Saturday, May 14, 2005

Delegation Last night I was invited to a dinner reception with the Dutch minister of Health and a Dutch healthcare delegation in the Shanghai American Club. Because my company China Bay is setting up a platform for medical equipment manufacturers that want to set up distribution in China, this was a interesting opportunity to talk with some people from the industry. The delegation had been in China for a week, and most people were very enthousiastic about the country and the business opportunities. That[base ']s almost always the case, you hardly ever meet a business person who comes here for the first time who is not totally impressed with what he/she has seen. Most had never thought China is so [OE]capitalistic[base '], business-minded and advanced in many fields. Why is this? There is lots of news in the foreign press about the booming Chinese economy and about how quickly the country has developed. But people do not realize it until they are here. People still have very stereotypical ideas about China. This could be due to the fact that many [OE]normal[base '] news stories are quite stereotypical: it is not interesting to write how similar Shanghai is to say New York, so the press focuses on the differences or on the kind of news people expect about China. Furthermore, foreign news tends to be quite paternalistic about China, leading people to think that it is somehow not as advanced as their own country. The rest of the world always knows it better, and tries to teach China. Examples? Look at SARS crisis and all the criticism, where the foreign press made it look much worse than it actually was. Or the current articles telling China to revalue its currency: I think China can decide that very well for itself, and does not need other countries to tell it when it when to do that. 7:44:36 PM    comment []