| dc.description.abstract | At present, possibly no other economic region attracts as much attention as
China. Certainly, it would be redundant to list all topics of note, from growth
rates to governmental control, from patent protection to spending power. And
yet, some topics so far remain barely examined. One of this “blind spots” is the
issue of family businesses. The reason for that neglect might be that commonly
no one thinking about China takes into account family firms. When mentioning
China, the public – especially in Western countries – might rather think of statecontrolled or state-influenced companies. However, there are indeed familybusinesses in China; in fact, there are a lot of them.
Xing Ke from Chongqing in China, author of this book, states: “[U]ntil April
2015, there were about 19.3 million registered enterprises, of which 85.6 % are
private enterprises, and about 51.4 million registered individual industrial and
commercial businesses. Together a population of ca. 260 million is currently
employed in the private sector (SAIC, 20151
). The majority of the private firms
and almost all the individual businesses are family-owned and managed. Not
only small to medium sized firms are commonly owned and ran by families, but
also are some large publicly traded firms controlled by families. According to
Forbes China’s Chinese Family Business Survey carried out in July 2014, 58.7 % of
the 2528 firms listed on China’s A-share market are private enterprises, of which
50.3 % are family businesses2
.”
Nowadays Chinese family firms see themselves confronted with a challenge
very well known to their counterparts in other countries: the issue of succession.
It is in the nature of things that Chinese family firms sail into unchartered waters
now: The ascent of private entrepreneurship after the Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution as well as the economic restrictions of that period implicates
that the firms now are situated in their first phase of succession in the firm’s
history | |
