In 2004, foreign companies invested more than GBP30 billion pounds in China. Multinational corporations acknowledge that success in this market is crucial to their global competitiveness - yet many continue to find this success elusive. Where do you start? First, you need to understand how China thinks. In The Little Red Book of China Business - the first guide to doing business in China based on the advice and example of the country's ultimate insider, Mao Zedong - Sheila Melvin casts a penetrating light into the Chinese psyche. Using quotes and anecdotes from Mao's life to reveal fundamental truths about China's culture, each chapter elaborates a new 'rule' to learn - 'The Unity of Opposites', for instance, helps you understand the contradictory nature of a socialist country with an unabashedly consumer society. Filled with advice on typical situations likely to face those entering the China market, The Little Red Book of China Business is a crystallisation of the collective wisdom of the author's own experiences and of the hundreds of business people, diplomats and journalists she has advised and learned from over two decades of living and working in China.

Author Biography

Sheila Melvin spent seven years at The United States-China Business Council, advising executives of council-member companies in Washington DC, Beijing and Shanghai on the politics, economics and practicalities of doing business in China. She was nominated to the National Committee on US-China Relations in 2004. She has contributed to many international publications, including China Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. She lives in California and Beijing.