Chinese firms can learn from co-ethnic US counterparts

The experience of Chinese-American firms in the US can provide insights on strategies to grow small businesses in China.

Chinese-American companies, like other minority firms in the US, face considerable barriers to success, yet they are a vibrant entrepreneurial presence all across the country.

According to the latest government data available - the Survey of Business Owners - there are about 500,000 Chinese-American firms with annual sales of $142 billion. To get an idea of the comparative sense of the value of these Chinese-American firms, a recent WPP report estimated the value of the top 100 Chinese brands in China to be $379 billion.

There were also close to 145,000 female-run Chinese-American firms with sales of $26 billion and an annual payroll of $4.2 billion.

In total, Chinese-American firms employed 782,738 people and had an annual payroll of $21 billion. The growth of these firms both in number and sales was much higher than that of all the businesses in the US.

One usually associates Chinese-American businesses in the US with the all too familiar "Chinese Restaurant" in big cities or small towns across the country. However, the figures show that the top sector for these firms was in the professional, scientific and technical services area with 16.4 percent of the firms in that sector and $9 billion in sales.

The second-largest presence was in the accommodation and food services sector with 12.7 percent of the firms in that sector and $18 billion in sales.

There also have been a number of recent high-profile reports that document the strong presence of immigrants from China in the high-tech sectors of the US.

The sector with the largest revenue was wholesale trade with sales of $54 billion.

While Chinese-American firms can be found in nearly every state in the US, the top five states, accounting for most of these firms, are California, New York, Texas, New Jersey and Hawaii. California accounted for almost 40 percent of Chinese-American firms in the country and 48 percent of revenue.