Starting new businesses in Shenzhen not easy

During the two sessions in Beijing, Standing Committee of National People's Congress (NPC) chairman Zhang Dejiang told Hong Kong deputies to pay more attention to the personal development of young people. Personal growth is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aspirations in life and set goals to maximize their potential. Perhaps the most important realization an individual can make in their quest for personal growth is that there is no single formula defining the path to personal success. We all have different goals and priorities. Different activities and attitudes make us feel good about ourselves.

However, for many Hong Kong deputies, personal growth means something much more straightforward. It means worldly success: having a business, owning a house or having an expensive car. Echoing Zhang Dejiang's call for action, Andrew Yao Cho-fai, 49, chair of the Hong Kong United Youth Association from 2007 to 2008, vowed to encourage the city's younger generation to start businesses in Shenzhen.

Yao was quoted as saying in one local media: "Entrepreneurship, global perspective and professional ethics are what is missing in China, what we have here is a huge domestic market (So I hope) Hong Kong youth (can) go to Shenzhen, to try their hand at entrepreneurship not only in cha chaan teng (tea cafes) but something related to consumers and the e-economy."

What an interesting claim! When Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu were achieving amazing feats, Yao believed mainland had no "entrepreneurship, global perspective and professional ethics". What he meant by China is of course the mainland, but he is not a Hong Kong civil servant and therefore not bound by civil service protocol. If Hong Kong had more patriots like him, our dissidents would soon all be unemployed.

In the last few days it was reported that the respected US magazine Inc. had named Shenzhen as a top hub for start-ups. But Hong Kong was nowhere in the rankings.

Inc. quotes HAXLR8R (pronounced hack-cellerator) general partner Benjamin Joffe as saying they moved to Shenzhen for the sole reason that "It's the Silicon Valley of hardware," the publication also notes that the city is home to a number of major tech firms. How could this happen in a place "without entrepreneurship, global perspective and professional ethics"?

So who is Yao anyway? According to one local media, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988. Yao then took over his father's business, the construction steel importer Van Shung Chong. In 1994, two years after earning an MBA at Harvard, he listed the firm on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Yao is an excellent mentor for young people with IPO-ready companies. But I wouldn't have gone to him for advice about starting a business from scratch.

The truth is the mainland boasts many examples of successful entrepreneurship. In fact, what we are now witnessing may well be the beginning of a start-up bubble. Last December, Ministry of Education issued a circular. This asked universities to allow students to take time off from their studies to start their own businesses. Students are encouraged to create online businesses to attract funding and support from finance institutions, NGOs, and trade associations. It was also reported that universities are required to offer entrepreneurship courses and bring in business owners and investors as mentors.

Some observers have noted that it is rare for students at mainland universities to take gap years, while this practice is fairly common at Western universities. Is this "convergence" to be celebrated? It depends. People should realize that behind the global start-up mania, and its mainland equivalent, is a lot of cheap money and a tough job market for young people and new graduates.

Most start-ups fail. For people who have the wrong ideas, and still believe the mainland is a place lacking in entrepreneurship, a global perspective and professional ethics, starting new businesses in Shenzhen is the last thing they should do. There is nothing to be ashamed of in working for someone else. It is also all part of the process of personal growth.

(HK Edition 03/11/2015 page10)