China
Lee and Sachi Lefever have been travelling the world and documenting it on their excellent site, The World Is Not Flat. (Disclosure, I had a hand in helping setting up the site, and it's hosted by my employer, Bryght, for which I do technical support.) As a guilty admission, I've only recently started following the site, mainly because early on I subscribed to their 'china' tag and only now are they writing extensively about their travels there. Check out their great articles about Hong Kong's modern efficiency, unidentifiable meat in Guangzhou and the gorgeous photos of Guilin (I always heard it was beautiful, and here's confirmation). The phrase “winds through the grotesque peaks exactly like a blue silk ribbon” is funny, partially because it reminds me of when I was in China, the Internet cafe I frequented asked me to help with the English on their sign. Let's just say some words on the sign did not exist at all in the language. They leave China in September, so it sounds like there's more to come about their adventures in the Middle Kingdom.
Kris reflects on today's China Business Forum at the Wosk Centre: “This is the perfect way to spend the day before my first ever business trip to Beijing... I'm learning a lot and it's calming my nervousness about the trip. There sure does seem to be a lot of opportunities to companies looking to grow into new markets, but I'm looking forward to hearing people talk more about the social and environmental impacts of China's explosive growth and rise to power. ¶ Can the massive amount of wealth being generated by this boom be used to promote positive change in China and around the world? How will China keep the gap between rich and poor from widening? Will the ultimate cost of the environmental degradation that is taking place as part of this growth ultimately be its downfall?”
Some of the issues not addressed in the forum were environmental and social pressures China faces as it moves its huge rural population into urban centres. Alan Carrol came close, mentioning environmental remediation as a growth area for the Chinese economy twice in his presentations and, in a general sense (though only very briefly relating it to China) calling the world's water shortage a more urgent problem than global warming. (I wonder if some people think he's off message by calling it "global warming" and not "climate change".) The social pressures from daily demonstrations by factory and mine workers, the almost complete lack of political rights weren't on the minds of the participants, or were brushed off: one speaker said China is "too big and too complicated" for human rights, and another said "the chaos [in China] is quite wonderous". Granted this was a forum about doing business in China, not a forum about the country's problems and solutions, but few of the speakers even paid lip service to the problems.
Kris, hopping on the bootleg wifi provided by yours truly, has already posted a couple of photos from the China Business Forum here at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue: one featuring a blurry, reflective me and another from the introductory remarks. Time passes and Kris posts more photos of me, paying rapt attention and "networking" with a couple of execs from James Hoggan & Associates. The seminar isn't as boring as sleepy-head would lead you to believe.
Writing this too-early-for-me in the morning at Simon Fraser's Wosk Centre for Dialogue, where I'm attending the China Business Forum as part of China Access 2008 Seminar about BC businesses in China. As Megan and Kris point out, Raincity Studios and Bryght made it in The Vancouver Sun yesterday (I work for Bryght, and as further disclosure, the article's author is a friend from university, though I didn't know she wrote it until reading the article). The Wosk Centre has plush chairs, wifi, and power, so it's a good thing I thought to bring my power adapter this morning. I'll try to take notes, photos and maybe even some blurry video.
Robert Scales and my coworker Kris Krug (of Raincity Studios and Bryght respectively) are headed to China soon. Of course, as somewhat of an expert on China (see my 'china' tag, which gets syndicated over at Watching China), I'm jealous that they're going without me, but I'm excited for them as well. They, along with Raincity's Megan Cole have written a few announcements about the upcoming China Access event in Vancouver to kick off their trip: "Are You Taking Advantage of the China Trend", which was cross-posted to Raincity's weblog, asks whether BC businesses are ready to find opportunities in the Middle Kingdom, especially as China takes the spotlight during the 2008 Olympics; Kris has an announcement about the business forum on May 24th, which I'll be attending at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue. I'll be following along, living vicariously through Kris' photos tagged with 'china' on Flickr, not to mention Robert's. Yet another space to watch is Daily Vancouver's coverage of the Beijing Olympics.