China's huge population and potential market had attracted foreign companies since its economy began opening in the late 1970s. Although the profit position of some foreign companies improved by 2003, China remained a frustrating and unprofitable market for many. Highlights four major multinationals that were successful in the Chinese market. Allows for a discussion on what it takes to succeed in the Chinese market, how this compares to what it takes to succeed elsewhere, and the challenges and opportunities associated with leadership positions in emerging economies.

China's economic rise became one of the most important stories in the world economy once the Chinese economy began to open to the rest of the world in 1979. However, this rise was not evenly distributed across all of China's regions. By 2003, some regions had emerged as clear leaders in the economic development process, while others lagged far behind. A variety of forces also prevented the People's Republic of China from being a single national market of 1.3 billion people, and the national economy was perhaps better described as a set of coupled regional markets. Politically, China was not a monolith either. Competition between regions and between individual jurisdictions had been played out in the corridors of power in Beijing as well as in the regions themselves, as locations vied for investment and positions in the market. Understanding China's regional economies became virtually a prerequisite for success for economic policy and firms' strategies in China.

The Hong Kong brand Nin Jiom was popularly known in the territory by its flagship product Pei Pa Koa Cough Syrup. It was through the profitable mass selling of such an over-the-counter traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that Nin Jiom thrived through decades of history. By the early 2000s, the rapidly modernizing consumer culture in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong government's new TCM policies required manufacturers of TCM products to adapt constantly to a changing business environment. Nin Jiom's attention to this earned it an annual turnover of several hundred million Hong Kong dollars by early 2000s. The company was able to continue expanding overseas and in mainland China. How did Nin Jiom's products fit in an era when the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong as well as western public paid more attention to TCM than before? How did the company manage to maintain its success as a TCM brand in modern Hong Kong?

Financial crises could happen anywhere, although emerging markets were more seriously afflicted in recent times. Debilitating and massive shocks to bank liquidity, payments systems, and solvency were obvious characteristics of financial crises, as was panic, which was often precipitated by a sudden and dramatic loss of depositor and investor confidence. Companies operating in a region where a financial crisis had broken out could undergo corporate disasters as a result. Provides a general description of financial crises and macroeconomic warning signs of them. Also describes three major financial crises in the late 1990s and early 2000s, how the business sectors of the regions were affected, and how some companies managed to ride out the crises.

The import-export trading industry had long been one of the leading industries in Hong Kong. The sector, with about 500,000 people working for 100,000 companies, accounted for roughly 20% of Hong Kong's employment and GDP in 2002. However, in the early 2000s, the industry was under challenge as there were signs that the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions of mainland China might eventually threaten Hong Kong's position as a major trading center. Could Hong Kong's multitude of small trading companies continue to thrive? What were their major competitive advantages? And how substantial would these advantages be? Serves as an overview of an important industry sector in Hong Kong that is dominated by SMEs and presents important strategic issues at a time of economic changes.

From March to May 2003, Hong Kong's tourism industry underwent a serious downturn during the outbreak of SARS in the territory, which caused 1,755 cases in Hong Kong before July. There was practically no inbound tourism between April 2 and May 23, during which the World Health Organization advised the public to consider postponing all but essential travel to Hong Kong. Then, in a dramatic twist, the industry received a significant boost in late July, when residents of four nearby mainland Chinese cities were allowed to apply to visit Hong Kong on an individual basis as part of the mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement. Formerly, mainland Chinese tourists could visit Hong Kong only with tour groups. By September, tourists from the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen could also visit Hong Kong on an individual basis. Mainland tourists literally began to flood in as a result, bringing up total visitor arrival figures to a level that even surpassed pre-SARS statistics. Greater easing of travel restrictions was expected in the first half of 2004. How could Hong Kong's SMEs, much battered by the economic woes in recent years that were capped by the SARS attack, capitalize on the new opportunities offered by the liberalization of mainland travel?

The sauce company Lee Kum Kee, one of the best known Hong Kong brands, had a long history that began in 1888 and was run by the same family for four generations. The company was founded by Lee Kam Sheung as a small oyster sauce manufacturer in Guangdong Province, China. It relocated to Macau in the early 1900s and moved once more to Hong Kong after World War II; it remained based there in the decades afterwards. Lee Kum Kee was already expanding beyond the Guangdong-Macau-Hong Kong distribution network in the 1920s to North America, when it was also making shrimp paste. In the 1970s and 1980s, after the torch passed to third-generation leader Lee Man Tat, there was rapid geographical market and product diversification. Lee Man Tat's sons, who were educated in the West, inherited the leadership from their father in the 1990s, and the pace of modernization and diversification continued while the company's marketing strategy remained vigorous and adaptable. The company overcame a consumer confidence crisis--called the 3-MPCD crisis--in the late 1990s and early 2000s and continued to thrive. By early 2003, Lee Kum Kee had already developed more than 200 sauces. Its distribution network covered 60 countries in five continents, and its products were available in more than 80 countries. What lessons about strategic brand management can we learn from the way Lee Kum Kee developed, maintained, and expanded the reach of its products over a whole century? What lessons about crisis management does the company's handling of the 3-MPCD crisis offer?

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to buyer-supplier relationships and supply chain management in general. Views of buyer-supplier relationships have evolved from the old school of the 1980s, where buyers and suppliers were viewed as part of a zero-sum game, to the more collaborationist outlook of the 1990s, which claimed that buyers and suppliers could cooperate to the benefit of both, to the more network-oriented view of the 2000s, where buyers and suppliers are parts of organic business ecosystems. One interesting fact is that, empirically, buyer-supplier relationships exist in surprisingly multifarious forms in different geographic regions and business sectors. There is no one dominant mode. This case provides an outline of eight different real-life examples to illustrate a broad range of buyer-supplier relationships.

In October 2001, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading mobile telecommunications company, launched the world's first commercial third-generation (3G) mobile service. However, the new service faced technological obstacles. Many observers were skeptical about its future success. But 3G in Japan was only DoCoMo's first step in a grand plan to have its standards of 3G technology and service established worldwide. By late 2001, DoCoMo had formed alliances with major telecommunications players in Asia, Europe, and the United States to develop 3G networks. Despite technological setbacks and astronomical fees for obtaining a license to operate 3G in some European countries, DoCoMo and its partners continued to build the infrastructure for the new-generation service. Analysts saw these moves as a gamble.

In the Harvard Business Review article "The Core Competence of the Corporation," authors C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel put forth the notion of core competence with a comparison of NEC's focus on core competence and GTE's focus on businesses rather than competencies. The article went on to become the best-selling HBR reprint in history and ushered in a wave of consulting and academic work that said that core competence was the key to company performance. The authors predicted a bright future for NEC and other "competence-based" companies and potential obsolescence for GTE and other "business-based" companies. The present case juxtaposes quotes from the article with a discussion of the evolution of NEC and GTE through 1999. It includes performance data on the two companies that allows for a critical assessment (and counterintuitive evaluation) of the core competence idea for the 10 years preceding the publication of the article and the 10 years following the publication.

China's economic reform program has had many important impacts on business competition in the nation. In many industries, foreign competitors entered, making "strategic investments" that they believed would lose money for a significant period of time and then turn profitable. At the same time, many Chinese companies adapted to the new environment much quicker than many observers expected. Meanwhile, however, a regulatory and administrative system that created substantial uncertainty, links between the state and companies, bank lending that kept money-losing firms in business, and a rapidly changing and reforming economy made business competition in China different from business competition in many other places. This case provides vignettes of four industry sectors in China in which competition was already fierce on the eve of China's WTO accession, including beer, personal computers, steel, and television sets. The class discussion focuses on the nature of competition in the industries and the likely impact of full accession into the WTO on competition. Allows for a discussion of the nature of uncertainty in business and for the development of tools to generate scenarios about future competition in uncertain situations.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, four U.S. passenger planes were hijacked during transcontinental domestic flights. Two of them were crashed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, leading to the collapse of both skyscrapers. Another one hit the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense near Washington, D.C. The fourth hijacked plane crashed in western Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to take control back from the hijackers. The death toll from the unprecedented attacks was estimated at around 3,000. In addition to the human, political, and military impacts, the events of September 11 also would have far-reaching economic impacts. One of the industries most affected was the airline industry, which was already suffering before the attacks. Some airlines closed, some saw massive layoffs, and all were faced with substantially lower profits or higher losses. As the year 2002 began, managers throughout the airline industry wondered which effects would be permanent and which would be transitory. They also wondered how they and their airlines should deal with the fallout from the attacks and the other forces that already had been reshaping the airline industry. The case gives an overview of the global airline industry before September 11, showing it was a tough industry with not a great deal of profits even before the disaster. It then highlights the impact of the events of September 11 on the airline industry.

Japan Net Bank (JNB), Japan's first Internet bank without physical branches, began operation in October 2000. It attracted mainly young customers looking for convenient, round-the-clock bank services with much more competitive interest rates and transaction charges than traditional Japanese banks. Its access channels included the mobile Internet service i-mode and fixed-line Internet. JNB relied on flexible, open computer systems and a small, young workforce to minimize operation cost. Its shareholders, including parent company Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. as well as NTT DoCoMo (provider of i-mode), were all big companies from different industry sectors. By April 2001, JNB had 130,000 customers. But it needed to resolve a number of issues before being able to achieve long-term success in the face of strong competition from bricks-and-mortar banks and new Internet-only banks. One of those issues was about how to meet with wide fluctuations in usage without overinvesting; the other was alliance management, i.e., how to cooperate with alliance partners to achieve competitive advantage.

In August 2001, Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), a major international investment bank, was removed from the foreign underwriting team that would handle a pending share offering for China Unicom Group Ltd., the second largest telecommunications company in the Chinese Mainland. Only two months earlier, CSFB was designated to deal with the U.S. portion of that offering. However, after the bank hosted overseas investment "road shows" attended by senior government officials from Taiwan (including the finance minister), it was officially dropped from the China Unicom underwriter list. The incident provoked criticism from governments in the United States and Taiwan and widespread activity in investment banking circles as several other banks dropped plans to host road shows for Taiwan.

In January 1998, Peregrine Investments Holdings Ltd., once billed as "Asia's only indigenous investment bank," was forced into liquidation after the revelation of huge losses in its fixed-income business and the withdrawal of potential investors from Europe and the United States. Peregrine became the highest profile corporate failure in the Asian financial crisis to date. A firm that seemed to be on top of its world in early 1997 had collapsed under a pile of bad debts less than a year later. Peregrine's demise raised questions about how the firm might have avoided the debacle. This case can be used to teach corporate governance and strategy development in volatile environments.

In July 2001, Acer, Taiwan's best-known company, was in the midst of an ambitious reorganization. The goal was to reverse flagging sales in Acer's branded computer and peripherals businesses and to address the concerns of major clients of its contract manufacturing business. The reorganization would involve splitting the company into three parts, massive layoffs, a shift in geographic focus, and a complete change in business philosophy. Acer's chairman and cofounder Stan Shih had personally taken charge of the reorganization, signaling the seriousness of Acer's position and his commitment. However, questions remained as to whether the reorganization would be effective in meeting Acer's challenges and turning the company's fortunes around. This case can be used to teach strategy development in volatile environments, the challenges of creating a successful brand, and the links between company strategy and location advantages and disadvantages.