Part One: Concept vs. Value: the Struggle of China’s Consumerism;
　　Part Two: Double Bureaucracies - Corporate and Government in China;
　　Part Three: No Reasons to Fail -Invest in the Fundamentals (to be followed)

In the context of societal evolution, creativity has two implications – create thing to advance a society, and add valuable substances to the society, which can be new technology, energy saving or anything as long as it is not just a reshuffle of the current wealth or sustaining of the past.

On the one hand, individual endeavor (entrepreneurship) is the source of the creativity; on the other, the periodic eruption of strong creativity is closely associated with new technology. America is exemplary in the past two centuries. The creativity strides in its own mechanism when the necessary social elements are in place. As a matter of fact, the strong individual creativity is rather an exceptional phenomenon even in the most optimal environment. Majority of people tend to equally admire and fear the changes led by a relentless legend.

Creativity has enormous energy but soon build its own boundary. In contrast to creativity as a show of individualism, bureaucracy is to confine the constant changes.

Americaand other developed countries have been gradually sliding into bureaucracy since 1980s’. American dream is no longer the same as it was thirty years ago.

Despite of its recent successful economic reform, China has never changed its chronically bureaucratic nature. The current globalization fosters an overlapping of double bureaucracies, the big government of the East and the big corporate of the West. The mentality of concept over value is acute in China.

Corporate Bureaucracy and Steve Jobs Phenomenon

Americais the birth place to numerous iconic business leaders, Rockefeller, Sam Walton, Ray Kroc, Steve Jobs and many more. However, the death of Steve Jobs has a strong reaction world-wide and is prophetic to today’s business world. This is not just another American story. Steve Jobs symbolizes the dying of an old school in today’s heavily corporatized society.  It shows how unique a person’s will and capacity in a corporate level can tunes no-nonsense rationality, turns corporate power into creative advantages and achieve something unimaginable scale.

Americareached its apogee around the end of 1980s. America today is no longer the wild-west for adventurers. In 1870s, Texas was still America’s frontier fighting the last war with the Indians and butchering millions of buffalos on the prairies. In the early days, American dream was full of endeavoring and hardship. As much as one third of Jewish immigrants left the states because of the hardship. One hundreds years later today, America is the country of Fortune 500 and their affiliates. The then-entrepreneurers built world class corporates that dominate almost every catagory of business. These corporates are run by professionals who are specialized and are trained by also corporatized education system. Sky has no boundary, but a country has, so is the depth of a socieity to intake the commerialism and the capacity of a corporate to run creatively at such a size.

A corporate culture is inheriantly bureaucratic. When the market is saturated with big corporates, society as a whole would also be infected by its culture and start to shift toward bureaucracy. With all these designed nuts and bolts, corporate builds as a machine, and will runs as a machine. Corporate is not without trying to be creative. However, for its inflexible hierachical structure, shared responsibility vs risk taking, interwoven personal interests, size, fratenity like inner circle, technical challenges and so on, all renders its lack of flexibility and compete not on a creative level. It is specially acute after the retirement of its first generation of top management. This phenomenon is obiquitous.

In this new world of corporate culture, it also creates a habitual corporate mentality and a linear career path starting from the education. MBA and law school grow their importance in paraelle with the boom of corporate culture. Although education is more important than ever, the consciousness of a career preparation in the education system outpowers the teaching of creative and independent thinking. Excerise of the mind is no longer ofa real world venture but a competition of IQ and a calculation of risk avoidance. Even mathmatics is no longer just a tool but an entry barrier, in more than a few instances in the business, to a world of nonsenses. During the same time, common sense (or no-nonsenses) becomes more and more of a rare commodity.

In comparision to the gradual descent into the bureaucracy of the west, China is nearly a perfect text book example of double burocracies from the very beginning of its economic reform.

Double Bureaucracies – China’s Style

In Fortune 500 companies, all Chinese firms, except one, are state-owned. Fast economy growth is pillared on real estate, export-oriented manufacturing and government spending. Monopolies are everywhere. China’s grass-root entrepreneurship is strong and vivid but in an aboriginal fashion. Short-term mentality and corporatizing inclination co-exist and dominate both private and state-own business. Because of its political structure, China has never broken its historical shell of hierarchical and elitist tradition.

Chinais a sophisticated and well-crafted ancient civilization. Its tradition is defined by the doctrines tracing back two thousand years ago. The layers of social and political structures accumulated and refined through each historical dynasty in order to confine the changes. In comparison to sea culture of the West, China is still an inland culture state – a bureaucractic state. Creativity is a newly founded word and is not much appreciated. The status quo is still the preference. Despite of their eternal depression, the general populations are not the willing reformists. China has been applauded for its successful reform led by the elitists. Without going too much into the causes of such a success, we can safely say it is a bureaucratic reform and is thus inherently anti-creativity. 

China’s economic reform is in parallel with the rise of the West’s corporate bureaucratization. Chinese elites have gone to study in the western countries and highly influenced by its education system and its concurrent business culture. They have seen the end results of strong creativity and entrepreneurship without completely comprehending the sources of these creations, or it is simply irrelevant in today’s business environment. Most of these Chinese returnees are limited to work in six areas – law, finance, consultancy, education, IT industry and foreign companies. It is common to see wall-street returnees running start-up companies. They are more interested in playing capital game and story-telling than in creating solid business. It is not to say there are no exceptions. However, the overall trend is un-mistaken.

China’s education will produce more students of MBA, law, EMBA, PHD and master degrees than any other countries soon. It is another manifestation of China’s hierachical and elitist nature. Instead to let creative spirit flourish, China is learning fast from the West to add another layer of entry barrier in its far-from free economy.

Even more interesting, in order to expand, the big western corps are leading the waves into China’s market with their strong brands, dazzling products, operation capacity, professional management and deep capitals. They lay out an unmatchable playing field to Chinese who just starts acquainting such a consumerism. China’s economy is not homogeneous and is infected by corporate bureaucracy from the start.

It is a new era of the world economy. Wide economic gap between the west and the east amplified by the overflow of superficial information creates a ‘successful’ and jaw-dropping speedy growth on the back of bureaucracy and misinformation. This trend is too overwhelming to be corrected even though it is deemed to be unsustainable. The force of nature will eventually make its own correction. During the meantime, how to get back common sense, how to put creative over bureaucratic, how to bridge the strength of the West to the vast market of the East are not only just a jargon but also business opportunity to many.

After all, China is still a vast market way beyond its western counterparts. When all the knowledge is there and business models are available, there are just no reasons to fail.