Survey: Chinese Workers Stressed Out
Nearly eight out of 10 Chinese workers became more stressed in the past year, a new survey has found.
The survey by Regus, a global workplace-solutions provider, recently polled more than 16,000 workers in 80 countries.
Seventy-five percent of Chinese workers polled said that their stress levels had risen in the past year, according to the survey.
It found that 48 percent of workers globally felt growing pressure in the past year.
The smallest increases in stress worldwide were in Australia and the Netherlands, where just 38 percent and 40 percent of workers said they had experienced more stress.
Chinese workers’ stress mainly comes from work, individual financial status and clients, the survey found.
In China, workers in Shanghai and Beijing felt the highest rise in stress in the past year, it said.
In Shanghai, 80 percent of workers said their stress levels rose. In Beijing, the figure is 67 percent.
– China Daily
First World Wingsuit Flying Championships Held in Zhangjiajie, Hunan
Awesome contest for the brave amidst the majestic scenery of Tianmen, Zhangjiajie.
See CCTV/Hunan Cable TV clip provided by BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-19988451
Reuters: No Evidence of Huawei Spying
White House-ordered review of security risks posed by suppliers to U.S. telecommunications companies found no clear evidence that Huawei Technologies Ltd had spied for China, two people familiar with the probe told Reuters.
Instead, those leading the 18-month review concluded early this year that relying on Huawei, the world’s second-largest maker of networking gear, was risky for other reasons, such as the presence of vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit.
But they may douse speculation that Huawei has been caught spying for China.
Manley: School Boards Must Teach Mandarin and Other Languages
John Manley, the former finance minister who now heads the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, said it is time for a national debate over how to encourage new language skills as part of the country’s trade efforts. At the national level, the Conservative government is making an aggressive push to expand trade with China, India and Latin America, but Ottawa has no say in provincial curriculum or local school-board policies.
Even parents who can afford private language lessons can have a hard time finding classes for their kids, Mr. Manley said.
“It has to do with where the jobs are going to be 10, 15, 20 years from now. I think that it’s a great asset for Canada that we already think in terms of bilingualism. I just think that we are underestimating the importance of multilingualism,” said Mr. Manley, after delivering a speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa about the need for Canadians and Canadian businesses to focus more on Asia.
“We know that we have members that are trying to hire – particularly Mandarin speakers – but other languages as well, and they’re not easy to find,” he said.
Canada should follow Australia’s lead, said Mr. Manley, where government policy encouraged Chinese language education in schools. A report released last month by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada made a similar recommendation, pointing to how Australia’s sustained focus on China takes a broader approach than simply signing trade deals.
It is up to individual school boards to decide policies around language courses, and some are already pushing hard in this area. For instance, the Calgary Board of Education offers Mandarin as an “alternative program” that can be accessed for an additional fee. The Calgary board also offers programs in French, German and Spanish.
In Brampton and Mississauga, the Peel District School Board has elementary-level courses available in more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Gujarati, Hindi, Mandarin, Punjabi, Sinhalese, Spanish, Tamil, Urdu and Vietnamese.
It’s not only big-city school boards that are moving in this direction. Earlier this year, the Renfrew County District School Board announced it would offer Mandarin to 24 adult education students in the small Ontario town of Deep River.
The B.C. government considered taking a step further with a draft curriculum that would have treated French as an “additional language” that would be grouped with others like German and Mandarin. That plan was abandoned last year in the face of objections from supporters of French language education.
– Globe and Mail
Food Waste in China Enough to Feed 200 Million
The amount of food wasted by restaurants and households in China is simply incredible. Culture is partly to blame as people would rather waste out of ‘face’ than take home in doggie bags.
When Will Western Economists Get it?
A couple economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco came out with a paper arguing that even as China’s GDP slows to a new normal over the next decade, poorer interior provinces will speed up and take up some of the slack. Well, of course!
Most Western economists just look at China’s macro picture but in the interior and western China, pockets of deep poverty remain. There are some 10-13% of the population still living under US$2 a day. They should instead perceive China as a multi-layered economy – advanced development along the coast and in the major cities, central areas and third and fourth-tier cities and counties that have a ways to go in catching up, and remote rural areas in central, southwestern and northwestern China that are about 15-20 years behind.
This is all part of the urbanization process that proceeds nonuniformly across the country – from the coast and major cities gradually working inward. China has a long way to go in development and the government is fully aware of the challenges ahead.
Here is their analysis on rich and poor provinces switching places by the end of the decade as the rich slow to 5.5% and the poor grow at a robust 7.5%. But, I think their dichotomy between rich and poor provinces remains crude. I expect growth to be higher all around, especially in the interior where the central government has been pouring in massive amounts to build up infrastructure and stimulate growth and will continue to so in the coming decades.
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2012/el2012-31.html
China and Canada EMBAs on FT Top 100 List
Mainland China’s EMBA market has grown like gangbusters in the less than two decades since the first school was set up in 1995. In the Financial Times just released 2012 ranking of the top 100 EMBA programs around the world, 13 Greater China EMBAs made the cut – eight mainland programs along with four Hong Kong based and one in Taiwan. Seven of them are joint ventures between Chinese and foreign institutions. Eleven years ago, in FT’s 2001 ranking, only two mainland Chinese institutions were mentioned.
Analyzing the results, FT declared unequivocally: “The EMBA is to China what the MBA is to the US, the masters in management is to France and PGP (Post-Graduate Program in Management) is to India – the most popular diploma for managers and executives. This is reflected in the ranking, with nine of the top 12 programs taught at least partly in Asia.”
Significantly, first-timers on the list, Tsinghua University/INSEAD catapulted to 4th ahead of traditionally strong INSEAD and CEIBS and Sun Yat-sen University Business School came in 11th, fighting well above its weight class. Fudan University School of Management entered at 35th while its JV with the University of Hong Kong tied for 54th. The Kellogg Graduate School of Management/Hong Kong University of Science and Technology program topped the world for a third year in a row.
Although the newspaper commented on Beijing-based Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, privately backed by the Li Ka-shing Foundation, the popular school does not appear on the list, the reasoning for which is unexplained. Also, Sun Yat-sen University made previous rankings without specific reference to the Business School, placing 54th in 2011 and 53rd in 2010.
Six Canadian schools made the list but their positions were invariably pushed downward due in part to the surge of high-performing mainland Chinese schools. York University Schulich School of Business’s collaboration with Kellogg was the top Canadian program, tying for 27th overall.
The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management was a little behind at 29th, followed by the University of Western Ontario which also operates in Hong Kong (43rd), Queen’s University’s joint program with Cornell University (45th), Queen University’s own program (tied for 92nd), and University of Alberta/University of Calgary program (99th).
Greater China-based programs:
Greater China World School
2012 2012 2011 2010
1 1 1 1 Kellogg/Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School
2 4 Tsinghua University/INSEAD
3 7 11 18 CEIBS
4 9 15 18 Fudan U. School of Management/Washington U. Olin School of Business
5 11 Sun Yat-sen University Business School
6 17 14 10 Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School
7 21 20 28 Shanghai Nat’l Accounting Inst./Arizona State U. Carey School of Business
8 24 26 22 OneMBA: Chinese University of Hong Kong (US, Holland, Brazil and Mexico)
9 35 Fudan University School of Management
10 43 36 29 U. of Western Ontario Ivey School of Business (Canada and Hong Kong)
11 54 University of Hong Kong/Fudan University School of Management
12 66 45 37 National Taiwan U. College of Management
13 86 56 39 Tongji U./Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech (ENPC) School of Int’l Mg
Canadian programs:
Canada World School
2012 2012 2011 2010
1 27 11 23 Kellogg/York University Schulich School of Business
2 29 28 29 University of Toronto Rotman School of Management
3 43 36 29 University of Western Ontario Ivey
4 45 44 55 Queen’s U. School of Business/Cornell U. Johnson School
5 92 84 69 Queen’s University School of Business
6 99 73 48 University of Alberta/University of Calgary business schools
Hong Kong Magnate Donates New China Center to Oxford
Construction has begun at St. Hugh’s College at Oxford University on the new Dickson Poon China Center Building, which is named after the Hong Kong luxury magnate and philanthropist who donated £10 million to the project.
Currently, the Oxford China Center’s 40 academics are spread throughout the university, without a dedicated physical space. The new building, whose construction began on Oct. 8 and is expected to be completed in 2014 with the help of Mr. Poon’s $16 million donation, will be home to a 60,000-volume library, a language laboratory, lecture hall, student accommodation and conference areas. Outdoor spaces will include a Chinese-style courtyard and garden and a rooftop terrace with views of Oxford’s famous spires.
– NYT
China Ups Reforestation
China has plans to increase its forest coverage to 21.66 percent by 2015 in an effort to improve the country’s ecological environment, an official said Sunday.
Sun Zhagen, vice head of the State Forestry Administration, unveiled the plan at a forum on sustainable forestry development, Xinhua reported.
Sun said the effort is to cope with global climate change. Some $7.22 billion have been set aside to subsidize farmers whose farmland was reclaimed and turned into forests.
China’s forest coverage reached 20.36 percent in 2009, up from 18.21 percent in 2006, the SFA said. Some 20.54 million hectares of forests have been restored so far in the country.
– UPI
Photo Essay: Hairy Crabs
Never understood the Chinese taste for dirty and skimpy-fleshed freshwater hairy crabs that can go for hundreds of RMB per catty in fancy restaurants throughout the country. Aficionados say they like picking and sucking out the small strands of meat, especially the ‘xiehuang’ (reddish-yellow flesh) which is considered a delicacy and garnished as a delicious topping on shiumai and mixed into stuffing for dim sum style rice-flour dumplings.
In Germany, a similar crab is seen as a pest and exterminated. I guess one man’s waste is another man’s prize.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/09/201291110213227772.html