Our Articles

How Nestle Finds Clean Milk in China
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Exploding watermelons, toxic peanuts, and contaminated rice are just some of the food hazards that routinely bedevil Chinese consumers. The risks of contamination are particularly far-reaching in the case of milk, since more than 70 percent of Chinese mothers rely on baby formula rather than breast milk to feed their...
Make in India: Lessons from China
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rightly picked “Make in India” as the most important plank in his drive to help accelerate the country’s rise towards becoming an economic superpower..…..
India and China: Friends, Foes or Frenemies?
By Haiyan Wang & Anil K. Gupta,
When President Xi Jinping welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China on Thursday, both leaders will be well aware that, by 2025, their nations will be two of the three largest economies in the world. Geopolitical tensions notwithstanding, economic imperatives demand that collaboration between the two giants help mitigate...
$100 billion from Xi’s Visit to India – Not Likely
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to India this week will likely be the most significant meeting between the leaders of China and India since Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in 1988. Indeed, India’s leading business daily has gone so far as to suggest that Xi will bring along with him...
The Innovation Struggle
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
There appears to be a growing drumbeat – almost always by non-Chinese observers – about China’s imminent rise as an innovation superpower. Just in the last five years, leading American media have carried headlines such as “China poised to become innovation leader,” or “Danger: America is losing its edge in...
Asia Isn’t Going to Lead Technologically Anytime Soon
By Haiyan Wang & Anil K. Gupta,
The past decade has witnessed a steady, though largely groundless, drumbeat of warnings about how the West is losing its innovation edge. The first such warning appeared soon after the 2003 report by Goldman Sachs predicting that in the long run the BRIC emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India and...
Why Foreign Retailers Stumble in China
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Tesco’s recent decision to transfer its retail operations in China to a joint venture controlled by China Resources, a local state-owned enterprise, is just the latest example of a prominent Western retailer that has stumbled in China……..
Stay the Course on Investing in Asia
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Given the U.S. economy’s sustained recovery, it is all but certain that the Federal Reserve will start to reduce bond-buying later this year and end it completely sometime in 2014. As real U.S. interest rates inch up, investors are pulling money back from emerging markets……..
Caterpillar’s Chinese Lessons
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Caterpillar has a well-earned reputation as a global technology leader, having done a masterful job diversifying from its main construction equipment business into mining equipment, heavy-duty engines, electric power generation, and locomotives. Yet when it comes to performance in China, the world’s largest market for its products and services, Caterpillar...
Corporate Strategies for A Slowing China, Part 2
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
In our previous column (“Corporate Strategies for A Slowing China, Part 1”), we argued that the slowdown in the Chinese economy is structural, not cyclical. In this column, we look at what these structural shifts mean for multinational companies’ strategies in China. We focus not on the upcoming 12 months...
Let China Supply India’s Public Works Boom
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
The commerce ministers of India and China meet Monday in New Delhi, and the trade balance between the two countries is set to be a matter of particular controversy. Indian leaders have become alarmed by their growing trade deficit with China….….
Harsh Reality: Why Innovators Don’t Always Win
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
Godfrey Hounsfield, an EMI scientist, conceived the world’s first CT scanner in 1967. By the time he won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine, EMI had ceded almost complete control over the CT scanner market to later entrants GE and Siemens…..…..
How Beijing is Stifling Chinese Innovation
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
China’s indigenous innovation program, launched in 2006, has alarmed the world’s technology giants. A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce even went so far as to call this program “a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has not seen before.”…..…..
Good Governance Would Be Worth A Trillion Dollars
By Anil K. Gupta, The Economic Times,
In terms of India’s standing on the global stage, the current 10 years have the potential to become the most important decade in the country’s history. Given good governance, India could easily overtake China to become the world’s fastest-growing economy……..
Multinationals have a bright future, if you know where to look
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
The rising tide of economic nationalism has caused many observers to announce that globalization is not just in retreat, but near death. To be sure, the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump (as well as the popularity of various far-right European politicians) raise important questions about the future...
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Prospects for Emerging Markets Aren’t As Bad As You’ve Heard
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
It’s obvious that emerging markets are facing severe headwinds. 2015 will be the fifth consecutive year of slowing economic growth. However, today’s events are not necessarily a good guide to longer-term trends. In analyzing the trajectory of emerging markets, it’s critical to look at the broader context in at least...
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Why Xiaomi Can’t Succeed Without India
By Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang,
Just five years after its launch, Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone maker, has become the world’s most valuable startup. Its market value of $46 billion (as of June 2015) is larger than that of Uber, Snapchat, or even Palantir….. +Read full article
China Can’t Be a Global Innovation Leader Unless It Does These Three Things
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
When the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee wraps up the Third Plenum on November 12, 2014, a shift from efficiency to innovation will likely be one of the major planks in its vision for China. The government’s imperatives are clear.….. +Read full article
Beat the Odds in Cross-Border Joint Ventures
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
It’s proving to be an eventful year for AirAsia, the Kuala Lumpur-based airline that has emerged as Asia’s most successful low-cost carrier in recent times. The last 12 months have seen the collapse of AirAsia Japan, a once-promising joint venture between AirAsia and Japan’s ANA, and the birth of AirAsia...
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Coping With Change in Emerging Markets
By Anil K. Gupta & Haiyan Wang,
In 2000, Chrysler’s then president, James Holden, traveled to India to study the market. Upon returning to Detroit, he summarized his visit with the remark: “Call me when (India has) built some roads,” according to Forbes correspondent Robyn Meredith in her 2007 book The Elephant and the Dragon..….. +Read full article