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发表于 2012-8-29 12:46:37
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Reuters Magazine: The Made-in-China CEO
Thu Jun 28, 2012 6:39am IST
(This piece originally appeared in Reuters Magazine)
By Terril Yue Jones
REUTERS - Zhang Yue fondly caresses the blueprints as he slowly flips through them, occasionally pausing to stare at a drawing as he explains his new project.
The plan seems impossibly ambitious: Build a 220-story building, the tallest in the world, in just four months by using the rapid-construction techniques his company has developed.
Zhang, a slight but wiry and intense man of 52, says "Sky City" - as he has dubbed it - can fix many of the world's pollution, congestion, transportation and even disease problems by completely purifying the tower's air. The 838-meter-tall building (10 meters taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the world's tallest) will hold schools, a hospital, 17 helipads and some 30,000 people. It will, indeed, be a city in the sky.
His dreams don't stop there.
Pinned up on his office wall are plans for a project even more audacious - an almost preposterously massive building two kilometers high. When asked to estimate the odds of this 636-floor giganto-scraper ever being built, Zhang responds without hesitation, "One hundred percent! Some say that it's sensationalism to construct such a tall building. That's not so. Land shortages are already a grave problem. There's also the very serious transportation issue. We must bring cities together and stretch for the sky in order to save cities and save the Earth. We must eliminate most traffic, traffic that has no value! And we must reduce our dependency on roads and transportation."
Tenaciously pursuing a lofty vision is a hallmark of Zhang's success at Broad Group, but also that of many entrepreneurial Chinese chief executives in these days of heady growth in the world's second-largest economy.
The recipe for success for all these CEOs includes: 1) the vision and guts to seize upon a bold, even outlandish idea; 2) a relentless drive to build a company; and 3) an outsized ego to drive the process and overwhelm the skeptics.
Chinese founder-CEOs such as Zong Qinghou of drinks-maker Wahaha (until last year China's richest citizen), automaker Geely CEO Li Shufu, and Huawei chief Ren Zhengfei all have compelling, almost mythic personae that color most facets of their companies.
"In these entrepreneurial firms, the products and services are the passions of the founder," says Chris Marquis, a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School who studies Chinese business executives. "They were employee No. 1, and now have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in sales, and thousands of employees. These CEOs have been there every step of the way, and their vision has been what's driven the company."
These entrepreneurs are all known for thinking big ... and then bigger. Zhang Yue's Very Big Idea is to save the world by conserving energy, reducing congestion and pollution, and making homes and offices much more healthful places by purifying stale air he says is responsible for 68 percent of human illnesses.
"Each era had an issue of its time; each era had a mission of its time," Zhang says in an interview in his headquarters on the outskirts of Changsha, the capital of south China's Hunan province. "Our era's problem is not productivity and it's not wealth. It's not even politics or democracy. In society today - including China and all the countries of the world - we're facing the increasingly grave problem of environmental pollution."
Zhang, who ranks No. 186 on the Hurun Report of wealthiest Chinese, built his estimated $1.19 billion fortune on industrial cooling systems and air conditioners. He started his company on the back of some patents for non-electrical air conditioning, and later expanded into industrial strength chillers and air purification systems that have been installed in Madrid's airport, a U.S. military base, and throughout Europe and the Americas.
The devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that left more than 87,000 people killed or missing was a turning point for him. Horrified at the widespread collapse of buildings, including many shoddily built elementary schools, he set out to design safer, environmentally sounder buildings. He realized that by prefabricating building-floor slabs with pipes and wires built in, ready to be connected once modules are in place, buildings could go up much faster, and with only 1 percent of materials discarded as waste.
Last December, Broad Sustainable Building, his construction unit, erected a 30-story hotel in Hunan province in just 15 days. (A time-lapse video of the build has notched almost 5 million views online.)
Zhang next plans a 50-story building, and perhaps a couple more with 30 floors, while he drums up funding for Sky City 220. He's also hoping to set up franchises so such buildings can go up anywhere; he has seven in China so far, and is aiming for 150 around the world.
CHINA'S OLD-SCHOOL CEOs
Broadly speaking, there are two types of chief executive in China. The traditional one is the bureaucrat head of one of the traditional state-owned enterprises (SOEs) - mammoth, lethargic behemoths, often monopolistic, including the telecom operators, banks, insurance companies, oil and steel producers. Their leaders are generally intelligent and capable managers, but most are Communist Party stalwarts who have served quietly in local and central government agencies or ministries.
They are generally not looking to shake things up. They don't have any game-changing ideas, prefer not to rock the boat, and would find the appellation "disruptive" - one embraced by so many Western CEOs - to be anathema.
"This kind of career path tends to be more system-oriented, in pursuit of steady growth for the organizations," says Katherine Xin, a professor of the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. "They are more attuned to government policies, to the political, geopolitical environment. These CEOs tend to be promoted through a well-established ladder of career path, step by step."
China Construction Bank, the world's second-largest lender by market capitalization, illustrates the SOE model well. Recent Chief Executive Guo Shuqing had stints as vice governor of Guizhou province and as China's foreign currency regulator, and was appointed last year to become head of China's stock market regulator. His favorite saying is, "Listen to both extremes and take the middle course," reflecting his desire to please as many people - and irk as few - as possible.
THE NO-SCHOOL CEOs
A new breed of Chinese CEO has sprung up in the wake of China's economic reforms since the 1990s. Entrepreneurial CEOs in China share few personality traits or management techniques with those SOE (state-owned-enterprise) CEOs. They are keen to innovate and seize opportunity, are eager to leave a legacy, and are legendary for their tenacity.
Wahaha's Zong leapt at an opportunity to develop a market presence in the beverage business. Establishing a distribution channel deep into China's countryside to supply remote towns with Wahaha products was one of his biggest accomplishments. He is also renowned for his persistence, and his willingness to delegate to his talented staff.
Many of these entrepreneurial Chinese CEOs were hardscrabble businessmen who started making and/or selling products on a small scale - furniture, real estate, auto parts - and added bits and pieces along the way. That's how Du Kerong, head of Tianjin-based Xinmao Group, built his closely held conglomerate. He started with a construction materials company that evolved into a real estate firm and eventually into the Xinmao Group, which today employs more than 30,000 and has more than 100 subsidiaries in real estate, construction, hotels, fiberoptics, software and other high-tech fields.
The charismatic but fiercely private Du sprang to prominence in late 2010 when he made a billion-euro offer for a Dutch cable manufacturer, muscling in on an all-European deal that had already been agreed upon. His bid failed, but it exemplified the style of this new strain of Chinese CEO - brash and flush with cash and ambition, but inexperienced outside of China.
"They are very sensitive to their environments, very alert to new opportunities and extremely flexible to pursue these new opportunities," says Xin. "And one of the most important characteristics is that they are very pragmatic: 'Whatever works.'"
STEVE JOBS IN A SMART CAR
In his work and in his personal life, Zhang Yue seems to have a desire to comprehend everything. Back when he was an art student, he wanted to understand Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. An instructor told him that to do so, he would have to paint it himself. So he did. |
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