IOWA, BEIJING ©
(one company, one civilization)

. . . is a peculiar account about China framed in the fickle business adventures of an expatriate general manager of the Beijing subsidiary of the world’s largest grain company but set in the unchanging mind and psyche of the Chinese nation. In this first-of-its-kind, history-parsing look into the Chinese civilization, Chineseness is decrypted; answers are given to questions like: What makes China China? What is the essence of the Chinese? What is the force that holds the Chinese civilization together? and the whole complex Chinese past and present are linked together – in a singular and piercing story.

Synopsis

An ambitious American executive of the world’s largest grain company hurriedly entered China to turn around a foundering subsidiary in Beijing. No sooner had he pitched himself into the troubled operation than he discovered that it was not so much hampered by business problems as inscrutable cultural and moral perplexities before which his managerial know-how and previously-acquired knowledge of China seemingly turned irrelevant. He struggled, kept being baffled and agitated by the people and happenings in his microcosmic company, asked questions, and picked up whatever threads of understanding that came his way. These eventually gathered together – as if someone knew he would have to tell this story later – and began to weave into an ever-more complete image that at last evinced, to his awe, the essence of the Chinese, and that which explicated the vicissitudes of the tumultuous but somehow indestructible Chinese civilization.

I can picture Adrian using the one-point-something billion consumers again in his pitch to New York: "If the market grows just five percent per year, and we only achieve an unthinkably-pessimistic ten percent market share, by the end of the next decade, we’ll be selling as much feed additives in China as in the States...that is, if we still keep our number one position in America."

Adrian had them sold, apparently, as his new venture had been going for over a year now. He took me out to lunch in the Hong Kong Marriott across the street. This time he did so in the full capacity of Senior Vice President of World Grain Corporation and General Manager of C.I.D., China Industrial Division.

"Miles," he said to me as soon as we ordered, "I’ve finally gotten the okay from your boss to talk with you. You’re doing a great job in Trading but over on my side, we need a general manager in Beijing. You’ve got five years marketing feed additives in Des Moines; two years trading grains with China here in Hong Kong. Your Mandarin has always been better than mine. I want you."

"Wow--hmm--what happened to that guy from the Chicago office?" I asked.

"Well, it was unfortunate. He just fell down on the job. I had no choice but to send him back...which was what he wanted anyhow," Adrian said in a mild-mannered way, which was his way, although there was always a sureness in what he told you. And behind that mildness and sureness, there was also an openness not usually found in high-placed people. Perhaps that’s why I’d always trusted Adrian.

"The feed additive market in China is huge and booming. We just need the right person to bring in the results," Adrian continued. "There’s probably going to be a difficult patch at the beginning. So far the accumulated loss is about $2 million. Now, even with the couple of expats we got there, that’s still a big check for a simple factory and twenty locals," he added, preparing me for reality. That was November 1994.

On January 3, 1995, a cold, bright morning, my family arrived in Beijing. Susan, my wife, knew if I failed to turn the company around, our lives would be turned around. But she also knew that I had wanted something bigger than a manager in the Grain Trading Division; that since college I had always dreamed of living in China; and that I had never failed in anything I set my mind to succeed in.

Early that afternoon, Adrian took me through the teakwood door marked:

IOWA FEED ADDITIVES (BEIJING) CO. LTD.

(wholly-owned subsidiary of World Grain Corporation)

And thus I became one of the tens of thousands of expatriates who roared into China with the hundreds of billions of investment dollars of the nineties. Or, it can be said that I just flowed into the country with that vast, crass business executive corps. I am the crass business executive in this story. It shouldn’t be me telling this story. But somebody must.