East Meets West
Forging New Markets
Each month Boots to Beijing will introduce you to people who have a connection to China and Dallas. This month meet Byron Dunn, president and CEO of Lone Star Steel.
Byron Dunn, President and CEO of Lone Star Steel
“Patience — you can’t force the western business culture on the Chinese. They have their way of doing things and that process takes much longer than most Americans can stomach.”
On Lone Star Steel’s China ventures:
The name of our company, Lone Star Steel, describes our geographic location in the “Lone Star” state of Texas. We use raw materials to produce a wide range of steel tubular products, primarily used for oil and gas exploration and production. Our interest in China has been long-standing. We view China as a customer for the oilfield casing and tubing we manufacture here in Texas. In recent years, we have engaged multiple relationships there to source our steel tubular products from a vast array of Chinese producers.
On China’s Economic Growth:
Those who believe China will remain a second-class economic power are naive. China is already big, but it is also fairly quiet. Just because you can’t hear it doesn’t mean that a snake will not bite you. Your eyes must stay open and alert. You have to see the vast infrastructure development for yourself to be able to fully absorb the extent of China’s future economic status. In my view, the only way for China to maintain a single party government is to spread that economic growth across all regions of the country, thus avoiding certain clashes between the “have” and “have nots” that can threaten central government control. They have tremendous momentum and, I believe it will take a couple of decades for that newly found social prosperity to reach the majority of the population.
On the Difference Between China and the West:
They eat any and everything! Not because they have to, but because through the leaner years I guess they had to eat what they could find, so they developed a taste for some pretty strange stuff. For the most part, however, you can get almost anything in China that you can get here in the U.S.A., except the good Mexican food we enjoy here in Texas.
On Favorite Places in China:
Qingdao, a beautiful coastal city with a heavy German cultural influence; it’s very modern and has a climate similar to Carmel, California
