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As a business journalist, I’m a big believer in the power of economics. I’m also not a big fan of culture. Sure, it’s fine when it comes to entertainment, but I don’t trust culture as an explanation of behavior. Many habits which are routinely attributed to culture can be better explained by economics. Take, for

This weekend, a friend asked me to tell him all I knew about consultants in China — but to tell it quickly, since he didn’t have much time.My initial thought was to list all the consultants I knew. Management consultants. Business strategy consultants. Market entry consultants. Sourcing consultants. Quality consultants. Engineering consultants. Financial consultants. Human

Frivolous lawsuits are one of the banes of Western corporate life. Lawsuit artists walk through stores looking for puddles to slip in, sue restaurants for the coffee being too hot — even get in touch with a dog bite attorney to sue people who unleash their dogs at parks and cause people to get hurt.

Thursday night, I witnessed the birth of an industry — the foreign-made Chinese movie business. In the United States, we don’t think twice about foreigners making English-language movies for American distribution. In fact, some of our greatest producers and directors have been foreigners, and two of our biggest studios are owned by Japanese and French

A new labor law went into effect at the start of the year, making it more difficult — and expensive –to fire employees. The law also specifies increased additional costs to employers, including minimum wages, overtime and benefits payments. According to the Associated Press , Dongguan’s Taiwan Merchant Association reports that that the cost of

There are many first-time entrepreneurs in China — in many respects, Shanghai is now what Silicon Valley used to be at the height of the dot-com boom.As a result, there are many seminars on how to actually go about starting up a business, and I try to make it to as many as I can.One

Christmas is my all-time favorite holiday. I’m not alone, it’s popular with many people, whether or not they actually adhere to the Christian faith. In my family, with its blended background of faiths, we see Christmas as a symbol of what is holy in every child. But, putting aside, the religious significance, the Christmas season

As a journalist, I routinely hear complaints that the news industry is dominated by a few giant multinationals that determine the boundaries of public discourse. I also hear that the news industry is dying, as bloggers now do for free what the media used to do for money. My personal position is that we’ve always

This week, Xinhua reported that the new four-year education plan will extend compulsory nine-year education to 98 percent of children in China’s 410 poorest counties. In 2004, children in those counties received an average of 6.7 years of education each — hardly enough to prepare them to work in today’s industrialized China. Today, the agency

This year, Chinese officials began putting some sharp teeth to the country’s environmental regulations. This can have significant implications for the economy — last week, the World Bank calculated that air pollution alone is costing China 3.8 percent of its GDP. Adding in water pollution and non-health impacts of pollution raises that estimate to about

During my trip to Sichuan last week, I met several successful Chinese farmers. The main reason for their success, however, was that they weren’t actually farmers any more. Instead, they were construction contractors, or operated tourism resorts. It’s hard to run a small family farm anywhere in the world, and China is no exception. My

Earlier this week, I asked Ge Honglin, the mayor of Chengdu, what incentives his city had to offer foreign companies wishing to relocate here. Can companies get subsidies? Low-interest loans? Tax breaks? His answer surprised me. I expected a few vague promises, maybe some obfuscations, some exaggerations. I got none of that. “Frankly, Chengdu can’t