Managing the Dragon

After a highly successful career on Wall Street, in the early 1990s Jack Perkowski needed a new challenge. Having decided that China would be the future, he set about investigating this little-known market and the business opportunities it offered. Before long, Jack set up ASIMCO, a manufacturing business specializing in car components, which now has an annual turnover of over $500 million. In Managing the Dragon Jack provides an insider's view of China, its many peculiarities and working practices. For example, we see how China's economy and government are highly decentralized and how the country tends to operate like a series of villages spread across a vast landscape; we discover how much influence 'the Party' has on the banks, and how economic incentives at local government level causes China to create overcapacity in virtually every industry. This may explain why the country has, almost single-handedly, placed the entire world in a cost / price squeeze. Managing the Dragon is a revealing and thought-provoking memoir offering a fresh perspective on a country at the dawn of a new age. Through its colourful narrative it also tells the story of one of the most influential and

About the Author :
Jack Perkowski was born in western Pennsylvania and studied business at Yale and Harvard. Following a very successful career as a banker on Wall Street, he left the US to run his own manufacturing business in China. Jack is a regular speaker at conferences and has written several journal articles. He has lived in Beijing since 1993, but he also has a farm in New Jersey.

Review :
"If you want to do business in China, Jack Perkowski is your man. In "Managing the Dragon" he takes you into the heart of the Middle Kingdom and shows you the way with insight, humor, and the kind of practical advice an entrepreneur or a down-home tourist needs to navigate this fascinating and often bewildering colossus of a country." --Tom Brokaw "I've just finished "Managing the Dragon," which I thought was fantastic. I was riveted by it. I cannot believe what Jack Perkowski has accomplished and what an adventure he's had, how he lived through it, how he's succeeded, and how well written his book is. It reads somewhere between a novel, a how-to book, and a primer on a second business life in a developing country." --Michael Eisner "I love Jack Perkowski's book. It tells, with some bravado and lots of humility, the firsthand story of a man who dared himself to move to China to seize upon the greatest economic boom of our age. Perkowski invites us into his world, into the blur of business meetings and friendships, hirings, firings, and onto China's shop floors. He reveals what it took to build a world-class manufacturing company in a country where you need to set firm goals but reach them in an environment where the rules and circles of influence shift daily. "Managing the Dragon" is more than a manual, more than a memoir; it is a gift from a seasoned friend offering the keys to his wisdom and experience." --Ted C. Fishman, author of "China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World" ""Managing the Dragon" is more than a great story about Jack Perkowski and his courage to move to the new frontier; it is a graduate degree in thetrials, tribulations, and successes of starting from scratch in China. Jack captures the essence of doing business in China and turns it into a very compelling 'how-to' guide." --Timothy Manganello, CEO of BorgWarner, Inc.