CHANOS: This is the book to read on China
But according to billionaire hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, the founder of short-biased hedge fund Kynikos Associates, there's at least one book on China that has scaled those barriers.
When asked if he had a must-read during a Bloomberg interview, Chanos said: "Tim Clissold's 'Mr. China'."
Chanos said the 2006 memoir is "a great, great story and kind of a cautionary tale. Tim and his team correctly, after Tiananmen Square, saw that China was going to be this great, booming market," Chanos said.
"It was hard for him as a Westerner even though he had done everything right to make any money."
"He confronted issues at every turn in China. And this has always been the illusion about China - this great market, this booming growth market - and yet profitability for outsiders has been again, illusive," Chanos said.
Clissold did everything to embed himself in Chinese culture.
"[Clissolds] spoke Mandarin. His team in fact did all the right things. They hired the right people. They scoured the country for great investment, manufacturing investments and whatever," Chanos continued.
But it wasn't that easy. Chinese law and regulation wasn't well established, and corruption was still rampant.
"At the end of the day money was either stolen from him, literally money taken out of bank accounts of his companies or he was lied to or whatever the case might be," Chanos said. "It's just making money that is very, very difficult if you're not specifically Chinese or wired in specifically to the various different businesses."
Watch Chanos' interview on Bloomberg here.