{"id":3527,"date":"2009-06-17T10:17:41","date_gmt":"2009-06-17T10:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3527"},"modified":"2009-06-17T10:17:41","modified_gmt":"2009-06-17T10:17:41","slug":"who_switched_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3527","title":{"rendered":"Who Switched the Playbooks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/managingthedragon.com\/index.php\/2009\/06\/12\/who-switched-the-playbooks\/\">Jack Perkowski<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>When I was starting up in China, many experts cautioned me on what I would encounter. \u201cIt\u2019s not a free market and there\u2019s no rule of law, they told me. \u201cThe government controls the courts, the companies and the banks. Central planners in Beijing, not the marketplace, decide what goods to produce and which companies should produce them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDecisions are made for political, not economic reasons,\u201d they went on to explain. \u201cThe heads of China\u2019s state-owned enterprises serve at the pleasure of the Party, the banks are told what loans to make, and making a profit is secondary to ensuring employment. That\u2019s the reason why China\u2019s banks are a mess and full of non-performing loans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally, I would push back, noting the economic progress that China had made since Deng Xiaoping opened the economy in 1978. \u201cYou don\u2019t believe the government\u2019s numbers, do you?\u201d they would ask incredulously. \u201cEveryone knows they\u2019re manufactured to convey whatever message the government wants. And, when it comes to financial statements, forget it. Chinese companies have at least three sets of books, and you can\u2019t believe any of them.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/managingthedragon.com\/index.php\/2009\/06\/12\/who-switched-the-playbooks\/\">Jack Perkowski<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>When I was starting up in China, many experts cautioned me on what I would encounter. \u201cIt\u2019s not a free market and there\u2019s no rule of law, they told me. \u201cThe government controls the courts, the companies and the banks. Central planners in Beijing, not the marketplace, decide what goods to produce and which companies should produce them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDecisions are made for political, not economic reasons,\u201d they went on to explain. \u201cThe heads of China\u2019s state-owned enterprises serve at the pleasure of the Party, the banks are told what loans to make, and making a profit is secondary to ensuring employment. That\u2019s the reason why China\u2019s banks are a mess and full of non-performing loans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally, I would push back, noting the economic progress that China had made since Deng Xiaoping opened the economy in 1978. \u201cYou don\u2019t believe the government\u2019s numbers, do you?\u201d they would ask incredulously. \u201cEveryone knows they\u2019re manufactured to convey whatever message the government wants. And, when it comes to financial statements, forget it. Chinese companies have at least three sets of books, and you can\u2019t believe any of them.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,39,33,35,9,17,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}