| Symposium Highlights |
|
|
|
The Symposium was by general consent a most interesting and successful event. We at Mindmeta, the hosts and organisers of the Symposium, are proud to have put on a quality event with superb speakers addressing a topical and important subject. We thank our sponsors and all those who contributed to its success. We are already planning our next function and will keep you posted.
Our first speaker was Ian Lee, a native of Chongqing, and a man with a wide range of experience around the world, including a period as Vice President of Star TV (China) and his present position as Finance Director for China with the world's largest advertising company. A former zoologist with a focus on endangered species, Ian used some of his observations of the animal kingdom, married to his experiences in the international corporate world, to put the communications challenge in business into an amusing and interesting perspective. This was followed by an lively contribution from Morry Morgan, the MD and co-founder of ClarkMorgan, China's largest corporate training company (in the English language, but increasingly in Chinese too). Morry went through all the most common communications difficulties that beset businesses in China, and then proceeded to address them one by one with intelligent and practical solutions, drawing on his wealth of experience with hundreds of Chinese and foreign companies. The last speaker of the morning session was the writer and business consultant, Paul French, Chief China Representative for Access Asia, and a man with many interests and an engaging and colourful manner. He took an historical perspective on China, and Shanghai in particular, and made the point convincingly that there was very little new about the new China, except maybe the buildings. All the hype about the size of the Chinese market was common currency in the thirties. He compared Shanghai of the 1920s and 30s with the city of today - the time frame of his latest book on the famous Shanghai-based American journalist and businessman Carl Crow - and drew out many fascinating similarities as well as significant differences. (Paul stood in at late notice for Chris Devonshire-Ellis, who took ill in Beijing the day before. He greatly regretted missing the event he had done so much to promote). Our keynote speaker, James Fallows, the distinguished American writer and journalist, and influential interpreter of the Chinese industrial boom for an American audience, provided a powerful and persuasive talk which canvassed the range of American perceptions of contemporary China，and proceeded with an analysis of how the US-China relationship is likely to evolve in the years ahead. While he devoted some of his talk to the wider issue of China and the West, his focus was more on the US relationship. A believer in the view that China's enormous economic transformation is good for America as well as China, he lamented the fact that the two societies know far too little about each other, and maintains the remedies for this situation are there and their application is well overdue. That said, he is also of the view that China will bode large in the forthcoming US Presidential elections and it is important that the debate doesn’t get out of hand, or too distanced from the realities of the China-US economic relationship. He believes it is also up to the Chinese government to show greater understanding of American society and the public’s concerns, and greater sophistication in the way it projects its image and handles the overseas media. During the Q&A session there was a lively discussion, which went on for forty minutes, involving James Fallows, Paul French and members of the audience. Trudy Wang a journalist with Caijing magazine, asked Fallows his reading of Western reactions to Chinese attempts to acquire major Western branded companies. He responded with reference to the US reaction to Japanese acquisitions of major US companies in the 1980s and 1990s, at which time there were some hysterical calls to block the deals, but today such acquisitions wouldn’t raise much interest let alone concern. He felt a similar sequence of concern and acceptance will probably apply to Chinese acquisitions of brand name companies in the future. Other issues came up such as labor laws, product safety and media restrictions. |
