This is China! blog

Monocle Magazine recently interviewed me about the relationship in China between its water resources and energy needs and the impact the relationship has on China’s development. I consider Monocle the magazine for ambassador’s wives and rich Arab sheiks; it’s approach is high-end all the way – an honor to be in its pages. The interview appears in its September edition.

The online interview is here (unfortunately, behind a paywall). Though I haven’t received a copy of the magazine yet, you should be able to see the interview in print.

While posting my first-ever video on Youtube I ran into a bit of a branding problem. The video promotes the sort of China talks I deliver to corporations and at conferences. Originally, I thought to name the video “Bill Dodson Speaks on the China Trends Impacting Business and the World.” Wordy, I know. But that wasn’t the problem.

Whenever my video displayed for viewing, a videotaped service of a memorial service for one deceased “Bill Dodson” was top of the list of other videos “like” my own.

Well, I considered, that would certainly be confusing for viewers of my Youtube video – and potential buyers of my book and perhaps speaking services – if they thought I was already dead.

So I changed the title of my video to “The Critical China Trends Impacting Business and the World” (still wordy, I know; but got to try to pick up as many keywords as possible ) No more memorial listing, then. Though authors supposedly sell better posthumously than when they were still alive and kicking.

Check out the video here.

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iTV-Asia did a fine job, I must say, in its interview with me about my book, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and Its Relationship with the World. Some of the pithy questions the interviwer, Nicholas McDonald, asked helped reveal what I was trying to get on about with ‘yet another China book’. Some of the questions Nick asked included:

• what possessed me to write ‘yet another China book’;
• the rise of the services industry in China and the challenges involved;
• where is China’s economic model taking the country in ten or fifteen years time;
• some of my favorite (and not so favorite) China books.

Check out the half-hour long interview here.

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I had the pleasure a couple weeks ago to present to a group of students at Ningbo-Nottingham University in – you guessed it – Ningbo municipality. The staff of the library at the university – a keen purchaser of my book China Inside Out – had invited me to speak on “Green Industries in China; Green Jobs.” About fifty students filed into the lecture room to hear the hour-long talk. Interestingly, 70-percent were women. I thought to myself, “Cool…”

Most professional speakers can appreciate the fact that audience gender can make a huge difference in a speaker’s approach. Men-speakers like myself become just a bit more animated, chatty – charming, even. The occasional fresh,  oh-gosh-he’s-really-great-smile can be inspiring, as well. It’s such a nice change from the starched corporate events at which I sometimes speak, in which everyone – young power-women included – are all dressed in the same regimental dark blue, pinstripe suits with matching frowns. It’s difficult in corporate gatherings to be spontaneous, fun even. I’ve even gained insights from my own talks when I’ve been able to be a bit spontaneous (no mime stuff, though, I promise!)

After the university talk, I asked my hosts why it was the audience was so tilted toward women. Was it that women who had found the poster advertising the talk found my photo sexy or was it the more urbane fact that there were overwhelmingly more women on campus than men? (Actually, I didn’t ask the first question; though I did entertain the thought).

My host, a young, portly and good-natured student who worked part-time at the library answered, “The curriculum at the school is in English,” he himself answered in accented English. “Women score better on the language portion of the university entrance examination than the men, so more women than men are admitted to the university; also, more women in the undergraduate school enroll in our business school.” He finished quickly, “When we open our engineering school, the campus should attract more men. We hope to have more balance at the school within a couple years.”

More’s the pity.

China Inside Out apparently caught the attention of the Fahrenheit 451 brigade in Suzhou. I’d gone down to the local branch of the Bookworm this past Sunday to kick-off a Royal Asiatic Society author’s talk on Edmund Backhouse’s Decadence Mandchoue, as bawdy an historical narrative as one will ever find. A friend at the shop told me my book had caused a bit of a stir a few days before with the local F451. I thought he was kidding.

The proprietor confirmed after the Decadence talk that, indeed, F451 had been to the shop, saw the nice little display for the book set up at the front bar; and politely asked that the book be removed. In all fairness, it’s not the first time the shop has been targeted. And it won’t be the last time, either. Apparently, F451 will shortly be requiring ALL books written by foreigners be taken down from the shelves.

Regime change has central and local authorities more brittle than at any time in twenty years.

The country just can’t seem to break out of some cycles.

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Last week I delivered a talk to a group of about a hundred New York University students studying for a few months at the University’s Shanghai campus. I like delivering talks and interacting with audience members as the exercise helps me develop my own thinking on various topics.

I was particularly struck by one young male student who went on for a couple minutes about how perhaps China’s form of government may not be adequate to the pressures of huge populations, rapid development growth and resource constraints. Finally, I asked him if he had read my book, China Inside Out? He answered he had not. I was slightly taken aback, as he echoed a thesis I begin developing at the end of the book  – hence, the need for a second book! :-’)

Not to give away the punchline of the book, I propose that China’s rapid and dense economic development is moving with such momentum and consequences for the environment and resource constraints it is leading the world into a new condition that will require a different paradigm to solve the new problems that arise – if the problems that arise are at all solvable. In other words, China will be at the forefront of meeting issues the rest of the world is hot at its heels getting to: global climate change, water constraints, overpopulation, unfettered energy consumption and the like.

And so I write in the book:

The shadow of Emperors’ past is long, and the Chinese people’s attachment to their revered history deep. Democratic change – if and when it happens, however necessary leaders and citizens believe it to be to preserve the wealth of individuals and the hegemony of the country – will have characteristics perhaps unrecognizable in the West -  in a world with challenges we can scarcely imagine.

It’s not often I get to use the word “swell”; however, if I were to use a single word to describe the community of expats in Chengdu and the warm welcome they gave me last week during the Bookworm Literary Festival, it would be that heartfelt word that American argot orphaned some decades ago. The Bookworm Literary Festival took place in three cities simultaneously for the first three weeks of March – Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou – and was part of a larger, international literary festival. My book talk sold 70 tickets, by the end of which all 30 or so copies the shop had had on hand were sold out.

The openness and freshness of the audience that attended my talk about my book China Inside Out was inspiring and refreshing. Chengdu has a great number of expats who work for NGOs as well as industry. I also met the teenage sons of American families who have made their lives in the Sichuan capital and knew the city as Home.

Peter Goff, a partner in the Bookworm enterprise and my host during the book talk event is as companionable and perceptive a proprietor as one will find anywhere in the world. He’s also a great journalist, who was on the ground in the earthquake-torn region of Sichuan just hours after the tragic event occurred. You can read his account in the local literary journal Ma La (which account, admittedly, moved this grown man to tears).

While in Chengdu I was privelaged to meet local government administrators who took me round the Tianfu Software Park, a truly impressive incubator and campus for start-ups and multinationals alike involved in services outsourcing. I also talked with Patrik Lund, of Lund Advisors, a specialist in assessing pollution risks in water, from whom I learned a great deal about the way companies in China are measured on water pollution standards; and Mandy, a Chinese environmentalist for an American multinational who has a great deal of experience with environmental assessments in China. Thanks to her and the Chinese friends she brought along to the Bookworm to chat  with me about China’s environment scene.

Finally, a warm thanks to the moderator for the China Inside Out book talk, Sherry Boger, GM of Intel Chendu, whom I’ll call the Oprah of Chengdu. She took the time before the event to read my book thoroughly, during one of the busiest times of the season for the company, when she and her staff were working all out to meet production deadlines. She worked with me to prepare our informal chat about the book with event participants, and made the  book session an engaging and entertaining time for us all.

Despite the big-ness and busy-ness and polluted-ness of Chengdu, I’ll return in the near future. To catch up with old friends and to make some new ones, too.

Max Henry, Managing Director of the Global Supply Chain Council, based in Shanghai, just sent me a lovely online animation of photos of the book launch the Council sponsored in Shanghai at the beginning of March of this year for my book China Inside Out. Top notch photos, lovely collage built on the Animoto platform (and be sure to have the sound up on your speakers – the better to hear a lovely piano accompaniment).

You can watch the animation here.

Thanks, Max.

I’ve been asked several times what I’ll be doing for the worldwide launch of my book, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and Its Relationship with the World. The Global Supply Chain Council in Shanghai last week was generous to a fault in providing a warm and inviting platform from which to introduce the book to the Shanghai community(see photos) . Suzhou, though, is my home, and so will be the platform from which to present the book to the rest of the world.

The Suzhou Launch will be this coming Saturday, March 12, 2011, at the Bookworm in Suzhou, just off Shiquan Jie. The book talk will last about an hour, starting at 4pm; after which will be a launch party with free flow wine and beer (but just for another hour or so).

I’ll be discussing the ramifications for China of the first couple pages of chapter 2 of the book, in which I describe how I unwittingly become caught up in a revolt of middle class protesters angry about the invasion of a property developer onto land to which they hold the deeds. Now, we’re not talking peasants, here; but bonafide, certified, Chinese professionals who find themselves pitted against the local government, unscrupulous property developers, construction managers with bad comb-overs and white-helmeted police in a local, Suzhou dispute that turns very ugly.

Hope to see you all there. ;-’)

The Global Supply Chain Council, headquartered in Shanghai, has been extraordinarily generous in hosting a book launch luncheon for my book, China Inside Out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and its Relationship with the World. The announcement for the luncheon just went out yesterday. The book is available, well, everywhere, it seems now. Print distribution this past week finally crossed the Pacific Ocean to North America and from there to the UK and Europe.

If you’re based in Shanghai and are a reader of This is China!, I hope to meet you at the event. The announcement reads:

When: Wednesday, March 2. Starts from 12:00 noon (lunch will be served)
Fees: RMB 100 for Council Member, RMB 200 for Non-Council Members
Venue: Shanghai, Puxi, restaurant to be confirmed.

Join us for a chance to meet, mingle and discuss doing business in China with the author of this book. Seats are limited, RSVP at http://www.supplychains.com/en/cev/587.

Books will be on sale at the event and I’ll be signing copies, as well.

>> About the Council
The Global Supply Chain Council is leading professional organization working to increase awareness and promote the value of supply chain management in Asia. Visit http://www.supplychains.com for more information. Council HQ: 10F, Block 2, 543 Xin Hua Road, Shanghai, China 200052.

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