Dog shit luck is very good luck — Editor’s Note for Friday, May 13, 2022

“Dog shit luck” or “very good luck” (狗屎运 gǒu shǐ yùn) is how Chinese internet users are describing six figure fortunes that Facebook’s head of advertising sales in Asia stumbled into when TikTok decided to chase after the American market.

That’s our Phrase of the Week.

“Dog shit luck” isn’t really applicable to much going on in business and investment in China right now. That would be my takeaway from my chat with investor, entrepreneur, and gadfly Anne Stevenson-Yang, which is the top story in today’s newsletter below (or on our website here).

Anne shares my cynical — or shall we say salty? — views on many things, and that’s mostly what we talked about. Don’t click though if you want cheering up about China in any way. But Anne’s a realist, and told me the following when asked about the possible end of the China dream for foreign investors. As context, the comments below came after an exchange of unrelenting negativity that you may delight in, or hate if you click through:

Does that answer your question? I don’t know. I mean, there’s a lot that’s good about the Chinese economy. It’s big. A lot of people have a lot of money to spend. There are a lot of companies in China.

In the U.S., you can, not to mention any names, but let’s say have a best-selling electric car, and basically be somebody who doesn’t have any idea about how to do business. But in China, you can’t run a cigarette stand without being a genius, because everything is so hard. So the companies that have developed distribution channels and good brand equity, you really have to think those are solid companies that should be invested in and rewarded.