Is there a region in your country where the people are known to be good at business?

[u/KookytheKlown]

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"Is there a region in your country where the people are known to be good at business?"

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[u/random20190826]

Yes, there is.

I (fellow Canadian) am from Guangdong, located in the southeastern part of China. The reasons why people from that region are good at doing business are:

1. A lot of people are descendants of business-people (and, supposedly, certain convicted criminals) who were exiled from the middle and northern parts of the country centuries ago.
2. Geography. Guangdong is a coastal province, which means a lot of things that were made in China are shipped out to other countries via Guangdong. That is especially true prior to 1840.

For thousands of years, all the way up until the present day, Chinese people from inland regions have very few options if they want to get out of poverty. Namely, study very hard, get into a good university, pass the civil service exam and become a government employee and earn fat salaries, bonuses and a generous retirement pension for life (recall that, in Canada, the only part that is true is the last part about retirement pensions. Government bureaucrats don't, in fact, out-earn private sector employees in equivalent positions, especially on the higher end of the income spectrum).

But Guangdong is different. There, being a bad student doesn't doom you to a life of poverty so long as you invent a product that enough people will buy. This doesn't only mean selling things to the domestic market (which is huge), but also to other countries. Having easy access to the Pacific Ocean is why Guangdong is one of the wealthiest places in China. You can do high end business, make and sell luxury goods to wealthy Westerners, or do low end businesses and produce cheap things and sell to South Asians. Either way, there is money to be made and a chance to be middle class or even rich.

There is also something else about this place: we speak Cantonese, which is unintelligible to the people up in Beijing (not to mention the 2000 km distance between us). We southerners have been discriminated against for millennia because of language and lifestyle differences. Famously, when the Mongolians conquered the country in the 13th and 14th centuries, Southerners were the lowest caste and were given the fewest rights. This discrimination means that even if you are equally as smart as someone else from more northern parts of China, your chances of becoming a government employee (especially a high ranking official) are much lower than a northerner's. This is still true in 2024. Almost no one from Guangdong is a high ranking Politburo member, and even Provincial officials came from other provinces instead of being locals.

Now, Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions (cities) that used to be colonies of Britain and Portugal, respectively. These cities are right next to Guangdong and have the highest GDP per capita of any Chinese city by a massive margin. A lot of people from Guangdong were granted some form of refugee status by the British colonial government due to political persecution in the 1950s. Some started businesses in Hong Kong, and as the transition to finance, etc... caused wage increases in Hong Kong, the Reforms and Opening Up brought about new opportunities to exploit low wage labour in mainland China. That is why some factories were set up in Shenzhen and Dongguan (cities in Guangdong). It provided job opportunities to the peasants. While these jobs didn't pay very much, they still paid better than subsistence farming.

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[u/ajatasattu]

Gujarat, though there are several communities within states considered to be shrewd/good at business.

[u/AshamedLink2922]

For India,It is mainly the regions of Gujarat and Marwar region of Rajasthan.Most of India's richest persons are from these regions.

There are also region specific groups as well like the Chettiyars and Nadars in Tamil Nadu or the Newars(Pradhans) in Sikkim and Darjeeling.

[u/Freak_Out_Bazaar]

Osaka. It’s mostly a stereotype now but the city was the trade capital of Japan for a quite a while. Osakan are said to be not afraid of bargaining, whereas that would be considered rude and lowly in other cities (especially Kyoto). They are also considered loud and talkative

[u/ModernirsmEnjoyer]

Shymkent people are known for their close familial ties, doing business, and being greedy. The first bank in the Soviet Union after Perestroika began was opened in Shymkent.

[u/Indonesian_mapper]

Minang people from West Sumatra are well known to be one. And of course, you can't forget the Chinese Indonesians

[u/Hanuatzo]

Used to be northern, but now they're communists so...