The China trip

The China trip, its hangover and the barrage of work that followed kept me from posting this so far. If I could summarize the China trip in few words they will be' I came, I saw and I am coming again'. One of my major reasons of joining Vlerick was the China module and I must say to the least it met my expectations in terms of its structure,line-up of speakers,industry visits, cultural trips & overall organization.

We started with Beijing. As I mentioned in my previous post that Vlerick has a sister campus in Beijing, situated within the Peking University. Most of our lectures & speaker interactions took place at the Peking U campus. We had lectures and speakers on a broad range of topics, to name a few; Jack Perkowski on his story in China, Confuscianism, IP issues, Starting Business, Business-Government relations.

We visited companies such as Tsinghua Science Park, Capital Steel Group, Sohu.com, Mengiu Dairy. The choice of companies was a good combination of State Owned Entreprises(SOEs) to Internet ventures. What was particularly interesting to me was the openness with which even the SOEs interacted with us. We also visited the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Hutong District and other places around Beijing.

It was my first visit to China and Beijing left a lasting impression on me, the sheer magnanimity of the city overwhelmed me.Beijing has this air of 'Political Authority' around it. Although the pollution bothered me initially but it was ok later.

Our next stop was Shanghai. In Shanghai we had lectures, guest speakers and industry visits too. Here it was pre-dominantly from the financial/venture-capital industry. Shanghai visibly has a different character than Beijing.It seemed more relaxed, easy-going and business-focussed. Shanghai has a better night life than Beijing. We did visit the Shanghai business district which was no less than impressive.We took a one day trip to Zhouzhang, a historical site close to Shanghai.

However I felt China has few challenges that would be fundamental for China's future:-

Gini Index
China has had its growth focused in Eastern and Southern coastal areas, this has been by design and not by co-incidence. This phenomenon has created a big income disparity between urban and rural incomes. The Gini Index is close to 0.5 in China today. China government is pushing for development in less developed areas, however this a big challenge for China's future.

Hukou system
This 'country within a country system' was promulgated to control the migration of people to urban areas,today this is creating a huge social unrest in Chinese society.

Media openness
Personally I feel the space for free media is still restricted in China. No Facebook, Youtube, selective access to Wikipedia among other things that made me feel the need for more media freedom.

Having said all of these, I have come to believe the West is misplaced in trying to transpose its presumed best governance model - 'Democracy' on China because Chinese society is fundamentally different.China has been a feudal society for centuries and the administrators realize this. Adopting democracy immediately may crumble China and that's why China is slowly opening up to it.It is a remarkable achievement to pull out more than 300 million out of poverty in a span of few decades and China must be applauded for this !!!