Betrayed in China: One Entrepreneur's Hard Journey East
Adam Kasha was proud of his from-the-gut approach to doing business in China. Then his partnership with a Chinese trading agent went spectacularly bad, and he realized he was being taught a hard lesson in how things actually work.
Burt Helm
Far From Home: Adam Kasha visits a supplier in Luhe district.
Adam Kasha returned to his hotel room, checked his phone for the umpteenth time, and gazed out at the murky Guangzhou sky. Six years earlier, in October 2002, he had met Rex Wang in this city. He still remembered the man's warning back then: When doing business in China, trust no one.
"No one but me," Wang had said, emptying his glass, a smile appearing beneath his mustache. They had met by chance in a hotel bar. Wang was 46 and a trading agent. Kasha, nine years younger, was in Guangzhou for the Canton Fair, there to find products for his Ann Arbor, Michigan-based decorative stone and glass company, Akasha Crystals. If whirlwind romances exist in business, those 24 hours had been one. The meeting led to a wild night of drinking and clubbing and--only in China--talk of supplier prices and shipping the very next morning. Somehow, in the magical hours between the 3 a.m. cab ride home and lunch, Wang had found a better quote on black river rocks than Kasha had ever seen. The reason was simple, Wang said: "If we work together, I will treat you as my brother. I will never try to rip you off. I will never accept a red envelope"--a Chinese euphemism for a kickback. Kasha believed him. This little guy, with his rumpled khakis, his cell phone clipped to his belt, his cigarette, had a beautiful energy about him.
Kasha held up his phone and stared at it. He had trusted that man, Rex Wang, defended him. Together, they had quintupled his company's revenue. That winter, they were on the hook to deliver the company's largest order ever, to the world's largest customer. They had made a plan to meet here for the fair. And now Wang had gone missing.
Kasha spent the rest of the fair visiting supplier booths and collecting product samples. Then he returned to Changzhou, the city on the Yangtze where Wang oversaw Akasha's Chinese operations. The warehouse was humming, but no one had seen any sign of Wang. Kasha flew back to Michigan.
