When Howard Schultz founded Starbucks in 1971, he never expected it would blossom into an internationally-recognized brand with approximately 450,000 employees and operations in 84 countries and regions around the world. The Chinese market has been particularly important to the international brand’s growth story, and the company now boasts a workforce of over 60,000 people in over 230 cities across the Chinese mainland. On April 23, 2023, Prof. Liu Qiao, dean of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, hosted a discussion with Schultz in an auditorium brimming with students eager to learn the secret to Starbucks’ business success.

Schultz has been traveling to China for almost 30 years, but making inroads into a market dominated by tea-drinking consumers took time and patience. Starbucks did not make a profit in China for almost a decade while the company worked to educate its customers about coffee and build its brand. Now, Schultz expects the number of Starbucks in China to eventually outstrip the number in the United States.

According to Schultz, Starbucks’ commitment to its people extends to every market in which it operates, including China. The company supports young professionals, including many college graduates, in developing new business and people management skills to help them achieve their own dreams and better contribute to the lives of others. Despite uncertainties in the business landscape brought by COVID-19, Starbucks continued to pay all of its employees in China, he said. The company also expects managers across all of its stores to develop personal relationships with their employees and to care about them as individuals beyond their work responsibilities and performance, the founder of Starbucks added.

Asked by an audience member how he’s maintained humility amid such tremendous success, Schultz suggested that a true leader must be willing to be vulnerable and avoid projecting an image of invincibility. People who demonstrate human qualities like vulnerability naturally draw others in because of their authenticity, and allowing hubris or conceit to creep in will undermine this process, he explained.

As Schultz has worked and traveled in China, the United States, and the many other countries part of Starbucks’s global footprint, he’s learned “We have many more similarities than differences,” He opined, “That statement is more important today than any other time in my lifetime—many more similarities than differences. We want the same thing: we want to make our parents proud, we want to bring joy to the world, we want to help the community.” He encouraged students to develop a broader lens through which to look at the world, to be curious, to be with people different from them, and to embrace diversity.

This event was part of Guanghua’s “Thought Leader Series,” which exposes the next generation of business professionals to industry executives, government leaders, and pioneering academics who have had transformed their fields. Previous speakers have included Nobel Laureate Dr. Robert Wilson, former Indian Prime Minister Dr. Abdul Kalam, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock Laurence D. Fink, former Chairman of General Electric Jeffrey Immelt, and Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong SAR Paul Chan Mo-po.