Introduction
In China, as in any foreign market, it is difficult to succeed
alone. Business practices, language, culture, legal environment,
and other obstacles make success in China elusive. In addition,
Chinese law requires a foreign company to have minority ownership
of enterprises operating in certain industries such as banks and
insurance companies. For these reasons, joint ventures in China are
common. It also is widely known that the failure rate of joint
ventures in China is high, and joint ventures in China have
achieved a reputation for being difficult to manage. Parties will
come together, usually after lengthy negotiations, and celebrate
the formation of the joint venture — and only a short
while later, after millions of dollars of losses, wonder what went
wrong. There are a number of reasons that few joint ventures in
China succeed while most fail, including differing expectations,
overestimation of the Chinese partner's market position,
