Dennis Wu is in a hurry, always has been. He started classes at UC
Berkeley as a 16-year-old math whiz even before he graduated from Berkeley
High, nailed a couple of degrees at UC and zipped off to a job at Deloitte
and Touche LLP.
Now, as national director of Deloitte's Chinese Services Group, he's on a
plane to Asia once or twice a month, trying to step up the pace of
business.
Deloitte is wrestling for market share in the fast-growing accounting and
consulting business in China. Its competitors include the other Big Four
accounting firms -- PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young LLP and KPMG
International -- as well as long-established players such as the
U.S.-China Business Council, which sells consulting services to members.
"We have 2,500 people in China, 500 each in Beijing and Shanghai," Wu said
in an interview at his corner office in a Fremont Street high-rise in San
Francisco. "The company was in China in the early 1900s. When the
communists came to power, we left. When the market opened up again, we
went back."
With his bilingual skills, years of experience and knowledge of the Far
East, Wu is very much in demand.
Wu, who has worked in the San Francisco office at Deloitte and Touche for
37 years, is a managing partner at the big accounting, tax and corporate
consulting firm. Over the years, he has become a prime recruiter of
executive talent, a mentor to young Asians and Asian Americans, and a
player in Deloitte's sizable and expanding China operations.
Raised in the Philippines in a Chinese family, Wu is fluent in English and
Mandarin and speaks several other dialects of Chinese. With his
biculturalism and senior corporate post, he is well positioned to work
both sides of the Pacific and counsel American businesses about China,
whose booming economy is growing at a rate of nearly 10 percent a year.
"They want to know 'How do we go in there with minimal costs?' We're kind
of their economic guides," Wu said.
Deloitte and its competitors offer tax tips, negotiation strategies and
market intelligence to U.S. businesses seeking to get in on the ground in
mainland China and wherever there is a large ethnic Chinese community:
places such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and
Vietnam.
Knowledge of local market conditions is crucial, as Wu illustrated in the
case of a California company that wanted to make and sell handheld
organizers in China.
Deloitte, which has major offices in the country, scouted Chinese trade
fairs and found that similar gadgets were already made and sold in the
Chinese market. As a result, the company, which Wu declined to name,
decided not to sell in China, possibly avoiding a costly mistake.
Another unnamed U.S. company, seeking a partner in Taiwan, sent a junior-
level executive to meet with a far more senior Taiwanese executive, who
felt disrespected by the younger man.
"He spoke Mandarin, but he didn't understand Chinese culture," recalled
Wu, who said Deloitte managed to set up a joint venture after assigning a
more experienced American to the case.
Wu is among a relative handful of senior U.S. executives with firsthand
knowledge of East and West, where even a seemingly simple exchange of
information can differ in subtle but important ways.
"My wife is from Taiwan," he said. "Awhile back, she misplaced her purse
at Stonestown Galleria, but a security guard found it and returned it.
When she told me about this, she went through the whole story in sequence,
instead of starting out by saying, 'I nearly lost my purse,' and then
starting the story."
Wu can see both sides of the transpacific story. He first came to this
country as a visitor at age 10 and couldn't wait to return here to live.
At 16, he moved from Manila to the Bay Area and became a U.S citizen.
Now, Wu's relaxed biculturalism informs his business role. He is
determined, he says, to recruit bright young executives from abroad and
encourage them to stay stateside, as he has done.
Shelley Chia, an audit senior manager from Taiwan, is one such person. Wu
called her after she started working for Deloitte in Taiwan, arranged a
place for her to stay when she came to the Bay Area, and introduced her to
senior management at Union Bank of California, whose account Deloitte was
servicing.
Chia praised Wu for his "generosity and kindness," noting that he was
instrumental in starting her on a career path that, come October, will
take her from her present post in San Jose to Shanghai or Beijing for her
next assignment.
Another colleague, Anna Mok, a partner in Deloitte and Touche's San
Francisco office, said Wu "brings people together. He recognizes strengths
in people that others might not recognize." With Wu, Mok started the
company's Pacific Rim group, which she described as "an affinity and
networking group" at the firm. Wu, she said, serves as a role model for
Asians.
Outside the company, Wu is the treasurer for the Committee of 100, a
nationwide group of prominent Chinese Americans who promote cultural and
commercial ties between the United States and China.
Wu is passionate and opinionated about Sino-American relations and is
convinced that Washington and Beijing, still fitful, uneasy partners, need
to handle their growing relationship with care.
Noting that Washington has increasingly come to view Beijing as a
potential military rival, Wu said, "China does not have a history of being
an aggressor. More often than not, China has been attacked. So our fears
are not well grounded."
America's trade deficit with China, which soared to $124 billion in 2003,
has become a political football this U.S. election season, along with
outsourcing. But Wu thinks the deficit can be narrowed by doing smarter
business and cautions Americans to see China in a broad context:
"Although China has a trade surplus with us, they are running a deficit of
their own with the rest of the world. They're importing a lot of stuff. We
need to ask ourselves why we're not providing those goods."
At 62, Wu has hit the mandatory retirement age for partners at Deloitte
but says he may continue as a consultant on Asia and diversity issues.
One thing is for certain: He'll remain an inveterate globe-trotter, as
will his wife and his infant son, who recently got his first passport at
the age of 7 weeks.
"I hope he will love to travel," Wu said of his first-born. "I hope he'll
have a passion for the world."
E-mail David Armstrong at davidarmstrong@sfchronicle.com.
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Copyright 2004 SF Chronicle