(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-06 06:34

Zhang Xin, born in China and educated in the UK, used to work on Wall Street before she and her husband Pan Shiyi founded SOHO China 12 years ago. The company has grown into one of the largest commercial property developers in Beijing. The couple have become the most high-profile property celebrities in China with their innovative ideas on property development and international vision.

Zhang, CEO of SOHO China and a Young Global Leader (YGL), shares her views on innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese and YGL, with China Daily reporter Liu Baijia before the opening of the YGL summit in Dalian.

Q: How does the Global Young Leader (YGL) title help you and your company?

A: YGL is part of the World Economic Forum, but it has its own characteristics too. First of all, Young Global Leaders are usually young and their backgrounds are also highly diversified.

Some are businesspeople, some politicians, some working at non-profit or non-government organizations, and others professionals. It is very exciting to be with such a diversified group of young people.

At an ordinary economic conference, participants are usually from similar circles, but the YGL summit has much more diversity and these people are ambitious and actively working to make the world a better place. So we brainstorm on many different topics such as terrorism and economics.

Q: What are your views on the entrepreneurial spirit of Chinese businesspeople?

A: Chinese entrepreneurs are mostly very young and belong to the YGL age group. China's market economy is also very young and has a lot of vitality, unlike mature economies.

Entrepreneurial spirit in China is especially strong because China has a fast-growing economy and entrepreneurs keep looking for new opportunities, so they are particularly alert and demands for innovations are especially strong.

Innovation is not only invention. For Chinese enterprises, it's more important to have innovations in their business models and management.

In China, most developers on the mainland focus on housing projects and rarely do commercial development because they think that is the territory of Hong Kong developers.

But Hong Kong developers have a Hong Kong model: they find, build the property and lease the space. In leasing, famous brands like Louis Vuitton are key to bringing more tenants, so developers usually charge these brands very little or even give them the space for free.

But this model does not suit developers on the mainland, so SOHO has its own model: we build our projects, sell to customers and then help them lease the properties. In China, only a few actually buy luxury items, most frequent commercial areas to eat and drink and to have fun.

Q: How do you see the possibility of Chinese entrepreneurs assuming global leadership?

A: Global leadership is firstly about vision, followed by efforts and opportunity.

Most Chinese entrepreneurs are around 40 and some of them may become global leaders in different areas, but I do not know how many. More importantly, most of them are concerned more about how to grow their businesses rather than how to become global leaders.

The way to globalization may not be what we are seeing in some companies: buying enterprises overseas.

There are more failures than successes down this road. We shall not think like the Japanese decades ago and say we are rich and we can buy foreign enterprises and turn them around. There's no guarantee that you can run a company better than the locals.

(China Daily 09/05/2007 page3)