Page 79 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Road tour of Chinacars

One fall morning in Beijing I visit Chinacars, arriving there in the company
car. It’s in the heart of the city but looks like it could be in San Francisco’s
Mission District, home to dozens of dot-com start-ups during the Internet
boom. We turn into a narrow alleyway, pass an old firehouse, and stop at a
multi-story factory building with large casement windows. Riding upstairs to
the offbeat headquarters in what used to be a cargo elevator, I land at a floor
with a large, high-ceilinged open space loaded with young Chinese workers
huddled in cubicles. It’s an upbeat place. The color scheme is bright cherry-
red offset by pure white. Red umbrellas festooned with the Chinacars logo are
propped open for effect above the cubicle partitions. The hip, casual feel of
the place is a refreshing contrast to the stuffy, heavy-draped offices of the
state-controlled businesses I’ve visited.
Zhang bounds into the reception area with a big smile, gives me a brief
tour of the space he designed, and escorts me to his double-level office. On
the lower level is a conference room outfitted executive-style for boardroom
meetings. In a loft above, reached by a steel staircase, is Zhang’s office.
This is the place I imagine Zhang goes to plot strategy for Chinacars.
Zhang honed his business skills at several challenging managerial posts at
U.S. technology firms. Starting his professional career in 1995 as a manage-
ment trainee at the Nasdaq-listed ADC Telecom Equipment, Zhang quickly
was promoted to run ADC’s joint venture in Shanghai. He made it profitable
in one year. The next year, he was bumped up to president of ADC China,
overseeing two joint ventures in Shanghai and Nanjing.
His break from corporate duty in China came in 1998, when he joined
California Microwave Inc. in Silicon Valley as senior vice president for global
business development, reporting to the CEO, Fred Lawrence. Zhang was
charged with repositioning the firm more broadly in the booming market for
broadband wireless access for high-speed Internet transmissions, but his
timing was off. Later renamed Adaptive Broadband, the company saw its
stock plummet in the tech slowdown that began in late 2000, and after two
aborted acquisition offers, it went bankrupt in 2001.
Opportunity knocked when Beijing got the Olympics, and Zhang hopped
on that flight to celebrate the historic occasion with his hometown friends and

Chinacars.com—Cruisin’ with Chinacars 53