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On November 11, 2016, Xi Dan, Senior Vice President of Tencent, and Ma Yongwu, Dean of Tencent Academy, were discussing how Tencent could develop new capabilities to sustain its growth miracle and entry into new technologies, expansion into B2B businesses, and internationalization.

Late in 2016, two senior human resources (HR) executives at Tencent Holdings (Tencent), China's leading Internet services firm, are assessing the effectiveness of the company's talent management practices in responding to Tencent's sustained hypergrowth. Over the preceding decade, Tencent's revenues and earnings had grown at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 38% and 44%, respectively. Its staff grew at a 25% CAGR, primarily by hiring recent college graduates. At the time of the case, the average Tencent worker was 29 years old, and worked at the firm for an average 3.24 years. Headquartered in the booming city of Shenzhen, China, Tencent benefited from rich pools of local entrepreneurship, capital, and skills, yet also lost employees to other opportunities catalyzed by those resources. The company therefore must do its utmost to attract, develop, and retain top talent: rivalry with its primary Chinese competitors, Alibaba and Baidu, is intensifying, and all three firms are increasingly looking to cultivate enterprise customers and to develop and sell products driven by new technologies, both in China and abroad.

Late in 2016, two senior human resources (HR) executives at Tencent Holdings (Tencent), China's leading Internet services firm, are assessing the effectiveness of the company's talent management practices in responding to Tencent's sustained hypergrowth. Over the preceding decade, Tencent's revenues and earnings had grown at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 38% and 44%, respectively. Its staff grew at a 25% CAGR, primarily by hiring recent college graduates. At the time of the case, the average Tencent worker was 29 years old, and worked at the firm for an average 3.24 years. Headquartered in the booming city of Shenzhen, China, Tencent benefited from rich pools of local entrepreneurship, capital, and skills, yet also lost employees to other opportunities catalyzed by those resources. The company therefore must do its utmost to attract, develop, and retain top talent: rivalry with its primary Chinese competitors, Alibaba and Baidu, is intensifying, and all three firms are increasingly looking to cultivate enterprise customers and to develop and sell products driven by new technologies, both in China and abroad.

This book is about how Chinese entrepreneurs deal with China's most important institution-the government-in their struggle to survive and even prosper in China's transitional economy. It takes an'inside look'at several private firms in China and provides a first-hand account, as well as the underlying rationale and decision considerations, of their corporate political strategy. The book is based firmly on solid academic research but actually written with both practitioners and scholars in mind. It offers candid and insightful quotes and observations from the owners and executives of China's private firms with regards to their dealing with the government. This book advances a typology of corporate political strategies based on the respective motivations of the business (the entrepreneurs and their firms) and the government (the government institutions and individual officials) as well as the modes of their interactions. Eight different types of political strategies by China's private firms are identified and illustrated with real-life examples, ranging from one-night-stand, situational shopper, good ole friend, patronage seeker, model volunteer, institutional improviser, direct participator, to red hat insider. The book also dissects a living case and traces the development of one particular private firm, from its humble start-up to present day glory, which fittingly illustrates the evolution and dynamics of the various types of political strategies the firm employed at different stages of its growth. For anyone who wants to understand China's private firms and the Chinese government, thus be able to deal with them more effectively, this book is a must-read.