China Dawn by David Sheff

Author:David Sheff [Sheff, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-16T18:30:00+00:00

After springing the news about his new job, Edward convinces me to visit him in Beijing, where his new office was a single room in the Friendship Hotel with a staff of two. “It’s pathetic,” he admits. It is. There’s a stained carpet, puce-colored walls, and furniture with fake-wood veneer that is peeling off. The fax doesn’t work and the printer doesn’t link to the computer. When he visits, James says, “Edward! What are you doing? You left AsiaInfo for this?” To make matters worse, the government’s initial funding is slow to come in and Edward asks James to borrow 2 million renminbi (RMB), the equivalent of $220,000. James says, “Don’t make this a habit,” but he gives the money.

Edward makes good on the loan in July when $25 million comes in from the investors. He also secures a $600 million line of low-interest credit from the Chinese Construction Bank; in exchange, CNC agrees to build the bank a state-of-the-art network.

His first chore is building a team. Hiring is a challenge, because many of the best and brightest in high tech in China have their sights on private U.S.-style start-ups or international brand names; most are highly skeptical of anything to do with the government. He lobbies a couple of candidates who turn him down, but Edward is nothing if not a good salesman. “I have become a convincer, trying to convert them to join me,” he says. “I learned from studying Steve Jobs that people must feel like they’re creating something. They must feel passionate, that this is an opportunity of a lifetime. And you can’t convince others if you yourself aren’t convinced.”

His pitch is compelling, and he clearly believes it. “Join me,” he says. “We can do this for the 1.3 billion people of China.” Po Bronson in The Nudist on the Late Shift wrote that Silicon Valley “offered a chance to leave a mark on a world that already seemed terribly marked up.” Even compared to Silicon Valley, China seems like a blank slate, and Edward tells employees of Western companies, “After ten years of working for Hewlett-Packard or Microsoft, have you really made a difference? Here you will have an impact. You need to do something in your life that is at least a little bit crazy. If we succeed, we will have something we can tell our children. We will leave our mark on the world.” He says, “It’s not only the opportunity of a lifetime, not even of a generation, but of a period of history that has the chance to create a positive future for our people.”

As a legendary figure in China, Tian himself is a selling point. Says Elaine Wu, who comes aboard to work closely with Edward in investor relations, “He is one of the most important heroes. Many of us have come here because of the opportunity to work with Mr. Tian on a project that could change history.” Edward promises potential employees a new type of company in China, and not merely because of the stock options and its lofty mandate.

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