Current TV has just released their newest installment City on Steroids, and it should not be missed.

Shot in Chongqing, this segment is broken into three parts,

• Day 1 -Bang Bang Men (porters), rampant construction and individual home ownership (every young couples dream),
• Day 2 - life of a bang bang man, migrant appreciation day,a trip to the market
• Day 3 - a trip to Lifan’s car production facility, a look at the shadow that is Chongqing’s skyline, a trip to an English school to discuss the price of progress, and a last stop to visit Mr Rong’s apartment.. under the bridge.

For those that have only been to Beijing or Shanghai (particularly Shanghai), I think the most important things to understand are:
1) This grown is occurring in cities all over China: Chongqing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Kunming, Shantou, Nanchang, and countless others
2) There are large numbers of people in China who are willing to sacrifice everything to live under a bridge to eek out what they feel is a better life for themselves and their family
3) The environmental costs of the torrid pace are tremendous, and eventually Mother Nature is going to ask for the check.

Just found the article Special Delivery: UPS Moving Ancient Terracotta Army, and had to write a quick post as I think this a great example of how some firms are able to get themselves into the middle of some interesting things.

For those who have yet to visit Xi’an, these warriors are simply an amazing site, and they rank up there with the Great Wall and Forbidden City in terms of cultural significance.

According to the ariticle:

UPS (NYSE:UPS) today unloaded an exhibit of the 2,200-year-old Chinese terra cotta warriors, horses and other artifacts at its West coast air hub in Ontario, Calif., after a long flight from Shanghai.

to make this move possible, UPS actually had to take special care

The U.S.-bound exhibit was packed in 42 specially-constructed crates for movement in the 747-400:

So, for whoever sold this project on behalf of UPS, my hats off to you. In my mind, this is one for the books, and I am sure the people in Nanpu and Atlanta are gleaming over this

Note: for the sake of full disclosure, I was once an intern with UPS and they forced me to shave off my goatee.

Last year Andrew Hupert from Diligence China was kind enough to invite me over to the Itv-Asia office and pepper me with questions about china’s 2nd tier. For a number of reasons, I have just now figured out how to embed (i.e. shamelessly promote) this video.

A few things have changed factually since the video, but I still believe in the fundamental issues that I run through, highlight, and stutter over.

If you have trouble viewing through this post, click over to ITV’s site, but for those in China I should just warn you ahead of time that it is slow no matter how you cut it.

Continue reading »

With so much going on in China, and only a limited amount of bandwidth, I have created this weekly post to highlight articles that I feel are (1) important, (2) relevant, and (3) interesting.

This week there are 3 articles that I have chosen to highlight as each are quite interesting, they are all relevant, and there are issues within each that I think you the reader should be aware of.

If you have an article that you feel needs to be mentioned, please do so in the comments section. We all have different areas of interest and bandwidth, so I hope you will take some time and post those articles!
Continue reading »

I am generally of the opinion that if you are writing a blog focused on business, you should follow the cardinal laws of topics to avoid at networking events: politics and religion. In china, I would also add culture.

However, I recognize the fact that the line between business and politics is a fine one, and that come this November the line that the Bush Administration has drawn in the sand will be moved by one of the candidates…. and more than ever, I think we need to understand clearly the knowledge, understanding, experience, and potential impact of the candidates as it relates to globalization.. and of course China.

and, as luck would have it, Youtube has provided such an opportunity through a 9 minute clip of Hillary Clinton being interview on the George Stephanopoulos show:

 The highlights of the clip are:

Continue reading »

Last year, specifically last summer, was an inflection point.. some say a tipping point.. for China. news stories surrounding Taihu, Slave labor, product safety, and cardboard dumplings had a huge effect on China’s policy makers.

It is something that I have covered on a number posts on All Roads (Summer 2007: A Catalyst for Environment Change in China and The Real Meaning of Public Hearings in Xiamen), on Crossroads (Xiamen PX: A Turning Point?, and The Relationship Between Pollution and Unrest) , and in presentations

and the Xinhua article Making all draft laws public, a new step to improve legislation quality is in my mind another step in the right direction for China, and China’s policy making mechanism.

One of the things I love about China, is that “China experts” can have worked in the same city, assisted largely the same firms, be roughly of the same intelligence.. and yet disagree on things that one would think were fundamental.

The first time I witnessed this in China (keep in mind I used to watch a lot of CNBC), was at an AMCHAM where you had three economists debate what was going to happen with the RMB.. and just how undervalued it was.

The next experience I had was when I moderated a panel on real estate in Shanghai (a pretty well discussed topic you would think), and the differences between investors, economists, and agent expectations was fascinating.

more recently though, it has been over the topic of China’s market size, and more specifically the size of China’s middle class. Type it into google, and you get a pretty decent range of opinions… 57 million … 10o million… 200 million.. and so on.

One of the most vocal critics of the big 200 and above numbers is the well known Paul French, and it is he who for a while stood out from the crowd and said that China’s middle class is not as large as others would say.. and it is definitely not in the 200 million range

And when I saw the recent Youtube (h/t Danwei)of Paul French taking shots at JWT’s Tom Doctroff - also considered to be very well versed in China, I realized that the fight was spilling out into the street… one Old China hand against another!

Like Thomas Crampton, I too would like to hear Tom’s reply to this. for me, I know each equally well, which is to say that I have seen both of them present and heard good things about both. My view on the middle class is that (1) you cannot trust any statistic (2) you cannot base your numbers on luxury sales and (3) it is surely more fragile than anyone would like to admit.

UPDATE - Doctoroff Responds to French

Continue reading »