Surfing The Asian Tide
Cliff Ennico
www.creators.com
Brace yourself for an onslaught of new business books and #147;news reports#148; about how China, India and other fast-growing Asian economies are wiping out the U.S. economy. According to the prophets of doom who write these things, there#146;s no way us big, fat, overpaid, lazy Americans can compete with highly disciplined, highly educated, extremely motivated Asian employees who are willing to work for pennies a day and even speak better English than we do. Listen too much to this malarky, and you#146;ll come to the conclusion that your retirement years will be spent in a shack somewhere, doing menial service work that no self-respecting Asian person would do while your grandchildren are combing the Mongolian countryside looking for suitable marriage partners.
Haven#146;t we been here before, folks? Remember all the books and movies that came out in the 1980s about how Japan was going to take over the world and the best Americans could hope for was to learn Japanese management practices like wearing uniforms, doing calisthenics every morning and shouting company slogans every five minutes? It didn#146;t happen then, and I don#146;t think it will happen now.
Still, there is no question that the Asian countries are lurching their way into the world economy. And we have to take this seriously. Wasn#146;t it Napoleon who said #147;China is a sleeping dragon, and when it awakes, it will shake the world#148;? Those who believe that the outsourcing of American jobs to Asia and the growing dominance of Asian companies in many industries are just a #147;flash in the pan#148; that will disappear in a few years are living in just as much a dream world as those that would sell the Brooklyn Bridge to the Malaysians.
It#146;s amazing to me how often something that is commonly perceived as a threat can really be an opportunity in disguise. As entrepreneurs, we are supposed to be studying trends in world markets and figuring out how we can make money from them, not sitting around spinning Doomsday scenarios. So given that China#146;s rise to world superpower status, and growing Asian dominance of significant parts of the world economy, are #147;megatrends#148; that aren#146;t likely to reverse course anytime soon, how can you position yourself to take advantage of them?
Or, to ask the question another way, #147;as China, India and other Asian countries move into the economic mainstream, and suffer the growing pains that all developing economies do, what products and services will people over there need that I can provide?#148; If you are a consultant or business specialist, you may be able to make a lot more money doing what you do in Qingdao these days than you do in Chicago.
Want to surf the Asian tide rather than stick your fingers in the dike and hope you can keep the ocean at bay? Here are some ideas, just a few of many, many possibilities:
Are you a downsized executive or lawyer that speaks a little Chinese? Set up your own consulting practice to help American companies find Chinese joint venture partners overseas, and vice versa.
Are you a former journalist? Teach Western journalism and public relations techniques to Chinese media organizations so they can obtain more favorable press in American news media. Cliff Hahn, a media consultant in New York City (
cliphy@yahoo.com
) takes it a step further #150; he teaches children in China how to write and publish newspapers, Internet Websites, and other news media as part of the nonprofit Children#146;s PressLine (
www.cplmedia.org
) in an effort to train the Chinese journalists of tomorrow.
Are you a speech therapist who wants a more exciting opportunity than working in a public school system? Fly to India and offer your services to the #147;customer call centers#148; that operate in several cities there. By training their employees in various regional American accents, you will enhance their marketability to U.S. corporate customers, and make U.S. consumers more comfortable dealing with foreign-based customer service operations in general.
The Asians are coming, and you basically have two choices #150; fight it (bad idea), or embrace it and help bring it to fruition in a way that will benefit your country, your career and your business (good idea). As they say in Beijing, #147;hao yun#148; (#147;hou wan#148; in Shanghai, "tumhara bhagya accha ho#148; in Bangalore).
Cliff Ennico (
cennico@legalcareer.com
) is a syndicated columnist, author and host of the PBS television series 'Money Hunt'. This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at
www.creators.com
. COPYRIGHT 2005 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
