Caterpillar Learned A Good Lesson

(1/21/2013) China's huge market and cheap labor seems to be too good to let go. Many international conglomerates rushed into China to set up their new branches, or to acquire business in order to beef up their competitiveness. Well, Caterpillar learned a good lesson that the Chinese company SiWei they bought was a lemon. This terrible purchase forced Caterpillar to write down a loss of $580 millions in the fourth quarter in 2012. This $580 millions of loss is almost 89% of its original merging cost ($653 millions). Ironically, the two business men who sold Siwei to Caterpillar and made huge profit are American, as this news says " Emory Williams is a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. The other principal is James Thompson III, the son of billionaire James E. Thompson, chairman of Crown Worldwide
Group, a relocation company in Hong Kong." Forbes has revealed that merge in 2011.

Foxconn's Style of Management

(12/17/2012) French reporters get an exclusive report about Foxconn's employee management (Apple's biggest contract manufacturer).



(12/18/2012) An interesting article on Wall Street Journal found that the workers of Foxconn are unhappy: "the newly implemented labor law in China is making it hard for employees to earn a living because they are working fewer hours at the higher overtime rates." What a cultural difference, right?

Money, Money, Money

(10/17/2012) Money is always a game changer in business. To be more exact, what I mean is that the currency exchange is a game change in international business. Is Chinese RMB (Renminbi) still manipulated at a very low level? That is one of crossfire topic last night in the presidential debate between Romney and Obama. This article provides you some evidence that RMB has been relatively appreciate its value in the last several year.

I often hear that American accuses Chinese government currency manipulation that causes their trade imbalance and job loss issue in the U.S. Then the Chinese accuses American (people and government) spending too much money and own a lot of debt to foreigners. In Chinese, it says "一個銅板不會響", which means that you cannot make noise with just one quarter and both sides should be blamed. I agree with that. However, who will eventually win? Well, I think American, RELATIVELY.

Japan's problem

(9/29/2012)
Reading an article from Washingtonpost.com: As Apple and Samsung dominate, Japan’s tech giants are in a free fall.

Japan's problem is not just in business, it is at the national level. So often, we see Japan has its own standard that is different from all other countries. They want to import to other countries, but don't want to buy imports from another country (because Japanese's products are the best). They ignore the economy of scale of globalization that is outside of Japan and rapidly expands in recent decades. So many Japanese tech giants were "innovating" for its own market and to become the leader in Japan market. Look at NEC and Fujitsu, they are PC leaders in Japan. But few consumers outside of Japan know them as PC makers. From the people, to business and the nation, they just overlook what is going on outside of Japan because they entered into a deadly self-breeding cycle for their diminishing future.