A Brief Introduction of ZUJI TAO (T.C.TAO) (1925-) AND HIS BUSINESS

1979 was a year of great change in the Chinese history. After 30 years of rigid control under a centralized economy, the Chinese government began to adopt a liberal policy of economic reform and opening to the outside world. It was then that Zuji T C Tao, a 1947 economics graduate of an American school St. John's University in Shanghai, gave up his three decades of working record with the state trading corporation and started his own private consulting business - Shanghai Industrial Consultants. The company was aimed at helping the Chinese industrial sector to establish direct contact with foreign technology and equipment for best results of technical renovation and product upgrading.

Without any official authorization, Tao took courage to start his private service completely on his own risk. In about six months time, he was able to put together three direct transactions between Western suppliers and Chinese endusers. His success as an international consultant was quickly brought known to Chinese Communist Party and government leaders in Beijing by an internal news report by the powerful Xinhua (New China) News Agency.

His ideas and efforts to form a useful liaison between China and western countries have since received strong support from topmost persons in China including former Party Secretary Hu Yaopang, Ex-Premier Zhao Ziyang, President Jiang Zeming, Premier Zhu Rongji, former Shanghai Mayors Wang Daohan and Xu Kuangdi, present Shanghai Mayor Chen Liangyu and a number of other high level officials in the central as well as Shanghai municipal governments. In 1985 he was awarded the May1 Labor Medal and named National Active Reformer in recognition of his exquisite performance in carrying out international consulting services. But support from the top is hard to be translated into power of solving daily problems at the bottom. The suffocating bureaucracy on the working level had taught him that he had better to stop or at least change the tactics before it was too late.

In 1989, therefore, with the assistance of Roderick Macleod, then Senior Partner of Coopers & Lybrand, Tao was able to move his consulting operation to San Francisco for helping American companies to do better business in China. Now, in addition to its offices in San Francisco and Shanghai, Tao is also the Chief Representative in Shanghai for the venture capital investment company ChinaVest which is based in San Francisco and has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. He is concurrently Senior Associate of Asian Strategies Group, a consulting firm in Washington DC composed of a selection of retired experts and diplomats serving American business interests worldwide.

Twenty years of reform have brought great economic, political and social changes to China. Western companies are perturbed by the opportunities and the problems created in conjunction with such changes. They like to see a stable social environment in China for ensuring maximum safety of business interests, yet they also expect a speedier process of liberalization which is considered by the Chinese government as a risky thing to do in view of the numerous variables in the time of change.

Seeing this exacting demand of most of the western companies and their perplexity with present Chinese situation, Tao's current business philosophy is to alert international clients of the realities and challenges posed by the present evolving China market and the importance of developing an appropriate strategy to let each individual company's plan of development go in parallel with the long term interest of China.

One of Tao's strong points is his knowledge and experience in dealing with official decision making organizations in Shanghai and various inland provinces. He writes his own Chinese newsletter distributed to about 1000 Chinese government offices, research institutions and business entities for introducing international practices to the Chinese side which has drawn many positive responses. His contacts are almost all over China, but among the places where he is more well-placed are South China cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Fuzhou and Zuhai, those in China's Great West like Chongqing, Xian and Kunming and member cities in the Greater Shanghai area including Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wuxi.