My comments re reasons for If You Want to See Entrepreneurs, Go to China - BusinessWeek

If You Want to See Entrepreneurs, Go to China - BusinessWeek

These are great observations and analysis of published reports in similar subject.

One should if possible try to appreciate further potential 'reasons' which might not be able to be 'easily emulated' (sometimes understood) in the western world, for example:

1.) Chinese has such cohesive extended family structure (in general) that everyone is 'striving' to be successful from day one in order to 'bring glory' to themselves and their family/ancestor.. For example, every year, Chinese new year (or wedding functions) is the time when elder family members (Grand/Great-grand parents) compare notes and boast about their more successful kids or grand-kids. (in some ways similar to certain Mediterranean cultures, or Greek/Italian), but for Chinese, Obtain & gain "Success" is like a sub-routine in most Chinese's brain (on operating system level).

2.) Comparative weaker social support/benefit structure, means sometimes you have NO CHOICE but start your own business (can you imagine, for those that are NOT entrepreneurial, when they cannot find work and have to move thousands of miles away for even some hourly/daily paid jobs when even that is lucky? and have to fight to get home every year, where your kids & parents are.)

3.) Sadly, the pressure of 1.) and 2.) above means that there are a lot of also unscrupulous people who would CUT all corners to make money (from illegal trades like joining triads/human trafficking to more white collar type blurred line of white or wrong by stuffing JV Partners etc.)

Due to lack of transparency and ease of tracking people and size of China, you also do have people that do move town and societies to 're-invent' themselves.. some for better, some for worst..

To illustrate, southern china (Cantonese speaking), especially Hong Kong, there is a special type of pop (now become classic) music that aim to encourage/inspire to succeed (from school kids to study & people to work hard. artists like Sam Hui), called "勉励" music.. which were mostly created during 60-80's.. success is this much 'programmed' in our Chinese culture.

Not sure how the west can learn from and encourage more entrepreneurship.. but maybe first would be to take away some of the safety blanket ..

tough one.

@GarethWong