The Author Tim Clissold will be meeting BCP members exclusively
at Dynasty 7:45pm on Tuesday 22nd February 2005
We have invited a speaker to share his experience with BCP members & friends and to people who are interested in doing business with China.
Tim Clissold, the author
of a new book "Mr China", will talk for half an hour and answer questions and sign books. The remaining evening will be a
net-working opportunity for those who would like to work with China and meet other BCP officers and members.
All are welcome to support BCP at this event.
Please be there for 7:45pm so we can start promptly at 8:00pm. It is proposed to charge a nominal £5 attendance fee to help cover the costs of the buffet. We are grateful to HSBC who have kindly offered to sponsor the cost of wine. We should be finished by around 10:00pm.
About the author and the book 'Mr China':
The true story of an Englishman, an ex-Red Guard and a Wall Street banker, who raised $418 million dollars, invested it in China , and watched it slide towards the abyss…
In the late eighties Tim Clissold went to China and fell in love – with the country, her people, the chaos, the endearing absurdity and the wonderful mistranslations. His love became an obsession and in the summer of 1990 he returned to Beijing to study Mandarin.
In the early nineties China was opening up for business with the West and opportunity was ripe. Clissold soon became a founding partner in a private equity group intent on investing in a rich new China . Having raised a staggering $418 million dollars, he and his colleagues travelled the country, lurching from one grubby hotel to the next. They visited over a hundred factories and saw every type of business imaginable: huge iron foundries, steel rolling mills in workshops a mile long, badly lit shacks where row upon row of young women assembled tiny electrical motors.One thing was certain, there were plenty of factories poised for expansion that needed investment. And invest they did, buying up factories here, and factories there.
Flushed with success and certain of a rich harvest soon to be reaped they sat back and watched.
But slowly the truth dawned. The Chinese conduct business like no Western country and their money was heading south, fast. Left with little choice – face ruin or fight, Clissold and his partners fought. They fought against the bureaucracy and the stubbornness; against the inscrutability, the fraud and the disobedience; and against the sheer utter madness of the Chinese way of business.
Often surreal, occasionally frightening, Clissold's amazing story is hugely entertaining. MR CHINA is an extraordinary, amusing and eye-opening account of the arcane world of traditional Chinese business.
About the author :
Born in North Yorkshire , Tim Clissold graduated in Physics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University , before joining Arthur Anderson. He worked in London , Australia and Hong Kong , and spent two years studying Mandarin Chinese in London and Beijing . He has lived and worked in China for sixteen years and is married with three children.
For further information please
contact: Alix Hughes, Co-ordinator, Bristol International Twinning Association.
Tel: 0117 3284450 e-mail: Alix.Hughes@uwe.ac.uk