Duluth Native Times His China Book Well

Duluth native times his China book well

BUSINESS: After 15 years working in China, James McGregor writes a cautionary book about how to do business there.

BY JANE BRISSETT

NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Fri, Nov. 18, 2005

The two hundred people who may return starry-eyed from Gov. Tim Pawlenty's trade mission to China on Saturday would do well to read a new book by a Duluth man before forging ahead.

James McGregor's book, "One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China," should make business people think seriously about a place where, as he writes, "foreign businesses are trapped between profits and politics."

It's an environment where corruption is rampant and personal relationships reign supreme, he wrote.

"It's going to take a generation or two to get things together," McGregor said in a phone interview from Beijing on Wednesday.

McGregor, 52, who lived in China for 15 years and moved back to his hometown of Duluth about three years ago, said he felt an obligation to write the book because of his background.

"Everybody is coming to China these days," he said. That includes President Bush, who will arrive there Saturday.

McGregor's book, released Oct. 11, is in its fourth U.S. printing. British and international paper- back editions also will be published.

FredHills, McGregor's editor at Simon & Schuster, expects it will soon be on the business best-seller list. McGregor said the book has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

McGregor is a well-known figure in China, both in the expatriate community and among Chinese officials, said his friend Jim Friedlich, who worked with him for 10 years at Dow Jones & Co.

"He's just a big strapping guy from Duluth who is enormously comfortable in another culture," he said.

KNOWS THE SCENE

McGregor's sense of humor and Midwest openness have won the respect of the Chinese, said Friedlich, who described McGregor as an ambassador for China when he's in the United States and an ambassador for the United States when he's in China.

"Here's a guy who can really write well who knows the China scene," Hills said. "I can't think of anybody who has that combination of credentials."

The author has come a long way since he was kicked out of the former CathedralHigh School, now the MarshallSchool, as a senior for "having too much fun," as he put it. He graduated from EastHigh School in 1971.

McGregor is one of nine children of John and Sally McGregor, who owned McGregor's Drive-In Liquor Store, 624 E. Fourth St. Later, John became manager of Northland Country Club and a country club in Phoenix. Jim McGregor's grandfather, Louis McGregor, owned the McGregor-Soderstrom men's clothing store in Duluth.

His parents broadened their children's world when they took in 12-year-old Cuban refugee Armando Vega, said Jim's brother Doug McGregor.

"When other kids had sports posters on their walls, I had maps," Jim McGregor said. "I wanted to see the world."

After graduating, 17-year-old McGregor volunteered for Vietnam, serving in the Army infantry. He took shrapnel in his knee and won the Bronze Star, given for "heroic or meritorious achievement or service." He would not elaborate on how he won it, saying, "I wasn't a hero."

He returned home, earned a degree in journalism at the University of Minnesota, married Duluth native Cathy Grady and eventually became the Duluth News Tribune's Washington, D.C., correspondent in the 1980s.

His Vietnam experience sparked an interest in Asia. In 1985, he and his sister Lisa took a six-week backpacking trip across China without knowing a word of Chinese.

"I returned to the United States convinced that China's eventual emergence onto the world scene would be the economic event of my lifetime," he wrote.

In 1987, at age 33, he talked Cathy into selling everything, and they headed for Taiwan to learn Mandarin Chinese.

"He was one who always knew what he wanted to do and did it," Cathy said.

Soon after arriving in Taiwan, McGregor was hired as the Wall Street Journal's Taiwan bureau chief.

Three years later, he became Beijing bureau chief. It was shortly after the Tiananmen Massacre. The family, which by then included daughter Sally, lived in a diplomatic compound where their nanny spied on them and their phones were tapped, he said.

MELT THE ICE

To meet ordinary people, he rode his bicycle in the evening with his blond, curly-haired toddler. The Chinese were curious. Sally broke the ice and enabled Jim to talk with natives to learn their life stories, McGregor said.

In 1994, McGregor became the chief executive of Dow Jones in China. He built the company's presence from two people to a group of businesses that employed about 150. He also led the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

He left Dow Jones in 2000 to become a partner and China managing director for GIV Venture Partners, a venture capital fund, staying there for three years. Today he has a consulting business, Vermilion Ventures, and is a partner in BlackInc China, an Internet company.

He keeps an apartment in Bejing and spends a good deal of time there. But more than three years ago when he began work on the book, his family returned to Duluth. The McGregors wanted Sally, now 16, and their son, Grady, 13, to live like typical American kids. In China, they went to school with the children of diplomats and had a cook, a maid and a driver.

He's now on a yearlong worldwide book tour. He gets to Duluth as often as he can, though, and phones or e-mails home daily.

His future after the book tour remains uncertain.

"I would say that China's probably home for me," he said. He quickly added that he also needs to get away from the noise and pollution of Beijing from time to time to his childhood hometown of Duluth.

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JANE BRISSETT can be reached weekdays at (218) 720-4161, (800) 456-8282 or by e-mail at .