China and the global business revolution

As China joins the World Trade Organisation, the author questionswhether China's large firms will be able to compete on the globallevel playing field. Over the past two decades, Chinese largeenterprises have undertaken extensive evolutionary change (comparableto that of other latecomer countries such as Korea, Taiwan andSingapore) but, at the same time, the world's leading firmshave undergone a revolutionary transformation. Based on analysisderived from case studies made in the course of the China BigBusiness Programme at the Judge Institute of Management Studies,Cambridge, the author concludes that China's large firms havenot caught up with the world's leading businesses.