Family firms, which make up about 90% of China’s 21.6 million private businesses, are on the cusp of a sweeping succession wave that may be the biggest the world’s seen yet. Private firms didn’t emerge until after the country abandoned its socialist path for market reform in 1978. “Deng Xiaoping only allowed private businesses starting in the 1980s, so these family businesses are all relatively young,” says Roger King, director of Tanoto Center for Asian Family Business and Entrepreneurship Studies at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Many Chinese family businesses are in traditional industries like export manufacturing and face challenges such as rising labor costs. That’s likely to be also true with family firms based in China, he says, though he adds not enough firms have completed succession yet to carry out a rigorous study.

Source: The Edge Markets September 28, 2017 06:45 UTC