On May 31st Jason will be presenting to the public and members of CanCham on the topic of east-west management philosophies with the theme of Secrets to Understanding your Laowai Boss.

More information on the presentation can be found here and you can register by going to the CanCham website at this link.

Jason plans to talk about differences in leadership style, decision-making, and power distance, in the context of Chinese employees working at Western multinational companies, and will also discuss some of the Chinese management approaches including Mao-style management.

The Spring 2011 issue of MICE Now, published by China Economic Review, has an article written by Jason on China’s MICE industry trends. MICE stands for Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions/Events.

The article, titled Of MICE and Trends, discusses how China’s MICE industry will develop now that mega-events such as the World Expo 2010 are over. The Chinese government’s recently published macro-economic five-year plan for China is one place that MICE companies can look for new strategic direction:

The 12th Five Year Plan … was officially unveiled in March, and should be required reading for the country’s MICE industry.

[...]

The government is keen to close China’s wealth gap, which goes hand-in-hand with narrowing the east-west development divide. Eastern coastal regions have received far more investment and witnessed more economic development in the past three decades, but as attention shifts to boosting consumption in western regions, brands will follow.

Another growth area to focus on, which this blog has written on before, is the employment fair. Specifically, in 2011 job fairs will be in greater abundance and more widely attended as yet another 6 million graduates hop into a frothy market that has quickly recovered from the effects of the GFC.

MICE Now is a print-only publication but can be ordered by contacting CER, and I also recommend their annual MICE publication for those in the industry, the China MICE Guide 2010-2011.

You can download a copy of the article Of MICE and Trends in PDF format here:

Jason Inch pages from MICENOW-2011

I have become something of a regular contributor to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai’s bimonthly newsletter. In the most recent edition, which can be found online now in Flash format or downloaded as a PDF, I am again in the Reflection column on the final page.

This issue’s theme is the employment situation in China so I decided to write about some of the job trends I find interesting right now (both for local Chinese and expat residents).

The first is shan yun -

Recently a new phrase has popped up in the Chinese lexicon, shan yun, which I’ll liberally translate as “crisis pregnancy,” meaning having a baby during the economic crisis. Why is this significant? Under the new employment law which went into effect January 1 2008, women are granted extended legal protections and may not be terminated during pregnancy or maternity leave, offering a year or more of safe employment. The unforeseen result? Employers already facing difficulty are rife with sudden marriages and pregnancies. No data is available yet but I’ll wager that 2009 will have seen a mini baby boom among urban professionals.

While writing this article I also found myself remembering my time spent in Chicago and Seattle during the dot-com boom. Back then, job-hopping was practically an institution, with lavish signing bonuses. One company even gave you a Porsche if you joined their firm, and good computer programmers were so scarce that massive H1B visa quotas were primarily allocated to Indian software engineers. In China, during the last four years I’ve been here, wages and voluntary turnover were steadily increasing in the major cities, until the global economic crisis hit, anyway:

It wasn’t so long ago that job websites such as 51jobs.com advertised themselves to candidates with a kind of euphoric “Enjoy life, try switching jobs!” tone. It all seemed reminiscent of dot-com boom tales of copy-editors becoming high-tech executives and making paper millions on stock options. But as in the dot-com bust of 2001, in Shanghai today jobs are hard to find, and the people with them are head-down and hard at work in their cubicles, assiduously trying to avoid “prairie dogging” – sticking one’s head up could mean getting it chopped off. One Canadian employer told me that voluntary job turnover has dropped to zero at his firm in the last three months. Some employers are probably enjoying this new era of stable employees who do not leave at the drop of a yuan.

Quite a change in attitude among employees. Search firms are also in a perilous situation, with cutbacks among even senior recruiting professionals. The new tone sometimes manifests itself in amusing ways. One example: At jobs website zhaopin.com, they’ve adjusted their advertising, from the picture on the left, saying “How can you get lucky in your future career? Once you are certain, job-hop again!” to the advertising below, with the tagline reading, “How about letting a good job find you?” And there’s now a cute mascot instead of the over-the-top jumping metaphors of Monopoly or Kung-fu flying. I imagine the mascot is there as if to say, “I’m your guardian angel in this horrible job market!” Reassuring.

For foreigners working in China, myself included, the employment landscape is changing but is by no means dire. I still hear lots of stories of young expats being transferred to China with hefty rent and living allowances, while for those in China already, Chinese companies are actually becoming an attractive option as so many multinational firms have frozen their hiring until the financial crisis ends. Chinese web-portal Alibaba is hiring 5000 new employees this year, I hear. Or you can always try a job fair:

I will be speaking at a number of events in the next month. Most of these events directly concern the Supertrends book, but one, on sustainable business, will draw on my experience as an cleantech consultant to focus on China’s current environmental and sustainable development challenges and opportunites.

April 23 – CanCham Shanghai, 6:30 PM at the Four Seasons Shanghai

May 7 – Green Product & Business Forum, 10 AM at Shanghai’s Guangdong Hotel Conference Center

(More information on the above two events can be found at this post on Supertrends).

As well, in May I will be talking to some groups privately, including a study tour to China from my alma mater, the Richard Ivey School of Business, and a group of EMBA students from the John Molson School of Business of Concordia University.

I am available to speak about China’s economy and the Supertrends at events inside and outside of China. Please contact me for more detials.

The most recent article I have written is out in the new CanCham March / April newsletter.  My article, “Shanghai’s Great Expectations: Can the World Expo 2010 Revive a Depressed Economy?” is on page 8 in the Special Focus section.

The overall topic of this issue of the newsletter is in fact the upcoming World Expo. I have previously written on this topic in relation to Haibao, the pinipedean Gumby look-a-like Expo mascot, but my new article is less tongue-in-cheek and more about what the real potential for the 2010 Expo really is:

Fast-forwarding to 2010, the Shanghai-hosted World Expo could be a turning point of the economic crisis, or it might be one of the worst-timed major events of the 21st century: When Shanghai opens its doors to the world, China’s economy and that of the world could be on the way to recovery or in the midst of a downturn possibly rivaling the Great Depression.

I go on to compare it with the last major expo, that of 2005 in Aichi, Japan, which I had the chance to attend given that Nagoya was a city I once called home. The theme of the Japanese pavilions and the overall event was the role of technology in our lives, apt in a demographically-challenged yet high-tech Japan. This contrasts with the theme of Shanghai’s, which is to be Better City, Better Life, basically all about urbanization and sustainable development. I must say, I prefer the idea of a cleaner greener future rather than one in which I am served by robotic guides…

I think that in the end, Shanghai’s Expo will be, much like Aichi’s was, a phenomenal success. Sure, there is the possibility it may not be in the booming China that we have grown accustomed to in the last several years, but I believe it will be a source of new optimism for a brighter future.

Watching Barack Obama’s Inauguration on January 20th, after midnight as many were from China, I was waiting for some key statements about his plans for a long-term solution to the interrelated issues of oil dependence, geopolitical conflict, and global warming.

He gave few specific details, but the following statements stand out, as quoted from his full address:

…each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

…We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.

…We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

…All this we can do. All this we will do.

As I have written previously, I see this to be a viable solution to the multifaceted problems facing our world. Quoting Al Gore, whom I believe put it into the best phrasing yet (albeit in reference to the US situation in particular) in his speech last July,

…We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf, to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.

I hoped that President Obama would be using such a strategy to invigorate the US economy. While his current economic recovery plan of approximately $825 billion, which has just passed the US Congress and is going to debate in the Senate next week, has a fair amount of environmental spending (about $58 billion could be termed energy-generating or -conserving spending) the bulk of the $825 billion is devoted to tax credits, infrastructure spending, aid to the poor, education and so on.

It is disappointing that there was not more, but saving the planet is a hard sell when the overall economy and people’s livelihoods are in trouble. However nearly $60 billion in green stimulus, which includes more than $20 billion in renewable energy tax credits – for things like solar panels installed on rooftops – is a great beginning to what hopefully will become the hallmark of his Presidency: Changing the direction and drive behind the US economy.

I recently wrote an article for the Shanghai Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s bimonthly eMag newsletter, titled “Cleantech Powers the New Economy: The Global Financial Crisis Provides an Opportunity to Invest in Green Technology.”

The newsletter is available on their website, but I wanted to quote a few passages here for those who are too busy to download the full version. Regular readers know that this topic, environmental investment, is very dear to me. Here is an abridged version:

On the surface, it would seem not. Major financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs have failed or been merged into much larger entities, shedding tens of thousands of jobs in the progress. Others such as AIG and Citibank have received huge government investments and guarantees. Collapsing home values in the U.S. and UK are leading their respective economies into the severest downturn since the Great Depression, and the ripple effects are being felt around the world.

Below the surface, a ray of hope lights the darkness: An industry that can possibly rescue the global economy. Thomas Freidman, in his new bestselling novel Hot, Flat, and Crowded, makes a strong case for environmental investment to lead the way out of the intertwined energy and economic crises. To paraphrase his book’s main point, the US, and the world, can no longer afford to rely on cheap oil and must instead invest in cleantech, a collection of technologies including solar, water, biofuel and wind power, and sustainable products designed for the three R’s: Reduce, reuse,  and recycle. The economy of the future is the environmental economy. The new mantra? Green is good.

China, above all others, stands to benefit from this trend. World leaders, from Chinese President Hu Jintao to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, recognize the fundamental truth: Pollution, population, and resource use are the key issues of our time and must not take a back seat, even during this period of economic distress. President Hu made strong statements indicating China’s commitment to environmental investment at the 17^th National People’s Congress in October. China’s 11^th Five Year Plan and the “Save Energy, Reduce Waste” campaign are key initiatives.

At the G20 Financial Summit last November Secretary-General Ban said, “The emerging ‘green economy’ should be key to the stimulus plan. Eco-friendly renewable energy will drive the world’s next great industrial transformation. It has the potential to create millions of jobs and spur growth. Let us, therefore, invest in fighting climate change.”

So this is, in fact, China’s battle to lose. With one of the world’s largest markets and some of the world’s biggest environmental problems, China has a vested interest in making environmental technology successful.

The extraordinary events in global financial markets – the US subprime crisis, the collapse of banks, stocks plummeting – inspired me to write a blog post over at China Supertrends: Can China’s economy save the world’s?

Having experienced the Asia Financial Crisis of 1997 as an entrepreneur with my own trading company in Asia, I remember the crisis keenly for its effects on currencies we traded in.  As I have been watching the US subprime crisis unfold for nearly a year now, I recall that it was the US and the IMF who acted to stabilize markets then.  Now the US itself is in trouble.  So I pose the question, who will be the white knight?  Could it be China?

I felt so strongly about this issue that I submitted it as an OpEd piece and it was picked up by the Shanghai Daily.

Why did I write this article? There are a lot of good things in China: Its economy is strong, growing, and it has just successfully hosted the Olympics.  I was alarmed to see, then, the speculation from China Investment Capital Corporation’s Chief Economist that China may cut back its US dollar holdings. Then a few days later, a Chinese academic from Tsinghua University wrote, rather bluntly

..While minimizing the adverse effects of the US subprime crisis as much as possible, China needs to maintain its stand and uphold its national interest on the world economic stage.

He didn’t go into detail about what exactly China’s ‘national interests’ meant, but the tone of the article suggested that China should be maintaining its status quo, and letting the chips in the US fall where they may. In other words, hands off and let the US take care of its own mess.

However, if the CICC’s economist’s idea becomes reality and China actually stops buying US debt or starts selling what it already has, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the world.  At this time, China needs to be expanding its international monetary policy, strengthening the RMB, importing more and, no matter what, continuing purchasing new debt from the US without trying to take advantage of its weakness at this time. For better or worse, China and the US are in this together.

To paraphrase the writing of John Donne: No country is an island in our globalized world. Everybody has a stake. With global alarm bells sounding, can China passively wait for the US to get through its bailouts and hope that the world financial system remains intact? Or does this bell ring for another? Whom does the bell toll for? China, it tolls for thee.

Have you ever seen the magnificent Commencement address given by Steve Jobs at Stanford University in 2005?  If not, check it out (text and video).  In the speech, he covered several themes, one of which I want to focus on here:  Connecting the dots.

There was a time in my life when I was interested in phones.  Obsessed might be a better word.  I even read at the callow age of 14 a (no longer in print) book on telephony history called “The Biggest Company on Earth: A profile of AT&T.”  At the time, I had no idea what use this knowledge would be to me in the future, nor did I really care, it was just something I loved and wanted to know more about.  

My interest in telephones was in tandem with an interest in computers, and I read all the early studies of the computer revolution including the seminal Hackers, by Steven Levy, originally published in 1984 (which computer geeks remember more fondly as the year of the first Macintosh and one of the all-time best commercials, the Orwellian-inspired Apple vs. IBM ‘Big Brother’ spot). 

Hackers was not about the tales of people trying to steal money from banks with their computers (though that was in there, too), it was more about the psychology and sociology of the people who worked on the earliest computers, the earliest networks, built the first personal computers, and developed the software.  You can fill in the names of those people if you’re in the know:  Alan Turing, the scientist possibly most personally responsible for turning the tide of WWII by helping the British perfect the code-breaking capabilities of Enigma, Marvin Minsky, pioneer of modern AI at MIT, Gates, Allen, Woz, and yes, Steve Jobs, they are all in there, plus an array of other fascinating characters who epitomize the real meaning of the word hacker.  I am still so enamored with the history, I couldn’t help digressing, but I’ll get back to my main point about Jobs’ speech:

After all those years of being locked away in my memory, AT&T has come back to inspire me to write something comparing the breakup of the once largest telephone company on earth to the current breakup and reshuffling of the telecom industry in China.  The famous jingle of AT&T was “Reach out, reach out and touch someone…” and it touched me again by connecting the dots between what I know and what I love.  I wish life and work were always this simple.

If you would like to read more, check out my latest article from the Shanghai Star Business Journal, Will telecom restructuring mute critics? 

My latest column from the Shanghai Star Business Journal is now online at China Supertrends. The post is called “Starting a Business in China: Things foreigners need to know” and contains some of the interesting takeaways from a seminar I attended last month in Shanghai hosted by China Entrepreneurs, a networking and entrepreneur support organization based in Beijing.

Entrepreneurs in China are in difficulty in the run-up to the Olympics: Their business or tourist visas are no longer being renewed and they are having to switch to Z-visas, as noted in this article in Forbes recently. This is a problem because until now the regulations were relatively simple and the process of application was easy. Not so anymore, as visas in China have become much harder to get, more expensive, more time-consuming. Echoing a comment I’ve heard numerous people say in the last few weeks, at the time when China should be opening its doors to foreigners visiting China for the Olympics, it has instead made it that much harder to visit and, for some, live and work here, by imposing a sudden raft of new visa restrictions.

For the latest news on visas in China, this list and commentary from Chinatravel.net is very useful, as well as the most comprehensive discussion I have found on all the visa issues, official and unofficial, at the Beijinger forum.