Mark Atkeson - International business leader, entrepreneur, investor, author, expert on doing business in China

Jason chats with Mark Atkeson, who shares the ins and outs of his 30-year journey doing business in China, covering everything from the massive economic changes to the nitty-gritty of Chinese entrepreneurship and innovation. Mark dives into the misconceptions about China, his personal experiences across various sectors, and offers a peek into the future, especially for young folks eyeing opportunities there. It's a deep dive into the transformative world of Chinese business, exploring both the challenges and the vast opportunities that have unfolded over the decades.

 "In the course of 30 years, 800 million people were lifted out of poverty. So one could argue that that has been so far the most important event of our lifetime."

For more than 30 years, American entrepreneur Mark Atkeson found himself in the trenches of the Chinese economy managing joint ventures and startup companies.

His new memoir, RISKY BUSINESS IN RISING CHINA : Deals, Ordeals and Lessons Learned as an American Entrepreneur in a Surging Superpower Grappling with Growing Pains, chronicles Atkeson’ s real-life experiences as the world’s most populous nation transformed itself into a global economic and military superpower.

Over his three-decade career, Atkeson worked across a variety of industries ranging from aircraft maintenance to electric-vehicle production, mobile internet to venture capital. In addition to Atkeson’s behind-the-scenes business dealings with entrepreneurs and government officials, the book offers an unprecedented glimpse into Chinese society, its economy and its governance into the near and distant future.

Mark Atkeson is an international business leader, investor, entrepreneur, and author. A foremost expert on doing business in China, Mark managed, partnered in or provided services to Chinese-based companies for more than three decades in industries ranging from machine tools to aircraft engines, automotive manufacturing, mobile technology, startup venture investing, and aviation asset trading. Most recently, Mark wrote and released Risky Business in Rising China: Deals, Ordeals, and Lessons Learned as an American Entrepreneur in a Surging Superpower Grappling with Growing Pains, chronicling his real-life experiences managing joint ventures and startup companies in China. Now living in Calif

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Transcript

Jason Frazell: 0:11

Hey everybody, my guest on the show today is Mark Atkinson. Mark, he's an international business leader. I'm going to talk a lot more about what that means. He's an investor, he is an entrepreneur, and he is an author. Mark, thank you so much for being here. We just got a chance to catch up a little bit on your background, as this is our first time meeting. And I'm very excited to have this conversation with you, because And I'll say this, people go, why do you podcast? And I'll say variety of reasons. But one of the things I get to learn a lot, and I'm going to learn a lot today because we're going to talk about a topic that I am not an expert in. So Mark, welcome. So good to

Mark Atkeson: 0:41

have you here. Yeah. Jason, thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to share with everyone my career in China.

Jason Frazell: 0:49

Career in China. Yes. Which is, I've never been to, even been to China. So as I said, I buy a lot of things from China. I didn't know I do a lot of business from China. Trans. So Mark, let's let's kick off here before we dig into your expertise. What do you want us to know about you or what would you like to share about you and your life?

Mark Atkeson: 1:08

Yeah. So I wrote this book Risky Business in Rising China which basically describes my career in China over 30 years and, you know, coming out of that, Jason I learned a lot of lessons about taking risks, about reinventing myself. About making opportunities as you can imagine the Chinese economy from, you know, 1980 until very recently was just growing great guns, a huge modernization. They went from being one of the poorest countries in the world to, you know, being you know, relatively high income by, by any standard. And, you know, I think it's important for people to understand and engage. China's here to stay, you know, you know, when you think about things like you know, solar cells, batteries, AI tick tock there's all kinds of stuff, China's going to be around for the rest of you know, the foreseeable future. And you know, so we need to figure out how to engage with them.

Jason Frazell: 2:05

Yeah. And this is something you spent, I don't know, 30 years doing, you now help other companies do this as well. I'm curious if we kick off here, what are, what are some things that potentially, I'm going to speak to mostly to the American audience here, but I would assert, like I know I have people that listen to the EU and Canada and such, that maybe there's some misnomers or some things that aren't fully understood because my extent of understanding China and the economics and all those things is pretty much what I see or read in the news. And that's it. And I know that a lot of the things I see or read in the news are influenced by the political, by what's going on in politics, or by politicians themselves who are saying things because it suits, it suits their agenda for what they're working on. So I'd love if we could spend a few minutes on things that you No, you've learned, you know, that like an average person like me is not necessarily going to understand.

Mark Atkeson: 2:59

Yeah, no great question And you know, I would I would say that probably the most common, you know Misconception about China is that China is this, you know, big monolithic state owned economy By central government they're out there, they're working on cornering markets, they're working on manipulating things, they're working on, you know, all kinds of things that, that we give them too much credit for. And, and we're probably a little bit paranoid about, and. You know, here's, here's, here's the way to really think about China and, and, you know, this is something that I learned over my career there, which is 60 percent of the GDP of China is actually the private sector and 80 percent of, you know, all the jobs basically come from the private sector. And, you know, what is the private sector? It's it's millions of firms that are, you know, adaptable, you know, very flexible, very fast moving, you know, jumping on market opportunities. And they're run by Chinese entrepreneurs who you. For the most part are basically free agents. And, you know, when I say free agents, meaning that these are people who are self made, who, you know, basically are not in it for the country, they're in it for themselves just as you, you would expect any businessman in the United States. So, you know, as a business person in America trying to do work, you know deals in China working with Chinese entrepreneurs is very straightforward. You know, you can partner with them very creatively. You know, you could work with them to source things as well as sell things. So I, I, I think it's important for people to recognize that China is a much more complex and diverse economy than what we normally see in the U. S. media. Hmm.

Jason Frazell: 4:56

Yeah, and you covered a lot of the things that maybe I have a specific like way of looking at it just from what I've consumed over the years and being the age I am to where there was a time where it was that like that could be one of our biggest enemies in the future and still sometimes see that rhetoric. But one of the things you mentioned that's really true. That it really struck me as the straightforward way of doing business. But I'd love to hear more about what you mean by that.

5:24

Yeah.

Mark Atkeson: 5:24

So in in, in my career, you know, I started out with working with big state owned companies like Air China, the flag carrier of the country. I then worked with a engine company that was owned by the state making you know, MIG aircraft engines. And we ended up. Creating a joint venture with them to make parts for the U S aerospace market. And then I ended up in a company that had gone from a state owned to semi private under, you know, with private equity investors. And unfortunately that state owned culture had come through and, you know, these guys were just highly corrupt. I, I spent basically two years turning around a diesel engine parts business where, you know the salespeople were taking kickbacks, the the, you know, the procurement people were taking bribes and the head of the factory was basically driving trucks into the factory and stealing parts out of the factory. So I got through that. And then I, I, I made, you know, I made a leap into the private sector, which was two other guys and I got together and we created an investment company. In investing in, you know, small startup businesses in the mobile mobile tech sector. So we were investing in Chinese entrepreneurial teams who in most cases at that time were, you know, importing technologies from the West and they were importing, you know, successful business models to then adapting them for the China market. And, you know, what I found was that for the most part, the Chinese were Very upfront about you know, what they, what they were looking for in terms of you know, the product that they wanted to integrate into the Chinese market you know, in terms of business deals in China, you know, one of the interesting distinctions. So you mentioned, you know, how Chinese can sometimes be more direct than we give them credit for in America. You know, we put a lot of emphasis into designing. Contracts and having terms and contracts sort of referee outcomes in, in business transactions. And in China, they sort of push the contracts to the side. The more important thing was, you know, did you truly have leverage? Did you have the money in your bank account or did you have control of the product in your warehouse? And that was, you know, the important thing in the business relationship. You know, I would say that I, I got into a business where I was working together with Chinese entrepreneurs in the internet, you know, so we were doing everything from payment systems to entertainment, gaming, and all that stuff. And they were very let me say this, they were very focused on grabbing the commercial opportunity in the markets as fast as they could. And, and, and this is, you know, another distinction that, that you sometimes hear about China is that. The Chinese are very good at commercializing product and services into their market. And they have to act quickly. And part of the reason they have to act quickly is because as soon as anybody starts making money, Hundreds of other private sector companies jump in. Yeah. And so the marginal return is driven down So y you know, I'm, I'm sure that you know, the Chinese are also eyeing, you know, what is successful in our markets and, and, you know, how do they go after that? Here's another good one, Jason. So look at the electric look at the electric vehicle companies in China. They're all private. They're, they're all, yeah, totally. None of none of them are state owned, you know. BYD was, you know, BYD was a, a, a phone battery company that got into cars. You know, Xpeng, Li, all these guys, they're all private and they're all startup and none of them existed, you know, just a few years ago. So the Chinese are very fast to capitalize on market opportunities.

Jason Frazell: 9:22

Hmm. That's interesting. I want to talk a little bit about, about some of the, like the intellectual property things that happen with certain companies like Hawaii, I think it's Hawaii and DGI, the drone company. And now, you know, we, I think it's well known that the Chinese government blocks a lot of the like social media services. They build their own things. Kind of like what Russia does as well. I want to talk a little bit about that and get your perspective on that. And then there, I think there's been some. In the past, at least there's been some talk about like Foxconn is building so much of things for Apple, like what, what are the potential risks? And then of course, and you mentioned it right now, we're recording this in March of 2024. Right now, what's in the news that's big is what you mentioned, ByteDance, which owns TikTok is, I think it's going, it's either gone to the Senate or it's about to go to the Senate with a potential, like either you sell it or you don't do business here. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, I said former secretary mansion is putting together his investment group to potentially buy it, I believe is the latest news, but curious, curious to get your overall, you know, feelings about, about those things. Are they warranted? Is there a reason to feel that way? Is it demonizing and anything that you want to share about that?

Mark Atkeson: 10:37

Yeah. So no, no, very good question. So I think that look in the early days you know, 30 years ago and even 20 years ago when I was in China you know, one of the biggest victims of intellectual property theft would have been Microsoft. You know, so, so that the. Cash that they got back on users of Windows was probably 10 percent of the total, you know, user population. So you know, huge amount of piracy, particularly in the sort of older fashioned operating systems and, and, you know, software that we're all familiar with you know, fast forward to you know, much more recent. So if you look at semiconductors today, I mean, it's, it's, it's really not a case of, you know, can you copy it? You do need to have certain manufacturing technology. As you know, you know, you need to have the ability to make incredibly tiny transistors. That the Chinese don't have today. And of course the U S is trying to restrict them in that. You know, if, if they could get access to that, they, they, they could probably start, you know, upgrading their semiconductors, but again, it's not simply a case of copying. And another good example is, so Boeing and Airbus are, you know, obviously eyeing China and at what point will China try to create, you know, aircraft and engines that can compete directly. If you look at aerospace technology and particularly on the engine side, you know, with what GE makes there's so much material science inside of that engine that have taken, you know, 70 years to develop that the Chinese are not easily going to just be copying that, but, you know, let's, let's be clear that The Chinese tend to focus more on, let's say, incremental innovations with short term market opportunities. We, we in America, we're the alpha guys. We're very good at. You know, breakthrough technologies we're, we're not so good taking it to beta level and, you know, commercializing it. We eventually do. And obviously Apple is a great example of a company that has you know, done an amazing job. And look, even today, you know, Apple has. iPhones, which are copied by Xiaomi in China. Xiaomi is probably one of Apple's biggest competitors other than Huawei, but you know, Apple still is a strong company in China. You know, they, they're there. The threat to Apple in China is not so much. Their product with its functions and features. It's the fact that the Chinese government is basically telling certain parts of the economy not to buy the Apple iPhone. Right. Yeah. So that's a political problem, not a political, yeah, an intellectual property problem. So, you know, apple had, had, has done really well in China, even at the pricing. You know, which tends to be more expensive than what the local products are. Talking quickly about tick tock. So I am, you know, I have to admit I am a tick tock user. I find it very funny and very entertaining. Most of the time. I also find, you know, Jason, I actually do find that it's a very useful form of, of newsfeed because totally, if you're scrolling through tick tock, you're immediately alerted to breaking news. And you're immediately alerted to things that, you know, you feel are important. Now I read an article of I think the economist came out with an article in its most recent edition about they take the position. That we should be restrictive of tick tock for the following reason, which is that countries tend to be sensitive to foreign ownership of traditional media. So, you know, newspapers, magazines, television has been that way in the U S yeah. It's always been that way and it's always been that way in most other countries. And so the concern is that if TikTok really is a form of newsfeed, then to what degree can the Chinese government, you know, put bias into there to influence, you know consumers opinions. So, you know, that's an interesting point. You know, I, I mentioned to you that in China. All of the U. S. social media is blocked, you know, so no YouTube, no Facebook no LinkedIn, no Google and the Chinese might respond and say, well, all these companies fail to compete. And so they basically left the market. But I, I, I think it's deeper than that. So, you know, if you ask me what should happen to tick tock, I'd be sad if it went away, it would be great if they could maybe spin it off and listed it as an independently, you know listed company on the U S stock market or Hong Kong or some other market, but who knows? So you know, complicated issues.

Jason Frazell: 15:22

Complicated issues. Thanks, Mark. Before we get into kind of like what you're up to now with writing the book, and then also I know you have real passion for the next generation of people climbing into the workforce that want to do similar work. I'm curious, how did, how did you, like, what was your path to become an expert on doing business in China? Like, was that, and I always wonder about this when I meet people, like, was this something that. You know, you're, you're going to school and you're, you're undergrad and you're your graduate degree and you go, I'm going to be do business in China. Sometimes you talk to people and it was purely random. They had a friend who went and did something and said, Hey, can you help me with this? So curious what like led you to become an expert and have all this knowledge and do all this business in China.

Mark Atkeson: 16:02

Yeah. So the, the short answer is. Stumbled into it and it, and it built momentum on its own. You know, the longer, the longer answer is I was an electrical engineering major in college. And I took a a trip with my family, my freshman year, 1982, to Beijing. And, you know, at that time, China was one of the poorest countries in the world. Think about this, Jason. You know, you have these stoic Chinese and threadbare Mao suits riding very simple black bicycles and, you know, only two story buildings in Beijing. There's no neon, there are no cars and, you know, you fast forward to today. And, you know, people are wearing designer suits, they're driving BMWs. And you know, so in my career in China, the kickoff was that I graduated from college and my engineering classmates went to AT& T and I had, I had no desire to do that and you know, I also had this youthful, you know, I guess wanderlust that here I was no commitments, early twenties, you know, why not take a leap into China. The Western media was talking about, you know, Coca Cola, Procter Gamble, you know, Boeing, all these companies were trying to get into the country. So, you know, there was certainly a buzz around that said, you know, opportunity was developing in China. And my first job was I, I took it with a machine tool company out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I mean, you know, meat and potatoes you know, metal cutting, metal bashing. And the reason I joined those guys is because they were willing to send me straight into China you know, to, to work in the in industry in China. And, and, and that was what I was looking for. I was looking for basically exposure. And then it built on, you know, from that and I jumped the beauty of what happened in China was that, you know, as you can imagine this amazing modernization, you know, sectors would come up, new sectors would develop. So I moved from basically aircraft maintenance to automotive parts. to mobile technology, to venture capital, to, you know, aviation asset trading. So the key was just to keep moving forward and keep reinventing myself.

Jason Frazell: 18:23

What did you learn to speak Chinese in college? That's a good question.

Mark Atkeson: 18:32

So, so, so, you know, while I was doing engineering, I took two years of Chinese in college. Yeah. When I got to China, I would say my Chinese was pretty rudimentary. You know, it was pretty basic, but in the 1980s the economic life of the country was really slow. You know, I mean, people were still basically riding bicycles and, and haggling with street vendors. And so there was a lot of time, remember, you know, no cell phones. Yeah. No internet you would get, yeah, no internet. You'd jump on a train to go anywhere, so you had a lot of time to interact with the people. And that allowed me over time to, to really get my Chinese up to speed. And then, you know, the other thing over the course of my career, particularly in the first half Jason, I spent a lot of time in factories where I was the only foreigner in the factory and, you know, so nobody in the factory spoke English. And in, in factory environments, you really have to get your point across. You know, you have to, you have to be well understood. So, so it, it, it worked out. And then in the second half of my career, you know, I tended to be the older guy in the room and I was dealing with, you know, millennials and Gen Z much more in the internet world and in new technology. So, you know, there's one of the chapters is I work with guys to develop electric vehicles, affordable electric vehicles for the U S market. And we had a team of about 70 Chinese engineers, all of whom were probably, you know, 15 years younger than me. But you know, all up and coming people in everything from battery technology to car manufacturing.

Jason Frazell: 20:13

Interesting. I had a, I had a question about venture venture capital slash investing in China. Yeah, just speaking for myself and my wife. I know we have like some international, you know, like some international ETFs or some sort of mutual funds that do have like an Asian component. I believe obviously China is going to likely be in there. I'm curious about the investing environment there and I guess as somebody who's never done any direct vesting, is the government, I guess my question is, does the government get government get more involved? Like if you're going to go in there and, and put venture to a company or you want to do some investment, is there like my, my perspective would be, and this is just my own, my own way of looking at it, which may be false, is that there's going to be a little bit more governmental control there. Like, what is it like if you said, Hey, we've got a, we've got a 350 million fund. Fun. We want to go to, we want to find Chinese companies to invest in. Is there more governmental control than there generally is in the U S?

Mark Atkeson: 21:11

There is more governmental control in areas that are sensitive to, you know, the government. So a good example was telecom. So. I chose to set up a venture capital fund that was completely focused on what was what we called the mobile internet. You know, the funny thing, Jason, just by the way, is that 20 years ago, mobile internet in America was your laptop connected through wifi to Starbucks. And in China, mobile internet really meant that the only device everyone had was a phone. And, you know, you, you were going to be downloading Java games to your phone. So the, the, the issue we ran into Jason was the following was that you know, app developers, content developers, service creators were all private sector people. And there was a time when the big telecom providers like, you know, China mobile, China, Unicom created these like ecosystems where content developers could you know, commercialize their content. But what we found was that the government over time would ruin that ecosystem by increasingly, you know, by incrementally controlling it and restricting it. So here's, here's one example. So everybody knows American Idol and, and, you know, there was a time when in the U S that you would vote through SMS on your phone for your favorite singer. Okay. So in China, the way that worked was that you charged people a premium fee for, you know, voting for their favorite singer. In my book, there's a story about the Supergirl competition. And honestly, it was so big in China, there was 800 million votes cast in one season. Wow. So think about that. So, so, so that went great. The business I was in, we were making millions of dollars of profit, just, just premium texting. But then when the government decided was this exercise in democracy, which is basically voting for somebody on your phone is too dangerous. And, and so in the end they shut it down. And, and so that was the end of the operative.

Jason Frazell: 23:22

They don't, they, they, because they didn't want the people to get used to the fact that they had a, like a democratic way of doing

Mark Atkeson: 23:27

things. Yes. Yeah. Because so their worry was that a DJ on a radio station might one day wake up and say, let's have a vote on the leadership of the country and whether they're competent or not, you know, so that's funny. So You know, they were worried so, so, but let me make one other comment about, you know us and us investors in China. So you are right. You know, the Bloomberg and CNBC now, you know, have more and more of this discussion about whether China is investable or not. And, and I, I hate to say it, Jason, but I think, you know, what's happened in the last three or four years, particularly you know, since COVID was that. The Chinese government had a big regulatory crackdown on a lot of the private sector businesses that really matter, particularly, you know, in the internet and in, in the tech sector. And, you know, the bottom line is that Alibaba and Tencent, you know, which were their two big ones. Yeah, both of those, you know, both of those companies were on their way to trillion dollar, you know, market caps similar to Amazon and our big guys here in the US and following this regulatory crackdown and following, you know, taking Alibaba's CEO, you know, Jack Ma into custody. Yeah. For, you know, ideologically ideological impurities or whatever. You know, the, today those companies are worth, you know, maybe one third of what they had been worth. And, and so as an, as a U S investor, you look at that and you say, Okay. There's a classic case of the central government has basically destroyed an investment opportunity and it's destroyed value in the market. So, so I hate to say it, but I mean, I think even at the private investing level, it's harder and harder to find opportunities. And you know, I guess, Some people might say, Jason, that, you know, the consumer opportunity is a big one. And, you know, again, up until COVID, the Chinese people represented 40 percent of all consumption of luxury goods in the world, you know, so Louis Vuitton. Yeah, you know all the, all the main stuff you know, the Chinese were big, big consumers. And what's happened now with the the crackdown on the property sector and the deleveraging of the property developers, you know, you've got the situation that the urban middle class, which it represents, you know, most of the the wealth in China, they're losing confidence. And, you know, as they've lost confidence, how can you, as an investor, jump into a consumer business that's, you know, focused on them? You know, what you're looking at now is the potential for some fairly serious pullback in domestic consumption in China. Yeah. Thanks,

Jason Frazell: 26:26

Mark. So now let's start to not ready to wrap quite yet, but I want to make sure that we cover off on something that I know you're personally passionate about. And that's helping the next generation of talent who wants to do what you've done in your career, do business in China, potentially go to China. I'm curious what. You know, I'm, I don't know you to know that you do mentorship, but I would guess based on our conversation, this is something you'll mentor people on. You've written a book about it. People, anybody can do it. Well, the book will be in the show notes, but I'm curious, like what, what do you like? You've got somebody coming out of MIT and they say, Hey, I'm thinking trying to might be the place I want to go. They have, there's they're you 30 some years ago, like you said, what do you think people need to know now? Good, bad, ugly, about potentially taking the same path that you took.

Mark Atkeson: 27:14

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, let's kick it off by first being, you know, full disclosure that China is sort of in the penalty box right now. Yes, it is. You know, what I mean by that is, you know, who would have thought that the U. S. economy is doing really well right now and the Chinese economy is sort of being driven into a ditch. And, you know, what does that mean for a young person when they're thinking about, you know, do I, do I expose my career to a country which, you know, might not be doing so well in the long term, but you know, put that aside and think about the fact that, you know, China's here to stay. China is a world beater in everything from solar panels to lithium ion batteries, to electric vehicles, to artificial intelligence. So, you know, you know, China's going to continue to be a leader in all of the key technologies that we care about here in America. And, you know, I think for. Young people think about it this way. So I'll tell you a quick story about my last chapter in my book. So I woke up I was in my you know, I was I was about 50 years old by then and you know I looked around and I thought okay The local talent in China is basically squeezing the foreigners out and you

Jason Frazell: 28:34

know, I said they're just getting that they're getting good good

Mark Atkeson: 28:36

good Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the local talent in China is, is very capable. And, you know, I thought to myself, well, the Swiss do watches. The Americans do airplanes and jet engines pretty well. And so I thought about that and I was like, okay, what can I do in the aerospace industry? Where I can, you know, still be an active player in the Chinese economy. And I I found this air finance course run by Citibank down in Hong Kong. So I enrolled in that it was about a three day course. And they, you know, they teach you everything about asset financings and residual values. And, and, you know, all these different. Aspects of the credit world. And I looked around when I got down there and I was in my business suit and everyone was like a 25 year old Hong Kong Chinese. And they were all working for local banks. And I thought, okay, now I really am a fish out of water. Yeah, I, I ran into a French guy who was about my age and he was basically buying. Mature Airbus airplanes, and he would bring investors in and they would jointly own these airplanes. And then what they would do is they would disassemble them and sell the parts. And so, you know, the cashflow from the parts was greater than the purchase price of the airplane. You know, bingo, you've got a high end junkyard business. So yeah, I, I immediately put together a business plan for China to do exactly that. And came here to the U S talk to various investors in this sector in San Francisco and New York. And from that, you know, found a lead to a guy down in Florida who had just signed a joint venture with Air China. So my, my, the, the, the, the sort of the, the, the punchline of that Jason is that for young people. Think about the fact that sometimes you might not have the experience or the pedigree to be hired into a certain sector, but a lot of times you can actually make your opportunity yourself. You know, sometimes you, you actually start a business in it yourself. Sometimes you go get some training. But one way or another, you can often make, if you see a sector that you want to get into and you know, employers here in the United States are not interested figure out how to make an opportunity. And I, and I'll, I'll give you a hint, you know, with China, one way to make an opportunity in the current economic situation is Chinese private companies are beginning to realize that in order to grow. They have to get out of China. And one of the things they're doing now is they're coming to Mexico. They're coming to the U S so in everything again, you know, from solar panels to batteries, to electric vehicles, you're seeing localization in the United States. And one of the things these, these Chinese guys are going to need is they're going to need, you know, young U S people who are competent and can, and can help bridge them into this market. And, you know, if you think about. If you work with a Chinese company to set up a battery factory in America or an electric vehicle business in the United States, you're getting cutting edge technology and you're getting a view into how Chinese run their businesses. And that makes you incredibly valuable, not just, you know, with other Chinese companies, but with any us employer. I mean, the fact is you know, this move. It creates U. S. Jobs. It creates competitiveness. And it puts young people in America who to take that opportunity and puts them in a really good position. If you don't like that opportunity, you still have. Remember that Tesla makes more electric cars. In China than it makes in the United States. Yeah. And, and Apple still sources basically everything from China. Everything. So the I mean the tech, when you leave San Francisco airport at nighttime to fly to Asia, there are a ton of young people jumping on those planes who are basically working for us tech you know, who interface all across Asia in interesting jobs. Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 32:40

So there's, there's, so there's plenty of opportunity just like I think for anybody and I'm, I'm really, I just realized I was reading on LinkedIn this morning that the job market is a little cool for recent grads was the article. I don't know how it shows. I didn't get into it, but I just noticed that was a headline. So another thing to consider, Mark, I want to wrap by asking you, and I asked all my authors, this question. Why write a book?

Mark Atkeson: 33:09

No, it's a great question. So three things. First is, you know, here I am. I'm 60. My kids always wondered what the heck I was doing in China because I was jumping around all these different companies and industries. And, and, you know, so the first thing was a memoir, a chronicle for my children to really understand what dad did in China you know, the second reason was that my career had this uniqueness from the perspective that. You know, as I said, I, I jumped from aircraft maintenance to auto parts to mobile technology, to venture capital, to asset trading. And I feel that the scope of that gives any reader a very good view of what was going on in China and particularly this transition from The dominant state to a very vibrant, you know, private sector in China. And then the last reason is that in the 30 years that I was in China, you know, China, basically when I got there in the eighties turned away from ideology and class struggle and, you know, craziness. And turned away from central planning and basically implemented very practical market oriented reforms. And in the course of those 30 years, 800 people were lifted out of poverty. So, you know,

Jason Frazell: 34:34

one could argue that people, 800 million people, I'm sorry.

Mark Atkeson: 34:38

800 million people were lifted out of poverty. So one could argue that that has been so far the most important event of our lifetime.

Jason Frazell: 34:48

Absolutely. That's, that is a staggering number of people. Two and a half times the population of the US. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

Mark Atkeson: 34:57

You know, so China today has people who have a reasonable level of control over their lives. You know, they have aspirations. They went from nothing, you know, no ownership of their homes, no ownership of a business, no car, no nothing. You know, a bicycle and a radio was something that people really pined after. And, you know, today China is a country where the local people basically can make decisions about where they want to work and, you know, how they want to live their lives. And it's just, it's, it's a huge, you know change or improvement in people's wellbeing over such a short period of time.

Jason Frazell: 35:37

Yeah. That is a tremendous change in not that, not that many years in the grand scheme of, of history, is it? Yeah. It really isn't. Excellent. Mark, well, let's, let's wrap up and like, what's next for you? You said you're, you've got the kids, you said you're 60, you've written a book. What's next for you? And what are you, like, what's next on your horizon?

Mark Atkeson: 35:58

Yeah. So, so look, I, I continue to engage with China. I, I enjoy looking at the, you know, the daily newsfeed out of China. So I've got three things going on related to China. One is I consult with a software company based out of Dallas, Texas that is owned by, you know, the world's major airlines. And what we do is we help airlines to basically connect their management systems to their supplier networks. So, you know, American's a big user Delta is a big user. Yeah, it's a user. And so I, I, I get airlines in China, like Air China, China Eastern also connected. So it's like helping the Chinese, you know, airlines with their supply chain. The second thing I do is I work with a Chinese company that is interested in developing what's called a flying test bed. So think about when you. You know, design a new aircraft engine. You need to have something like a 747 to carry your engine up to, you know, flight test altitudes and speeds. So I, I work with those guys. There's a company in Seattle that would help to modify the airplane. And I help the Chinese to basically, you know, scour the world for old 747s and help them buy it. And then my last thing is that pre COVID the Chinese were sending lots of young Chinese kids to America to learn how to fly. Because you know, we have open skies and we have lots of small flight schools, very inexpensive to learn how to become a commercial aircraft pilot. Yeah. So I I, I helped to bridge. Chinese students into, you know, small privately held flight schools here in the U. S.

Jason Frazell: 37:36

Very cool. That was unexpected and very cool. That's really interesting. Well, Mark, I want to thank you for your time and your energy today. Appreciate the work you're doing. I would, I would, one of the things I was, I've been thinking about during this interview is that it's very likely that something that you've done, I've experienced. Based on the work you've done over the last 30 years, either the products I've used, the aircraft I've flown in, it's extremely likely that you probably have a, we have a closer connection than I would ever know, just based on that, all that, all the things that you've worked on over the years. So I just want to thank you for that. Thank you for writing the book. And I always like to ask my guests, are there any last words you'd like to part? In part onto the everybody listening.

Mark Atkeson: 38:18

Yeah. So look again I think in general people, you know don't be afraid, you know, take risks, reinvent yourself, make your opportunity. And Jason thank you so much for inviting me onto your show.

Jason Frazell: 38:30

Yeah. Thanks Mark. It was a pleasure to have you. We'll talk

Mark Atkeson: 38:32

again soon. Thank you very much. All right. Bye bye.

38:36

Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to Cool People with Jason Frizzell. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell your friends, follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and give us a shout out, or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode piqued your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast at jasonfrizzell. com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.