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Mandy Zuo

China’s young entrepreneurs need to be patient about success and not focus all their efforts on the internet – despite the current mainland frenzy involving online start-ups.
That is the view of billionaire Dong Mingzhu, chairman of leading Chinese home appliance manufacturer Gree Electric.
She urged young mainlanders to diversify their talents in an interview about entrepreneurship in The Economic Observer.
“We focus a lot on online entrepreneurship, but our country should not rely solely on internet business,” said Dong, whose company, the mainland’s top air-conditioner maker, is based in Zhuhai, in Guangdong province.
“I would encourage more young people to use the skills that they have learned to develop more technologies, which can be used to empower our nation in our everyday working lives.”
Premier Li Keqiang stressed the importance of innovation and e-commerce as new engines of China’s growth during a speech in March at the end of this year’s national parliamentary session. He has also encouraged the idea of mass entrepreneurship.
Dong said some young mainlanders have succeeded in obtaining venture capital thanks to original ideas or eye-catching concepts.  
One successful start-up, Daxiang is a Beijing-based condom manufacturer co-founded in 2013 by post-1990s university classmates, Liu Kenan and Zhao Chuan.
Daxiang, which means “big elephant”, has no bricks-and-mortar distributor and uses social media to help it sell its products exclusively online; its novel business approach helped it to win investment totalling US$5 million last year from several venture capital firms.
Yet other entrepreneurs that were not lucky enough to secure rapid investment were often too “impatient” for success, Dong said.
“Many of them will question why they haven’t made it after only a short time, as if they are not successful if they are not making lots of money,” she said. “In fact the biggest success for entrepreneurs is that they persist.” 
“You have always got to be modest and passionate so that you can keep plugging away in the competitive world of entrepreneurship,” she was quoted as saying.
In the manufacturing industry, innovation meant inventing original technologies and creating new markets, she said.
Yin Tongyue, chairman of the private automaker, Chery, based in Wuhu, in Anhui province, who was also interviewed by the newspaper about starting up a company, advised would-be entrepreneurs to cooperate with an established organisation when launching their own businesses.
“Young people, in particular, can work in partnership with schools and colleges,” he said.
Those people planning start-ups needed to be bold, but also keep in mind some general rules, Yin added.
“For example, is there a market for the idea? Where is it based? What’s the current trend? And, if everyone else is working on the same idea, it’s certainly not right for you to try to join in, too,” he said.
 


China's entrepreneurs need to chill out and diversify, says boss of air-conditioning giant 

Dong Mingzhu, chairman of China's Gree Electric, says many entrepreneurs are often too 'impatient' for success. Photo: Fudan University

China to cut e-commerce red tape, back entrepreneurship and ease market access

The new e-commerce guidelines came as Premier Li Keqiang visited Beijing's Inno Way - a start-up street with more than 12,000 technology companies - to toast entrepreneurs for creating employment. Photo: SCMP Pictures

How China’s young entrepreneurs are ‘overthrowing tradition’ to revitalise business through technology

Zhou Bangwei, 18, promoting his business's new app. Photo: SCMP Pictures

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