Quote:
Originally Posted by problemeliminator
I totally agree that entrepreneurship has a high failure rate-a good friend and I wanted to start our own training center (because we think the teaching in most is so shitty) and just ran into so many problems. To start with, at least in Guangdong, it's flat out illegal for foreigners to own training centers-or any kind of educational institution. So any foreigner you meet here who claims to own a training center? It's actually his wife who owns it. A small chance the rules were different before and he got grandfathered in, but I doubt it. We talked to a lawyer, he said our company could partner with a Chinese company and start a third company which could then buy a training center, but since the whole purpose of such an arrangement would be to skirt the law I had no faith our rights would be upheld.
We had one guy who wanted to be our partner. He had agreed to a 20% share (he was just gonna be responsible for paperwork, dealing with the government, we would be the teachers and face of the company). As we got closer to buying a place he suddenly said he wanted 51%. LOL no. Why would I kill myself to build a company for him?
Even if you get started there are catches: you have to rent a location, do renovations, and apply for licenses all before you can legally start classes. The location must be on the 3rd floor or below, must me 200m2+, and must have two exits. The fire department will come and inspect twice to grant those licenses. All of this can take months, and meanwhile you're on the hook for rent. Of course, 99% of places will start classes before they have all the licenses, and usually it's not a big issue. But now they've got you if they ever want to apply pressure for any reason.
But back to my point about learning Chinese. You only need to spend about 50 hours of good study to get good enough in Chinese for the most basic situations. I was able to deal with basic situations through self-study within a few months. If someone doesn't wanna put in the effort to become fluent, I totally understand that.
I would say that in my experience people who speak Chinese on at least a reasonable level are happier with their lives in China than those who speak almost none.
Of course the competitive advantage is low, I acknowledged that. My whole point was don't learn Chinese to make money. Learn it (or any second language) because you want to cultivate a hobby and understand a new culture better.
I don't worry about whether people think I'm pro-China or anti-China. I'm a Sinophile for sure, but less enamored with the CCP. On reddit I've been called both a wumao (a paid shill for the CCP) and typical Western anti-China hack. /r/China is a weird place.
I don't spend my time on China youtubers in general (even my friend who is one)-if I wanna know about China I read a book by an expert. So here's a few I've heard:
Soldiers of the Dragon edited by CJ Peers. Mostly of interest to military history buffs
The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China by Julia Lovell -really good and explains how memories of the Opium Wars have been used for propaganda purposes ever since.
This Is China: The First 5,000 Years by Haiwang Yuan-super simple and easy introduction to China.
Accepting Authoritarianism-a really good and thorough investigation into why the Chinese largely accept the political system they have, and why there's basically no demand for a liberal democracy.
That's one of the most useful phrases. Let's say you have a long train ride. If someone next to you seems friendly, say "Hello", point at something and say "how do you say..." in the language you're learning. If the person seems interested, continue (and possibly do the same for him in English). You've just had a unique travel experience and if you remember those basic words you'll be able to impress your friends back home.
Wow, i literally had the EXACT same thing happen to me.
The training school, the needing of an external company to own the school, the chinese investor who was great but when it came down to investing it came about that she already had an education company set up and that education company would be the one investing.. yadayada, 51%
Correct about all the requirements to be above board and even if you make them you'll still need to pay off the education bureau to get your license.
It's truly a nightmare.
i slightly disagree with the other point. Learning Chinese has huge advantages for quality of life and if you want to go into business/make money in China.
Sure you can open a western restaurant/bar which naturally targets expats and you don't need to speak Chinese. The problem with this kind of "entrepreneurship" is that expats in Asia are notorious bargain hunters, they won't spend, and Chinese people don't really like western food.
Or you can open a training center / school with your trusted Chinese partner.
You're pretty much capped at these sort of businesses without Chinese.
If you have fluent Chinese you can do so much more if you wanted. off the top of my head
-build your social media presence like on Douyin (tiktok), Taobao shops, Wechat sales, network with people- understand how business actually works, get into import/export - real businesses that can make real money.
