9780062396372
Play Sample

Chinese Rules audiobook

(256 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 24.99 USD

Chinese Rules Audiobook Summary

From the author of the international bestseller Mr. China comes another rollicking ride through the slick mega-cities and industrial backwaters of twenty-first-century China–part adventure story, part erudite myth-buster, and part practical rule book to help Westerners win in China.

China’s role as struggling underdog is now firmly a thing of the past. The world has tilted eastward in its orbit even as the West seems mired in self-doubt. Through living and working in China for more than two decades, Tim Clissold has uncovered stealth methods Westerners can use to straighten out complicated situations in China and achieve their own objectives.

Revealing the hidden logic that governs the Chinese business and political landscape, Clissold puts China’s cultural, political, and military history into context and explains the mind-set that drives Chinese political and business leaders–a resource that has been sorely lacking in most books about doing business in China.

Here, with sharp observations and a deep appreciation for China’s rich past, Clissold presents five rules anyone can use to deal effectively with modern Chinese counterparts. These include understanding that:

  • China has its own set of rules that provide a unique pathway to success;
  • the quest for stability overrides all others;
  • in China, one should never attack directly;
  • in solving problems, stick to practicalities and avoid arguments over theory;
  • and knowing yourself and knowing the “other” will help you survive a hundred battles.

Combining exuberant storytelling, sly humor, and counterintuitive insights, Chinese Rules traces Clissold’s latest adventures, providing an object lesson in the contradictions between reality and conventional belief that continue to make China a fascinating, perplexing, and irresistible destination for Westerners.

Other Top Audiobooks

Chinese Rules Audiobook Narrator

Stephen Critchlow is the narrator of Chinese Rules audiobook that was written by Tim Clissold

Tim Clissold has lived and worked in China for more than twenty years and has traveled to most parts of the country. After graduating with degrees in physics and theoretical physics from Cambridge University, and working in London, Australia, and Hong Kong, he developed a fascination with China. He spent two years studying Mandarin in Beijing before cofounding a private equity group that invested more than $400 million there. He has since spent time at Goldman Sachs recovering distressed assets and, more recently, started a business that invests in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in China through the UN's Clean Development Mechanism. Mr. China was his first book. It has been translated into twelve languages and was an Economist magazine Book of the Year.

About the Author(s) of Chinese Rules

Tim Clissold is the author of Chinese Rules

More From the Same

Chinese Rules Full Details

Narrator Stephen Critchlow
Length 8 hours 51 minutes
Author Tim Clissold
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date November 18, 2014
ISBN 9780062396372

Subjects

The publisher of the Chinese Rules is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Business & Economics, General, International

Additional info

The publisher of the Chinese Rules is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062396372.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Adrian

November 30, 2015

Grope for stones to cross the streamTim Clissold's book is part memoir, and part cultural study, and uses Chinese stratagem and historical examples to buttress his argument about the difficulty of doing business in China.The book is a memoir of a trip to China to negotiate carbon credits for a power plant within China's new, and hitherto, experimental, emissions trading scheme. However, with a business deal where much money hangs in the balance, much stubbornness and stonewalling is still found.Clissold's primary source of comparison is Sun Zi's Art of War, but many other proverbs and anecdotes are used. The book also contains a number of interesting interludes into the lives of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and the author draws surprising parallels for the present.The book can drag at times, and is something of a slow starter that I initially found myself struggling to persist with, however the book picks up and provided insight that even an experienced China hand such as myself found beneficial.Tim Clissold writes a decent conclusion that essentially warns people that China will continue to do things in it's own way, and the West would benefit from a greater understanding of China.At 273 pages and a fairly decent pace, Clissold's book is both readable and rewarding.

Azor

October 29, 2017

Mind Opening. A great book to understand differences between Chinese and Western cultural and business norms. Values can be relative and the Chinese approach to strategy and negotiations, although difficult to understand from Western lenses, has invaluable lessons that can be applied to a number of situations in business and in Life.

Garnette

August 28, 2017

Years ago, I read Clissold's first book on China, about his experiences in the 1990s as an early venture capitalist. This one focuses on the 2000s as he works to make deals involving carbon credits. Clissold is a compelling storyteller and both his books are well worth reading. He uses the changing view from the top of Coal Hill, overlooking Beijing's Forbidden City, to mark the changes in China. His two books are equally revealing. His experiences in early Western investment in China were a wild ride, involving theft, fraud, corruption in a country with few laws and little to no experience enforcing the existing laws. This second book is markedly different. Working between two quite different cultures, business deals are still difficult. However China has made enormous strides in establishing orderly processes that foster business. But of course these processes are distinctively Chinese, and Clissold emphasizes that to succeed in business in China you need to play by Chinese rules. He uses the precepts drawn from Sun Tzu's Art of War to guide his business. Perhaps. But it seems to me that his breakthroughs occurred not from following Chinese rules but rather from establishing enough trust between the two different parties that both sides could understand each other's needs and motivations. That's often the challenge in any business deal and it's made harder by cultural differences. Both sides have to make adjustments. But it's Western businessmen, far more ignorant about China than their Chinese counterparts are about the West, that have difficulty reaching across the gap. It's interesting that the eventual decline of the carbon credit business was caused by changes in the West, not by challenges in China.

Anna

August 09, 2019

Even though the book deals with a somewhat esoteric topic of buying and selling carbon credits, the narrative is positively riveting. The story of an aspiring business negotiating, cajoling and fighting its way up in modern-day China is interspersed with chapters on China's history, culture and politics. Plus, after reading the book, dealing with Chinese is so much easier - just because of the insight into the inner workings of this most ancient and sophisticated civilisation provided by the book.

LouisaLei

April 26, 2018

This is a well-written book combining the author's anecdotes and some key events in China's history. I am impressed by how the author translated ancient Chinese literature and modern Chinese catchwords into English so subtly. This is a worthy read for all westerners who want to succeed in doing business in/with China.

Rhishabh

September 30, 2020

I was a bit sceptical about this book at start as books about economies of China are pretty difficult to understand but then as I started I almost fell in love with the way Tim has explained every minute detail with his own experience. This book truly helped me learn things that won't only be necessary for doing business in China but to do business in general. A must read!

Viktor

January 11, 2018

Brilliant analysis of Chinese mentality in business dealings, and quite fun reading as well. Clissold tells his own experiences of doing business in China and what it taught him. He finds 5 rules for doing business in China, for which he finds illustrious historical examples.

Nadine

December 31, 2016

Another interesting book about doing business in China written with humour and empathy and trying to see common threads through history while invoking ancient writings. Well worth reading

Leeor

May 11, 2018

Meh

Sadhana

March 15, 2018

Loved this book, one of the most engaging account on China.Couldn’t stop before I finished all of it.

Elaine

February 02, 2017

I read this book as part of my New Years resolution to read all 100 NYT notable books of 2016. To be honest, at this part in the journey I was beginning to question the list itself. I even went back and double checked in search of figuring out why my interests were in woeful lack of alliance with the venerable NYT. Then I read this book and I feel that the list is redeemed. The writing is interesting and shows the author's deep and sustained interest in China. His occasional musings on what we can learn from China are a real delight, such as that a politician changing his or her mind is a good idea, and potentially a great idea, while we in the States hear the dreaded words "flip flopper" whenever a politician sees something in a new light. The sections on the rise/fall/rise of carbon credit trading were the highlight of the book for me.My only criticism is that the historical sections were quite lengthy, and the recent trend towards taking an interesting, but ultimately short tale, and wrapping the tale in lengthy historical retrospectives is not to my literary liking. If I want a pithy history of Mao I'll head over to other sources, where I am sure the facts have been triple-checked. However, if the various sections had been omitted the book itself would have been quite short, and one can always skim such sections.Overall, despite the fact that I am not a fan of the historical sections of the book, I have found myself quoting various segments of the book to others over the last few days, and I'm feeling better about my son's decision to tackle mandarin. In this post election age, I found myself wanting to highlight several of the rules and sending them to our President-elect. For, if the book is accurate, our new leaders will roar and bluster, and China's leaders will deflect and ignore, while waiting for decades for their next move. During that time multiple US Presidents and administrations will rise, fall and end, while China remains watching.

Tirath

February 21, 2016

Another brilliant book by Tim.This time, his adventures are not as crazy - since he was confined to the carbon credits markets.But what this book offers is a brilliant context for the non-Chinese reader.The history of China, and why the country is the way it isWhy it functions a certain wayAnd why it has its own rules and ways of dealing with stuff and trying for progress.A brilliant book with very fun historical excerpts.I have read Deng's 500 page biography, and I couldnt understand why he mattered so much - - this book helped out!!

Toni

November 18, 2016

My endless curiosity about China is partly why I read 'China Rules', the other reason was a conversation with a relative about his company's desire to do business in China. I wanted to find the perfect book to recommend to him. The author combines real-life experience with China's history. Never boring, always fascinating, if you're curious too, you'll like this book.

Barbara

November 15, 2014

I won this book in a giveaway at goodreads.com...thank you!I enjoyed this book immensely. It was compelling, funny, and hard to put down. I am drawn to books about Asian culture and this book drew me in and didn't let go. It was a wonderful read.

Lifeng

October 15, 2016

Cordelia is the quintessence of Chinese unprofessionalism. Hilarious to read about China from the perspective of a laowai/foreigner. I grew up in China.

Maria

November 13, 2015

Clearcut, alliterative, real world examples of Chinese business philosophy. Not at all dull, amazingly.

Aik Lim

July 07, 2015

Personal reflection of a British man in China weaving in the historical developments of this great civilisation.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves