Silk Road International Blog

Update 30/09/08: others are noticing the contradiction between walking in space and the disasters on the ground in China.  Many are saying that the solution is increased accountability within the system.

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I’ve said more than once that much of what you see here in China is scripted.  The 0lympics should have convinced you of that.  But, if you still don’t believe it, read this report about recent Chinese astronauts first night in space–published BEFORE their rocket even left the ground!!!

Foreigners going into factories for audits, inspections, first visits, etc. need to be very aware of this–I promise you, your Chinese partner is actively “putting their best foot forward” even if that foot is not theirs.

Since this is just “business as usuall” from the government down to the smallest factory, from accounting to business dinners, is it any wonder that locals have very little faith that there is someone, be it in government, business or society, which is looking out for the little guy?  People here are dependent on themselves and their immediate families and that’s honestly about it.

About 2 weeks ago there was a great article (in the Times Online, I think) about the difference between the Chinese perception of a “successful” 0lympics and what the West will expect from London.  The difference lies in the importance placed on presentation vs “reality.”  The best take away from the is the concept that China values clean, smooth (face-saving) presentations while “the west” likes to see raw emotion and “real” human interactions rather than fantastic stage productions.  The corollary is that any public presentation in China is known, or at least assumed, to be completely scripted (e.g. fake).

What my experience in China and these issues speak to is a systemic lack of trust outside of any given individuals’ inner circle of friends, family and close business associates.

Here are a few more examples from the news and just this last one week of work in China.

We know of a factory that will not keep the contractual agreements with the client for shipping/payment terms.  The factory has repeatedly held product hostage to price increases and shipping delays.  Now that everything is done and finally ready to ship, there is an argument over retention of the molds.  The factory will not honor the contract payment terms (balance after FOB) because they think that the client will, as they have done, play games with the payment to gain the upper hand in the mold argument.  The client, of course, says that the factory has proven to be untrustworthy and will not pay until the truck is secure in the port.  The stalemate requires someone (SRI in this case) to step in and act as an acceptable third party.

Next example: Talking with the owner of a small print factory today I was reminded how “normal” this kind of thing is (product held hostage and the milk scandal).  I was trying to empathize that on a day that Chinese people should be proud (because of the space walk) there are still thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people affected by contaminated milk.  My point was if you can’t trust people making baby food and the government inspectors then whom can you trust?!  The factory owner just shrugged and commented that this is how things work here.  If you have connections you can stay away from the contaminated milk, or make a lot of money, or just not have to pay as much to get the things done you need.  He listed a couple of example of social and business policies that “everyone knows you just pay officials” and you can get around the law.  He was much more resigned than angry.

Next example, from the media: the melamine scandal is no longer linked only to milk powder—and it’s still growing.  Milk powder, fresh milk, yoghurt, ice-cream and other milk products, Pizza Hut pizza (cheese), cookies (Lotte Koala bears and others), White Rabbit candies, coffee (fresh and canned), bread, protein bars and drinks, cake mixes and “anything that should have protein in it.” Let me repeat that: anything that should have protein in it is now suspect!!! In Thailand, for example, that includes: “Oreo wafer sticks, Dove milk chocolate bars, M&M chocolate candies, Snickers caramel peanut bars and nougat, Mentos yoghurt candies, and Mao Huad coffee and oatmeal crackers.”  The EU has now banned ALL children’s food imports from China.

(Angry side note: do you know that they are stopping any Chinese crossing the SZ/HK boarder with more than 4 cans of milk powder?!  Can you believe that?  How many times can the average Chinese cross the border in a week/month to buy milk for their children, family members or neighbors?  If you don’t have a HK ID it can be a few hour process and most people only have one day off a week.  I find this maddeningly insensitive—since the government is at least partially responsible!  Sure there will be some abuse of the crisis by people trying to make a buck off the situation.  But to limit people who really need it is really pretty cold hearted, I think.  Of course, (white) foreigners with more than 4 cans can cross with nary a question asked.  Now back to the trust story.)

And then, just this morning, the NYT is reporting that eyewitness accounts and photos of the bus attack on the Chinese officers in Kashgar, China last month differ GREATLY from the official report.

So as all of this is happening, I’m about half way through with a GREAT book, Will Hutton’s: The Writing on the Wall: China and The West in the 21st Century.  It’s well written, well researched, and timely.  Read it.  I’ll review it next week when I’m finished reading it.  Anyway, as I was reading this book and the milk crisis broke out I found myself thinking that everyone should read at least this section of his book (p.130-132)—so here it is!  Timely and appropriate section title:

Is Corruption Endemic?

Lu Xiaobo, director of the East Asian Institute at Columbia University, take the analysis even farther.  IN Cadres and Corruption, he argues that a post-revolutionary party is trapped between its need to become a bureaucracy bound by rules, and its revolutionary purpose—to break rules and bureaucracies.  As judge and jury for its own cases, abjuring any external scrutiny, communism cannot easily police its own deviant party members.  But that is not the only reason corruption is difficult to eradicate.  The organization itself is driven into deviance because, one the revolution is over, there is an unbridgeable inconsistency between revolutionary rhetoric and the compromises of non-revolutionary practice.  The morality of revolution—that the ends justify the means—becomes a morality that justifies corruption.  And when as many as 40 per cent of officials are not paid regularly they seek self-preservation in a morally ambiguous political climate.  This reality, coupled with the growing opportunity for corruption, has characterized China’s development.  The deviant officials of the deviant part-state can prey on wealth with no ideological discomfort because of the ambiguity over where the state ends and private life begins.

Lu’s argument is similar to my own.  China has a well developed concept of the state, but communism cannot permit the conception of an intermediate public domain between state and civil society.  In this respect it is the faithful heir to the Confucian tradition of governance with systemic corruption.  Absolute power, along with moral exhortation to its official class to refrain from plundering the people, is preferred to offering institutional, legal or ideological protection in authoritarian states; but, founded on the doctrines of communist revolution, official are more powerful and more psychologically predisposed to corruption in a communist one-party state than in any other.  I have argued in earlier articles that corruption flourishes where social norms that might induce a sense of shame are weak, where there is a widespread belief that a high income results not from effort or merit butt from effectively working the system and were there is a belief that corruption is victimless—crime involves someone else’s money.  In China all three inducements to corruption exists in spades.  Add the peculiarities of communism and it is not difficult to understand why corruption is so dominant and so hard to root out.

James Kynge, a former Beijing bureau chief of the Financial Times, writes in China Shakes the World that in China ‘trust is a commodity constantly under siege.  Poverty and competition for scares resources impinge upon it.  The ideological vacuum that replaced communism undermines it.  The daily diet of propaganda disorientates it.  The venality of officials devalues it.  The ascendancy of a value system dominated by money hollows it out.  What is left is a society in which describing someone as “honest” can jus as easily be a gentle criticism as a compliment.’

The costs of this mistrustful, corrupt environment can be very high.  Kynge describes a crooked blood bank scheme in Henan in the 1980s that was run with the full knowledge of corrupt local officials.  Donors received blood back, minus its plasma, from a general blood pool that had been infected by HIV-positive blood.  The scheme seems to have left as many as one hundred thousand children orphaned.  Yet the enriched officials have arrested Aids activists, shut down orphanages and harassed journalists.  In another scandal, officials allowed companies to sell fake and poisonous milk powder that caused disfigurement and even deaths; even though officials have been imprisoned, the production has reappeared on the market.

Corruption is part of the system’s DNA.  Jiang and his successor Hu Jintao have thus been disabled, despite their rhetoric and their attempted actions.  Legislative injunctions have to be implemented and policed by the very system which is corrupt and which disallows any external independent agencies because they would challenge the party’s political independent agencies because they would challenge the party’s political hegemony.  The party begins successive ‘rectification’ campaigns and inquiries, but these are compromised by the fact that the investigators are themselves corrupt and becoming more so.  The climate of psychological warfare creates an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty: corrupt individuals demand even higher bribes because the risks are higher.

The full book can be purchased online at Amazon here.

Tags: Business, China, Politics, Thailand by David Dayton
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The following is a list of tactics presented by managers, bosses or engineers to me in meetings that we had regarding rejected product with a couple of large factories (more than 600 employees each) over the last month.  The quotes and the “translations” are from meeting notes that I took (to make sure positions and options don’t change later on (and they quite often do)).  By the end of the meeting with the second factory I realized that I was hearing some of the same things from each factory—and many of them I’d head before from others too.

1.    “We have a lot of pressure from our boss to get this product moved.”

Translation: “We are under internal (financial) pressure, by our boss, to get the product out the door, or we may lose our jobs.”  But instead of fixing the problems the position most often chosen is to take a hard line with the client and get the product sold, more or less as is, rather than spend more money to repair/replace it.

Some times this is not as bad as it may initially seem—you now have a few folks whose jobs are very dependant on your satisfaction.  You have the opportunity to now show them how it’s in their best interest to meet your standards (and move their product).  A starting point is often convincing them that you really do want the product.  For western buyers going to this level maybe a “duh! Of course we want it” experience.  But for Chinese factories who are often burned by buyers who can’t pay for orders this is a very necessary starting point.  With the stink that you probably just threw over product quality, they are honestly unsure if you’ll really take it (late and substandard as it is).  Once these managers realize that they can keep their jobs if you’re happy you’ve essentially got some people working for you on the inside.

2.    “We did our best.”

Translation #1: “We’re not exactly sure what you’re complaining about—this level of quality has been fine for other clients (that didn’t do their own QC).” What this boils down to is either the factory over sold their abilities in the bid process or they underperformed in the production process.  Of course, neither is acceptable.  Further, I almost always doubt this claim because usually reworked product, samples and some of the production all met the contracted standards.  So if they can do it some of the time, the problem is QC and the management of inline processes in which case the people you are talking to are most like the ones directly responsible (and the ones least likely to want to admit it).  But even if they do admit it, this doesn’t mean that they are willing to or have the ability to fix the problems (in this case sub-standard product).  Which is why there is a second translation.

Translation #2: “This is as good as it gets from us.” Just because factories have some international experience/clients and have the same machines that you’ve used back home does not mean that they can consistently achieve the same results.  Often, specifically because of where the blame sits, factories are completely unwilling to redo product that is “just slightly off.”  Remember, going from 85% approval to 95% approval is typically much easier than going from 95% to 97.5%.  If you’re already at your factory’s threshold point pushing them may not be worth for either of you.

3.    “We’ve already spent a lot of time and money to fix it.”

Translation: “We’ve have used up our limited amount of boss-given leeway to redo your product; the costs of doing any more work will be taken out of our salaries/bonuses.”  You will never get past this obstacle unless you move up the corporate ladder and get to someone who can both make money decisions and override the managers’ objections.

Sometimes you need to work with the people that you’re given and sometimes you need to go over their heads.  It’s a tough call, and I’m second guessing myself a lot as to when to piss people off and when to work with them—because that’s really what going over their heads means; you’ve decided your quality is more important then their face.  And while it is to you, it’s most likely not to them.

The difficult part about going up the ladder is that the higher you get, the less the people know about your project (and the more they rely on the people you’ve diss’d for information).  Of course, one word from the boss and you can get all that you asking for too.

4.    “The rework is not very good and we were worried about this before we started.”

Translation: “This is not our fault, you rejected it and asked that we fix the problems we thought were really non-issues in the first place.”  Of course the replacement of rejected product was a choice too, and was what most clients want, but what factories won’t due unless they are under legal pressure to do so.

This is an attempt at managing your expectations. Expect to hear this just before doing some QC on re-work.  Often, when the rework is done right, this can also be interpreted as humility and/or an attempt at preserving face.

5.    “If the client had agreed to these standards in the beginning we could have avoided all the arguments.”

Translation: “See, we told you that you were too strict!”  This is the classic transfer of responsibility for delays to “unreasonable” client demands rather than poor internal QC.  Never mind contracted standards, when things go south what can actually be done becomes the real standard.

We hear this all the time as we’re finalizing shipments—original standards can’t be met, we battle for all the rework we can squeeze of the factory and then settle for “as good as it’s going to get” and then the factory says something like this—“see we told you it was already good enough.”  Implying that actually trying to achieve the contracted QC standards was a stupid and unnecessary waste of time on my part.  Silly me.

6.    “We didn’t know this was going to happen when we did X rework.”

Translation: “Your client’s request for rework is the source of this new problem (and additional expense), not anything we did.”  Probably more than any of the comments listed, I hate this one the most.  Why?  Because it means there are now new problems, and new problems can turn a late project into a really late and expensive headache.  Cost can really rise any time retail packaging is ruined by reopening/repackaging, for example.  This is never what you want to hear—it almost always means that you are back to square one in your resolving-concerns-negotiations.

This also means that as little as possible effort (and planning/forethought) went into the rework process; and that’s what’s most frustrating about this.  With just a little preparation or even an honest desire to do it right the second time this can almost always be avoided.

For example, we had to get a factory to remake large plastic lids for a client’s cooler project.  The factory had to go into their own pockets for the money to replace a full 50% of the order and what happened after the new lids were made and painted?  They put them in $0.03 plastic bags before they were dry and ruined the finish on 20% of them!!  They had to buff/polish and repaint hundreds of lids because someone just didn’t care enough to check and see if the paint was dry.

7.    “We’d really like to sell the entire quantity.”

Translation: “We expect that you’ll buy the entire ordered quantity regardless of your problems with quality.”  This is another tricky situation.  If you agree to buy everything, and you may have too to avoid losing deposit money and/or current product, you’ve got to both manage rework and control the rejected product (so that you don’t see it on eBay later on).  If you don’t agree to buy it all the factory may just take a loss on the project and recycle it (e.g. sell to another “trading company” that will sell it and share the profits).

Asking a factory to rework 100% of an order (or even 50%) and honestly letting them know up front that you’ll still probably reject 10-20% of it leaves them with very little incentive to help you out.  There are times when it’s prudent to be quite.  If you play your card right you may get the final rejected qtty’s offered to you at a discount—you laugh.  I know, you didn’t want it in the first place and now that the whole order is sub standard why would you want an additional 10% that’s really substandard?  Why?  Because sometimes that the best option.  Getting out of a bad agreement by taking everything with you and not leaving any sellable product behind can be a very good thing for you.

My definition of Chinese Cooperation: Paying more to get less than you originally agreed to and being honestly happy about it.

8.    “This is good enough for the Japanese.”

Translation: “As everyone knows, the Japanese are the end all be all of QC; you’re being unrealistic in your quality expectations.”   You know, for a country that openly hates the Japanese, Chinese people sure respect Japanese work standards.  At least they do whenever we reject product.  I have to admit, I’m not sure that Japanese standards are as great as they are cracked up to be.  I mean, if they would, on a regular basis, accept our rejects then they’re actually pretty low.  Or…it could be that the factories are overstating their indignation to get us to back off of our QC demands.  No, couldn’t be that.

Regardless of what other clients will or will not accept (I really don’t care), my opinion is that your standards should always be as high as possible.  You can almost be assured that you’ll have to come down at some point—and the higher you start, the higher your standards will still be when you’re finished.

As I’m constantly reminding my project managers, negotiations isn’t about what you want as much as it’s about understanding where the other party is coming from and what they can actually do for you.  Understanding what options are realistic for your supplier is a valuable starting point in discussing how you’ll get what you expect (or at least what you can accept).

Bonus: here’s our list of 30+ negotiating tactics that we’ve collected over the years working in here in Asia.

Tags: Business, China, Culture by David Dayton
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After watching hours of the milk scandal news from China and stock market news from Hong Kong my Chinese wife said to me yesterday, “You know why China is the sick man in Asia?  It’s because we are willing to kill ourselves for money.”

The “boycott made in china” calls do not seem so racist any more, especially now that Chinese are making the calls for the boycott themselves.

I don’t mean to mock the significance of the milk powder crisis in any way, but it’s not all that surprising that something like this has happened (again).  After the raucous nationalism of summer 2008 it seems like everyone forgot about all the humiliating recalls of the summer of 2007.  Everyone except for those of us who do QC for a living.

As the milk powder scandal shows, out in the trenches, over the past year, nothing’s really changed.  Sure, the toy industry is paranoid or has moved on to SEA countries, but no one else seems to be talking much about the recalls from so long long ago.  We still have the same issues with factories not meeting agreed upon standards, not understanding those standards in the first place, substituting cheaper domestic products in place of more expensive imported ones, using uncontrolled sub-suppliers, working rejected product back into approved stock, and of course purposeful and natural quality fade issues.

Whenever we have to deal with these issues I’m always amazed at how a QC issue can quickly turn into a debate over national superiority.  We’ve been in QC or rework negotiations (arguments) on behalf of clients numerous times where we’ve been told something like: “It’s good enough for the Japanese.” Or “Of course these are the correct numbers, do you think that a Chinese manager would lie to you?!” Or “You Americans think that everything has to be the best or it’s not good enough for you.”

Of course, QC has nothing to do with race or nationality.  But because it is often foreign QC personnel that identify substandard product, these conversations happen more often than you may think.  And you can bet they are thought, but not spoken even more often.

Like so many other issues in China, nothing will change in the quality of products being sold to the domestic (and international) markets until enough people get angry enough to force a change.  And then the change will only be effective if there is enough transparency in government to make sure that enforcement is effective and consistent.  Remember this tainted milk issue happed before, just 4 years ago.  And while there was anger and temporary outrage, which resulted in rich people buying milk in Hong Kong, nothing else really changed.  Reports are that as early as 2005 warnings about chemicals in milk went unheeded and the government actually allowed Sanlu to make milk powder without any inspections!!

Another thing that has to happen is that these big-crisis lessons have to become cross-applicable to individuals outside of the dairy industry.  Meaning, the lesson that bad-milk-can-kill-people-so-there-needs-to-be-better-regulations,-enforcement-and-QC needs to be transferred to other industries like: poorly built autos and auto parts, shoddy domestic consumer products, clothing with too many chemicals/dyes, all contaminated food products and, farther down the list, non-essential consumer products made for export.

But I fear that I may be asking for too much.  In my experience, I’ve found that Chinese can be brilliant, talented, capable and thoughtful—just like anyone else on the planet—given the right motivations and opportunities.  I’ve also found that the Chinese system (in government, education and business) rarely reward these traits.  More often than not, talented individuals do not have experience in cross-application of lessons or “thinking out of the box,” or standing out from the predominant group-think.  I don’t mean to say they can’t or won’t or always don’t act individualistically.  Just that it’s not common.

How many Chinese right now, who are not dealing personally with affects of the milk tragedy, are going to recognize that a lack of enforced regulations across the board in China and the consistently substandard products being passed off as acceptable are a chronic and deadly problem in China right now? When are Chinese people going to realize that they are entitled to the same quality as the rest of the world?  How many will realize that while calls to boycott all Chinese goods are often stupid and always extreme there are a significant number of real concerns that are not racially motivated?

We’ll see if anything changes here—for those of us that live with our children here, I pray they do.  But I won’t hold my breath.

OK, off the soapbox and onto what can be done about your individual products in China.

I’ve been harping on the test everything, test often mantra so much, I fear that people will get sick of hearing it.  But then we have a series of recalls like this and I realize that I’m not crazy and I’ve obviously not said it enough.  Here are some processes (from previous posts and published articles) that will help you immediately with your quality control in China (or anywhere else, for that matter).

First, the rules for working with Chinese factories.
Second, how to qualify an appropriate factory.
Third, here are the ways to avoid quality fade and ensure consistently good quality product.
Fourth, here are some tips on negotiations.
Fifth, here’s what you can do to make sure you get what you ask for.
Sixth, what to do about missed shipping dates.
And finally, here are some tips on returning product to China if all else has failed.

Tags: Business, China by David Dayton
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I was interviewed by Public Radio’s Market Watch segment yesterday and their focus on the general economic conditions (downturn) headed into China got me thinking that there are certainly going to be more rather than less problems in the future.  Specifically, Scott Tong asked me, in regards to the current tainted milk powered case, “were you surprised? and do you think that more issues like this will come?”  The answer to the first question is “no.”  My (Chinese) wife has not allowed us to buy milk powder in China ever.  And the regularity of reports out of Hong Kong of rejected Chinese imports of pork, fish, chicken and various veggies has convinced us that living here is hazardous to our health—no joke.  We are very cautious about what we buy here but admit that if we headed every warning we’d never eat.

Secondly, and more applicable to business, yes.  I expect that we’ll have more cases like this and like what happened in 2007 again.  Why?  Because as margins shrink and as the economy slows down (smaller and fewer orders) there will be more and more pressures on factory owners to increase or at least retain current levels of profits in any way they can.  While this may just be business as usual—for which you need to be testing/checking/monitoring to compensate–it means that your product quality is up to you and solely you.  As it always has been, actually.  The really unfortunate news is the CNN (and other) reports that the govt apparently knew about this before the 0lympics and decided to cover it up to make sure there was no bad news in August.  This further entrenches the belief that the laws that slow economic growth in the short term (labor law, green GNP and most other Chinese laws) look great on paper but enforcement will be increasingly lax by local governments that are still measuring success by money.

Some people say that this will teach Chinese brands/companies a lesson in capitalism and the power of brand name recognition.  But why didn’t the last milk powered scandal teach this?  Why didn’t the lead paint, the non-adhesive tires, the tainted cough syrup, etc., etc., etc., scandals teach these lessons already and why is this time different?  When push comes to shove in this next year of poor domestic economic performance do you really think that things will be different?  Don’t count on it.

Great analysis of the crisis at Image Thief and China Law Blog.

Other good China/ASEAN news:

China
The global pinch is hitting home in China too.  Hmmm, not so independent after all.
This is one of the best articles I’ve read recently on the Chinese economy and what it means for Australia (but it’s good for the rest of us to read too).
Industrial output from China is slowing down but how much is just the 0lympic affect?–We can’t really read China data.
Is China a threat (again)?

Hong Kong
Best Courts in Asia.

Thailand
Political problems means less tourists so Thailand needs to shape up.  I guess you know who is influential in govt circles (e.g. military folk that control much of the sex trade).
Logistics to open up in BKK.

Vietnam
Growing economy but poor transparency and confidence.

Tags: Business, China, Politics, Thailand by David Dayton
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Before you read this, I’m warning you, I hated this book.  I’ve rewritten this 4 or 5 times trying to make it “nice.”  You’ve been warned. (MONDAY 15/09/08 MORNING UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM)

I’ve been accused of bashing China on this blog.  I don’t agree with that title but I’m certainly no Panda hugger.  Regardless of what you call me I felt like I needed to take a bath when I finished reading this book.

The author tells us in the introduction, that he wrote this because, as he says, “I can and I must.”  Yet there are two other more obvious reasons why this book was written.  First to get your money, and second, to scared the pants off you for some unspecified Anti-Chinese agenda.  Both jobs are accomplished admirably.

The book is the new China Bashers’ constitution.  Reading it you just know that every anti-China congressman and union leader in the US are going to be quoting this for the next decade.  I’m guessing that’s why it was written (and probably who paid for it too).

The book is based on a number of unproven and/or untrue assumptions including, but not limited to these: The US can outspend China, there will be either a hot or cold war with China, China will always be an adversary, China can and will continue indefinitely to grow/spend/pollute like it has for the last 30 years, China can be contained by the US/EU and China cares about international public opinion more than domestic opinion.

Basically it’s a collection of every single bad press clipping that has ever been published about China in the last 10 years.  And, admittedly, while some of the horror stories are true, some context in retelling the stories or even a superficial nod to objectivity would have been nice.  It wouldn’t have hurt to include some actual university/peer review quality research (since the author is a professor) or even a causal mention of alternative points of view.

There isn’t a single source citation in the entire book and the many of the ideas and much of the background come from (admits the author) unverifiable internet sites and anti-china organizations.  Again, that doesn’t mean that the stories are not true; just exaggerated, out of context, agenda driven and written with more hype than a bad B-movie trailer.

But even though it’s very poorly written, it’s a book that you just can’t put down—like a train wreck, you want to know what else could possibly be worse then the previous chapter.

China has serious world-affecting issues in many areas, no doubt.  And many of these issues affect the US (and other countries) directly and will get certainly continue and some will even get worse.  Pollution, for example.  But without a solution for solving a single one of the problems presented, what’s the point of reprinting (ad nauseasium) the obvious?!

This book does provide a service—it’s the balance to the rah rah China press that constitutes most books on business in China.  But it’s written to be more of a scare tactic than an investigation of or solution for major issues.  I’m all for raising awareness to issues like these and then proposing something to do about them. But this book doesn’t do that.

The book’s conclusions, prefaced with this hypocritical gem: “no problem can be solved until it is clearly understood,” seem to just have been added on as an after thought.  Some of his conclusions/solutions into individuals and countries wining a war with China are:

*Be a conscious consumer.
*Write your congress person.
*Buy Made in the USA products (but don’t be protectionist)
*Buy more copies of this book and donate them to friends and libraries.

I guess that thoughtful consumerism and letters to senators will eventually cripple one of the largest economies/markets/populations the world has ever seen.  In addition to that individual formula for success, our governments should:

*Encourage free trade by forcing trade partners to abide by WTO legislation
*Encourage IP protections (yea, nobody’s trying to do that now)
*Add currency manipulation to the list of unfair trade practices
*Adopt a zero tolerance policy for counterfeiting and pirating and tighten the boarders (no mention about eliminating the #1 market for illegal goods in the world—the US)
*End the blood for oil politics of China (yea, that’ll be easy, let me just finish up with Iraq here first).
*Counter Chinese imperialism with our own “Charm Offensive.”  Quick, name one other country in the history of the world with the “soft” power/influence of the current US (culture)?
*Enforce environmental standards in China via trade agreements and contracts
*Resolve the Taiwan issue  (No solutions, suggestions or any ideas on how.  Just do it.)
*Don’t get the US military involved in any “unnecessary conflicts.”  (No shit?!  Really?)

There are no workable scenarios, no processes or “how to” steps to get any of these things accomplished, no analysis of current policy or positions to oppose/support, no ideas whatsoever how to get anything done.

This book is a collection of the worst news stories that the author could find followed by a list of ideas that was most likely generated on the blackboard at the end of a college IR class.

Don’t waste your time or money.

________________________________

Monday Morning UPDATE-20 good books on China.

Since I don’t want to be just critical and leave you with nothing of value (other than the warning not to buy The Coming China Wars), I figured I’d better give you a list of 21 China books that I liked and recomend.

1.    Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China. (History)
2.    Mayfair Mei-hui Yang’s Gifts, Favors, & Banquets, The Art of Social Relationships in China. (Anthropology)
3.    Susan Shirk’s China: Fragile Superpower. (Politics)
4.    James Mann’s The China Fantasy. (Politics)
5.    Scott Seligman’s Chinese Business Etiquette. (Business)
6.    Donald Sull’s Made in China (Business)
7.    Peter Hessler’s River Town and Oracle Bones. (China Stories)
8.    Tim Clissold’s Mr. China (Business)
9.    Will Hutton’s The Writing on the Wall, China and the West in the 21st Century (Politics).
10.    Bergsten et al’s China, The Balance Sheet (Business)
11.    John Pomfret’s Chinese Lessons (China Stories)
12.    Ross Terill’s The New Chinese Empire and what it means for the US. (Politics)
13.    Pierre Xiao Lu’s Elite China (Business)
14.    Julia Lovell’s The Great Wall, China Against the World (History/Politics)
15.    James McGregor’s One Billion Customers (Business)
16.    Ted Fishman’s China Inc. (Business/Politics)
17.    Clyde Presowitz’s Three Billion New Capitalists (Business/Politics)
18.    Ming-Jer Chen’s Inside Chinese Business (Business)
19.    James Lilley’s China Hands (China Stories)
20.    Chen and Wu’s Will the Boat Sink the Water (Social Issues)

And 10 more books you can probably just as well skip:

1.    Navarro’s The Coming China Wars
2.    Fernandez’s China CEO
3.    Engardio’s Chindia
4.    Chee and West’s Myths about Doing Business in China
5.    Ross’s Fast Boat to China
6.    Sun’s The Long March
7.    Menzies’s 1421
8.    Chang’s Ma0, the unknown story
9.    HBR’s Doing Business in China
10.     Kynge’s China Shakes the World

Tags: Book Reviews, China by David Dayton
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