Page 75 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

key posts. After long struggles to find experienced candidates, Chinacars
recently picked off new chiefs of finance and technology from two Nasdaq-
listed Chinese companies.
If Zhang can sustain the momentum, his next goal is Nasdaq. Zhang, age
47, has been prepping for this chance for a long time. The firstborn son of
high-level Chinese bureaucrats, he went to the prestigious Institute of Interna-
tional Relations in Beijing to do undergraduate studies. In 1985, with a Ford
Foundation fellowship in hand, Zhang, then 25 years old, landed at JFK
Airport, his first trip to the United States. He spent a week in New York City
and found the buzz of the city stimulating. He soon headed south on I-95 to
the nation’s capital, where the big monuments and stately buildings reminded
him of his home city, Beijing. In the Washington, D.C. area for 10 years, he
earned an MBA from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His parents
encouraged him to get a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of
Maryland. While in D.C., his adopted hometown, he raised a family with his
wife, a research assistant at Georgetown University Medical School. Leaving
academia in 1995, he spent the next six years in top management positions at
two Nasdaq-listed telecommunications firms. It was a good ride until the tech
crash of 2001. That was when Zhang made up his mind to help shape China’s
new private enterprise economy.

Going for gold

His concept and timing for Chinacars couldn’t be better. Cars and the Internet
are liberalizing forces in the new China, and Zhang is going for gold. China’s
fledgling car market is growing by 36 percent a year and now includes 30
million automobiles, compared with the world’s largest market, the United
States, at 136 million. But most of those cars are owned by government
agencies or corporations. The private car market in China is still small. Only
about 3 percent of the population, or 13 million people, own a car; that’s one
of the lowest percentages of car ownership in the world. Sticker prices for cars
are about 10 to 15 percent higher than they are in most places, putting autos
out of reach for the masses. Most people ride bikes, take the bus, or, if they
live near one of the few urban subway lines, ride the rails.
But private ownership is picking up. The watershed year was 2003, when
individually owned cars surpassed taxis and government vehicles for the first

Chinacars.com—Cruisin’ with Style 49