Experience Not Logic - 不经一事，不长一智



The China 5-Star Experience (Jul 4)
Several years ago, a friend and I took a car from Portland, Oregon to New York to visit his brother who had just started his summer associateship at a big fancy law firm. We arrived on a Friday afternoon after making stops at Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. We met his brother in his office. I was wearing flip flops at the time--I felt like a jackass with each step. Somehow his brother was able to get off at 5pm (but I think it was with the caveat that he read some 1,000 pages over the weekend), and secure the firm's card for drinks.

Long story short, I woke up in some hotel room that ate into a huge chunk of the spare change I had left after blowing as much as my graduation money as I possibly could on fireworks at various firework depots on the drive cross country (I still have a seemingly endless satchel full in my closet). But, it wasn't the money I was thinking about as I awoke. Rather, I was wondering whether I had fallen asleep in a cloud for the bed in the most inexpensive roo...


Case Study in Fitting a Triangle into the Global Market (Jul 2)
This week's Economist print edition has an interesting case study about Chinese tire manufacturer that's On a roll, Triangle Group.

Triangle Group was founded by the Weihai government in 1976, and has since grown into one of the six largest domestic tire companies in China. The article notes that with its 1% global market share it is one of only two Chinese tire companies with "anything approaching a global market share." As with many SOEs, Triangle became big, bloated, and unprofitable by the early 1990s. Then, in 1993:
A powerful chairman was installed who could run a business and negotiate the country’s complicated politics. The company reworked contracts, imposed a new approach to discipline and rustled up money (presumably from Weihai, Triangle’s parent) to invest in the production of modern radial tyres. Workers wear uniforms determined by rank, and every detail of operations, from the typeface to be used in correspondence, to the company song, to how a phone should be answered ...


Carbon Emissions and Chinese Forest Fires (Jul 1)
DISCLAIMER: I don't want anybody getting any funny ideas about thinking that this post has anything to do with human GHG emissions being relatively harmless in comparison with the amount of emissions released by nature. Though climate change has happened quickly in the past, the data largely shows that the current climate change is being spurred on by man. Forest fires, as you'll read, are just currently of interest to me.

California, especially Northern California, is currently engulfed in forest fires. Growing up in a part of the the Santa Cruz Mountains called Bonny Doon, our largest struggles with nature were the rain's effect upon our power lines and an earthquake in '89. As a young man I was less equipped to understand the devastation wrought upon our landscaping by the deer. Despite growing up shrouded in redwood trees and pine trees, the threat of forest fire never seemed present. While attending college in Southern California, several forest fires have struck near to where I...


Posts of the Week: 6/23 - 6/29 (Jun 30)
Williams Loft Case Study About Sourcing in China at All Roads Lead to China

Restructuring Restructuring: State-Owned Enterprise Reform in the PRC (Part 3) at Boulder2Beijing

China Environmental Torts at China Environmental Law

is “no more chinese knock-offs” an empty threat? at China Esquire

China, India and Oil Prices at China Hearsay

Why Western Employers Are More Attractive to Many Chinese at The China Vortex