Author Description

Zhu Ling Publisher of China Daily In the waning days of 2011, Larry Lee, president of China Daily USA, proposed the idea of designating the year 2012 as the "Year of Chinese Enterprises in the US". His plan was to gather stories about all the major Chinese companies that are doing business in the US, and then compile them into a yearbook - the debut of an annual album. I fully supported this project, and China Daily USA subsequently organized promotional events in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. Chinese businesses responded positively to our reporters, who fanned out throughout the US to write about them for our newspaper. The results are the stories in this book. For Chinese companies in the United States, 2012 was the year they came of age. Thirty-three years after Deng Xiaoping donned a cowboy hat at a rodeo in Houston, the relationship between China and the US is still a work in progress, but business has never been better. For many, the transition from East to West has not been easy, or even necessarily successful. They met resistance – from customers, from competitors, and from government regulators – but they persevered. They learned, they adapted, they shifted gears; in some cases they shifted businesses, but they found their way. Today, they are up and running, and an integral part of American business. Or, in the words of Wu Shiqiang, general manager of the New York branch of the Bank of China, quoting Confucius, "Sanshi erli" – "A man stands on his own feet at age 30." What follows is an astonishing success story … profiles of more than 60 Chinese companies that have come to the US and prospered. No two of these tales are the same, but taken together they offer a roadmap for companies to follow, and for future cooperation between the world’s two largest economies.