Four Hundred Million Customers: The Experiences - Some Happy, Some Sad - of an American in China and What They Taught Him - Hardcover

Crow, Carl; Vogel, Henry Ford II Research Professor Of The Social Sciences Emeritus Ezra F

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1788690028 ISBN 13: 9781788690027

Publisher: Eastbridge Books, 2002

Synopsis

Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) is a collection of humorous essays and piquant anecdotes underpinned by well-informed insight and highlighted by witty drawings by G. Sapojnikoff. Like a bowl of salted peanuts, these vignettes make you want “more.” The book was welcomed on its publication as the most entertaining and instructive introduction to the rapidly modernizing people of the new China and their resilient customs. While it has been taught in recent years at the Harvard Business School, the book — or at least its title — has been cited much more than read, usually to illustrate American illusions about the China market. Yet the book has lost none of its still perceptive insights into China, which is now more than triple “four hundred million.”

“Crow, living in Shanghai [in the early twentieth century], wrote in a bemused manner about city dwellers. [While] Crow’s book was of little value to the China watcher of the 1950s and 1960s . . . once Chinese reform and opening took off after 1978, the clever city dwellers that Crow described in the 1930s are a far better guide to the China of today than [Edgar] Snow’s revolutionaries or [Pearl] Buck’s peasants. 

“I have a former student, a successful businessman, who opened a factory in Shanghai a few months ago. On his reading stand he keeps a copy of Four Hundred Million Customers. ‘No other book,’ he said, ‘including many more contemporary works on the Chinese economy, provides as much insight into the business environment I face. And it helps me keep my sense of humor as I face the frustrations of doing business in China.’ No need to repeat the wonderful stories and phrases found in the book. Enjoy.” 
— from the Introduction by Ezra F. Vogel

About this title

About the Author:

Carl was a Missouri boy who studied journalism and then pitched up in Shanghai in 1911 to start China's first American-run English-language newspaper, the China Press. He then started his own advertising agency that made him wealthy and revolutionized advertising and brand management in China. He was one of the most prominent foreigners in China during the era between the world wars.

Review:

“A rich trove of anecdotes and insights about the Chinese people and doing business in China, much of which still holds true today.”  —James McGregor, author, One Billion Customers

About this edition

• Publisher: Eastbridge Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1788690028
• ISBN 13: 9781788690027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 338