at it, Japan had a lot of IP issues in the '70s, and the Japanese government only started protecting IP when Toyota and Sony started losing. And it's the same thing with Korea in the '80s and '90s. They were rampant piracy until Samsung and LG started lobbying the government to protect. That's what you're seeing now, right? You're seeing the Chinese companies— Huawei, you know, Huawei patents more to Apple than Apple patents to Huawei. So you see the Chinese firms are saying to the Chinese government, we have to have better IP protection, and that's absolutely happening right now. So when you heard Pompeo or now Tony Blinken, you know, attacking China for IP protection issues, those are red herrings, right? It's like Huawei bought $11 billion worth of US technology, 1% of Intel's global Revenue was sold to Huawei before the economic sanctions were placed on them by the Trump regime.

Yeah, I remember back in the Olympics in '08, my then mother-in-law—I bought her some health insurance—and they gave us these free dolls from the Olympics. They were like you know baby Jing Jing, you know whatever the names were. And I was like, "Oh,这个是导版的吗?" And he's like, "是真的，当然是真的." And I was like, "Wow, okay." It was like. Of course they're not going to pirate the Olympic stuff through an insurance company. They're like, of course it's real. Right. And I was just like, okay, that works. That works really, really, really well when it's your own stuff. Right. So Jon Stewart's got a great joke where he tells a joke about a rabbi and it kills. And then he tells a joke about the Pope and it just falls flat. And he's like, yeah, not so funny when he's your own guy, huh? And excellent. Hey, Sean, I really enjoyed our chat. I appreciate your time and I'm going to go read the title of your books right now. So, and I hope all of you out in—

Great talking to you, Rick.

Podcast land, read the title and the dust jacket of my book as well too. At the Speed of China, at bookstores now by the time that this is posted. So excellent. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. And to be continued.

That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rich Robinson Show, Season 1, At the Speed of China. Visit therichrobinson.com/show to smash that subscribe button. Please also go to iTunes or whatever platform of choice, rate and comment. And until next time, thank you very much. 再见，谢谢。