Barefoot in the Boardroom by Bill Purves (Allen & Unwin)

In the early eighties, the People’s Republic of China created the Open Door Policy which was announced by Deng Xiaoping. It allowed foreign companies to set up businesses in the mainland. Special Economic Zones were created in the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian in the hopes of attracting direct foreign investments. Deng Xiaping believed the policy would help modernize China and boost its economy.

Bill Purves was born in Canada but currently lives in Hong Kong. In 1988, after spending five years in the British Protectorate and learning the language, Purves was looking for a new job and his eyes stopped at a small ad for a job opening in the classifieds. He sent in an application although he was not very enthusiastic about his chances of actually landing the job. “It seemed unlikely that I would stumble on a genuinely senior position in the classifieds, but in Hong Kong postage is cheap.”.  

Barefoot in the Boardroom is Purve’s first-hand account of living and working in the People’s Republic of China. He was hired as the General Manager by Gold Land Limited, a cast iron foundry located in a rural town in mainland China. Gold Land Limited is a joint-venture company between the government-owned danwei or ‘work unit’ and a company based in Hong Kong which was still a British colony at the time.

Purves shares his observations and gives us his impressions of the working conditions at the foundry for the two years he worked there. We share his trials and tribulations as he tries to apply Western management principles on a country that was still unfamiliar with sales and marketing. Product isn’t manufactured on a supply and demand basis as the factory’s quota is set by a government committee.

One of the ideals of communist China was to create an ‘iron rice bowl’ for its workers, “using each according to his abilities and providing for each according to his needs.” As Americans, we would call this “job security” or “job for life”. The result, according to Purves, has created a “vast and ineffective state planning apparatus and a tangle of social welfare policies and regulations.”

Another one of the biggest problems Purves noticed was the lack of any modern office equipment. There were no phones, no faxes, no copy machines. Without any phone lines or an intercom system, the managers of various departments would arrive at the General Manager’s office unannounced because there was no way to make an appointment. All copies of any documents had to be done using carbon paper. The factory used onion-skin paper so if an error was made which was prone to damage if an erasure was made. 

This crash course in how business works in the People’s Republic of China is surprising as it is eye-opening. The market and economy has improved vastly since the eighties but it is the pioneering efforts of joint-ventures like Gold Land Limited and others that set the country on the path to prosperity while still keeping in touch with it’s communist doctrines. Currently, most factories and their suppliers must follow the Global Supply Chain Compliance and if they don’t, I would have second thoughts about buying anything with “Made in China” printed on it. ~Ernie Hoyt