Social change

yep - this site has not been updated in a while..thats due to a whole bunch of stuff which is much better explored by going to the sexier, sleeker, sassier new site by clicking here

You can get downloads of training material - Presentations, slideshows, files, training manuals, content for leadership develop and more (Gosh!!) in english AND Chinese here

You can get more information on the Onevoice manifesto (Chinese) by clicking here

Please update your bookmarks!

A friend told me on the phone the other day the following:

"Most Chinese feel that if the Japanese government genuinely and publicly apologised for what its wartime attrocities in China that they would feel satisfied, it is the lack of acceptance of historic fact that angers the Chinese people so much..."

Rightly so. After all the Chinese are generally peaceful and reasonable people. So this is for all you who feel embittered and angered by the arrogant history distorting "Japanese pigs":

Statement by Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama (1995)

"Now, upon this historic occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war's end, we should bear in mind that we must look into the past to learn from the lessons of history, and ensure that we do not stray from the path to the peace and prosperity of human society in the future.

During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.

Building from our deep remorse on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, Japan must eliminate self-righteous nationalism, promote international coordination as a responsible member of the international community and, thereby, advance the principles of peace and democracy. At the same time, as the only country to have experienced the devastation of atomic bombing, Japan, with a view to the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons, must actively strive to further global disarmament in areas such as the strengthening of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It is my conviction that in this way alone can Japan atone for its past and lay to rest the spirits of those who perished.

It is said that one can rely on good faith. And so, at this time of remembrance, I declare to the people of Japan and abroad my intention to make good faith the foundation of our Government policy, and this is my vow. "

For the full speech click here (in fact, the Japanese have publicly apologised 6 times to China and have given billions of dollars in aid each year to China by way of compensation). Why doesn''t anyone in China know this? Its not that difficult to figure out.

My wife recieved another one of the millions of text messages flying around the country ranting about how the Chinese should boycott Japanese goods in a bid to destroy thier economy. This is a typical display of nationalistic ignorance winning over a basic thought process. For example:

1. Japan trades USD$ 203 billion a year...
2. Japan is China's largest trade China...
3. Mega quantities of Japanese stuff is largely Made In China giving more than a few Chinese jobs and fuelling thier economic growth through massive Foreign Direct Investment.
4. The Chinese economy is wholly reliant on FDI for economic growth if it is not to collapse and cause massive social chaos.
5. Therefore if we stop buying Japanese stuff, thier (the Japanese) economy will fail and we (the Chinese) will feel rightly proud of ourselves for being really clever.
6. .....sometime later in China....."Oh. SHIT".

Hmmmm. It is frightening to think that an estimated 30 million of these messages has been spread throughout the country, mostly among the student population who appear to have been studying the wrong textbook on basic economics.

 

Technorati Tags: china+japan,, nationalism,, China,, doublethink

Here is a great post from Andre Gentry explaining his experience with arguably the top university in China (Fudan) and the "management" of a frighteningly simple registration process. His experience is in no way unique and is emblematic of the frequantly bizarre work culture that is propogated by dullard managers and that employees mindlessly endure day after day. Alas, it is not just the government organizations that are "managed" with such contempt for effectiveness but it is common in the "private" enterprises fattened on a diet of (what they believe is never ending) free capital flowing from the government - money is simply handed out like candy to almost anyone with the words "High Technology" in thier business proposal and a free dinner voucher for building a government relationship, ensuring that concepts such as efficiency and effectiveness are practically guarenteed not to flower in the minds of the management for some time.

7 people + 4.5 hours + 5 minutes = 1 registration

I would like to thank the staff at Fudan University's International Cultural Exchange School for making this post possible.  Without their fulsome and inefficient method of registering folks for the HSK this coming May there would be nothing to write about.

Yesterday some friends and I made the trek from Shanghai University to Fudan to register for the HSK.  We started out at 8:30a, arrived at 10:00a, and finished the registration process at 2:30p.  The actual registration took only about five minutes, but it was necessary to wait four and a half hours to do it even though there was almost no one ahead of us in line.

Originally the registration for the May test was supposed to be from April 4 to April 14 (something which their web site still says).  That was changed for unexplained reasons to March 22 to March 30, but we were told we could give our money and documents to Shanghai University and they would send them over to Fudan.  Unfortunately, for reasons ungiven this service stopped on March 27 and so on March 29 the four of us bussed and taxied ourselves to Fudan.

The morning registration was supposed to last until 11:00a, so we figured that arriving at 10:00a we'd have no problem getting through the process and returning to Shanghai University in time for lunch.  Lo, such hopes were misplaced!

Upon arriving we inquired as to how we could register.  We were told we couldn't and that we should come back the next day at 7:00a or 7:30a to stand in line for numbered tickets that determine the order in which everyone is served.  Good thing no one told us about that.

For a little while we thought Shanghai University had forgotten to tell us about this important little fact, but the Fudan students we spoke with quickly disabused of us that notion: Fudan had not even explained to its own students that you had to come early to get numbered tickets if you had any hope of getting served.  Nor had it told its own students that there were just 100 numbered tickets available each morning, so if you came before the registration period ended you wouldn't get served even if those 100 people had been registered before 11:00a.  That's putting the customer first!

After failing to badger ourselves into getting registered in the morning we were told we could wait until 1:30a when the afternoon batch of 100 numbered tickets was disbursed.  We resigned ourselves to this situation with three of us going to lunch and one of us staying behind to wait in line.  At 12:00p we returned to the line and sat around talking until 1:30p, when we received our numbered tickets.

So we get our tickets and a little before 2:00p the registration process starts moving, supposedly to last until 4:00p.  At around 2:15p my number comes up, so...

1. One man has the responsibility of disbursing the numbered tickets and then standing in front of the door to the office and grunting when it's your turn to go through the door.
2. One woman inside the office is responsible for watching you fill out the application and watching you sign your name to the HSK examination folder that will be handed out to you in May.  That's all she does: watch.
3. You then go to the office next door where: one person takes your money and makes change...
4. And another person writes out your receipt by hand.  Why two people to do the work of one person?  Why not!
5. You then return to the original office and give your receipt to a woman whose job is to receive receipts and hand back an HSK handbook.  It's hard work: reach out your hand, take receipt, put receipts in a pile, hand back handbook, repeat.
6. Another woman takes one of your passport photos and pastes it into a photo album that somehow insures that I will really be who I say I am when I arrive at the testing center in May.  Pasting, that's all she does.  Why that photo is a more fool-proof method of finding false identities than the passport I have to bring anyways neither I, nor I suspect anyone really, is at liberty to understand.
7. And lastly is the woman sitting in front of the computer typing your registration information into a computer.

From start to finish the process took five minutes.  So, to recap, we waited four and a half hours for a registration which took five minutes to complete.  In addition, seven (seven!) people were necessary to do those five minutes of work.

The inefficiency of the process, the lack of publicity and confusion surrounding both the dates for registration and the method of registration, and the fact that in spite of facing the same problems every day of the registration period nothing was improved, well, I just marvel at the managerial incompetence.

It's not difficult to run a registration process, especially one that lasts only a week.  Just have three people working in the morning, change shifts at noon and have another three in the afternoon, and you still have an extra person available all day if too many people come.  Voila!  No one is terribly overworked and all the customers are served in a timely fashion.  This is not rocket science, but like too many things in China, the process was intentionally set up to be difficult, cumbersome, and to waste as much time of as many people as possible.

While I veered between laughter and anger yesterday at the nonsense of having to wait four and a half hours even though we arrived well within the appointed time, and it's difficult to decide how to react when you know that the bulk of your time waiting is taken up by office workers on an extended lunch break, ultimately I think it just makes me a bit sad that the worth of everyone involved, both the office workers who were wasting their own time doing tasks of such mind-numbing simple-mindedness and the students who must waste hours of their day waiting to finish a five-minute process, was so unvalued.

Yesterday's experience in inefficiency was, I believe, hardly unique.  Most everyone who has lived in China for a long period of time can come up with countless others: trying to get certificates for your business from myriad government offices that do nearly nothing, the multitudes of shop assistants in nearly every department store who do the work that far fewer could, the armies of people vainly trying to clean dust off the streets, the farm fields divided into ridiculously small plots that simply scream inefficieny.  Labor is cheap and so labor is wasted.  Labor consists of humans though and wasting humans is a depressing commentary on the value of being a human in China.

That's the thing really: if you make work inefficient then the clear implication is that you don't want to fully use the human talent at your disposal.  You are content wasting your workers' time and skills doing things (like separating the two people needed to take your money) far below what they are capable.  The effects of not valuing people in this situation extend past those office workers to the hundreds of students who have had the misfortune to go through the disorganization of Fudan's HSK registration process.  No one in the line that I spoke with was impressed with how things were arranged and in the end all we could do was shake our heads and say, ”ñí’†‘, Very China.

 

China is making leaps and bounds on the way to creating a "harmonious society" that is a"stablising force" in Asia...

I have just returned from Hong Kong (possibly the best city on earth) and Shenzhen to yet again be dismayed by the Chinese nationalistic cancer that has been pumped into the average Joe on the mainland since they were kids by a government fearful of the people turning against them, so has systematically manipulated the people to become mindless nationalists craving some kind of redemption for "humiliation". Listening to these guys, you would think that the Chinese had a history of 200 years not 5000 - the constant irrational whining about humiliation by all and sundry has become boring and infantile and increasingly dangerous. If you are proud of your country, well...you are "proud", pleased with your countries achievements. After 5000 years, there have been many achievements - in a culture that is rich and diverse as the Chinese - who can fail to be inspired? Unfortunately there is a terrible lack of pride and a large empty hole where the inspiration should be.  What about the Americans and English? The English tore apart America 150 years ago killing untold numbers in a civil war.  The English bringing "civilisation" to the Japanese and slautering them wasn't exactly a tea party either...the list goes on and on and on. Do you see the rest of the world whining about it? No, you dont, they learn from the past and move on to build hopefully better societies. History haunts many Chinese like a ghost  - they are chained to the last 200 years and losing the pride that is rightfully thiers of the other 4800.

Riots have been breaking out all over the place against the Japanese, (and actually encouraged by the police in Shenzhen when I was there)...and the government remains wholly incompetent in dealing with the basics of developing anything closely resembling a civilised society: of course, the "concept" / goal of a "harmonious society" is the governments rhetoric (doublespeak anyone?) and its top priority - obviously.

Qoute (and this goes for a great deal of the Chinese I have talked too): "I have been waiting for ages to show my feelings for my country" - a Shenzhen demonstrator blabbered after helping smash up a supermarket with 3000 other well fed, lower middle / middle class, car owning, city dwelling Chinese (the vast majority of which would leave the country for a "better life" outside China - bizarre? Not here!). "My feelings" were quite obviously anger, violence, childishness and mindless nationalism: not very harmonious at all, though I am sure this escaped the mob entirely.  I wonder what the countries 800 million farmers living in poverty would do given half a chance?

Why the Japanese are doing so little about thier horrific (they really are horrific....) China past is bizarre, giving the green light to some distorting text books is bound to inflame and small minded to say the least.  I recently discovered that Chinese children are still taught that the 35 million Chinese that died in the Great Leap Forward was solely the result of bad weather (!) and that the Cultural Revolution is given 2 pages in the standard school history book - the Japanese massacring of the Chinese are given 35 pages in the same text. Teaching foundations for harmony or teaching foundations for an mindless, destablising nationalism? Somebody has set themselves up to get bitten.

I am watching this whole affair very closely indeed - Nationalistic behaviour (teachings of "hatred" to kids in schools)  has been driven by the current powers to divert attention from pressing local issues, to encourage people to "let off steam" to an external party.....it appears to be getting a bit over heated: first Shenzhen, 10,000 in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou. Chinas entire future rests squarely on its economic relations with other countries (Japan has been China’s biggest trading partner in three of the past four years) , yet the average "educated" chap on the street constantly hears and reads about the Motherland begining to dominate the world and what a great success it is. The fact is that he has little or no understanding of basic economics or  global trade and a head full of propoganda about how his country is some kind of global superpower. Obviously, if his information is correct, China would not stand by and do nothing when it is "humiliated" again, China, the great country would act, as that is what he expects a new global superpower to do. That is why he will smash, vandalise and riot - He is Chinese and China is no longer willing to be pushed around by others.

What is he going to do when he gets a firm message that he is in fact wrong, and should calm down? Somebody is going to lose credibility and then we all have a really big problem indeed.

Where on earth is the peace movement??? Surely not everyone thinks that this weapon touting, flag burning, posturing, rioting madness is sane? Chinese society would benefit greatly from having a peace group, to show another way - where are the hippies when you need them? Oh, of course, they would be banned for being a threat to the social order and harmony.

On a gray Friday morning in February, Liu Min quietly went up to the ninth floor of an atrium building in Begbu city, Anhui province, climbed over a 1.2-meter railing and plunged to his death onto the marble floor below.

The suicide might have drawn little attention, especially in one of China's poorer provinces, except that it happened in Bengbu's municipal government building and that the dead man was chief of the city's statistics bureau.

His neighbors and others in Bengbu suspect that the 48-year-old Liu, who left behind a wife and son, faced intense pressure as the person in charge of generating economic growth data. Just weeks before Liu's death, city officials proclaimed a stunning 16.5 percent increase in gross domestic product for 2004, nearly triple the GDP increase of the year before. more...

Technorati Tags: china, china+statistics, China+corruption,

Absolutely sick of it. When will I learn not to expect a shred of decency from the people I chose to spend my money with?

This stuff is SOOOOOOO goddammed simple its scary.....

Retailers here love to talk for hours about the "customer" . "The customer is God" (God? thats a bit far, but this is what they do, in fact say) the customer blah blah blah. As with many things here, there is a Pacific ocean of talk and very little action - the customer thing is a great example. Years of propoganda from the government has created many managers who believe that if you are to manage or "lead" anything then words are the tool to do it with. Fine, but they forgot about the action bit that words are supposed to drive. This has led to an enormous number of businesses here that actually run thier business by talking complete crap to each other, thier employees and customers, everyone! Result? nobody trusts each other about anything anywhere. Fewer and fewer people want to buy anything from Chinese companies because they simply lie. In short, they act as if thier employees and customers are in fact, completely stupid. Very few "business" people get this at all and disply an almost total ignorance of human nature to an almost magical degree. This is quite scary. 

Chinese retailers have an especially bad case of self delusion and are in great need of a HUGE collective God fearing foot up the rear end of the morons who blabber on endlessly about "serving the customer" until thier heads are going to violently explode with the amount of BS they spew forth.

For example, at every supermarket I know of (bar one that I know of - Ginwa department store: GREAT store it is too) there are security guards to ensure you do not enter a supermarket with a bag - obviously, they assume you are all thieves and will steal thier stuff.

At every exit, there is a security guard that stops every customer who has brought something, checks the recipt against the contents of the bag and then marks it. You are then free to go.

This happens at many many stores - not just supermarkets; bookstores and clothing shops have simaler policies - the assumption that the people that come into thier establishment are likely to steal given half a chance. The customer is God BUT the customer is also a thief given half a chance.

Obviously, the "security" guy serves no purpose whatsoever except to get in peoples way and make the PRESENCE OF THE MANAGEMENT felt on any customer who may be thinking of stealing anything. It has not occured to any of the almost unbelieveably stupid fools who drive this ridiculous behaviour that anyone stealing things from thier shop would not be so entirely dumb as to put thier stolen items into the shops carrier bags as they exit the building. The guards only ever check the company plastic bags. You can only get these bags at the checkout. Erm...hellooooo?

One company: NMart, even has a "helpful" sign informing customers that they must check all bags upon exit as part of thier customer care scheme - they want to make sure that you haven't forgotton anything. What a bunch of assholes. I have happily watched the business disintegrate over the last three months and they are closing down shortly. Hurrah!!!

Why dont you guys stop talking BS and start doing something like treating your customers with a bit of respect and developing systems that drive good service instead of devising new ways of patronising your customers. May your companies rapidly dissapear and the incompetent self serving, delusional morons running them dissapear with it. Amen to that.

 

Technorati Tags: China, china+marketing, china+business, madness

Yeah yeah, some of you may think its a little bit late - but most who need to read (I mean UNDERSTAND!!) this are oblivious to its existence. I have argued for a long time now that business's should quit behaving like businesses and start behaving like a group of human beings. The sooner a business emerges from behind an expanded concept of "professionalism" delivering its cleaned up "mission statements", marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. the better: Same old tone, same old lies same old bullshit. Its about time business grew up and did something genuine...Click here for more...

 

Technorati Tags: china, china+business, china+marketing, cluetrain

Chinese bankruptcy law has been being drafted for some time now. Another nail in the coffin for foriegn investors is the case mentioned in The Standard below (link to complete story) regarding a busines failure in Zhuhai leaving foriegn investors with nothing at all whilst Chinese investors were allowed to make off with the companies assets. Foreign investment for this business was about HK$7 billion (USD$850 million)....

``The Zhuhai Intermediate People's Court has permitted the Zhuhai government to seize assets which should be available for realization and distribution to all unsecured creditors,'' he says. ``It has ignored the provisional liquidators' requests for assistance and it has actively interfered in the provisional liquidators' attempts to obtain redress against the Zhuhai government. In simple terms, it has permitted the government's interests to be preferred to the interests of unsecured creditors.''

McDonald thinks the draft bankruptcy law falls short. ``The draft law might not have been of any assistance to the provisional liquidators in the Zhu Kuan collapse, because while Article 8 of the draft law expressly provides for the recognition of foreign liquidations, it only allows this if the overseas liquidation does not violate the interests and rights of [the government] and domestic creditors."

Ouch! Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! I am curious as to how much has been lost in unrecovered investments due to a lack of proper legal control over the dissemination of assets - my bet is that is is larger than most people think. The most depressing thing about Chinese company failure is the high frequancy of senior management "disapearances" just before a firm goes belly up,  what normally follows is the discovery of millions of dollars in government loans and investment has gone with the leader!

Opportunites for white collar crime are widespread and widely accepted as normal practice in many organizations - free money comes in and simply gets spread around by widespread abuse by the management team to fund that highly rated European and American education for the kids, beach houses, and luxury cars whilst the companies they are supposed to be "working" at lose more and more money. The common lack of accountability fueled by funding through Guanxi as opposed to merit or having a proper business case has created situations for companies here where the idea of company theft even being a "crime" has become blurry; the system has inadvertantly created a process that practically encourages abuse. The sad thing is that it is so easy to solve, and yet so obviously damaging to us all in China. The people who pay the most is not the investors - it is those who work and live here who pay in terms of increased cynicism (in particular the young) about what it means to be successful and are given example after example that says that if you are to be successful in business you have to be an asshole and a thief. This of course is not true for a great deal of Chinese companies, some of whom are doing great things - nonetheless, much more exposure is given to the bad guys than the good giving them collectively bad press.

Read more about the emergance of the Dark Side here....      

And you only need to look elsewhere in the world (erm...USA?) for corporate abuse on a truly world class scale...as Mr. Bernie Ebber so elegantly demonstrated as he screwed all the WorldCom investors to the wall, or of course the Bush / haliburton / Iraq menage a trois. This list is extensive.

To redress this darkness - I am coming up with a list of cool businesses in China; who they are, what they do and how they are doing it, adding some color to what is at the end of the day a brilliant country filled with some brilliant people that doing some great things. If your company is genuinely interesting, and has a leadership that is passionate and involved in achieving great things, let me know. Help me keep the faith because everyone out here needs it.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
"The love of money as a possession-as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life-will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental diseases."