As a follow-up to today’s session with Mark Wesley, you really must check out the recent Wall Street Journal article, Battling Boycotts: When A Company is Targeted Simply Because of It’s Nationality, What Can It Do? It contains some great “best practice” tips that relate to a number of the firms we will visit in China (e.g., think of the Starbucks and the Forbidden City controversy as Exhibit A that I previously post on).

What were some of your helpful take-aways from today’s session with Mark re: Starbucks?

And here’s another article I want to bring to your attention …

A good article in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal re: activists turning up the heat on the Beijing Olympics. Check it out. This article ties nicely into the The China Fantasy book and post I made some time ago and James Mann’s chapter on how he thinks the PRC will use the Olympics to support his thesis. Who do you think will win this PR battle in China, and why?

t seems to me that success or failure of the 2008 Olympics will not be determined so much by how many groups protest or try to hijack the Olympics to further their own goals, but rather by how China elects to respond or not respond to such attacks.  I.e., the outcome, really, is up to China.