Old School Lessons for China Business

Old school.

There’s nothing like it.

Finding an old school jacket in the attic that still fits. Grooving to the old school 8 track with a hot date on a rainy day. Getting out the old school playbook and kicking the opposing team’s butt with it.

While it’s trite to call someone an old China hand around these parts, these guys – the ones here long enough to live through some hard-core communism – get major props. It’s because they’re old school, with old school tried and true methods.

China International Business (CIB) magazine just did a series of good profiles on old schoolers. They focused on the men and women. We’ll focus on their old school methods, which might just save you, either in business, or during the next cultural revolution – whatever that involves.

• Street smarts work on corporate carpet. Jaime A. FloraCruz was an activist and critic of the president of the Philippines back in the 70s. Barred from returning to his homeland after what should have been a brief trip to China, he stayed and volunteered for hard labor in Hunan Province. “I was swept up with this romanticist notion of working in the countryside,” he told CIB. He emerged less than idealistic, and put his more practical methods to test shortly. In a fishing trawler off the coast of Shandong Province, bored, he scrutinized newsprint – and photos.

  According to CIB:

  He examined photos of political leaders on the front page of the People’s Daily every day for clues as to who was currently in and out of favor. “There was always a formula of how they sat, so when you noticed one guy had disappeared, you knew he was in trouble, or when someone had moved closer to Chairman Mao, you know the guy had just gotten a promotion,” he explains.

He carried those street news instincts with him to Newsweek, working part time, and getting his name some serious print when the bureau chief was out of town. When Newsweek didn’t offer him full time employment, he went to Time magazine’s Beijing office and offered his help. It worked.

Mr. FloraCruz was well educated, having studied Chinese history at Peking University. But his street smarts – no, make that countryside and boat smarts – got him ahead in China.