There is one error. I told the compiler in an e-mail September 2007 to erase the Yuyintang quote since they had moved location and things were looking tenuous, but apparently she kept it and the fact checker never mentioned it to me.

More about my own recent travels soon.

Much love, gentle readers, until my return.

Last year, several multinational corporations, such as Microsoft and General Electric, fought a clause of the Labor Law that made it difficult to fire workers. The Labor Law, which went into effect January 1 this year, shifts power and rights from the employer to the employee and grants labor unions greater agency. Among several objections from multinational companies was that to a clause stating a worker’s probation period for a one-year contract should not exceed two months. Although MNCs lost the battle—that clause and many contended others stuck—they’ve gained coping strategies that have turned out to be less painful than previously conceived, while smaller companies that can’t adjust are leaving.

Centaline Property Agency human resources manager Jiang Yifan says if the firm has incurred any new costs from the Labor Law it has come from investing money and time in a stronger HR department. “In the past, business managers only had to think about performance. Thinking about human resources was a secondary consideration,” says Jiang, whose HR management costs have increased by 5% in the past six months. “The Law has made them equally important.”

Although some smaller companies have explored the option of firing entire staffs and then rehiring people with new contracts, most MNCs, already plagued with HR issues, don’t have the time or inclination to take this route. Instead, Jiang says in regards to hiring and promotions, the company won’t take old talent for granted or new prospects lightly.

Stephen Maloy, general counsel of Asia-Pacific General Electric, concurs: “The labor law reduces probation periods, which forces management to make an earlier decision. This may make managers more risk averse.”

Some companies are loath to comply whatsoever; in recent months, citing the Law as a major factor, 200 Taiwanese firms left Dongguan, and 5 percent of Korean firms in China were preparing to leave with an additional 25 percent considering it. The Federation of Hong Kong Industries predicted that in the Pearl River Delta alone, as many as 10,000 companies plan to shut down or scale back. An American Chamber of Commerce and Booz Allen Hamilton survey reported one fifth of foreign-owned or foreign-invested companies operating in China plan to move some or all operations out of the country, and more than half of companies surveyed reported believing that China is losing its competitiveness to other low-cost countries.

Good riddance, says Liu Cheng, a law professor at Shanghai Normal University who helped craft the Law. He says there’s still tremendous room for companies to profit, but “some industries here just want to run sweatshops here.”

MNC representatives admit to Newsweek Select that, despite some firms’ claim of as much as a 40% spike in operational expenditures directly due to the Law, in reality, inflation and appreciation of the RMB have been greater factors in rising costs. “We’ve not seen that great of an impact (directly due to the Law),” says Sony vice president of human resources Liu Wushuyun.

General manager of Fayat China Machinery Limited Jania Zhao adds that while smaller companies have traditionally cut corners and saved on “luxuries” like social services and fair wages for employees, most major corporations with long-term commitments to China already had such expenses built into their contracts. Although Zhao says her company has seen a 20 to 30% increase in operational costs this year, “there has been no direct increase due to the Labor Law, and we’ve not had to make great adjustments.”

Indeed, at the time of writing, no significant authoritative evidence has yet revealed a recent MNC flood into surrounding nations or news of any major multi-national corporation’s departure from China in direct response to new costs invoked by Law.

Daniel Harris, founding partner of Harris & Moure, a boutique international law firm, and author of the award-winning website, China Law Blog, says the companies that are shutting down are those based on a model no longer viable in China: “A lot of these businesses seized an opportunity that will never be available again – pollute like hell and pay really cheap prices. They’re shutting down because their businesses essentially operated illegally.”

Dongguan municipal government numbers back that up—as of April, an investigation found that of approximately 6,000 companies inspected, nearly 1,000 hadn’t signed labor contracts with workers. Not only will the departure of such companies from China end this treatment, Liu Cheng says, it won’t hurt the overall market.

Harris says the most important adjustment companies can make to the new law is to do what they should have already done: sign contracts with all workers and create an employee policy manual.

For companies operating at the fringes, severance pay might be a new concept, but Christina Yu, communications and human resources director at Dow Chemical, says it’s old hat to most MNCs who instead must only make minor contractual adjustments. “Our separation process is through performance or job reviews, and we never make a decision to lay off an employee simply because the contract is up. If we do, we pay severance regardless of contract status. “

Liu Wushuyun of Sony says other necessary housekeeping includes, “going through and making sure all existing contracts without existing end dates are provided with such.”

Big companies must also take the initiative to develop the resources to monitor smaller JVs. In April, the All-China Federation of Trade announced it would advise the labor department and law enforcement department to punish Xiamen Topstar Lighting Co. Ltd., a joint venture of GE and Xiamen, for employee working hours and payment schemes that violated the Law. Local reporters first encountered the story in March via a report by Policy Matters Ohio, an American watchdog NGO, which claimed GE was enforcing gratuitous overtime without compensation. GE sent a team of 11 investigators to the Topstar facility where they spent a week interviewing more than 120 randomly selected employees and inspecting the operations and facilities, says Maloy. They found no infringement, and no legal action has been brought against GE, but such scrutiny will doubtless keep corporations on their toes.

Companies with strong CSR programs may find it easiest to adapt. Nike, one of the few Western companies to resist joining last year’s fray between American lobbyists and Chinese policymakers niggling on Labor Law clauses, has been cited by Chinese labor activists as being a stand-out among Western MNCs. The company’s website provides a comprehensive resource for those seeking to understand the Law. Although it does not own manufacturing plants, Nike discloses the names and addresses of those it uses and provides transparent monitoring. The company began holding educational seminars last June and continues to do so as the situation develops.

“There continues to be a lack of clarity on what exactly the new regulations mean for factories and what the requirements for implementation are. We can help bridge that gap by providing training and other education programs,” says Hannah Jones, Nike’s vice president of corporate responsibility. “As the government further clarifies how the rules should be implemented, we will continue to work with our contract factories to help them comply.”

In addition to the promise of a growing local market, access to China’s developed infrastructure, logistics and supply chain ensures companies will stick around despite the new costs from the Law, inflation and appreciation of the RMB. But as China slowly moves its manufacturing capabilities up the value chain — a trend the Law has not instigated as much as supported — companies must likewise gradually readjust their strategies.

Harris adds that not only do companies need to appreciate this new perception of China, they also need to understand where they fit into the picture.

The American Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with the U.S. consultant firm Booz Allen Hamilton, released a report in March that prescribes use of such practices as postponing customization on mass-produced goods, tailoring business streams and tightening up sales and operation planning. Moreover, companies must think of their China operations as a fundamental element in their globally integrated whole rather than as merely an emerging market.

To be an essential part of the world — it’s the reality for which China has been striving since opening up nearly three decades ago.

With Sarah Chen (Shanghai)

=========

Sidebar
Pyramid Scheme
A recent report prescribes a new approach to China’s new business environment

By Megan Shank

The American Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with the U.S. consultant firm Booz Allen Hamilton, released the China Manufacturing and Competitiveness in 2007-2008 Survey and thus prescribed methods to deal with the changing economical landscape. The results, presented in a pyramid, are as follows:

(base)
Global Integration
China should be viewed as a web of capabilities rather than just as an emerging market. The nation is a core part of global strategy by integrating sourcing and sales-centric models in China.

(next)
Postponement/Late Customization
Companies seeking to make an integrated process should create the ability to produce large volume of products with the correct pause prior to customization in order to meet future customer needs – for example, creating language specific manuals for a product at the last minute.

(next)
Tailored Business Streams and Segmentation
This level takes advantage of Chinese capacity for large-scale, cost-efficient manufacturing yet retains levels of differentiation for various clients - for example, customizing computers for specific orders.

Footprint and Network Modeling
Managers determine plant strategies on this level and identify market risks and client’s needs.

Sales & Operation Planning
Businesses coordinate efforts and communication among departments in order to quickly and fluidly move products whenever such demands arise.

Lean Practices
Companies must take a systematic and global view of their China operations and build up from there, tightening logistics and shop-floor operations as well as communications via the foundation of lower layers.

Of course, sometimes I miss wine and shitty food and sleeping in and bragging and gossiping and self-righteous (do you know who I AM?) anger, BUT this article by the New York Times captivates me because it seems to further suggest that the source of human pain and suffering originates from the egoic mind, which separates us from the greater oneness of life. I’m not getting kooky, I swear. It’s just the opposite — I’m becoming more sane. For me, simplifying things and surrendering to the knowledge that the universe will go on as it will and I just need to be quiet and uncluttered and present allows me to get closer to that peace.

One quote that particularly grabbed me: “Religion is a story that the left brain tells the right brain,” she said. “Nirvana exists right now.”

Here’s her TED speech.

Comment: Geez, Melinda Liu, would it kill you to leave the politics out for ONCE? Instead of criticizing the Chinese government, could you not have taken a more humane perspective? 20,000 people are dead, much more are suffering and family-less, and you are more concerned with analyzing the motives of Chinese leaders. Once again, you have taken a biased standpoint against China. Why not just throw away your supposed Chinese heritage altogether, since you are so ashamed of it? Change your last name to Smith or Jones so that you can become an American. You, madam, are the epitome of the “biased western media” that we’ve been hearing so much about.

Let me just address this pap, quite representative of a growing sentiment here, even though it’s hardly worth my breath.

Americans — that’s right, even AMERICANS NAMED LIU, of which there are now as probably as many as the Smiths or Jones — rarely leave out politics. Not when it comes to China, not when it comes to the United States. Examples? What about the thousands killed in Iraq? Does that mean we as Americans have no right to question the war? Sounds like nutso Right-Wing punditry to me.

That’s different because it’s a war we started on others’ sovereign territory? Ok, what about Hurricane Katrina? We BLASTED our hebetudinous head of state over that. We BLASTED lackadaisical local officials. We wanted justice. We wanted action beyond mere remedy of present circumstance.

Maybe that’s not China’s way, but I distinctly recall it being China’s way for lots of folks to say Sept. 11 was a long-time coming, so let’s not play the world is so mean and we’re so innocent.

But that’s a little off topic. Let’s get back to the idea that if someone disagrees or speaks against the government that they should, “just throw away your supposed Chinese heritage altogether” because this is where it gets scary — whether it’s the flag pin hounds in the States or the burka police in Saudi Arabia. This urgency for homogenization of thought doesn’t seem to be as unifying as it is fascist. While it has a pull and sheen similar to that of enlightenment, there is no good end to it. There is no conflict between seeking the truth and honoring the dead. On the contrary, the two are inexorably linked. State media and most Chinese citizens seem to believe, however, that these are irreconcilable concepts. When questioned regarding it, they fall back into the “YOU” paradigm, which I have blogged about on this site. (RE: Who are “YOU”)

There must be time to mourn, it is true. What has happened has brought me to tears over the paper every day, and the world should reach out its loving arms to a nation and people in need. But there is a very different mindset between the victim and the errant victimized. Those who take advantage of this disaster to support dogmatic truths and the destruction of individual voice might as well shovel dirt over the deads’ faces and see them all as Mao and the communists once did: meaningless bodies martyred for a nebulous cause.

It’s one of the first events in a three-day period of mourning in which the government has restricted access to entertainment channels and plead for the discontinuation of frivolous text messaging, as well as paused the torch’s march.

The death toll in Sichuan has reached 34,073 people, with an additional 245,108 injured, 9,500 still buried in the rubble, and 29,29,418 missing.
Check out the clip for the feeling of the memorial this afternoon. 080519_000.mp3

A trapped woman waiting for rescue workers to dig her out told cameras poking down into her hole (in Chinese):

“I knew you would come to save me. When I heard voices nearby, I would call for help. When I heard no voices, I would conserve my strength. I’m so happy and grateful you’re here.”

What amazing, courageous words, and, if one truly considers it, an incredible prescription for living not just through earthquakes but through anything: she preserved hope through fear, she identified the situations in which her effort might be rewarded and in which situations it was best to stay silent, and she expressed gratitude for the chance she had been given rather than questioning why it hadn’t come earlier…or whether someone could just get the damn building off her back already.

My heart goes out to the people in Sichuan. I think the world, though its aid, will prove to China they’re not all against the middle kingdom, despite the common sentiment here of late.

The fact of the matter is that this poem very much illustrates the polarity enhanced by nationalism — the insularity of China, to this day, to take any criticism, sweep it all up and put it in one pile and call it “Western powers” without considering any delineation among the critics.

It used to amaze me that I was a 外国人 (waiguoren or foreigners) and so was the guy from Pakistan and the girl from Japan. We were never our own respective nationalities; instead, we were all, collectively, the outsiders. So where is Waiguo? I’d like to go there right now and hunt down all the haters.

The next question might be, who are WE? Are WE inclusive of the Tibetan people?

And what’s up with that little threat at the end? “You only get so many chances.”

Poem below:

When we were called Sick man of Asia,
We were challed The Peril.
When We are billed to be the next superpower,
We are called The threat.

This Big Blue Earth is Big Enough for all of Us.

First, let me explain: I’m a musical person and find that using music has always been an effective way for me to retain anything. I sang in choirs from a young age, and it was there I was introduced to foreign languages — whether via Rachmaninoff’s Chichester Psalms, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Dutch lullabies or Ghanian wedding songs. Throughout high school and college, I performed in such choirs, as well as musicals. Later, I would sing jazz and Chinese pop music at the Swissotel in Dalian. And when I first undertook my study of Chinese I would make songs for useful phrases such as, “到站请告诉我下车好吗？” (Please tell me when it’s my stop, ok?) Imagine it as a string of half and quarter notes with stress on the first beat in an oddly patriotic chord progression de capo.

Ok, so to make a short story short, I bought the Spanish edition of Earworms Learning, which pairs language to electronic music in a coordinated way. Although, when considering there were no supplementary visual materials thrown in, the thing was overpriced — c’mon $19!– I’ve found that while flooded with tunes I could never more than ironically dance to at a club, I’m learning to ask whether there’s a pharmacy nearby. And there’s no plunky “dong, dong, dong, dong” chime in between lessons, as seems to be the case with most any language tape that I’ve ever encountered, thus not making it especially pleasant to listen to at night before settling in. Additionally, sometimes it’s just downright hilarious, though seemingly unintentionally so.

Megan Shank: Your company reached a plateau from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. What propelled it upwards again?
Tom Cook: The way we had gotten most of our success was through new product innovation, which drove a lot of our growth. But we realized we had to think more broadly than just product innovation. We could also focus on service needs or solutions to problems pulling on a broader skill set and a broader set of knowledge.

For example, we began to offer our products with no after-sales service—an option some of our clients wanted because they already knew our product, knew how to use it and didn’t want to pay for service. Also, if any customer wants to move from the U.S. to China, we could help them sort out the regulations and even manufacture things temporarily until they established their own capabilities. You need to think about what your customers need, not what you sell. When you think of it that way, it changes your whole view of the world.

Last year, over half of Dow Corning’s sales revenue came from regions outside the U.S. What part did China sales play in that figure?
We don’t release China-specific numbers, but in the past six years, Dow Corning sales have doubled, in China, sales have more than doubled, which means China sales are above the corporate growth rate.

What’s made that happen here?
Silicones go into many different industries, many of which are growing here. The automotive industry, cell phones and personal care products all use silicone. There’s huge opportunity for our product. Our primary driver is not low cost manufacturing to ship to other regions but to reach out to the market here. We need that made-in-China ability to have better responsiveness to our new customers.

Have you had problems with IP infringement?
We’ve had problems with counterfeiting our sealing products. I don’t think it’s quite the issue that it was for a number of years. We went out to the streets to find the source of it and work with the source as much as possible.

So you didn’t legally pursue it?
No, we did it in a more business-oriented way.

How do you protect your IP in China?
The Chinese government has taken some steps to protect IP, but they need to keep working in that direction. We have a strong emphasis on educating employees on corporate values, code of conduct and what is intellectual property. And only people who need to know are given privy to the IP, and even for them, we split it up across jobs and roles so no one individual has too much information.

You’ve spoken about giving back to China and remaining loyal to innovation. Where do these two concepts meet?
There are one billion pairs of jeans made every year worldwide, and half of those are made here. There’s a lot of water and energy being used to produce them. In mid-2007 we introduced a granulated textile softener that’s aimed at the Chinese government’s priorities –how can we help improve the environment and energy usage.

This product reduces the manufacturing steps necessary and reduces the water used by 30 to 50 percent – about 15 less liters of water for each pair of jeans. It comes out to 7.5 million tons of water per year that’s not dirtied. Also, one of the key things is that when you’re making the jeans and you’re processing all that water by heating it, so we’re also talking about using 30% less energy as well.

Who knew silicones could be so sexy?
(Laughs) Innovation brings to life what we’re all about – the impact on the environment, the improvement of quality of life. I think everyone knows that where the environment is at in China, well, we just can’t continue in the same way. We’ve got to get to a point where it’s more sustainable.

You’ve also said a company should ask itself what keeps its customers up at night. What about your sleep?
I think one of the challenges we have here is making sure we hire the best people that we can and develop future leaders. I believe our company should be run by the Chinese – someone who can understand the culture and the language, etc. The sooner we can get our company here to be run by a native Chinese the better.

Might put you out of a job though.
I’ll find something else to do. It’s a challenge to find the right people because of China’s history – there wasn’t really business exposure here 30 years ago, so we’re slowly training people.

by Megan Shank (Shanghai)

On a recent sunny day, 26-year-old Anne Li and 27-year-old Amy Lei browse Shanghai’s Huaihai Middle Road Sephora store during their lunch break. The two epitomize the Chinese cosmetic market’s coveted consumer—both are highly educated only children born into China’s affluent modern era, products of homes where they are rarely denied little luxuries and members of a work force where competition demands any achievable edge. Not only does it feel good to pamper themselves, they say, giggling into milk teas, good grooming is a way to set oneself apart. “It never hurts to be beautiful,” Lei says. “If you give them a lovely impression, people will remember you.”

They’re not the only ones looking to make an impact. Once the realm of domestic giants like Shanghai Jahwa, China’s oldest and most profitable cosmetics company, the high to mid-end cosmetics market has witnessed foreign companies enter en masse in recent years and form limited partnerships with local companies. By now, foreign brands are estimated by marketing research firms here to dominate as much as 50 to 80% of the market’s profits.

Individual companies have been posting remarkable numbers as well. L’Oreal’s China sales grew more than 30% last year, compared with North America’s 4.8% dollar revenue growth. Its Maybelline lipstick, represented by newly scored spokeswoman Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, snagged 33% of the market. Competitor Estee Lauder has also seen sustained double-digit growth for the past five years. Sephora, retail chain and cosmetics line, celebrates three years on the mainland market this spring and has opened 33 stores. Today average sales per square meter at its Chinese stores are nearly equivalent to that of its stores in France. If current growth continues, experts estimate the Chinese cosmetics market to value at USD $3.8 billion by 2009, eclipsing even the U.S. market.

However, international cosmetics companies face a challenge on the way to reaping their market share: first they have to create the market.

“These women might know a little about skincare, but nothing about make-up or perfume,” says Thierry Jaugeas, Sephora’s Asia Managing Director and China President. “In the U.S. or in Europe it’s a little easier because girls get the training from mother or grandmother, but in China, this is the first generation so deeply discovering make-up products or skin care products.”

That make-up-ignorant generation also makes up these companies’ hires. Cosmetics companies send their new employees to crash-test beauty schools where they are taught how to entice customers into interacting with the products. Sephora, for example, uses a “beauty bar.” Customers perch on stools and attendants swarm with powder puffs and silkening spritzers. Estee Lauder holds free basic make-up seminars at universities throughout China and gives out samples afterwards. During update training sessions, employees also report customer feedback—a sort of reconnaissance marketing—to their bosses who bring it back to corporate.

Perhaps it’s this attentiveness and adaptability to the market that has allowed these companies to thrive. Company CEOs universally proclaim the adjustment here a radical one. Unlike Europe, where perfume generally makes up 60% of total cosmetics sales or the U.S. where 50% of those sales are generated from make-up, in China, it’s all about what’s already there.

“Skin, skin, skin. It’s an Asian mindset,” says Carol Shen, China’s managing director of Estee Lauder. “Asians believe natural beauty is real beauty—you’ve got to take care of your skin.”

Paying attention to what concepts complement China’s cultural ideology translates to success. So does selling culture itself. “The whole ‘Chineseness’ is a growing thing,” says Matthew Crabbe, co-founder and director of Access Asia, a marketing research firm that just released the report “Women in China 2008: Women as Consumers”. According to the report, “enhancement”—or how to better something that already exists—is a primary goal for the office ladies to whom cosmetics companies market their products. And, “if you’re marketing a product, if you can make it more Chinese, it will give you an advantage. It used to be that to be like the Western woman was the aspiration – but now women would rather be their best Chinese selves.”

This sense of self-celebration has been picked up by brands that increasingly seek a more “Chinese” look through advertising. Olay and L’Oreal favor actresses who have risen to fame in the West like Maggie Cheung, Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, whereas Estee Lauder’s MAC brand uses radiant Chinese girl-next-door types. Revlon is also currently considering Chinese models for use in upcoming campaigns.

Using native models makes beauty seem more achievable for Chinese women, but it’s also important to understand the limitations culture places on any market. Shen notes in Japan or Korea a woman’s skincare routine is eight or nine steps, but Chinese women average only three or four steps – and might never push past that. As with skin, it’s vital for companies in the market to work with the natural grain. Estee Lauder’s Clinique products, which incorporate a three-step cleansing and moisturizing process developed by dermatologists, neatly fits within Chinese women’s existing culture and customs.

But it takes more than adaptation to profit in China – it also takes branding strategy. Most aggressively, L’Oreal has worked fast to acquire and create partnerships with local companies and enter new distribution channels. In late 2003, L’Oreal acquired MiniNurse, a domestic skincare company, upgraded existing products and created new ones. Within a few months, the company took a similar tactic with another local brand, Yue Sai,which has become a radiant success. Most recently, L’Oreal has expanded its distribution channel to include pharmacies where it sells its Vichy skin products.

Other companies have approached growth more conservatively. Estee Lauder has ensured each of the brands under its flagship reaches the correct market by carefully hand-selecting retailers and customizing brand awareness approaches. Instead of advertising the benefits of ultra-luxe Lumiere, or even making information widely available about where in China one can find it, Estee Lauder relies on word-of-mouth power among the upper class to bring in more clients while maintaining the brand’s exclusive “DNA,” as Shen puts it. Even more basic in its approach, Revlon tries to entice younger consumers with flashy new Asian skin friendly colors while selling at a higher market level than in the West, where the brand is not considered a luxury product.

Despite these different tactics, one mutual challenge for companies thus far has been the limited range of customers – most brands peg their consumers at ranging from 25 to 35 years old with an average monthly income of 4,000 RMB. Although Chinese cultural standards are relaxing, it’s unlikely teenage girls will start wearing make-up to junior high school, as is found in the West. Instead, it would behoove companies to look at the upper age brackets, say industry analysts.

“Products aimed at older Chinese women would be a great market,” says Crabbe. “Things are starting to slip and sag and wrinkle up a bit. You might adapt the product, the brand and the colors for these women who have savings, whose kids have graduated. These women might want to travel abroad and have some fun.”

Back in the Sephora shop on Huaihai Middle Road, however, 24-year-old Xiao Zhou seems to be enjoying herself much more than her middle-aged mother, who declined to speak to Newsweek Select’s reporter. Xiao Zhou alternately rushes from the perfume wall to the beauty bar to the full-length mirrors spritzing and brushing and fluffing in a frenzy of uninitiated joy.

“Aren’t you done already?” Her beleaguered mother asks, wearily following her daughter now applying blush to the beat of rap music bumping from the store’s speakers. “We’ve almost been here an hour, and this place is giving me a headache.”

It seems beauty is still in the eye of the beholder.

No one wants rain at the games this summer, but should it pour, GE has provided Beijing’s National Stadium with China’s first rainwater recycling system to process the downfall for landscaping, fire-fighting and cleaning—that’s saving water that otherwise would have come from traditional sources. The company is also supplying filtration technology for safe drinking water and powering conference areas with highly efficient energy units, among other projects.

Since announcing its eleventh five-year plan in 2005, China has set ambitious environmental goals for the Olympics and beyond by focusing on increased energy efficiency and decreased emissions. These targets mean companies don’t need to do a hard sell on their green products for the 2008 event– in U.S.-based SPX’s case clean cooling towers, which require less energy and have built-in functions to clean the air instead of emitting more pollutants. Last year, the company sold several for use in Olympic buildings in multiple Chinese cities, including the convention center and the basketball gymnasium. If Yao Ming is indeed benched with a bum foot this summer, he may not lead his team to Olympic glory, but at least he’s won the right to air quality equivalent of his Houston court.

Not only are multinational companies involved, Chinese companies, like Beijing Sangpu, which works with solar power, are enjoying their day in the sun. For their try-out for Olympic glory, the company created equipment to power lights and telephones surrounding Beijing Worker’s Stadium and thus won the contract to implement solar-powered water heaters at several Olympic arenas.

Come rain or shine, things are looking greener every day.

Dollface
by Megan Shank

Even now their faces haunt me: round and cotton, oval and porcelain, square and plastic, mean, cute, shrewd. Blue eyes, brown, stitched or stuck in, lashes, bare, lids and lidless. Button noses. Quiet smiles.

I return to that room.

Beside me, my twin brother’s small body, collapsed in a sweet-smelling bed lump, stirs. We would share this big green bed, sticking our gum to the back of its headboard, until we were 6, one year later. At that time, I would have a new tenant – the next brother down the line, eventually going through all four, each with their own particular sleeping dispositions.

When my twin brother and I shared this sleeping space, we promised one another to fall asleep at the exact same moment, only after we had selected our dreams from the foot of the chartreuse beast. We thought of picking out a dream as though it were like picking out a record from my parents’ boxes in the basement. Here was Mickey Mouse on ice skates, here were snow days and a Christmas puppy.

Tonight, however, my brother had left me in the conscious world alone for the first time. Unmitigated by human contact, the night proved clear and calm. I traced letters and words on the green dresser that bordered the bed. M-E-G-A-N. That was me. And here I was. Here I was. There was something lonely and powerful about that.

I stood upon the bed. Surveying the room, my things were in their right place. Atop the dresser sat Raggedy Ann and Andy, dolls my Grandmother had passed on to me, still smelling of stale cigarettes. Their stitched smiles and impossibly curvy dimples shined under the light of the lamp I had since learned not to touch. It had already burned me a dozen times, but as a child, I greatly enjoyed the game of touch-it-as-fast-as-you-can. Was it possible to do so without scalding tiny fingers? Could I, through the acuity of my own physical judgment, beat what could hurt me?

I found I could not. Born with a non-cancerous tumor on my face – a cherry lump of flesh the size of a healthy pea that hunched like a tired dancer upon the tip of my nose—I learned quickly it was impossible to escape some hurts. My kindergarten classmates called me Rudolph. The word freak had apparently not yet entered their vocabulary. I found comfort in the company of my twin brother, an intensely shy child who never uttered harm. Or much else.

I looked at the tacit Raggedy Ann and Andy. I hated that I couldn’t brush their hair – loops of turned red thread bound tight to flat skulls. Also, their shoes were irremovable. You could strip Andy and Ann right on down to their androgynous little naked selves, and they’d still be wearing those damn shoes. This was hard to accept. I could see my other toys stacked in the corner of the room. In the forefront, barely touched by the light stood my doll Annie – apparently I wasn’t so creative with names yet – her hair made punk rock stand-up-on-end straight through my years of toting her affectionately by the scalp and my stuffed rooster Pock-a-bird, named thus after his felt beak had “pocked” me in the eye when I was three. I had hated him for weeks before giving him a last minute reprieve prior to a Goodwill swap run. Years later my poodle, Bingo “Peter Venkman” Shank, would chew off his offending beak.

What were these things to me, and what was my relationship to them alone in the dark? I leapt from the bed and seized a colored marker from the desk. Scrambling back up to the dresser, I snatched up Ann.

The first few bold black strokes barely gave me pause. After marking the first two letters of my first name in blocky capital letters on Ann’s flat white forehead, “M-E,” I hesitated, astounded by a newly discovered significance. But “M-E” wasn’t the biggest part of it. I finished “G-A-N.” In the burning lamplight, the dolls and toys stared at me with blankly benevolent eyes. No mouth pursed in consternation, no eyebrows furrowed. Satisfied with my work on Ann, I moved on to Andy, then Annie, then Pock-a-bird and the others until my toys lay in a brutal pile upon the bed like victims of a mass execution. Just as tragically, no one had noticed.

There was no danger my brothers would take these things. I did not have to claim them in this way. And yet, beyond reason or incitement, I had cradled each with loving care as I disfigured their faces, one by one with the muted seriousness of which only children are capable.

The thrill of the decision, the satisfying immediacy of the work drained and the sharpness of the night faded in the shadow of awful implications. This could not be undone. Neither time nor twin could fix this. It wouldn’t be gone after I joined him in the green behemoth bed and slumbered. I realized for the first time the awful might of my own actions, the terrible power of me. They, like me, were marked. I discovered I had “me,” but I wasn’t sure what it meant when everything else was involved. My brother slept. I buried my face in the faces of those that bore my name and tried to forget to forget myself.

Semantic errors and historical bungles aside, there’s no mistaking people here are deeply upset about the recent Olympic torch protests, about the comments by CNN’s Jack Cafferty on Chinese “junk and goons” and about rumors that the French supermarket Carrefour supports the Dalai Lama.

In the States we generally think of activism as being anti-establishment, but in China the protests that make the news are the ones that have been allowed to make the news. There are some exceptions, of course. Recently a Shanghai community rallied against the construction of an electronic train that was possibly toxic, and last year residents of the seaside city of Xiamen turned out en masse to protest the construction of a chemical plant positioned just a wee bit too close to city limits. Then there are protests that not only were never meant to be seen but also enjoyed no happy ending – such as those a few years ago by poor country residents seeking more representative local government

All of these protests were local ones. And the protest against Japan a few years back—in response to Japan’s official visits to the shrines of war criminals and the publishing of revisionist history books—was nationalized. But to protest what they view as slander and attack on the nation’s policies, on the country’s sovereignty and its Olympics, Chinese young and old, rich and poor, erudite and uneducated have turned out from New York to Shanghai. They’re blogging, they’re making videos for YouTube and Tudou, they’re designing t-shirts late into the night, and they’re sharing heated conversations—whether over tea in Beijing or coffee in Chicago. Today at work in Shanghai, I noticed out of more than 200 Chinese contacts in my MSN instant messenger list, more than 90 percent had placed a (H)China or (msn heart)China after their name in a sign of solidarity. This was meant to be a glorious time for China to invite in the world—has there ever been a time so many foreigners were asked to come to China, this traditionally isolated nation, rather than invading it?—but instead it has faced the international community’s finger wagging and the resultant loss of face. This is fair criticism to some degree– China should have handled the Tibet situation with more decor and less violence–but we must also question the efficacy of the West’s reaction and perception of events.

In addition to being inundated with MSN Heart-Chinas, today I also became privy to a long stream of e-mails passed between working Chinese in the United States from a diverse array of occupations—banking, hospitality and education, among others—and all spoke of boycotting French goods, protesting CNN and Time and educating people about China’s long and complicated history with Tibet. These young people are not communist party members and have lived abroad for some time, so what gives? If they’ve been in the States for as long as a decade, which some of them have, certainly they should have embraced the values our nation represents and abandoned their evil Chinese ways, right?

But let’s just consider something truly radical for a second. In some capacity, however diminutive, they might have a point. The media has, sometimes sloppily, packaged the story the West wants to buy, a vision that will invariably make the West feel more assured about its position in the world and less anxious about its own offenses. I have found Westerners also have a particular affinity for self-righteousness and snobbery when it comes to China. And of course, it’s much easier and more ego-gratifying to hustle to a rally with friends and high spirits and yell “Free Tibet” before heading off to the nearest microbrew pub for heated hyperbole than it is to make a conscious effort to boycott Chinese goods or send challenging letters to Western Olympic sponsors or examine which companies—clue: not just Chinese ones—have been essential in building the railway to Tibet or bottling its mountain water.

Also, as our world becomes more influenced by the Chinese, it might behoove Westerners to seek to understand opposing ideas before they attack—it’s a basic principle in The Art of War, in any case. Personally, I’ve learned during my time in China that growth and cooperation with the Chinese people only comes through subtle dealings. For example, if I berate a reporter working under me in front of others, I have lost all efficiency in dealing with that person who will become closed off to me and antagonistic to everything I say. If I, on the other hand, ask them to have lunch with me, speak of light matters and slowly work my way into the problem as we finish the meal, my concern will be edible to them, and they will happily digest it. I can say with absolute certainty and conviction that no amount of torch obstruction and no amount of opening ceremony boycotting will bend China to international will. It will only serve to isolate them at a time when they need, more than ever, to be in line with the world.

I am no moral relativist. China is far from blameless. The country must eventually trust its sovereignty enough to believe that allowing greater freedom of speech won’t topple it. It must trust that even bad news has an element of truth in it, which must first be explored rather than denied. It must handle its people with dignity and respect and detest the use of violence. It must, as a major global player, seek to influence the world in a positive, sustainable way. The next step, which recent events have made abundantly clear, is for China, an emerging nation, and its people, increasingly global citizens, to learn to cope with even the most vitriolic criticism that comes along with being part of the world without demanding apologies or proclaiming someone who doesn’t agree immoral, as has been the case. It must also open itself up to the possibility that sometimes it too is wrong.

The West, in turn, needs to consider solutions that work—not merely ones that feel good.

CSR: Where Do We Go Now?
By Sarah Chen

Only two years ago, when Premiere Wen Jiabao released the first CSR report at the State Grid Company, did top-level Chinese leadership suggest the nation adopt universalized CSR practice. “Industry should take responsibility for society and voluntarily accept social supervision,” he said.

At the time, Li Weiyang, China State Grid CSR Department Head, listened attentively. For the past two years he has worked to further the CSR concept in China. Late last year, the state company released its “National Grid Implementation CSR Guide,” which speaks, from the managerial level, about how to invigorate dialogue and cooperation between corporations.

Li believes that one of the catalysts of CSR development in China is the radical change in the country’s economic structure—the most profound being the promotion of separation of government and enterprise, which has led to independent industry and created the demand for meaningful CSR practices. CSR is simply the natural choice for a country with industries seeking to globalize via cooperation with multinationals or through export deals.

Or, as Guo Peiyuan, general manager of Syntao, a Beijing-based CSR consulting company would put it, there is no other choice. Today’s speed of information has brought about societal change, he says, in which companies are put under scrutiny not only by their consumers, but also by the media and NGOs. As such, companies now face greater transparency than ever, and with that comes a certain pressure to perform with greater ethics.

However, when considering CSR in China, the special circumstances and challenges of the nation must be taken into account. To many companies in developed nations, CSR is an effective public relations tool, but China is a country with struggling industries and a huge gap between rich and poor as well as wealth chasms among regional divides. The government must evaluate how to apply appropriate standards to various regions, says Guo.

In the meantime, multinationals may serve as leaders when it comes to Chinese CSR, but problems arise when these multinationals don’t localize their message or disagree with what should constitute as an important aspect of CSR in China. For example, to Westerners, global warming is an important issue for major industries to consider, but to Chinese, it is easier to get the message across by talking more concretely about conserving resources and eliminating emissions.

To put it simply, it’s improbable to simply take and translate CSR development without considering differences in cultural background and the limitations of a nation’s resources.

To resolve these problems, there must be greater communication, says Guo Peiyuan.

Recently, that communication came in the way of a recent surge of meetings. Several large model multinationals hooked up with organized political bodies, university scholars and NGO representatives in Hong Kong and other Chinese cities to share and discuss points about how business is shaping up in Asia and how business operations can enhance understanding. They also discussed how companies can localize responsible practices.

These talks also served as an educational tool. Li points out that most Chinese are unfamiliar with CSR because society currently has no way to promote effective CSR tools and industry lacks models for universal study. Academic management and economic programs should also adopt CSR studies into their curriculum, he says, to develop deep and meaningful research.

Guo asserts that industry must continue to play a vigorous role in universalizing CSR, but in order to do that business must find its own impetus. The government’s duty is to provide a market that allows industry the room to implement CSR procedure.

The challenge now is to make this trend stick. Experts agree that starting with realistic goals and evading the pitfalls of formalism to create good comprehensive strategy is a good start for China. In the final analysis, CSR must be viewed as a tactical choice in industry’s development and an effective long-term management method for the company – and for the world.