I found this post on the China Law Blog re: the marketing of American consumer products in China to be interesting.  I did not know that firms such as UPS, the package delivery company, provide annual reports available to the public about the categories of products they deliver in a particular country.  The UPS survey asserts that Chinese urban consumers, or “Chuppies, have many shopping preferences depending on their age, gender and location, and they appear to have a heavy preference for a variety of quality American products.  The ”most sought after” categories of American goods by these “Chuppies” are: (1) home appliances; (2) consumer electronics; (3) health care products/pharmaceuticals; (4) beauty products; (5) apparel/fashion accessories; and (6) movies, music and books.  This data and information, while broad, would seem to be of interest and value to a variety of American firms seeking to penetrate the Chinese market. 

A good friend recently turned me on to The Long Now Foundation which hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. It is offering an upcoming (free!!) seminar by Orville Schell, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley titled, “China Thinks Long-Term, But Can It Re-Learn To Act Long-Term?” You may find this seminar of interest. Once it is loaded into a podcast, I will definitely watch it.

Global Business Network. You may find the following article posted there titled, “Four Futures for China Inc.,” of interest. It addresses the question of whether China’s economic and political power will continue to expand dramatically or will it slow in the decade ahead? GBN’s Jesse Goldhammer and Doug Randall respond in this Business 2.0 article with four possible interesting scenarios.

Check out this self-explanatory CNN article on the importance and value of MBAs who understand China and Asia. It made me feel good to see that on this particular educational market development, the Orfalea College of Business is ahead of the curve.

See also this recent Business Week article, China’s B-School Boom, that I thought offered insight into some of the pros and cons of obtaining an MBA within China. As an educator and director of an MBA program, I can relate to some of the issues the Chinese are struggling with.

Prof. Carr May 19, 2008 addendum: But for a different take and swing the other way in the market, see this related post I just made, As They Say … In China, Everything Is Possible. But Nothing Is Easy.

Check out this 12 minute audiocast interview of Stanford Economist, Ward Hanson, on Google’s China dilemma.

I found this 4 minute podcast by Asher Epstein, managing director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, to be interesting. He discusses how China’s emergence has impacted entrepreneurship, particularly in the greater Washinton D.C. area. Having now travelled to China, you should now be in a much better position to critique the accuracy of his statements, which ones are overbroad or right on the mark, etc.