In her article, Why China won't conquer the world , Xue Xinran tells a rich story in answer to the headline. Of particular interest was a quote from  Jiang Xueqin, a Yale-educated school administrator in Beijing. He asserts that the Chinese "gaokao" origins of the current educational system rewards "very strong memory; very strong logical and analytical ability; little imagination; little desire to question authority."

 

During my doctorate in curriculum studies at the Univesity of Alberta, I had the great fortune of sharing my graduate program (60 students) with 35 foreign scholars all concerned with the education of their nations. I heard the refrains similar to the above -- but I also heard other voices that offered a differing world view, one where China was not seen as a "developing nation" catching up to the West. Rather, thousands of years of culture and a differing economic system were grounds for a non-ethnocentric understanding of progress.

 

It is for this reason that I disagree with Xue Xinran's thesis, encapsulated by her quote from -- you guessed it -- a Western advisor: "Chinese corporate structures remain very rigid, and, according to Daniel Altman, a consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, original ideas 'have to percolate through so many layers of hierarchy that most won't survive to the top. China has a long way to go before it will be anything like the U.S. in its ability to foster entrepreneurship.'"

 

This understanding of one way -- the Western way, with an assumed Chinese gap -- is prototypical Western thinking. Meanwhile, the West's financial institutions are faltering as some collapse. Xinran offers the fact that in July of this year the total number of U.S. bonds held by China had reached $1.1735 trillion. According to the CIA, in July of this year China's population was 1,336,718,015 people. The US had 313,232,044. 

 

To extend Xinran's social math, this US sovereign indebtedness to China is equivalent to each person in the US owing $3756 dollars to China. And each Chinese person being owed $879. This circumstance adumbrates the need for a different understanding of global, socio-economic progress.

 

 

September Begins a Joint Venture with NRG Research Group

 

July 2011

Beginning this September 2011, I will be an independent market research contractor with NRG Research Group. I will be representing both NRG (for all market research) and my own company to clients. 

Previously, as a client-side researcher at ICBC for over 20 years, I worked with NRG through all of  the company’s transitions since the early 1990’s. They provided outstanding research solutions throughout the years. In fact, through competitive bidding processes, NRG maintained the very large ICBC customer satisfaction research program for fifteen years and counting. NRG understands and excels at the co-research model I have championed. (2002) Responding to the Needs of Marketing Research Clients: The Researcher's Role as Change Agent.  Professional Marketing Research Society, Toronto: January.

My client practice will be broad: health, post-secondary, crown corporations, non-profit, and businesses of all stripes. This will be the third successful company that I have started - the second research company. I am very excited with this new (renewed) chapter.

My focus as always will be voicing the needs of customers, participants and stakeholders. But first research requires the articulation of business outcomes driving the search for insight.  To this prerequisite and often difficult planning process, I bring over 30 years of strategic leadership in corporate setting. 

I am delighted to have the resources and assurance of working with such a reliable company as NRG and to continue pursuing my maxim: Customers are not always right, but it is always wrong not to begin with a genuine understanding of their perspective.

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2:11 pm pdt 

 

 

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington September 24, 2011

 

"I think it is pretty clear to everybody that Greece is in a very difficult position in terms of repaying its debts. That is, I think, plain to everyone. The key is the knock-on effect on European banks and making sure that contagion is controlled."

 

In the same article, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported to have told a meeting of her political party members that a Greek default was not an option for her because "it might trigger a domino effect in other struggling economies."

The article concluded: "Politicians in northern Europe, especially in Germany, have opposed dedicating more money to fight a crisis that they see as caused by the profligacy of countries such as Greece."

Knock-on effect. Domino effect. Caused by profligacy. Where have we read this before? Images of sub-prime, collapsing houses-of-cards also come to mind. Profligate lending which allowed overpriced, home-purchases by families who hadn't the means to sustain payments. Profligate spending. Profligate lending. Wasteful abandon and extravagance by borrowers, spenders, governments and lenders.

The good news comes from BMO chief economist Sherry Cooper:

"Canadian housing and jobs markets remain solid, and the banking system is the best in the world… People who want to protect themselves from wealth destruction should invest in blue-chip, dividend-paying companies with strong earnings histories."

"Canada is a pretty boring place right now, and we're the envy of the world," she said.

"Boring is good."

For more good economic news closer to home read:

 

Resources boom changing the face of northwest B.C. towns

 

Pictures thanks to Andre Gysin