U.S. Firms Star in China TV Show
Millions of television viewers in China will soon get a rare peek at the hows, whats and whys of capitalism, American-style. But don’t expect the Chinese to rush to buy shares of AT&T; or set up investment banking firms on every street corner.
Within the next month or so, Chinese television will begin broadcasting a 12-part series of half-hour programs on American business, entitled “The Global View.”
The Chinese- and American-sponsored series will profile several U.S. companies and organizations, such as Hewlett-Packard, United Airlines, Sears, American Telephone & Telegraph, Bank of America and the Stanford Research Institute.
The aim of the series, to be broadcast in prime time initially in Peking and later throughout China, is to introduce Chinese managers and workers to Western corporate cultures, management styles and profit objectives.
While the program’s sponsors don’t expect the Chinese to convert to capitalism, they do hope that some ideas about Western marketing, financing methods, research, labor-management and customer relations might be useful and adaptable for Chinese managers and workers.
“My approach is a modest one: Here are the excellent U.S. companies, and here are their stories,” said Doris Wan Cheng, a Shanghai-born naturalized American citizen and Chicago-based business consultant who is executive producer and co-host of the series. “The Chinese are very smart. They will decide which part of Western management will be appropriate for them.”
‘Management Was Never an Issue’
Most of the concepts on the programs are familiar and taken for granted by American businessmen. But they are new for many Chinese managers, who for years under a centrally planned economy never had to worry much about such things as marketing or customer relations.
“Management was never an issue in China,” Cheng said. “The central government decided what to produce and how to produce it and allocated funds. There was never any concern about how to market. . . . The only concern was how to meet your quota or production schedule.”
China’s recent effort to modernize and decentralize its economy now has placed new demands on Chinese companies--demands that a little dose of Western business management techniques might help, Cheng said.
Each program in “The Global View” tries to illustrate one or more points about American management through profiling a company or organization. The first program, which focuses on AT&T;, tries to show how the company is at the leading edge of the information revolution. “We want to use AT&T; as a starting point to show excellence in research,” Cheng said.
The segment on Bank of America tries to illustrate how the bank fits into “the most efficient financial market in the world,” Cheng said. The piece also tries to show how the bank fits into a diverse U.S. financial structure--insurance companies, venture capital firms, banks, pension funds and the like--and how they contribute to the development of high-technology firms in California’s Silicon Valley, she said.
Chat With Former President Nixon
Other featured companies and organizations include Stanford University’s department of electrical engineering, the American Electronics Assn., Polaroid, Data General, Wang and Digital Equipment.
The programs include interviews with top executives of the profiled organizations, including AT&T; Chairman Charles L. Brown, Bank of America Chairman Leland S. Prussia and Sears Chairman Edward Brennan. Also featured is a chat with former President Richard M. Nixon, who discusses how Chinese economic development could serve as a model for other Third World and Eastern Bloc nations.
Subsequent series will focus on mature U.S. industries such as autos and steel and on European and Japanese firms, Cheng said. She eventually hopes to do a series exploring Chinese management styles to be shown to American audiences.
Production for the initial 12-part series so far has cost about $250,000--a low-budget project by American standards. The bulk of the U.S. production costs were underwritten by AT&T;, which gets a one-minute ad on each show. The Chinese sponsors are the Chinese Enterprise Management Assn., a government agency that trains Chinese business managers, and Peking Capital Television.
Reaction by Chinese government officials and management experts to previews of the programs has been very positive, Cheng said. “They feel it’s precious information,” she said.
Cheng adds that she has encountered virtually no problems with censorship. “Only a few pictures needed to be changed,” she said, but she was reluctant to discuss the matter in detail, saying only that the pictures probably had to be changed because “the background was sensitive.”
