Posts filed under ' Pre-Departure'
Man, kids are the best.
Just this week my seven year old, Amelia, asked me the following questions:
First set of questions: “Papa, who came first - God or humans? And if God came first, then who made God?”
Second set of questions: “Papa, how big is the Great Wall? And how many inches are in the Earth?”
Ok.
So where does one start with the first set of questions? That’s a pretty big issue to tackle. Did my best.
Re: the first part of the second set of questions, you would think it’s an easy question to answer …. until you find yourself having to explain it to someone who has never seen the Great Wall and/or whose sense of “big” is completely different than your own. But I did a bit better on this one, due to the good work of a recent National Geographic feature on China that I could show her.
Click HERE to see this visual of the Great Wall super-imposed onto a map of the United States that appeared inside that issue (it was a special issue on China called China: Inside the Dragon). The scope of this project was amazing. Can you imagine being the project manager responsible for making this thing happen, meeting budget, finding the right personnel, etc.? Makes my piddly little management worries and stresses seem insignificant.
And little Amelia, you are the best. Thank you for your wonderful honesty and curiosity about the world. It inspires and reminds me to keep learning and asking questions.
June 17th, 2008
Shenzhen is one of my favorite cities in China. Some find it too overwhelming, new, crass and “sterile”. One reason I like the place is that some of the first friends I made in China live and do business in Shenzhen. I also like its business energy and entrepreneurialism — the wild west mentality of the place, even with its warts and all, fascinates me. The reason it is repulsive to some is the very reason I like to visit this place in southern China.
The NY Times just ran a nice article on Shenzhen, with photo feature. Click HERE for the article and HERE for the pics and short narrative. The students with an architecture background in our program will especially enjoy these pics and the discussion.
Due to the India addition to the trip, we unfortunately won’t have time to visit Shenzhen this year, but in my view, it is one of China’s faces that you should try to see sometime (sooner rather than later) in your business and travel career. Doing so will help you reach a deeper understanding of China.
The money quote in the video feature noted above is right on: Shenzhen is an echo of our own past. You look at it and see what the US did and could do in the 1920s and 1930s and post WWII when it pursued its own massive building of infrastructure and cities (things we can’t really do anymore for a plethora of reasons).
That is exactly one of the feelings I get each time I visit and experience Shenzhen.
For some informative blogs on what’s happening on the ground Shenzhen, see: Shenzhen Undercover and Shenzhen Fieldnotes
See also this related National Geographic pictorial on China’s Instant Cities.
June 9th, 2008
Some of you have recently asked me what to do with your passports, particularly in China. Carry them on your person or other?
I can’t/won’t advise you on this. This is your call to investigate and make. For myself, I will likely carry a copy of my passport and visa on me, not the original. I will also carry with me a copy of the Trip Information Sheet and my airline ticket so that if I am stopped I can pull out a document that verifies what I tell people as to why I am in China. There is risk in my strategy. I may find that they don’t find this acceptable. So you should not assume that my way is the only way or right way. Everybody is responsible for their own selves on this issue on this trip.
See this recent good CLB post on this very topic, Is That A Passport In Your Pants or Are You Just Happy To See Me? Thanks, Dan Harris. As always, you have a way with titles for blog posts, of which I admittedly used verbatim in this post to grab my own student’s attention.
As I have mentioned in one of our recent predeparture sessions, China is cracking down on expats with the wrong or expired visa. There are a number of theories why they are doing this. I won’t go into that in detail here, but in short, my own view is that they are coupling the Olympics with visa issuance and renewal to find out who the “gamers” are in their country that are not playing by the rules, paying taxes, starting unregistered firms, to get a handle on who is legitimately there, etc., and, they are doing this as part of a fear of terrorism in lieu of the upcoming Olympics. Whatever the case, this is an issue to take seriously.
See, e.g., the below email excerpt I recently received from one of our MBA alumni now living and working in China where he/she describes a situation that is even more heavy handed than I realized:
The visa situation is horrible. The government is going to the [___ citizen] homes and trying to take away their visa by showing they are on the wrong type (i.e., working with a tourist visa). I got mine before these problems. I was on a student visa and now on a business visit visa for work. It was easier to call me an “internship” to get the visa. When I need to renew it might be difficult. My _____[omitted] company is trying to get a license here and get him/her a working visa but he/she is having difficulties so he/she keeps going to other countries to get a tourist visa. We have had guests who had a lot of problems, it is hurting our business. Last week _______ [omitted] came and spoke to ______[omitted name] [and us] because the police are calling people and asking questions to find reason to deport them. It is crazy here. They have pulled over two of my foreign friends and taken away their scooters and tried to take their passports.
As you can see, the Chinese don’t waste time endlessly debating visa, passport and immigration issues like we do in the US and Washington D.C. They make a decision, execute and get it done. Don’t blame them. They are only enforcing the laws that have been on their books for some time which hoards of companies and expats were violating en masse, but now said expats are crying that the enforcement rules have changed. Happens all the time in regulatory environments across the globe. Further, in terms of an checkpoint, or an opportunity to create a checkpoint via the Olympics, the Chinese strategy here is pretty darn effective and efficient, in my view.
And for cryin’ out loud, folks, if you DO carry your original passport on your person or in your backpack (can easily be cut open with a knife from behind), do NOT lose it or let it get it stolen!! Per the FAQ document, if your passport is lost or stolen I can do nothing for you other than drop you off at the embassy or consulate to solve this problem (plan for it to take a few days), you are on your own, and the rest of us move on. Any extra expense in you catching up with us will be yours to incur.
Take this issue seriously! Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.
June 6th, 2008
Last quarter I had you watch The Tank Man. Most of you seemed to like the video. Many of you were understandably shocked by how today’s young people and students in China did not know about or had forgotten the T*a*an*^n S***r* incident of the same day of this post, 19 years ago (click HERE for a picture that is worth a thousand words in memoriam to those brave souls who put themselves on the line that day; h/t to the China Law Blog for the picture lead).
This article in today’s Wall Street Journal (click HERE) touches on this very point. See, read and learn more about this phenomenon among the youth and college educated of today’s China. Your thoughts?
See also this recent WSJ article. Christian Groups Step Delicately in Sichuan. I had written on this very topic in my recent post, Human Rights, Part II. This raises an interesting religious, moral, legal and ethical question: What would Jesus do?
That is …
1. Would he travel to Sichuan, and pray, comfort and give counseling (only) and not violate or challenge Chinese law that forbids proselytizing in China, particularly by foreigners (at least via spoken as opposed to conduct)?
OR
2. Would he travel to China and enter China under the guise of signaling aid and comfort as the reason for being there but the true purpose being otherwise (see related quote in the article, “When Jesus said go out to the world and preach the gospel, he didn’t say just go to those places where you can get a visa.”)?
OR
3. Does is matter what said motivation is for going there? The point being he went and he served.
I don’t have a clue what he (or any icon in another religion) would do in this situation. I am a mere mortal that cannot read heavenly minds. Nor do I have the confidence to boldly advise others that the answer is black and white due to a piece of scripture I select to support my case while ignoring those segments that may suggest otherwise.
This is a difficult question but an important one to ask for China, its future, and how China and religious organizations interact in the future for the betterment of a “harmonious” society.
What do you think?
June 4th, 2008
UC San Diego Professor and former Deputy Assistant of State responsible for China, Susan Shirk, has written an outstanding book, China: Fragile Superpower: How China’s Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise. Her book is so good and so well written that I will likely require it as book review reading next year for all students.
In her book she has an excellent chapter on how the media and internet present both challenges and opportunities for the CCP. For example, the “let’s bash Japan” issue and phenomenon in China has now become even more of a volatile issue that the CCP cannot control and manage to its benefit, in large part due to the Internet.
This NY Times article, China Leader Makes Debut in Great Wall of Facebook, made me think of her excellent book and analysis, and her chapter on the media and Internet. Although Prime Minister Wen Jiabao still lags behind people like Obama and Aaaarnold in number of fans, he is ahead of icons like Ronald Reagan and rabble-rousers such as Hugo Chavez.
One other thing about this article of note:
Once the earthquake hit, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao got his butt out to Sichuan, right away, to at least go through the public motions that showed he and the government were there and cared (too bad they were asleep on building code issues for schools before the quake, though, in particular - but that debate will occur in another place and in another time).
See also this NY Times article, Fearing Floods: China Orders Evacuations in Quake Area, re: how the Chinese government just ordered the evacuation of 150,000, that’s right 150,000 people, due to possible flooding if a natural dam were to burst. And an estimated 16 MILLION buildings were destroyed by the quake (click here). 16 friggin’ MILLION! The import here is that in China, Katrina like events and disasters are not unusual (e.g., Yangtze flooding; the snowstorm this past winter that stranded hundreds of thousands of peasants at train stations trying to get back to see their families during the Chinese New Year, etc.), and their top down government/model seems to handle these situations pretty well (see my related post on this topic, Human Rights, Part II). To move and evacuate 150,000 people in China, with it’s 1.3 billion people, tends to be ho-hum news that makes page three, not page one. And the CCP knows it has to get these situations right … if they botch too many of these post natural disaster relief situations, it knows its days in power will be numbered. Not many second or certainly third chances will be given in today’s Internet world to top down governments.
Yep, ladies and gents, this is not yo’ momma’s CCP.
May 28th, 2008
Lots in the news lately about bad product/suppliers coming from China, although things seem to have died down lately. Yesterday I sat in on some nice presentations in Dr. Anderson’s ethics class, one of which included a presentation on corporate social responsibility and doing your due diligence on quality control with your supplier.
For an excellent nickel tour on what the issue of supplier control means and how it comes up, see this CLB post, How To Monitor Your Chinese Factory, The China Price and QC By Motorcycle. After you read this you can see how darn hard it can be to do this well.
Having said this, are there a number of bad suppliers in China? Of course. They get all the press. Are there many good suppliers? Of course. They do not get the press.
May 22nd, 2008
I have been watching and studying some of the US business schools who have entered the China MBA market for some time now (joint executive MBA programs are the usual market entry strategy). One such school is the University of Maryland Smith School of Business; an excellent business school with excellent programs, students and faculty and with loads of money to do great things (they are not scared to charge market rates).
For example, click HERE to learn about what schools like Smith are doing in China with their executive MBA program. It seems that each week I get a high quality marketing brochure in the mail from Smith re: one of its programs and said brochure, just one of them, must cost at least as much as my entire marketing budget for all of our Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business graduate programs.
Well, even the big boys falter. Smith just closed up it’s executive MBA program in Beijing (only); it looks like its much larger and well known Shanghai program is alive and well. Other B-schools are also struggling. See this May 15, 2008 Business Week article that just came out, China: Why Western B-Schools Are Leaving. Yet another good example of how local Chinese (in this case Chinese MBA programs) can replicate and achieve quality quickly, thereby making things miserable for the early foreign market entrants.
The money quote in this article:
Thirty Chinese universities are now authorized by Beijing to provide executive MBA programs. “The Chinese schools are coming right at the teeth of what I offer,” says Gary Gaeth, the associate dean of the University of Iowa’s Henry B. Tippie School of Management, which will start a program with the highly regarded Peking University this year. “And their MBA programs are every bit as good as everyone else’s.”
Oh, how that market and invisible hand can quickly swing the other way.
Yes, in China, when you make it you can make it big. But when you lose, well, you know the rest of the line. In China, experienced and knowledgeable expats will tell you, “Here, anything is possible. But nothing is easy.”
May 19th, 2008
This NY Times article will blow you away.
May 18th, 2008
Westerners can be ethnocentric (see, e.g., my previous post and our comment discussion, Cultural Knuckleheads in the Global World); but let’s be fair — so can others, including the Chinese. And per Dr. Morris’ lecture with us we learned that a fair bit of this stems from China’s historical “we are the Middle Kingdom” and our emperor has a “mandate from Heaven” cultural superiority/bias/thing and that house of cards. On either side of the Pacific, ethnocentrism is not terribly attractive, in my view.
I also see over-the-top nationalism to be a subset of ethnocentrism. Example: “I love my country” = okay and it seems to me is not ethnocentric and is legitimate patriotism. But “I love my country because we are the best at or we have the best ____” or “We’re Number One!” many times = obnoxious nationalism and hence ethnocentrism (particularly when said by one who has not traveled much to be able to have a decent sample size to gauge what the “best” or “No. 1″ is or by someone who is afraid to try new things and/or is not terribly adventurous).
Yes, the line between legitimate patriotism and obnoxious nationalism is fine, but it’s important. It’s easy to tip from one into the other.
See Dan Harris’ recent China Law Blog post on this very subject (Chinese nationalism) and how it relates to business. It’s worth the read.
Some will argue one side caused or led to the other’s grief. I have no idea how to sort out the casual chain. Others will offer excuses for their ethnocentrism (whether it’s western, eastern, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, or other) (e.g., “But you misunderstand me. I am not really that way as a person; and how can I be classified as ethnocentric for believing what I believe. That’s not fair. And in any event, I am right, you know.”). That stuff does not much matter to me. At some point, we all just need to get over the reasons and excuses, cut out the feeling of being right and/or superior to the other, and move forward.
Your thoughts?
Prof. Carr June 10, 2008 addendum: See the WSJ article that just came out relating to this very post, Victim or Victor? China’s Olympic Odyssey
May 18th, 2008
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).
May 18th, 2008
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