I am not too afraid of bird flu, at least not in the current stage of the ‘outbreak’. The media are overreacting once again, it reminds me of what happened during SARS. The moment some humans get infected in Shanghai most foreigners will probably flee China again to ‘safer’ places. SARS was just a big blown-up media event, and I feel that is what happening to bird flu as well. As long as the virus does not mutate into a human-to-human virus I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Apparently the longer the virus only stays in birds the smaller the chance it will mutate into a dangerous virus: the virus gets weaker over time when it spreads. The reason: sick birds don’t fly far and dead birds don’t fly at all, so only a weaker version of the virus will likely spread.

On the Oriental-List (a mailing list mainly about travel in China) an American lady mentioned today that she was going to travel to Beijing for the first time, but had to promise her family not to eat Beijing Duck because of the danger. What are these people thinking? At least another member took the time to remind her that the ducks are cooked (actually roasted) very well so that there is no danger at all to get infected. And even if there is any danger, this is still much smaller than getting hit by a taxi or bus when crossing a street in China.

But how does the average Chinese see this? David, my partner at China Bay, asked his driver this question. The answer: “The government says that bird flu is under control, so I don’t worry about anything.” An interesting observation that people still put full trust in what the government is saying. On the one hand maybe scary, but what if this would not be the case? If Chinese would overreact to bird flu like Europeans and Americans to SARS and anthrax the country would soon be in total chaos. I am glad to live in China!

This morning I visited the Foxconn plant in Kunshan (Jiangsu province). This was a very interesting visit for me, as the plant is one of the biggest labour-intensive plants that I have visited in China. In total the Kunshan plant has a workforce of 38,000 people, which would be the equivalent of a small town in Holland. I went to the plant on a ‘educational trip’ with a group of China Bay clients, so we hired a small bus to drive there. Too bad that the bus also included a tour guide, who kept on talking. Problem is that most of his information was either stereotypes or was even completely wrong, and that got really on my nerves. The misinformation ranged from the Maglev train going 580 km/h (wrong, I think about 430 km/h), the former sign at the Huangpu park ‘not allowed for dogs and Chinese’ (this seems to be an urban legend, although Chinese indeed were not allowed in), to this one: “The difference between Shanghai and Beijing is that in Beijing all lights are turned off after 7 PM and it is completely dark’. Well, the tour guide was a proud Shanghainese, so I expected a little looking down on Beijing, but this just went too far. However, with the clients around I did not want to start arguing with the guide, so I just tried to block out his talk.

Foxconn is an amazing company, they have increased their revenues in 10 years from around 2 billion to 20 billion, and keep on growing between 30-60% per year. They spent huge amounts on innovation and R&D to keep ahead of the competition, and that seems to pay off. The total workforce worldwide is nearing 200,000 people. We asked the management how long the growth can continue like this. The answer: only the sky is the limit! In the plant we visited the production of cables (mostly automated) and then the assembly from the cables to connectors. The assembly is all done manually. Imagine a hall the size of a gymnasium full of long tables and chairs filled with 18-20 year old girls who connect cables for 8 hours a day (in 2-3 shifts). They are extremely well organized, with the color of the uniform showing the level and experience of the girls (there were also a few boys but not many – when we asked we were told girls had smaller fingers, so could perform better). Everyone has a description of her/his work hanging in front of the workspace to avoid mistakes.

Later we were also shown the assembly of notebooks (all the big brands), from the injection moulding, painting to the final assembly (also manually). The logistics involved in this are quite something. I forgot how many notebooks they produce, but it must be one every few seconds. We were shown around by the division head, a very friendly and talkative American Taiwanese. He answered every question we had, and seemed to know all the details by heart. When we left it was lunchtime, and large groups of employees walked in an orderly fashion to the cafeteria. They must have been drilled pretty good, because there was no pushing or screaming as is usual on Chinese streets. Actually, now I come to think of it, I wonder whether they were even talking to each other (must be, but it seemed all very quiet). In the factory itself the girls had to concentrate on their work and did not communicate with the others. Only the supervisors occasionally said something. Even though their jobs may seem pretty harsh and boring, most of them looked quite happy. Or maybe that was because a group of foreigners in dark suits was observing them?

This week McKinsey presented a study (China’s looming talent shortage) that concludes that the quality of China’s university graduates is not good enough to move from manufacturing into services. I do agree with them on this, and I think it mainly has to do with the education system focusing too much on memorizing instead of thinking about a subject. But that is not the main reason for this post. What I noticed on the article’s main page, is that the article can also be downloaded as a zip-file and then be converted to an mp3. A very interesting move. What will this hold for the future? Will all articles become available as audio-files so you can listen to them on your mp3-phone or iPod?

I do not understand why they decided to make a 12 MB zip file instead of going for an mp3-file directly. For spoken text you don’t need high-quality audio and mp3’s can be smaller than the 12 MB file they now have (the length is only 17 minutes). If they would go for the mp3 format directly they should take it one step further and also put an RSS feed on their site, so people can subscribe to audio files – and then it is suddenly called podcasting. But that seems too big a step too far for McKinsey at this point. A quick check of their site revealed that it does not even have one RSS feed on it. You can subscribe to news alerts by email… That is so old-fashioned. Anyway, at least they are going in the right direction by putting an audio file online. But still lots of room for improvement!

Yesterday I flew from Sanya to Shanghai, and on the flight I was reading the Shanghai Daily. It opened with an article saying that all travelers to Shanghai would have their shoes sterilized and that people would be checked for bringing poultry to the city. I was wondering what procedures would be in place at Hongqiao airport upon arrival. Would the SARS screening stations be in operation again? These were basically computers that measure the body temperature of each passenger and show the result in a color graph on a computer screen. Or would there be mats with liquid on it to clean your shoes (this was actually already in use on the domestic airport in Manila when we were there a month ago – it had a sign that it was to prevent the spreading of bird flu)? Or would your shoes be sprayed when leaving the plane? And would dogs be sniffing the luggage (this was shown on the picture on the front page, a dog walking over the luggage belt checking all the luggage for chicken and birds)?

Well, the answer is simple: none of it happened. There was no change from the regular procedures and nothing hinted at the implementation or future implementation of anti-bird flu measures. Big front page articles in the newspapers to keep the people assured that the authorities are doing everything to keep bird flu out of the city. But it is just words, not reality.

Gary Wang with whom I founded Toodou.com, had an interview with the New York Times earlier this week about our site and podcasting in China in general. Today it was published. Because it is premium content, you cannot view it at the NYT site without a subscription, but we put the article online here.

It seems that our servers are not able to handle the sudden increase in traffic, so if the link is not working try it again tomorrow…

In Sanya on tropical Hainan Island today. My wife has an off-site here from her company (Roland Berger Strategy Consultants) and spouses are also invited. We are staying in the 5-star Holiday Inn Beach Resort, a nice place on the Yalong Bay beach. A good room on the executive floor with a view all over Yalong Bay. The last time I stayed in this hotel was about four years ago when the hotel was still in its soft opening stage. What I still remember from that time is that the staff tried so hard to please the guests, but things always went wrong. It was OK, because we were warned in advance. They are doing a much better job now, even connecting my (English language) Apple Powerbook to the internet was something they managed (it did not find the IP address automatically).

This morning Mr. Roland Berger, the founder of the company gave a pre-breakfast speech (at 7:30 AM, for one hour!). He among others talked about the results of Roland Berger worldwide and compared them to China. The China business is growing very quickly, much faster than the rest of the world (not surprising of course). Mr. Berger is a very charismatic person, and I enjoyed listening to him. Amazing that he managed to build this company in 30 years from a one-man operation to the top 4 or 5 consultancy company worldwide. Based on what he says I feel Roland Berger is a great company to work for. Retaining employees is a major point for them, and they seem to be treated quite well (Qi just started 2 weeks ago, so I cannot judge it yet based on her experience). The only down-side is that the consultants always seem to be working: last night after we arrived in the hotel around 10 PM many people immediately went into meetings, and also today people cannot participate in activities because they need to have discussions.

Mr. Berger this morning put it like this: the client always comes first, then the firm, and only then your private life. This is of course not something everyone likes, but if you enjoy your job and feel responsible for the work that you are doing it probably comes automatically. But it also explains why the average age at Roland Berger is not very high: many people change to a different industry after having worked hard and gained lots of experience during a couple of years here. Not necessarily bad, according to Mr. Berger, because they are the best ambassadors for the values and the quality of the company.

The Shanghai World Financial Center, the future highest building in China, will not get the beautiful round hole at the top of the building, as was originally planned. After Chinese complaints that the top looks too much like the Japanese flag, the (Japanese!) developer changed the design to a rectangular opening. To save face of course other reasons were put forward.

Yahoo News:
The developer’s president Minor Mori explained the change by saying that during lengthy planning delays in the 11-year-old project, he began to think the original design had “lost its freshness.”

Construction of the slender, wedge-shaped building began in the mid-1990s and is due for completion in 2008. The original design called for a 164-foot-high circular hole through the tower’s peak to reduce wind pressure on the structure and give it a distinctive profile.

But Chinese critics said the hole resembled Japan’s “rising sun” flag, an image associated in China with Tokyo’s brutal conquest of much of China during the 1930s and ’40s.

Sunday I watched the Shanghai Formula One race, the last race of the 2005 season. We were invited by Xue Qin from Guanchi / Flirting Pictures, a top local TV commercial production company in Shanghai. She gave us excellent tickets: Row 1 just behind the finish line! The seats were really amazing, being just a few meters away from the cars when they drive by at speeds far over 300 kph is quite an experience. She also arranged that our driver could park right outside the Grandstand, and because of that we were back in Shanghai about one hour after we left the circuit. I guess we were ahead of the traffic jams, because it was quite a smooth ride. Last year we were invited by Bertelsmann to the F1 race, and had a corporate Volkswagen event at the VW test track after the finish. So then we also missed the traffic jams, but many people complained about the long ride back.

Contrary to my expectation, the seats were pretty much filled. In the Grandstand where we had our seats almost all seats were sold out. Outside the Grandstand people were literally throwing money at us to buy our tickets! Quite amazing when you know that Grandstand tickets were almost 4000 RMB (=400 EUR) per seat. I read in the paper that total attendance on Sunday was 130,000 people (a full house is 150,000 people), better than expected a few days ago.

The race was fantastic to watch, although you sometimes miss what has happened (on TV the commenters keep you better informed). Only at home I found out that Montoya had hit a loose drain cover, and therefore had to retire. Exactly the same as what happened at the DTM race in Pudong last year. It seems the organizers did not learn from the mistakes of their DTM counterparts. I also watched that one, and we had to wait for hours before the race was re-started. This time luckily the race continued as planned, but it cost Mercedes-McLaren the constructors title. But all in all it was a great race, especially when you get invited to the best seats in the house!