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Public Affairs Television "Becoming American" Interview with Shirley Young

BILL MOYERS: What happens if everyone who now rides a bicycle in that populous country winds up driving a car?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, they obviously have to build more roads. They're madly building roads. They have to build parking. A lot of buildings going up all over China haven't provided for parking 'cause they never imagined that people would be able to buy cars to that extent.

And you need service stations and you need all that. So, even for General Motors going in, what we went in and did was, not just to build a plant that could turn our product. We had to build components. Who's gonna supply all the different parts of the vehicle?

The servicing, the distribution, you oughta create a brand. You had to do all those things. So, we basically were creating an industry. We weren't just creating a plant.

BILL MOYERS: The way the automobile industry grew up in this country 100 years ago.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: But that took years and years. [In China,] we’ve done it all within three, four years. (LAUGHS)

BILL MOYERS: They're really in that fast a race?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: You spent your adult life studying human motivation and psychology. Is anything that you learned about the American consumer behavior transferable to China?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Absolutely. But the principle is, you have to understand what the customer wants. The customer's not the same. For example, our engineers would say, "Well, we're gonna make the car very serviceable so that everybody can fix it themselves."

In America, the driver's seat is the one that has all the controls, the most comfort, it has all the cup holders, everything like that. Well, I said right away, number one, remember the driver [in China], for awhile, is gonna be a professional driver, meaning a chauffeur of some kind. And the important person is gonna be sitting in the back. In America, the backseat is for the kids, the dog, the golf clubs. It's not so important. The front driver's seat is what's important. Well, in China, the important person's sitting in the back. That's for the large sedans.

BILL MOYERS: Because the first cars are gonna be for official use?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, for company use, let's say an owner of a company or an executive of a plant or something.

That's who's riding them. Even an entrepreneur who has his own business, he probably has a driver that drives him around. That's the first thing. You had to answer, who is that customer? What do they want? And secondly, for example, they wanted to talk about "easy service" building. Well, I said, that's not gonna be a factor. The guy who's gonna take the car to be repaired is gonna be the chauffeur. He's gonna take it to a service station. So, to make it easy to fix in your backyard is a non-issue. (LAUGHS) So, the key principle still is understand what their needs are.

BILL MOYERS: But what about the ordinary citizen who wants to have a car?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well today, finally, after a number of years, four or five years, more and more people are individually buying vehicles. So now small cars have come into China. And General Motors has got a small Buick as well, it sells for about $12,000, that is affordable. So, people are driving their own cars. So, all these issues of parking and services will become greater. But for the moment, many of the cars are still not self-driven. They are still driven by a professional./p>

BILL MOYERS: So, do you see China having traffic problems?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: They do already, unfortunately. There's still constraints in terms of taxes and stuff.

BILL MOYERS: Is there a serious cultural gap between China and the United States on trade and commerce?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Taking the exact experience we had going in, we said our strategy became to be seen as a good partner, which meant it's really all about mutual respect and having your interests as well as my interests.

That attitude is crucially important. People talk about how relationships are important. Relationships just mean "I respect you, you respect me. We may be different. And I want you to win and you want me to win, and we'll both win." That attitude became our strategy. Our overcoming that was probably the biggest factor in our success. In fact, I know it was.

And I'll tell you why. I mean, we did things like-- people from China would come in and we'd serve pizza at lunchtime for a working lunch. And we discovered that the afternoon, all they talked about was how awful the pizza was. (LAUGHTER) So we said, " What? They've just gotten off the plane.

They don't like cheese. They don't like a lot of meat. They don't like bloody meat. Let's just serve Chinese food." So, we'd order out from some Chinese place. And so, what did that say? It wasn't the food that was important. It just said, "Hey, we respect you. We understand that you're different.

You like Chinese food. And you don't like pizza. We like pizza." But so, we're gonna respect you in that regard and do that. So from little things like that, we really demonstrate that. But the reason I say that I know that our strategy of changing from, "We wanna make the best deal, et cetera," and going beyond that and saying, "Hey, we want this to be a real partnership, we want you to see us as a good partnership for now and for the future so that we both win," and how do I know that that worked?

We had won the project in '95. And we actually started production at the end of '98. In 1999, I was at the Great Hall of the People. It was the 50th anniversary of the country. And I was sitting next to a guy I didn't know, and said to him, "What do you do?"

He said, "I work for the Chinese Academy of Social Science." I said, "What's your field?" He said, "Foreign joint ventures." I said, “That's interesting.” He said, "Yes. In fact, I wrote a paper about the automotive joint venture," which was a very big topic a few years ago. And he said, "I recommended General Motors." I said, "Really?" He said yes.

He said, " We've already eliminated the Germans and the Japanese for different reasons. And we were down to two companies. It was General Motors and Ford. And for a whole year, the two companies were kind of vetted and compared as to who would be the final choice."

And I said, "So, why did you pick General Motors?" He said, "From a products standpoint, you both had good products. From a technology standpoint, you both had good technology. From the financial standpoint, you're both willing to match the other. But we felt that General Motors would make a better partner." And he said, "That's why I recommended General Motors." And I said, "Well, how did [conclude] that?" He said, "We went to visit a lot of different operations, both your company and the other company."

And he said, "Everybody we talked to at General Motors expressed the fact that they understood that they wanted to help China succeed as well as [the company] succeed so there would be a win/win. So, we felt that over the long term, you would be a better partner."

BILL MOYERS: So, General Motors was the big winner in getting into China?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes. Yes, it did. There was only one winner, and we won. I'll tell you a good thing, a happy thing. Right now, because it's now 2003, and in 2002, the market was ahead, close to 40 percent, up 40 percent. That's the industry for cars.

BILL MOYERS: You were selling 40 percent more cars in China?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: The cars are 40 percent upright in China. General Motors business was about 50 percent. And it sold 110,000 vehicles last year which is quite respectable.

And the market is projected to grow by 20 percent for the next several years. Obviously, [we] make money when things are in that situation.

BILL MOYERS: And just as the car changed America, it's gonna change China?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And you would have been a pioneer in that--

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, hopefully. Hopefully, I was a part of it. I really feel grateful that I was able to [participate]. It's a case where you're lucky you're alive when you are.

Because if I'd been a lot younger I probably couldn't have done it. If I were older, I wouldn't have been here to do it. And so, the fact that at this point, I can serve a role. I think what has been helpful is that yes, of course, I understand Americans. I'm American.

But I think I still understood enough of China and I understood enough of the way to deal. And I think we did change the way we dealt. And I think the way we dealt was why we won.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think were the lasting values your parents imparted to you?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, I guess part of it was a sense of confidence that you could do what you wanted to do. And secondly, a sense of service. See, my father and my stepfather were very patriotic. [We’d say] "Oh, let's go do something fun." And we always used to hear, "No, no, I have to do this. This is important for our country. We must do this, or make this sacrifice," whatever it was. So, from the beginning, I always felt a sense of service. It was important to do something not just for myself or my family, for comfort, for fun. Try to do something. And that's what I used to say in those stupid interviews, that I'd like to make a difference in the world.

Like to contribute (LAUGHS) something to the world. In those stupid interviews I did, where I didn't get a job. So, I think that's what they gave. That you really should try and use your talents to do something that might be helpful.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you've been able to do that with General Motors in China, in terms of developing an industry, helping to introduce and start to develop a modern industry that’s gonna help China.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: I played a part. I played a part.

BILL MOYERS: When did you become an American citizen?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: In about the late '50s. My husband at the time was in the Army.

And so, there was the Korean War. Their wives could get citizenship. So, I got my citizenship that way.

BILL MOYERS: When General Motors asked you to come there, to join them full time as an executive, what was their problem? What were they facing?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, they were facing lots and lots of problems, okay, facing problems externally, being perceived of as being out of touch, and internally, not having the right feeling about dealing with the marketplace.

And as a result, their public stance was more stonewalling. In other words, they never wanted to admit error. They were very good technologically in many, many ways. But a lot of times, they didn't know how to deal with the outside world in terms of [communicating with] people. Instead of stonewalling when people challenged you, if you communicate your own story effectively, sometimes it can help.

So, for example, they were continuously criticized for their quality. And actually, they did a lot of work to improve it and had accomplished a lot.

But they never figured out how to convey that. And so, one of the things I did when I was there on that particular issue was to say, first of all, let's admit our error, the fact that we did have problems, and then talk about what we've done to fix them.

BILL MOYERS: What year was this, Shirley? What period?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: I think it was probably in the early '90s. They were under huge criticism and perceptions of terrible quality as a result, even though the quality had improved a great deal. They were still given the rap of having very bad quality.

So, even objectively it was there, nobody knew it. In order to do that effectively, you had to admit error. You'd had to admit, "I'd done something wrong." And that was one of the things in the culture which was not acceptable. You never admitted you were wrong publicly.

And here, things were terrible, terrible, people criticizing you, et cetera. And you keep on saying I'd never did anything wrong.

BILL MOYERS: Were their car sales falling?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes, of course. And their perceptions were down, et cetera. But in the meantime, their actual behavior had actually corrected a lot of it, except they didn't know how to tell anybody. (LAUGHS)

It's like if I keep criticizing you and you've changed the behavior but you never say, "Hey, I recognize I was wrong before and now I've fixed it."

BILL MOYERS: So, this is not just a matter of spin. It's not putting a good face on a bad situation.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Oh, no, no, no, no. It was that they were under-valuing their own situation in the public. Their whole attitude about it was hostile.

When they're attacking me, I'm gonna close ranks. Instead of trying to reach out. So we did a campaign in which we talked about improving the quality of General Motors.

But the first sentence of that was about, we know we've had some problems. And blah, blah, blah. And that was like, a major thing. My gosh, General Motor's admitting that they ever did anything wrong, even when the whole public press was about the thousands of things that people were criticizing it for. (LAUGHTER)

BILL MOYERS: I remember those ads. I think they said, "Putting quality on the road."

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes, yes, yes. (LAUGHTER) Right. That's what it was.

BILL MOYERS: Did that come from market research?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Yes. Of course it did, but the research had been around. There's no new research. That had been around for ages that everybody said the quality was poor. And the Japanese were much better. And that the they were out of touch. And blah, blah, blah. So, there's no new news about that, the research.

That's not the point. The point was when you did in fact, improve factors, which was true, that you found a way to convey it, but that was one of those things where you had to persuade people that it was okay to admit [you were] wrong.

BILL MOYERS: Here we are in a period of global warming. And there's the battle going on over emissions. And everyone's concerned about the environment. What do you think is the future of the automobile 100 years from now, when we will not be around? What do you think is the future of the automobile?

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, I mean, I can get even more specific than that. Because from the very beginning, I think General Motors and all the major car companies really understand sustainable success.

It means if you want to be successful, you can’t ignore these problems. The environment is critical. Fuel efficiency is critical. Reducing emissions and all these harmful things are critical. You may not feel the effect this moment. But if you want a sustainable success, you must address them.

So, they have huge resources surrounding this. But interestingly, take just China. When we went into China, China was not particularly environmentally concerned at the time. They have become much more so now. But they weren't particularly concerned. So, they just wanted to get this auto industry going. It used to upset me, because I would see in the paint shop, these young guys would be painting with no masks on.

And you're thinking, God, they must be killing themselves with that. How many years could they live when they're spraying all that paint? But anyway, when General Motors went in, it did take it's best knowledge, and say, "Environmental protection for your workers. When they're spraying paint, you gotta put on the expensive [safety gear], all those kinds of things that are necessary. [Reduce] emissions from the plant. You gotta do that."

The Chinese were not requiring it. But we said, as a company, we gotta do that. In fact, one of our technical people used to say, "I would drink the water that comes of this plant that goes through the whole process. Because they've got that many safeguards."

And also, catalytic converters, that reduce emissions. That wasn't a requirement. But General Motors decided that yes, we gotta put them into our vehicles. So, there were a lot of things that I think, the companies have become much more wise in understanding if we want things to go on, yeah, we could be kind of expedient. And say, "Hey, listen, as long as they don't require it, let's just get out there."

But I think that today, at least General Motors, I know is much more concerned about that. So, what's happening? Yes, there are alternative fuels. And I keep on saying China is probably one of the best places to [use them because] it's, of course very polluted.

It's working hard to try-- by making Shanghai more green, etcetera. But it's a huge job. Because they're trying to develop and build more plants while they're trying to keep the pollution down. Add more cars, save the transportation. But what's gonna happen is, in kind of top down, command and control markets, which are not totally free markets yet, which China is not, it's much easier to say, "All busses will have to be alternative fuels." Or we'll put X percent will be electric, or whatever. That can happen and already is happening. There are cities in China that are requiring that all the busses get converted. So, that's happening.

BILL MOYERS: That's intriguing.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: So what has to happen is that the knowledge has to get conveyed. So, if fuels cells are coming or alternative fuel, the knowledge as to what helps needs to get exchanged, so then, China will actually be able to implement it a lot easier than America can because we're much more of a free market.

You put it on the market. And nobody wants to buy it. What do you do? But over there, they can just say, "It's the rule. And everybody does it." (LAUGHTER)

BILL MOYERS: Thank you very much, Shirley.

SHIRLEY YOUNG: Well, I've enjoyed having a chance to do this.

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