Wuhan-ing for 35 days!: 28th September 2011 (23rd day)

28^th September 2011 (23^rd day)

Today’s programme is 2 IS teaching class.

The morning IS lecture taught about Business Environment & Strategies of Doing Business in China. The lecturer is a male lecturer who is very soft-spoken and didn’t increase his volume even though Vincent sitting at the first row requested to. Imagine I’m sitting at the third row? Therefore I have to strain my eyes to hear throughout the 4 hours of lecture.

He talked about Regional Division and Statistics in China, China’s Economic Development Prospects, Consumers in Real China, China’s Economy and Business Opportunities and China as a leader of the World Economy. Afterwards he talks about the 4 river in China:

1. Yellow River

2. Yangtze River

3. Pearl River

4. Song Hua River

· 100 years ago, there are Western came from the South China Sea, and the economy starts to develop there and it is more focused over at the area. And now I know that provinces like ShangHai, Beijing, Shandong, Hebei, Tanjing is located at the East Regions of China. Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi is at the middle regions of China. And mostly other regions can be found in the West region.|

· Wuhan is the place whereby a lot of people travel to for a link of transportation that can lead to other places of Chinese; therefore it leads to transportation problem over here. It will be even worst at peak hours whereby more people will knock out from work and going back home.

· China’s Economy has been growing at a rate of 9.6% annually since 1978 because of Deng Xiao Ping, who was a reformer who led China towards a market economy. He was also instrumental in China’s economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies were at odds with political ideologies of Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution but regained importance in 1978 by defeating Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng. Deng also opened China to foreign investment, global mart, and limited private competition. He was being credited with developing China into one of the fastest growing economies in the world for over 30 years and raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese. From 1988 to 1990, there was a drop of 4.0% because there was inflation.

· Comparing China and Singapore working industry is that a higher percentage of tertiary industry will be in Singapore and China has a higher percentage in Secondary Industry.

· From the World’s Bank Income Standard, China is at the low income level from 1980 to 1998, however the income starts to increase because of increase in trading and etc. This leads to China upgrading to the Lower Middle Income level from year 2000 onwards. And now 2011, China belongs to the Upper Middle Income level.

· In China, there are certain rules to abide, such as having a child in the family. The family can go for adoption only when the 1^st child has some problem, if not the family cannot adopt. And if the family wants to have more than 1 child, they have to pay 1Million RMB, if they are able to then they are able to saves their job. If they are not able to pay that sum, then they will be caught and they will lose their jobs.

· For consumers in real China, the teachers says that in Si Zhou of China, they have the largest market for Humvees, as they bought over the brand from US, as the China thinks that the car represents wealth, power. And the China do not cares whether the car has any disadvantages. The US does not want it and sold it to China because the car needed a lot of fuel to function and also it pollutes the environment very much. This taught me that at different countries have different views of purchasing power.

· The different types of tiers have different opinions of some questions, such as:
Purchase Decision.

For Tier 1 (70.5%) Tier 2 (66.1%) and Tier (70.9%)

What affects tier1 people to decide if to buy or not depends on previous experience, promotion. Tier2 people depend on recommended by friends/relative, and Tier3 people depend on the package or recommendation by friends.

This can be related back to real estate, depends on which income level we are targeting in China, if we are targeting on the higher income level of people. Then they will depend on what factors that will make their purchase and same go to other tiers.

There are also questions like Ambition, Fashion, Shopping Decision by small kids, Food habits.

And we also know that in a business world, for negotiations to be successfully deal, we have to personally socialize with the opposite partner first and develop a clear roadmap and talk about it then try to make the situation a win-win deal. There are also 9 important P in the business world, which are

1. Planning

2. Persistence

3. Partners

4. Product

5. Patron

6. Patience

7. People

8. Problem-Solving Attitude

9. Public Relations.

After the lecture of IS, we went back hostel and to the 热干面stall to have our noodles, we ordered together 12 bowls of the store, and with our huge orders at one go frequently; they must have increased their profits for the month already. And it will be a sad thing when we go back to Singapore, when the profits will reduce back to normal.

Soon the second IS Lesson was held at West Campus. The lecturer started with history presentation of Chinese Coins by the different dynasty and there are different kings who took over the dynasty. And he also mentioned how the kings were being punished by the others in the past, such as the Mongolia who bullied them. Before even the coins started, it starts with shells as the money for purchasing items but soon it changed to coins because the traders from China went over to other countries and realized that they have a lot of their shells.

This knife is also a form of money in the olden days

Money Coins

The interesting point that I remembered is also that there is one king whose picture is not being painted but being taken with camera in a black and white film. We were told that the king is more of western type of culture and his hobby is wood carpenter work and would do a lot of whose works. His works will be sold to others and he is one of the famous creator is some wood works therefore there are people who praise him for his good works.

One question is raised that if king or dynasty changed, can the coins for the previous king or dynasty still be used? The answer is that if the king changes, the coin still can be used though the dynasty is the same. If the dynasty changes, means that the coin cannot be use as there will be new coins be issued to citizens. And the previous batch of coins will be kept back by the government authorities but will leave some for some other purposes.

It is really good to have a touch of those coins because it is made of copper and these coins are rarely seen nowadays. The teacher kept a collection of them by his father and passed it to him, therefore we are fortunately to be able to see those coins. And there was one king who created a coin that can represents 10 normal, or 50 normal coins, so it will be easier for big amount of transactions.

The book of coins he accumulated!

In China now, they have modernized and start using paper notes, because you can easily find 1 RMB, 5RMB, 10 RMB, 100RMB notes. And of course coins can be of 1RMB, 0.5RMB, 0.1RMB form. I think in this way it is easier for transaction, and some more paper notes are lighter which is convenient to carry around inside the wallet. And I also think that the invention of coins is derived from the seashells, because there used to be a man who found seashells and start using it as coins for trading and buying of items, but they changed to coins soon after realizing that another country have alot of seashells in the sea and find it have no value.

After the presentation, we proceed to having fun in Calligraphy in the classroom. We tried drawing/writing flowers, names and anything with the brush and ink provided. And the lecturer also showed us some of his works and of course performed some works for us to see.