Comments on: Bits and Pieces From This Week in China

By: Scott Loar

Scott Loar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:12:56 +0000

So you learned when you were 12 years old “it is common sense that country A will avoid war with B, as it can endanger their investment, except in case of ’securing’ investment.”

You call this fallacy “common sense” and repeat it but that is not proof of argument and is demonstrably false as contrary historical example shows again and again and again and again. Also, Germany’s wish for more colonies did not precipitate WWI; the Great War was not a war for or about colonies.

Please read with understanding, “economics does not trump all other considerations when one nation decides to war against another or against itself (civil war).”

I’ll let you have the last word. Go ahead.

By: krdr

krdr — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:58:56 +0000

USA (or NATO) went in war with Serbia, although, first McDonald’s in East Europe was open there. Same MD that was the first restaurant to reach million servings per years. So, MD is not warranty for peace with USA

By: Scott Loar

Scott Loar — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:10:37 +0000

A few weeks ago one of the participants on the television program 头脑风暴 (Brainstorm) predicted that war with China and within the next few years was the inevitable consequence of the US economic crisis; the comments by the factory manager may be bizarre but not unusual. A people living under a controlled press serving a single authority who casually rank Japan and the US as their greatest enemies, one as recent historical example and the other as a jealous and declining rival, may be expected to have weird notions of what constitutes common knowledge.

By: jg

jg — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:04:20 +0000

I’ve heard the war thing far too often over the last decade – more so at the end of the 90’s than I’ve heard recently. This has always struck me oddly. I’ve also tried to counter it with some realities, though never with much success. I have brought a few to pause by mentioning that a few strategic strikes of national railroad lines would throw China into a major food crisis within 2-3 days. Last winter’s storms were a fine example of what can happen when a few trains stop. When food is brought into the equation, you usually get more of the war arguer’s attention, though anyone who is bent towards war usually doesn’t have much of a realistic sense of a future, even 2-3 days ahead. And they’re usually not very hungry for education, either.

By: david

david — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:35:15 +0000

I’m in partial agreement.

I don’t have an MBA, and neither to millions of others who run SME’s; but we’re small and so I think that it’s manageable to do without. Certainly you don’t need an MBA to do business, but that’s not the point.

The point is that there is a culture of and educational commitment to management in the “West” that is not yet fully developed in China. This affects the quality of both local talent available to individual companies and the standard of management within individual companies across industries.

Individually, companies with local only often have issues with HR, forecasting, international standard accounting, managing through difficult times and meeting international standards. MBA’s by themselves don’t solve these problems, but an educated business culture gives you resources to draw from.

The affect of this lack of individuals with significant international experience is very apparent in China MNC’s have major issues with and spend tons on re-training ‘the best and the brightest” that they’ve hired because they don’t meet their needs yet. Companies without MBA’s are, well, they are whom the rest of us work with regularly and we know they are not (for the most part) well managed at all.

Until the generation that started graduating from college in this decade arrived the legacy of most managers and anyone with higher education in China was SOE’s and marxist education. Only those who have graduated after ‘00 have had 20 years of consistent exposure to markets and capitalism and better quality (in the cities) education.

It makes a difference.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:12:58 +0000

I don’t quite see your point about the lack of local MBA graduates:

Many successful German and Japanese companies employ few or no staff with MBA degrees. Didn’t hurt their business prospects, it seems to me.

In general, I don’t quite see the value-added of many MBA programs. Lots of strategic blah, and little in terms of hard skills.

Plus, 15 years of work experience after getting a degree is plenty of time to learn how to manage a company. And you don’t have to be 25 when you get the degreee: Plenty of Americans get an MBA when they are already 30 or 35. And if you never got around to doing an MBA, you could always pick up a couple of good books, and learn the rest on the job.

Having said all that, of course it is true that China has a shortage of experienced “management talent”…