Page 76 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

time. By 2010, about 7 percent of the Chinese population will hold the keys
to a car, the China Consumer Association predicts. This will put China way
behind the American ideal of a three-car garage, but China is catching up in
the number of driver’s licenses. In 2006, 100 million Chinese—equal to one-
third of the U.S. population—had a driver’s license, according to the Chinese
Association of Automobile Manufacturers, and the numbers are growing by
double digits each year. The crowds gawking at auto showrooms in shopping
malls and business centers are an indication of the interest. No wonder
Detroit has arrived and quickly set up joint ventures to make Buicks, Fords,
and Chevrolets even though China has yet to start exporting the cars it
designs and makes to the United States.
Zhang is in the driver’s seat as China seems destined to become the
world’s largest automotive market—the same place Henry Ford was with the
Model T. Although not a car enthusiast, Zhang has to fit the part of auto
exec, and so his wheels are a spiffy black BMW. Like many executives in
Beijing, particularly returning Chinese with résumés packed with U.S. cre-
dentials, Zhang leads a comfortable life. He has a company car and driver
waiting to take him to the office and back home. His apartment is in the
Trump-like Palm Springs Villas next to Chaoyang Park in the northeastern
part of Beijing, where expatriates prefer to reside.
Zhang is too busy to enjoy the surroundings much. He has the entrepre-
neurial habit of working nonstop and the backache to show for it. Influenced
by his three years in Silicon Valley, he is motivated by its culture of rewards
from commitment to a personal goal. This spirit of entrepreneurship is alive
at Chinacars.
“In Silicon Valley, I saw that if you put your mind and heart into what
you want to do and you do it with passion, that can be an incredible force,”
Zhang says as we meet one Sunday afternoon in a clubhouse at his apartment
complex. We talk for two hours over tea, interrupted only by calls from his
mother and then his wife, who has just arrived on a flight that afternoon from
the Bay Area, where the family still has a home. Zhang speaks English fluently
and, with his hair trimmed with Beatles-like bangs, could be a model in a J.
Crew catalog. On that day he looked relaxed wearing a Johns Hopkins
sweatshirt, jeans, and running shoes. He was on doctor’s orders to get some
exercise and had been walking around the well-manicured grounds complete

50 SILICON DRAGON