Originally Posted by moondog

I'm writing now to give you a brief snippet of my experiences on the business front in Nanning.

Before I arrived on the scene, my company was down $300,000 in this market (not a lot of money when you consider overhead, but still sub optimal).

My presence has helped us stem the bleeding, but I'm now convinced that we're not going to make boatloads of cash here any time soon primarily because doing so entails getting Chinese companies and consumers to change their habits. In spite of all the fancy buildings and the beautiful scenery, Nanning remains a large patch of farmland that suddenly became a city (e.g. check out Google Earth, and you'll see what it was like that the time they grabbed their images... barren fields and jungles).

As far as I can tell, there is very little actual industry in Nanning (somewhat surprising in light of the fact that it is China's gateway to Southeast Asia). The economy is built on real estate speculation (big boon because most of the invest comes from other places), government jobs, and agriculture.

Because of the real estate thing, there is quite a bit of money in Nanning (poorest provincial capital or not), but the economic infrastructure simply lacks to the means to allocate it efficiently.

The net result of this is that local residents have been forced to adapt new means to get their hands on this cash. This is what clued me into the power of weixin, as well as creative direct sales strategies that are probably illegal, yet encouraged.

In any event, I feel fortunate to have spent some time here because, during my entire China stint (1/3 of my life), this is the first time that I've really had a chance to put my ear to the ground in a 2nd/3rd tier city. Prior to my arrival, I read numerous McKinsey/BCG/GS reports about Nanning, but I can now officially state that those guys didn't even scratch the surface.

Everyone seems to want to romanticize about building up China's interior; talk is cheap.