Rise of ‘entrepreneur worship’ in China encourages more people to set up shop

15.07.2015

In Shanghai Book City, the largest bookstore in town, Stephen Ding stands in front of a shelf in the “business management” section, carefully comparing a handful of books.

In his hands are books about China’s richest man and Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin, Alibaba founder Ma Yun, property tycoon Feng Lun, and Hong Kong multibillionaire Li Ka-shing.

Eventually, he decides on Wanda Philosophy, written by Wang about himself and his property conglomerate.

“I’m interested in these four entrepreneurs,” Ding, a Shanghai-based salesman, says.

“But Wanda Philosophy is written by Wang, while the others aren’t written by the entrepreneurs themselves. So I think Wang’s book can give me some real insight into his thoughts.

“I’ll analyse his experiences and ideas, and will borrow those parts that are suitable for me.”

A few steps from Ding is Yan Bin, seated on the ground, deeply engrossed as he studies a book on the internal management of Chinese computer giant Lenovo.

Having owned a small IT equipment store that closed down a few years ago, Yan said he wanted to get some tips on how to control business costs.

“The entrepreneur I admire the most is [online game developer Giant Interactive chairman] Shi Yuzhu because he would never be defeated by career setbacks,” Yan said.

“He was once among China’s richest men only to have his business empire collapse suddenly. But he stood up from where he fell down and moved on. Later, he built another great company.”

Ding’s and Yan’s views reflect the Chinese society’s growing tendency towards “entrepreneur worship”.

Interest in successful entrepreneurs has risen over the past few years as China’s private companies grew in influence and state leaders encouraged young people to set up their own businesses.

But entrepreneurs have not always been looked up to in China.

In fact, Chinese people used to look down on them. There is even a proverb that says every businessman is crafty and every crafty person should become a businessman.

As a result of a policy of promoting agriculture and restraining commerce adopted by China’s feudal dynasties, for a long time in the country’s history, business people were at the lowest level on the social hierarchy, below intellectuals, government officials and farmers.

After the country opened up and undertook reforms, people were gradually allowed to do business – but the job was usually taken up only by those who could not find other work.

At the time, people thought of entrepreneurs as being “pot-bellied” and having “a mouth full of gold teeth”, according to a survey by Horizon Research Consultancy Group.

But this impression has since changed drastically – and for the better, the group says.

About 40 per cent of those Horizon polled in April believed entrepreneurs possessed leadership skills. Some 37 per cent said such people had “vision” and 36 per cent felt they were “hardworking”.

Chen Lijun, general manager of the book business unit of China’s largest online book distributor Dangdang.com, said the company’s sales of entrepreneur-themed books surged 50 per cent last year compared with the year before.

For the first half of this year, 20 per cent more of such books were sold compared with the same period last year.

Chen said books about Japanese business guru Inamori Kazuo topped the list of entrepreneur-themed books sold, with an accumulated one million copies sold through the website.

Other business gurus whose books sold well included Google China founder Lee Kai-fu and property tycoons Feng Lun and Wang Shi.

“The sales of entrepreneur-themed books still can’t compete with books of other types such as literature books … But I would say the sales of such books have jumped quickly over these two years,” Chen said.

Entrepreneurs have become not so different from pop stars, it would seem, with frenzied fans taking to the internet to keep track of their business idols.

Among Chinese entrepreneurs, property tycoon Wang Shi, chairman of residential real estate giant China Vanke, has the most followers – 20 million – on his Sina microblog.

Alibaba’s Ma Yun has 19.4 million followers while Pan Shiyi, chairman of property developer Soho China has 17.2 million and Yu Minhong, founder of education service provider New Oriental Education has 14.2 million.

Xu Zijian, a Shanghai-based angel investor and co-founder of the Bund CEO Group, believes that the rise of “entrepreneur worship” in China is partly because of the high-profile of many company bosses these days.

Entrepreneurs in the past used to shun the spotlight, he said.

“In the current era, many entrepreneurs are comfortable having a high profile and some are quite outspoken,” Xu said.

“I think it’s because they are well educated, well exposed and are confident about the clean way in which they have gained their wealth. These aspects were all very different for our first-generation entrepreneurs back in the 1980s or 1990s.”

The increase in respect and admiration towards businessmen would encourage more people to venture out to set up their own businesses, Xu said.

“The successful entrepreneurs can be good examples for young people,” he said.

Shanghai University sociologist Gu Jun said it was better for people to follow in the footsteps of entrepreneurs than to fear change and hang on to “iron rice bowl” jobs.

(source: South China Morning Post)

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