A hat tip to Gary Chou for sending me the below link. I am a National Geographic subscriber, remember the below issue coming out and reading it, but I forgot to put up a post and the issue had since disappeared into the mess on my office desk at home.

Click HERE to check out these great pics on China’s Instant Cities (the photo gallery link is on the right side of the page; the commentary by Peter Hessler is top notch, as is all of his work - e.g., Two Years on the Yangtze). And reading this very good Wall Street Journal article, On the Move: Chinese Officials Want More Farmers to Migrate to the City; But They Are Also Aware That Migration Brings Problems, will put these photos into a good big picture context for you.

Finally, last month, April 2008, National Geographic published a special issue only on China called, China: Inside the Dragon. Check it out. Again, some great short pieces by Peter Hessler and the usual amazing pictures. You can also click HERE to listen to the China Business Network’s recent podcast interview of the Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic Magazine, Chris Johns, about this issue on China. I also had no idea National Geographic is read by 40 to 45 million people each month. Cha-ching. And talk about a company that has put on a clinic for others re: how to manage and build its brand ….

Enjoy.

Prof. Carr June 13, 2008 addendum: see also this related post on instant city Shenzhen I just made (Shenzhen is located in southern China).

Submitted By: Naomi Guy

The air is hot, sticky, and dirty. Your throat becomes itchy and a bad taste arises. What do you do? Well, in China you better not spit. Renmin University in China has created a Civic Index to measure the “civility” of their cities and gauge progress as the Olympics draw near. The index analyzes behaviors such as spitting, littering, and line forming from over a quarter million observations and surveys. According to this article, Beijing has been decreasing this behavior, but not as drastically as required before the Olympics. In 2007, Beijing scored 73.4 points, up from 69.06 in 2006 and 65.21 in 2005, but not up to the 80 point target. Changes were brought about using both positive and negative reinforcements ranging from flowers to fines. An example of an interesting (yet somewhat derogatory) program is one to promote the peaceful forming of lines. On the 11th of each month (standing for 1 after 1), uniformed officials swarm upon bus stops and subway stations waving flags at everyone to ensure they line up. The program was created by Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing’s Capital Ethics Development Office. She is now better known as “Ms. Manners”, and claims that changing these bad habits before the Olympics is “crucial in providing a cultural and historical legacy to China and the world as a whole”.

So what’s the big deal? It seems obvious that any country would want to look as good as possible for the hundreds of thousands of tourists expected for the Olympics. Well, we all remember back a few short years ago when SARS was a major health threat. During that time, officials tried to stop spitting in public to help stop the spread of the disease. Sadly, more effort has been directed into putting on a clean image for the Olympics than protecting the health of the country, and the world, just three short years ago (article). A fairly drastic change in behavior has occurred in the past year to create a new image, three years ago, when lives were at stake, it was hardly a difference.

So why is this? Did the government not care as much about health, or were people too stubborn to believe the threat of SARS? Is an external image more important than internal wellbeing? Would you expect this behavior to be true outside of China? Do you agree with Ms. Manners that these changes are crucial to providing a legacy?

I’d like to leave you with this statement by, Zhang Faqiang, vice chairman of the China Olympic Committee, “Ultimately, China’s modernization rests on the quality of its citizens.” Do manners truly make a quality citizen? and can that lead to modernization? I’ve know some key American inventors with little to zero etiquette…

A hat tip to Dan Harris and the China Law Blog for this lead ….

Here is a really, really interesting power point presentation by advertising giant Ogilvy on consumers in China’s Tier II and III cities. Some great stuff in here that will relate to what you are studying or will study in your MBA marketing class this winter quarter (e.g., branding, market segmentation, packaging, impulse buying, distribution channels, price sensitivity, who makes the family buying decisions, etc. anyone?). This material also highlights why so many foreign firms are trying to get into the market there — the consumer class and their spending power in these lower tier cities are on the upswing. This presentation is worth spending a few minutes to click through and study. Doing so, via this compare and contrast measure, also helped me better understand the marketing of products here in the US. Once in China, as you walk in and out of stores, and as you bus from A to B and look out the window, you need to think back to this material and connect some of the dots as related to your coursework ….

Hypothetical

You are a female MBA graduate and alumni from the Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business. You have been working the consulting track or big firm corporate grind for the last three years. Already, you are burned out and tired of taking orders from high maintenance clients and bosses. You are convinced that the time is right for you to become the master of your own business destiny.

You also recently learned that you are pregnant (or if you are a male graduate, flip this hypothetical and assume that your wife is expecting).

You want to keep your sex life going strong during your pregnancy, and you decide that finding some sexy lingerie that you can wear (or your spouse can wear) as an expecting parent can’t hurt your cause.

The challenge is you can’t find such lingerie anywhere in the US for you or your spouse, and you quickly realize there is a market for making and importing your own. Of course, you are an environmentalist and supporter of sustainability, as all good young people of today are, so said clothes will only be made from the finest organic cotton and by a factory that is certified under international standards and pays its workers well above the normal living wage.

You are bright, hard working and we trained you well to, among other things, spot niches in the market that have not been filled. After all, you went to China for one of your Cal Poly MBA courses, and honing your skills to spot new business opportunities was one of the very purposes of the trip, and while on the trip you paid attention, really threw yourself into it, and actively took ownership of your learning in that hybrid course were a good part of the learning took place on your own time by participating the course blog and delving into its many listed resources and blog discussions and debates.

A business idea and light bulb goes off. You decide to quit your job and take $50,000 from your savings (or your parent’s savings) and credit-card borrowings to start a maternity lingerie brand called, “Poly Hotty Sexiness.”

All you need is the right manufacturer to execute on your designs. You remember from your Cal Poly China MBA visiting some factories that convinced you that China may be a good place to place such work.

What will you do and how will you find one?

You previously read Professor Carr’s post on Chinese trade shows (Visiting A Trade Show In China), but you do not have the time, desire or budget to go that route.

So what will you do?

You might start by reading this Wall Street Journal article about Jack Ma’s Alibaba titled, Site Linking Global Buyers, China Factories, Plans IPO, which essentially tracks the above hypothetical I discuss. See also this very good and related SF Chronicle article titled, Alibaba.com and the Rise of Entrepreneurial China.

What’s the downside? How will you vet the manufacturing contacts you make on the Alibaba web site? See read this post from Dan Harris at the China Law blog:

I Hate Alibaba (The Website, Not the Company)

See also this related article from VentureBeat, Alibaba Shows China In Bubble.

So, do you have the guts to go for it? Or, will you get your resume ready for that next ’safe bet’ mega company or consulting firm? Discuss.