The Transnational China Project was established to study the influence
of the transnational circulation of ideas, people, commodities and technologies
in Chinese societies. During this inaugural year we have set up networks
of scholars from many countries to exchange research notes and teaching
methods. We have also sponsored original commentary and analysis by real-life
experts and practitioners. In March we asked China's former minister of
culture, Wang Meng, to talk about the ways that market reforms are changing
China's culture. He gave us a very insightful and critical analysis of the
ways in which popular attitudes and cultural beliefs are diverging radically
in China today.
We have asked Mr. Mao to talk about the influence of a different kind of
culture: organizational culture or corporate culture in China. We have asked
Mr. Mao in particular because he is an expert on China's collective economy,
a part of China's economy that we as Americans know little about.
When we think about Chinese companies we either think of large, bureaucratic,
inefficient, Soviet-style enterprises, or we think of small, family-run
private companies. In fact, as Mr. Mao will describe, there is a very large
class of companies called collectives, and they have their own organizational
or corporate culture. Collective enterprises were formed in the cities in
the 1950s as a way to persuade individuals with either capital or special
skills to form small enterprises in the handicraft, retail trade and service
industries. During the 1960s and 1970s, however, these collectives were
forced to follow government planning agency orders, just like the state
enterprises. In the 1980s, however, collectives developed rapidly because
state agencies began to focus their funding and efforts on large state-owned
enterprises, leaving the collectives to fend for themselves. Mr. Mao is
here tonight to explain why these enterprises are still very important actors
in China's economy, and to describe the development of one kind of collective
enterprise, the "stock cooperative," that he pioneered in China's
urban areas in the late 1980s.
Finally, by way of introducing Mr. Mao's background, let me say that he
has an excellent track record as a persuasive lobbyist for the collective
economy. In 1991 the printing factory of which he was a cooperative manager
was personally chosen to be an experimental "stock cooperative"
by then Shanghai mayor Zhu Rongji (now premier and the architect of China's
marketization policies). This experiment was so successful that it has become
the model for privatizing small and medium state-owned enterprises in urban
areas of China today. Mr. Mao has not just directly played a role in transforming
hundreds of enterprises he has even drafted local laws and regulations to
facilitate these transformations.
His expertise in small-scale privatization is recognized in China
and abroad. In 1995 he and various international organizations (including
the Canadian government and United Nations agencies) set up a non-profit
organization, the first of its kind in China, to offer advice to budding
stock cooperatives and housing cooperatives. In this capacity he has been
invited to conferences on cooperatives in Canada, Italy, Germany, France
and Spain. Recently he was asked by the People's Bank of China to set up
an experimental "cooperative bank" or credit union in Shanghai.
And it is his research on credit unions that has finally brought him to
the United States, where we are very happy to welcome him to the Baker Institute.