Monday, March 11, 2019
Week 4 Posts Due March 15
Despite being ironically spoken through the, anything but brief, words of Polonius, Shakespeare's quote--"Brevity is the soul of wit,"--still rings true. It takes true talent to be able to condense one's thoughts into a short, but complete statement. On the other hand, many times short thoughts are anything but complete. Keep this in mind as you post and comment over the next several weeks, being sure that your words reflect careful thought and pertinent content.
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Chapter three of my book brought the characters into a new setting and a new occupation. Even though the book made it sound like Xiaohong was very “worldly” and knowledgeable, she was actually very innocent. In a small town context, Xiaohong knew what she was doing, and she was familiar with the way things worked. Now that she has been taken out of her comfort zone, she has no idea what she is doing. Can we not all relate to that on some level? Xiaohong seems wary about jumping too far into things, which also surprised me because between her and Sijiang, she has experienced the most. Sijiang, who has only now started to gain new experiences after moving to the city, is more willing to try new things. Maybe this is because Xiaohong feels like she has already done enough, and she has no need to try other things.
ReplyDeleteFrom a business perspective, women selling themselves during this time period had the potential to make themselves a lot of money. However, there were very great risks to this business like going to jail or getting an STD. I think that if Sijiang had gone to Shenzhen without Xiaohong, she would have ended up as a prostitute. Even though Xiaohong came from a scandalous background, she was smart, and she used her brain rather than her body to get herself and Sijiang out of “sketchy” situations.
-- Ashley Blake
It is always hard to start new things. We may be experts in a certain area, but completely ignorant in another. It is a humbling thought.
DeleteThe next part in my book, The Souls of China, the author talks about the communist party in the 1900's. He tells about a time during the year called the Awakening of the Insects. This is when the communist party would have a ten-day ritual to display their power by passing bills and making laws. The author compares China to a shopping mall. He says that when they are going to make something, they make a big hullabaloo about it and building it, but only after it has been finished do they concern themselves with what will actually be in it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your posts because while my book is full of interesting facts yours is full of interesting stories. It is interesting that they called this ritual the Awakening of the Insects. I wonder why that is?
Delete-Rebecca Oxentenko
It is interesting to compare your post to some of what i have read in my own book. What really caught my eye is that celebration just to display how much power they had. In my book, it mainly hits on a lot of points of communism running the whole show.
Delete-Rodny Aquino
Rebecca Oxentenko
ReplyDeleteIn the next chapter of my book the author shares his concern that the USA is a weakening giant. For many years the United States was global leader in quite a few ways. However, the entitlement and consumerism culture that has taken hold over the last few decades is weakening the giant. The author compares the USA to an old oak tree. He says the tree was very strong and weathered many years of storms and problems. However, it is slowly succumbing to both external and internal threats. The author feels that there is one threat that it larger than the others. "The biggest storm of all is coming, though. The winds will be very strong. This storm is China." The rise of China and decline of the United States will depend on many factors. The author feels that it doesn't have to be as bad as it could be. There are a few things that are killing the tree from the inside out that need to be worked on. Problems like US debt, consumerism culture, and what he calls disloyal investors could really hurt the old oak tree.
I am enjoying reading so far. I have learned a lot about our economy and other economies throughout the world that I was not aware of before. The author is very opinionated but he does support what he says with lots of alarming facts. So far we have focused mainly on how the United States has got into the unfortunate position it is in now. I look forward to reading more about the China side of the story as well as I continue.
I find it interesting to hear what your author thinks about the economy. China has definitely gained some potential over the last couple decades. China is very aware of what we want and is giving us exactly that.
DeleteAround 2003 the new president of China, Wu, and the premier, Wen tried to push the country towards a scientific and technological direction. Many of their scientist would go abroad to study and never come back. They tried to implement a soviet like big rush campaign, putting scientific development at the top of their goals. Their method was to enhance original and foreign technology by reinventing and co-inventing them. International companies started noting this blueprint as a for massive technology theft. Many of these multinational companies spoke up about what was going on. The most noted complain came from the CEO of General Electric, when he said, “I really worry about china. I am not sure that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.” China later publicly agreed to revise the blue print and moderate some of the more contentious arguments. This part of the chapter for me was a bit shocking to see that their actual plan to improve was to copy what others had done and just modify or improve it. This may be one of the reasons they fell so behind on the technological growth because they always looked at what others have done and do not try to invent things for themselves.
ReplyDelete-Rodny Aquino
There is great potential in being a second mover in a market especially technology. That is surprising though that China was copying other countries tech and not developing their own.
DeleteMake sure to sign your name somehow, otherwise you won't get credit for this!
Delete-Professor Schilleman
On the next chapter I covered, it talked about finding the money and choosing the right Chinese business partner(s). China is really strict when it comes to money, it is nearly impossible to obtain bank financing in China, as the nation’s immature banking industry doesn’t include channels for foreign entrepreneurs seeking seed money. A lot of people that the book interviewed said that it is extremely hard to get financing and that their own solution has been to collect funding from partners, clients, or suppliers. Saving enough money to survive at least during the first months of operation. Self-finance is the safest option for funding your business. Also, when it comes to work with Chinese partners, it may be better to do it alone unless you have total trust in your Chinese partner. Make sure legal precautions are in place. The ingredients for a good Chinese-foreign partnership is to develop good communication and trust in order to fully understand the goals of the Chinese partner, take the time to build a solid relationship with your partner, and to hammer out a workable agreement and contract. Also, to have mutual respect and trust is very important. There was a quote that Olaf, Founder and CEO of Unisono Fieldmarketing, said which was “When it comes to business plans, you have to make sure you are profitable within a year. It is nonsense to make a five-year plan before you can make a profit. Things are changing so fast [in China] that if your business model isn’t profitable in a year, you have to seriously reconsider. Maybe that’s not true in other places, but it is true in China.” So it is better to have everything planned before hand.
ReplyDelete-Manelkis Javier Garcia
Your book does not only seem interesting it also seems very practical and informative. I like how you covered the details in your book and the different points in your book. Just a question that from reading this book do you think that is is easier to find an American business partner than a Chinese one?
DeleteIsaac Fernandez***^^
DeleteCoby Federowski
ReplyDeleteChapter 3 of my book goes over a few angles that allow Chinese businesses to compete and it shares the story of the Wei brothers and how they built Ting Hsinn one of China's largest food companies. Here is the amazing story in a nutshell. The Wei brothers grew up working in their fathers cooking oil business in Taiwan. When their father passed they decided to move the oil business to mainland China where the food industry was still fair game. They sold their high quality oil and it was popular only as a gift but to expensive for normal consumer consumption. They abandoned the oil industry and opened an egg roll line that was made with higher quality ingredients. Again, too expensive for normal consumers, they resorted to biscuits and on a chance they found their nitch. On an eighteen hour train ride to Beijing, the youngest Wei brother had packed lunches and when he prepared his Taiwanese noodles, the smell that covered the cabin attracted all. The brother then did extensive research on what regions of China prefer what taste and then with all the last money, changed their biscuit factory into a noodle factory, aired over 100 TV commercials in Beijing and consulted marketing experts on exactly where to position their new, healthy, reasonably priced noodles. The next year they invested over 300 million dollars in bank debt into production and were producing were producing 3.3 million packets of noodles a day. In 2004, China became the world largest consumer of instant noodles and the Wei brothers brand, Master Kong, accounted for 33 percent of that. They then took their brand back to Taiwan where they were then 2 times larger in noodle sales than the leading food company Uni-President.
They took 17 percent of the noodle market in their first year against Uni-President.
Isaac Fernandez
ReplyDeleteChapter 2.2 of my book.
This chapter is focused on business context in the west Vs. the East. The chapter starts off by giving a comparison between a car and businesses. The book said that in the surface business are only focused on making a profit and market shares (the engine of the car). But, that there is an underlining part of culture that is often forgotten in business and that is what makes a business move forward. This factor determines how fast or slow the business will grow and move. The author hits on very important point and that is how to people of this generation move form wanting quick and simple cause-and-affect answers to understanding the context of an answer.
This section hits one point in which the author describes 3 systems; Individual, society, and systematic interaction system. The individual system is made to see people as individual rather than race, ethics history, and color. The society system is the idea of culture of a certain group that is implemented into the game of business. The systematic interaction is how culture of a given society interacts with another. One fascinating point that the book brings is the idea that managers and leaders create a culture while workers live in the culture
I think it is very interesting how alarmed some Americans become when they hear that another country is doing something good. For example, when China introduced the Huawei 5g technology, the US government freaked out and tried to persuade Europe to not buy Chinese tech because they could use it to spy on us. While I suppose that’s a possibility, I think that we Americans are way too used to considering ourselves the “best country”, when in reality, different countries all have different strengths. We can’t be the best at everything.
ReplyDelete— Ashley Blake
I don’t know why this was posted as a comment, but it was meant to be a reply to Rebecca’s post.
Delete—Ashley Blake
Chapter 3 of my book talked about the different patterns of useful information for innovative ideas that entrepreneurs learn to recognize. It answers how the innovative entrepreneurs improve the crucial process of prototypes in the different job areas. It was very interesting to know that they will discuss how they would incorporate "dummy drafts", of the product they were selling, into the planning so it would be easier to work out the mistakes as they go. The chapter also describes how the innovators prompt different strategic ideas by finding the rarest needs and products. One of the best parts of the chapter is when they explained the "yin and yang" of the innovation that reaches the winning prize. It includes the supply-side changes that ended being better, cheaper, or faster product that will be enable by technology. Apart from supply-side changes, it includes demand-side changes, in which it either increases or decreases the scope of marketing and the distribution of the different products that the companies are offering. This chapter gave a wide range of knowledge that has helped me understand the difficult and long process that the entrepreneurs go through.
ReplyDelete- Allison Barreto
DeleteChapter four of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, explains the thirst people had to learn about the gospel. The Chinese natives would worship their dead family members and have hallucinations. The Yankees sent missionaries to teach people Christianity and Education. It is still very dangerous to be a protestant in China because the government tries to stay in control of their people.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting to read. I have always known being Christian is not allowed in China and that they get punished by the government. I think it will be intresting to see how Adventist worship when we get to China. - Cynthia
ReplyDelete