Tag: China

You Are What You Risk China Edition

Posted on by Michele Wucker

The Chinese edition of YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK: The New Art and Science of Navigating an Uncertain World (Pegasus Books, April 2021), translated by Feng Yi and Zhang Liying, as “Gray Rhino 2: How individuals and Organizations Dance with Risk,” was published in September 2021 by CITIC Press Group to high praise.

The book is part of the Rhino Books imprint featuring high-profile business books by international authors, which was created in 2017 around THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore (translated as The Gray Rhino: How to Deal with High Probability Crisis).

Cover of white book cover with red simplified Chinese characters for "GRAY RHINO 2" and image of fingerprint superimposed on a rhino

From the publisher:
“The popularity of the author and the popularity of the previous book. “Grey Rhino: How to Deal with High Probability Crisis” has become a well-known, hotly discussed and widely used phenomenon-level vocabulary since it was published by CITIC Publishing House in 2017. “Gray Rhino: How Individuals and Organizations Dance with Risk” is not only an extension and supplement to the concept of “gray rhino”, but also a deeper and more microscopic exploration of the essence of “risk”. We cannot ignore the constructive significance of this book for every reader, enterprise, government, and country in the future. “Gray Rhino 2: How Individuals and Organizations Dance with Risks” will once again become a work of the era with great influence with its acumen, foresight and professional depth of content.”

Praise for the China edition of YOU ARE WHAT YOU RISK/Gray Rhino 2:

SINA FINANCE Book recommendation: “This book is Michele Wucker’s new masterpiece.”

Wucker’s “Grey Rhino: How to Deal with a High Probability Crisis” allows us to improve our awareness and trade-offs in the face of political and commercial risks. Her new book reveals to us that individuals at risk, their risk personality, organization, and society’s dynamic feedback loop will affect citizens, organizations, and the government’s different perceptions, reactions, and response results to risks. Building a good risk ecosystem, establishing healthy risk relationships, and fairly distributing risks-related gains and losses, so that as many people as possible can live a better life, should be our principles and pursuit of understanding and weighing risks. 
— Wu Xiaoling (Executive Vice President of China Finance Society)             

??There are various gray rhino risks in the current society. Personal risks, policy risks, professional risks, economic risks, organizational risks and global risks are intertwined to shape our lives, work and the world. Wucker’s new book, based on the tremendous changes that have taken place in the world in recent years, deeply explores how we make our own choices based on our unique risk fingerprints, and how risk choices shape the relationship between individuals, organizations, and society, and help us inspire us. Work together to build a benign risk ecosystem to support the sustainable development of the economy and society.?
— Xiao Gang (Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference)  

??The great changes unseen in a century and the superposition of super-epidemics mean that this era is one of frequent occurrences of “black swan” and “gray rhino” events. To gain insight into the new laws of this era, we should peruse this new book by Wucker. This book is not only an extension and supplement to the concept of “gray rhino,” but also a deeper and more micro-systematic exploration of “risk,” which has constructive significance for individuals, enterprises and governments.
–Liu Yuanchun (Vice President of Renmin University of China, Economist)    ?

??We have entered an era of comprehensive, full-time, and global risk. Whether it is an individual or an organization, how to accompany risks and build a constructive relationship with them will determine their future. Wucker’s new book provides guidance and an operating system for this.
-Qin Shuo (China Commercial Civilization Research Center, initiator of Qin Shuo Moments of Friends)  

??Risk has become the norm in this era. The theme of Wucker’s new book is how to deal with the endless risks. There is no uniform standard answer, and people of different cultures, generations, and personalities have different views on risk. You need to understand your “risk fingerprint” first, and then exercise your “risk muscles.” This book is a survival guide everyone needs to read in the age of risk.
–He Fan (Professor of Economics at Shanghai Jiaotong University, author of “Variables“) 

??The big change that has not been seen in a century is also a big opportunity that has not been seen in a century. “Danger” and “opportunity” are always dialectical and mutually transforming. Embrace change, promote change with a positive attitude, shape a good risk personality, and dance with risk. This is the law of nature and the wisdom for us to get along better with the world. Wucker’s new book has strong enlightening value for us to refresh our risk awareness and prevent and resolve risk events.
— Ren Zeping (Economist)  

President Xi Jinping Warns of Gray Rhino Risks

Posted on by Michele Wucker

China must be on guard against highly improbable, unimaginable “black swan” events while also fending off highly probable but often neglected “gray rhino” risks, Chinese President Xi Jinping told senior Communist Party officials at the opening ceremony of a study session at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee January 21st.

Xi spoke shortly after newly released economic data showed that in 2018 China’s economy had slowed to the lowest rate in 28 years.

“In the face of a turbulent international situation, a complex and sensitive environment, and the arduous task of reform … We must be highly vigilant against ‘black swan’ and ‘grey rhinoceros’ incidents,” he said. Xinhua News Agency issued a full statement on his talk.

Xi cited areas in which China faces major risks: politics, ideology, economy, science and technology, society, the external environment, and party building.

His comments generated worldwide news coverage, from Australia to Indonesia to Argentina, and helped send U.S. stocks down over concerns about the effect of a slowing Chinese economy on global growth.

Columnist Ana Fuentes of Spain’s El Pais newspaper wrote, “More than black swans, it appears that 2019 will be the year of gray rhinos, threats that we have identified but have not been able to or known how to stop.” Top on her list was the crisis of governability in the West.

THE GRAY RHINO: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore, was released in China by CITIC Press in February 2017 and has become an influential best-seller.

Who’s Talking about The Gray Rhino in China

Posted on by Michele Wucker

Pointing to the existence of a gray rhino -a highly probable, high impact danger that nevertheless is being neglected, downplayed, or outright ignored- is a way to create a sense of urgency toward addressing it before panic sets in. Senior Chinese officials have used the term extensively for exactly this purpose for issues from financial risk to US tax policy to urban fire safety, earning it a spot on the “Top Ten New Terms of the 2017 Chinese Media” list compiled by China’s National Center for Language Resource Monitoring and Research in December 2017.

China’s President Xi Jinping keeps a copy of the Chinese edition of THE GRAY RHINO on his bookshelf, where media commentators noticed it during his 2018 New Year’s Day Speech, and has discussed the gray rhino with senior economic policy makers.

A reference to the gray rhino on the front page of People’s Daily in July 2017 following the National Financial Work Conference sent the prices of risky stocks down more than 5 percent in a day. The concept influenced Chinese policies on heavily indebted companies (covered on the front page of The New York Times) whose aggressive overseas expansions the government reined in.

In a much-commented-upon essay posted on the central bank’s website in November 2017, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan warned that China faced many gray rhinos, three in particular: macro-level financial high leverage and liquidity risk; credit risk including non-performing loans and increasing bond market credit defaults; and finally, shadow banking and criminal risk.

Cai Qi, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Communist Party Committee, referred to urban safety as a gray rhino after the tragic Daxing apartment fire in November 2017.

Senior Chinese officials told The Wall Street Journal in December 2017 that the US tax reform was a gray rhino threat to China, and raised interest rates in response to it.

China Banking Regulatory Commission director Guo Shuqing told People’s Daily in January 2018 that gray rhinos and black swans threaten China’s financial stability.

At Davos in January 2018, Fang Xinghai, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the nation’s stock market regulator, warned that China’s debt was a gray rhino, again generating headlines worldwide.

Shortly afterward, Fan Hengshan, vice secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning agency, warned in a commentary in the state-controlled Beijing Daily that the year to come faced many gray rhinos.

Baidu Baike, China’s largest online encyclopedia, explains the gray rhino and its evolution in China.

Read more below for additional detail on recent gray rhino coverage from China.

Close to retiring, China’s central-bank chief warns of financial risk. The Economist. November 9, 2017.

China’s Central Bank Governor Warns About Financial Risks — Again. The Diplomat, November 9, 2017.

Chinese Banks Enjoy Few Bad Loans But Central Bank Warns Of Risks Forbes, November 11, 2017.

Hidden Debts Accumulate at Local Levels. Caixin Global. December 27, 2017.

Beating Targets: China’s Economy Grew 6.9 Percent in 2017. The Diplomat, January 18, 2018.

China eyes black swans, gray rhinos as 2018 growth seen slowing to 6.5-6.8 percent: media. Reuters, January 29, 2018.

Use your browser to translate the following links from Chinese.

Zhou Xiaochuan: China must be vigilant “black swan” and “gray rhinoceros.” Gold Network. November 5, 2017.

Debt, shadow banking, capital market volatility, “gray rhinoceros” are moving toward China? qq, November 10, 2017

Zhong Wei: Considering Grey Rhino, China Should Balance Overall Gradual Reforms and Partial Radical Reforms. qq. November 16, 2017.

Exchange currency “gray rhinoceros” annual inventory. Gold Network. November 24, 2017

Ren Guanqing. The Greatest “Gray Rhinoceros”: an interview with Michele Wucker author of the Gray Rhinoceros Phoenix New Media, November 30, 2017.

Yearender: China moves to tame its “gray rhinos.” Xinhuanet. December 17, 2017

Observer: Why We Ignore Obvious Dangers

Posted on by Michele Wucker

In this Year of the Gray Rhino, I wrote for the New York Observer about how issues that are anything but the unexpected have sideswiped the Democratic and Republican parties:

Screen Shot 2016-05-26 at 1.12.49 PMThis year’s presidential campaign is full of the unexpected. Yet the underlying issues are anything but. It’s hardly news that middle- and working-class incomes have stagnated and that Americans are fed up with a government that even squabblesover an impending public health crisis like Zika. Why, then, have the country’s two leading parties been taken aback by voters who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?

It’s because everyone—not just politicians—underestimates the power of the obvious problems that loom right in front of us. So it’s a surprise when inaction creates unpleasant consequences. The Democratic and Republican parties are learning this lesson the hard way.

The truth is that we get into most trouble when we’ve ignored obvious problems. I call these issues “gray rhinos” because they are huge and charging right at us and ought to be harder to ignore. Yet we miss the most important information—like calling rhinos black and white even though they are all gray.

Read the full article at observer.com