Thanks to Vaz, had an interesting day out at the Access to China seminar held at BMA by Milagrow.

On the way to the seminar, saw this ad by Aztecsoft:

Good to see their ads back on the "bull"boards; have been missing them. When Osama was untraceable post 9/11, they had:

404: Osama not found

Anyway, there was a bit of confusion about the seminar venue: thought it was at BMA office on ORR. After making a painful U-turn, found that it was at the new BMA, on the other side of the road. So had to cut across the road all over.

Anyway, the chief guest, Dr. Chandar Pal, had not yet landed up at the venue and everyone had to wait, including the Chinese professors.

Vaz gave the intro and Rajeev Karwal took over. He said Milagro means miracle in Spanish and his son asked him to add a W at the end to make it more understandable in India; मिला and Grow! The child is indeed the father of man In the process, Milagrow adds up to a good number numerologically: 27; it should be quite effective in the A-Pac region.

Rajeev referred to Jairam Ramesh's "Chindia is rising" and how the two countries would be accounting for 40% of the world's GDP by 2025, with China's share being 24% (with the world as we know it coming to an end by 2012, don't know how that's going to happen, but let's see). He went on to say that the need of the hour is for Chindia to collaborate and compete; guess this is the same thing that was referred to as Co-opetition by some guru.

After this, Dr. Chandar Pal took over. He started off with Lord Buddha's advice to his son, what is called the Eight-fold Path:

• Don't lie, even in jest
• …
  
• Don't get intoxicated.

Don't know about that last one as i sort of believe in that funda of Ed Ricketts: (Log from the Sea of Cortez, page 35, bottom)

Not only did Ed love liquor. He went further. He had a deep suspicion of anyone who did not. If a non-drinker shut up and minded his own business and did not make an issue of his failing, Ed could be kind to him. But alas, a laissez-faire attitude is very uncommon in teetotalers.

Dr. Pal then went on to say how the MSME has been reducing the social and economic inequity in the country and that the MSME Act of 2006 by Parliament gave it legal sanctity. He went on to these facts and figures:

• Skilled manpower in the country is just 5%. This, interestingly, is the same as the % that speaks English. Of course the two sets are not the same.
• In mfg., a micro enterprise is one that makes 0-25L (lacs), a small enterprise makes 25L-5Cr (crores), and a medium one pulls in 5-10Cr. The corresponding figures for Services are 0-10L, 10L-2Cr, and 2-5Cr.
  
• The National Skill Development Mission was announced last August with an allocation of 30,000 crores! This would work in a PPP mode.
• MSME would finance cluster development to increase employment: expand the old clusters (say, brass ware in Moradabad, UP) to surrounding towns and create new ones (say, skill development in computers for groups). He went on to say that the recovery ratio from such loans was very good; to the order of 98%. The crooks come from the rich.
  

At the end, he gave an example of a recent visit to Shanghai and how one hawker kept pestering them to buy watches (3 for USD10, which became 5 on bargaining). Since his colleague's watch stopped working and the battery cost USD20, they bought these watches. And every morning, they would heave a sigh of relief when they noticed they were still working.

This pissed the Chinese Prof. (Liyan Zhang) and she came out in defence of the Chinese businessman, who she said had matured over the last 30 years. You get the quality for the price you pay.

Anyway, she started off her presentation with cultural differences between Chinese and Indians. How Indians eat with the hand and the way they use the toilet. The Chinese are generally put off by both, but when the Prof. asks them to introspect:

• Usage of chopsticks creates waste and pollution. Multiply that by more than a billion Chinese to realize the impact. Also, since the Chinese eat off a common plate, the chopstick touches the mouth and then the common food. Indians would find that icky.
• The toilet paper, apart from felling trees and pollution, also might not be of good quality and it comes into contact with your skin.
  

they come around to the Indian point of view. That last one reminded me of what JugS wrote so amusingly in the SToI of 09.SEP.2007:

Lavatorial anxieties beset all visitors to Britain, a place unconscionably niggardly with its loos. It is not unusual for a three- or four-bedroom residence to have no more than a single lavatory, and that too tucked abashedly under the stairs so no one will notice. But while this paucity affects all visitors, those from the subcontinent are doubly discomfited by the singular absence of that indispensable fixture of Indic civilisation: the lota, or its more up-to-date avatar, the hygiene faucet. Instead of which, British lavatories — and those in Britain's erstwhile colonies like America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — have paper. Reams and rolls of the stuff. But no evident means of washing up after the paperwork's done. Which of course is totally unacceptable from the subcontinental point of view, if that's the phrase one wants. For the subcontinental knows, as an article of faith, that you can wipe and wipe till — to mix metaphors and anatomy — you are blue in the face but you'll still be a dirty bum. Every Indian (or Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepali or Sri Lankan) I've discussed it with, has confessed to facing this problem which strikes to the very depths of our ablutionary identity: we are the washers, as distinct from the wipers.

Guess Indians were the original green and organic guys. Another sensible thing we do: we burn the dead.

Liked the other points:

• When in China, do as the Chinese do.
• Understand and respect cultural differences, which in fact are more like an iceberg.
  
• Leverage Guanxi to the extent possible. "It's not what you know, but who you know" and "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". Amusingly, in India, she said it was a different version: "You scratch my back, ill scratch someone else's back, and so on"! A good Guanxi is a very powerful asset and can help you do something that seems impossible to others.
  

To be a good Guanxi, she gave some tips:

• Be reciprocal
• Help others, but don't make them feel uncomfortable
• Do not let the others lose face
• Try to feel the others' need
• Gift-giving and receiving (they are not bribes!)
• Having dinner together (this is part of work). Later, on the sidelines, learned some more things: dinner starts at 6:30 PM and the host always orders at least 5-6 dishes that should be left untouched. Otherwise, the host will lose face. If you are vegetarian, choose by the color!
  
• Avoid public criticism
• Say some kind words to others
• Work well and don't make trouble for others.

If folks are happy with you, they will trust you and help you. She ended with:

• Indians have Gods while the Chinese understand only money
• Yes is not always Yes in China (as in India)
• There's too much discussion in India. But, of course, we have The Argumentative Indian.
• Punctuality: Indians are too relaxed. On the sidelines, Mr. Ramana Rao gave a tip: if the meeting is at 9 AM, be there by 8:55 AM. Straight away, the Chinese you went to meet owes you one
  
• Indians are more interested in private interest than collective interest.
  

To that last point, couldn't help pointing out that NRN says the same thing: Public good before private good. Prof. V Raghunathan has analyzed the same in a very interesting manner, via game theory, in Games Indians Play.

She signed off by saying that one should understand, respect, adapt, and use the cultural differences.

The next presentation, again by Dr. Liyan Zhang, was on Government Policies and Business Environment. She made an interesting observation:

In China, policy is a business opportunity.

In the recent policy, announced as recently as 01.DEC.2007, the increase in service outsourcing is a good opp. for SMEs. Some other points:

• 160 cities in China have industrial clusters on products such as textiles, F&B, Electrical Products, Machine Manufacturing, Furniture, etc.
  
• Though development has been along the coast till now, other areas in the middle of the country are also being targeted. It might interest you that China is known as ZhongGuo (ChungKuo) in Chinese, which means Middle Kingdom.

At this point, i found the NatGeo Atlas of China a handy reference.

Two web sites were suggested by participants:

• Alibaba for directory listings
• Made in China.
  

*** After-lunch sessions: to be updated after my lunch ***

Prof. Bian Cuilin gave me the thumbs up for the two bits of Mandarin:

• Wo Xing Shen; Mingzi Jiao Shi Ni Shen
• RenShi Nin Hen GaoXing
  

that i spoke

Source : http://shastrix.blogspot.com/2007/12/seminar-access-to-china.html