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AI the Dead,
I assume the big problems in Sichuan is its seismic activity which results in heavily increased costs.
I also know that SHELL after the initial enthusiasm slowed down noticeably with its activities in the field of shalegas in China.
Nevertheless China is really in high demand of gas and I doubt they will let such huge reserves untouched when they have to cover majority of their gas demands by purchasing the gas abroad.
But I would still rather bet on CNPC then on foreign companies.
I am a bit afraid that the original article provides to certain extent ‘biased’ view.
Probably the most clearly it’s visible from the part about movies. I am from Europe and many Europeans were in the past quite proud of the fact that Europe produces ‘artistic, high values’ movies in comparison to American Hollywood production ‘trash’.
Well, not anymore … The audience for these movies was smaller and smaller and finally European movie production tries to catch up with Hollywood mainstream.
What I want to say that there will be always people who will want to see so called ‘high value’ movie but the absolute majority of the population prefers something what is similar to current Hollywood production mainstream.
Coming then to the topic of Confucius Institute so I think they are doing pretty good job (I personally spent a year studying in one of them in my country). But I would dare to say that there can be quite a misunderstanding about their function. I assume they have following two main functions:
a) Teach Chinese to interested candidates – these people do not really need anyone to advertise them the Chinese culture as they are apparently interested in China, its language, history and culture whatever it means (to this group belong the university students of Chinese language as well as private students – and it’s not coincidence that majority of CI in the world are somehow connected with Chinese studies at different universities)
b) Spread Chinese culture among the vast audience – for this CI is using different methods (teaching Chinese in bigger classes where the chance to learn the Chinese language is practically zero but the people will get a unique experience; organizing the classes related to one of ‘traditional’ Chinese art etc.)
Blaming them for being political is of course possible because they certainly are but in the same way are political all other by government financed missions of any other country. As all these institutions are set up, financed, supervised and evaluated by politicians so they are of course highly political irrespective of if we talk about US (or any EU country) cultural or trade mission or about Chinese Confucius Institute.
When considering how different the China culture is in comparison to European one (and for the sake of this article I believe that huge simplification of neglecting individual EU countries culture differences and calling them all ‘European culture’ is justified by the big difference between each and every EU country and China culture) so I do not think China is doing that bad.
When I compare my country compatriots knowledge about India, Brazil or Korea with their knowledge about China so the difference is huge! China is apparently doing quite a good job in advertising and promoting own culture.
Mentioning this I of course do not want to say that there is no way for improving of its effort and achieving better ‘ROI’ (return of investment).
Nevertheless as many articles on many expat pages show it’s quite difficult for many ‘Westerners’ living in China to fully understand and/or accept the current China culture. Considering that these people have some ties towards China and the first hand experience living in the country so it may then give a hint of difficulties which any organization or institute will face when describing the China culture and situation to people who never went to China.
Actually Sichuan Basin natural gas discovery is the China single biggest ever. CNPC estimates discovered natural gas reserves at 440 billion cubic meters with about 308 billions to be technically recoverable.
What concerns of the shale gas so China reserves are estimated to be about 50% larger than those US ones (China estimated shale gas resources are about 36 trillions cubic meters). However due to many reason and technical difficulties the current development in China is not big. However China plans that till 2020 shale gas shall cover about 6% of the country energy demands.
ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips of the US, and Royal Dutch Shell, Total and Eni from Europe, are among the international oil companies that have signed deals to explore shale resources in China.
From companies providing services for oil and gas production, from drilling to fracking to water management then Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Weatherford are boosting their presence in China.Generally Sichuan and Chongqing look to be the most promising.
Pls have a look at this (even though a bit older) article in FT:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e434912c-7781-11e3-807e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Tqdzy9gu
Nevertheless as far as I know the problems are not small and SHELL so far did not make any big break through with its plans in here …
Dear Maz,
As majority of us are coming from so called ‘Trans-Atlantic civilization’ so I think we naturally assume that knowing and understanding our ways is for the rest of the world important.
May be yes, may be no – I guess it depends on the persons aims and targets in the life.
What I want to say that we are just a very small part of this big world and the big development of countries like India and China probably made many people to call this millennium to be millennium of Asia.
I assume that in not so distant future it can be totally opposite and for instance Chinese will blame EU people for lacking the ‘global identity ‘ (I am not making fun of this term!) due to the lack of knowledge about Chinese or Indian ways …
As a matter of fact I can see quite an ignorance about the real China situation in so called Western world (some of my colleagues asked me before their trip to Shanghai if I could send them Chinese money as they are afraid there is no way how they could change their Euros and Dollars into Renminbi and these people traveled into a lot of countries already … But I admit this is kind of extreme).
What concerns of the foreign languages proficiency I strongly suggest a trip to Italy or France and trying to get around just with speaking English …
I assume that knowing of the languages is more connected with the fact if the person does or does not need that for successful life. If the domestic market is big enough so the necessity for learning foreign languages is quite low. Almost all Europeans with university degree can communicate in English – but just a small part of English speaking countries university graduates knows the second or third language. It’s not because they are less capable – it’s just not necessary for them in order to succeed.
Just my two cents 🙂
I read your article and I find several points you mentioned interesting.
1) I noticed that you mentioned that majority of people in China seems to be quite materialistic. I understood it in a way that you mean they are more materialistic than people in other countries.
Can you pls tell me what do you mean by that?
2) You indicated that you think Japanese and South Koreans have more of by you called ‘global identity’ than Chinese. What concerns of English language so I am not exactly sure the situation in Korea and particularly in Japan is better than in China. On the account of selfesteem so it may be partly connected with our misunderstanding or so called culture difference. I do not think that majority of the people here lacks self-confidence or has any inferiority feeling towards foreigners.
All of us are coming to China and we are all saying that our cultures are different – not worse, not better – just different.
Nevertheless it somehow, may be naturally, for a lot of people develops into the stage when they probably unintentionally believe that ‘their way’ is better. Sometimes it really is but sometimes is not as the society is very complex thing and changing one particular detail just a bit can heavily influence the other parts (and thus, sometimes, bring a lot of problems).
When reading Ben Brown article so I assume that majority of his tips were aiming at this point – learn what is the situation and accept it – in the next step then try to find out why the situation is like it is and that will again contribute to your internal harmony.
I am also from time to time annoyed by, from my perspective, smaller or bigger issues but usually there is a reason behind them.
The misunderstandings are partly coming from different way of talking – Chinese generally do not like to contradict as it disturbs the good atmosphere. We sometimes misunderstand that for lack of knowledge or understanding – frequently it’s not – the person understand you completely! The person is just not able or willing to comply and from ‘proper’ Chinese perspective it looks to be a wrong way to enter into heated conversation about the topic (what we would work fine in my country and finally we would get the required outcome whatever it would be).
Therefore so many westerners learned ‘This Is China’ sort of arguments as it gives the people chance to save face for all participants and we, foreigners, look to accept it as an argument. But of course it’s no argument and generally everything has its own, good or bad, reason – otherwise how could this country develop so rapidly and even fly to universe?
Coming back to the language – I am not from English speaking country and as my country is quite small and therefore we are forced to learn foreign languages. After reaching certain level we usually realize one thing – there are a lot of discussions in which both parties absolutely understand each and every word but they still misunderstand each others meaning. What I mean that language is just a tool but as part of communication it’s closely connected with culture.
As we came to China so it’s our task to decipher and understand the China culture and the reasons behind the people behavior – I am sure these reasons exists and usually they give a lot of sense to majority of the situations around us.
Sorry for writing such a long article – in the future I will try to be less ‘talkative ‘ …
Hey Rick,
No issue! I hope you had fun yesterday night 🙂
Dear Mouze,
Just out of curiosity – how old are you and when did you come to China? Is Chengdu your first stop?
Nobody questions your business ability as there is no way how to judge the unknown person …
But you shall realize that your question attracted a bit of attention because if you have big spare money which you want to invest so you will immediately proceed with one of the reputable professional companies or ask a foreign bank for an advice. If you have relatively small money so it may not be worthy of the risk in the current China environment as you cannot get rich by small investment but easily may lose everything.
In case you are young so there is plenty of opportunities for foreigners to get here couple of hundreds (or thousands if really diligent) yuan extra.
Just look a bit around yourself and ask your Chinese colleagues and friends for guiding.
But if you really wanna gamble I can really give your contact to numerous, mostly girls, seeking anybody to invest into their shaky stocks. I just do not recommend you this way but it’s of course up to you.
No need to get upset or excited 🙂
To all then
恭喜发财！
Hey Rick,
I am pretty sure you do not talk to me as I can so far manage my portfolio to my full satisfaction and do not search for investment opportunity on social forums.
But your offer sounds interesting enough for anybody, who does search for such occasion on such a media, interesting 🙂
Wish you all good night as tomorrow is the last working day prior to new year holiday 🙂
Dear muell,
I must say that I really did check by you quoted articles and your investment opportunities made my day.
I think this is pretty much what Rick meant 🙂
And you judged me absolutely correctly – I certainly do not have the balls to take naive (or mentally challenged …) peoples’ money as during the next life I want to come to this world with even better karma (which wish as such already successfully disqualifies me from Buddhist nirvana and any too good karma because wish is the wish and it means that I still did not succeed to get rid of my desires … 🙁 – but I think I can live with it 😉 ).
I think your reply describes quite well majority of the contributors feeling but you demonstrated that ‘old fashioned’ assertive approach works far the best.
Have a good afternoon!
Dear Mouze,
I must say that I pretty much agree with Rick. I would also think twice before investing in China mainland due to:
1) Stock prices are heavily influenced by other than economical aspects what adds another risk to the business (as a result many people in China get very rich by these trades but much bigger quantity bankrupts).
2) There are many legitimate companies but unless you are fluent in Chinese both spoken and written (and by fluent I really mean fluent – being able to read and fully understand the contracts written in Chinese) and have basic awareness about China legal system (which quite differs from both common and civil law in the West – even though Chinese system is a civil law) so you may end up badly as the company (or in worse case person) will not hesitate to take the advantage of you wherever possible
3) There are of course fraudulent practices here but I would be ‘scared’ of them the least as I assume the above two problems are over weighing them. Due diligence without excessive trust should also protect you from the real scammers.
I am more surprised that you were not approached already by numerous traders and brokers who are eager to sell their service to you. I am not exaggerating when saying that I am approached every day by Wechat or QQ with some really great offers …
Saying all of this it does not mean that there are not some ‘less risky’investments in China mainland. Some of my good friends are ‘lending money’ to companies like Tencent and so far it works quite well for them but from this you cannot get rich unless you invest really huge amounts (however in comparison to EU zero or even negative interest rates it’s still a bargain).
But again – to do it efficiently and in order to minimize the risk you shall be fluent in Chinese and being able to watch the market situation in the real time.
If you really want to invest so I would recommend you to consider either Hong Kong or Singapore where the stock exchange market is better regulated and even though it’s under the current world political situation still more a gambling so the non economical aspects (except of those really global ones) are minimized.
However if you insist on investing into Chinese products so I will happily redirect all the offers I am receiving to you for your further follow up 🙂
May be I am missing something but the Chengdu part is more referring to illegal work of these teachers. I am from EU country and these issues are taken very seriously there.
I fully understand that many teachers are quite young but all of them should be highly educated. Even taking into consideration the language barrier I think it’s reasonable to expect that these people are aware of the basic requirements for working in foreign country.
I assume they should know when they are working illegally and they should be also aware of all the possible consequences of such act.
The demand for qualified English teachers in China looks to be quite enormous so I do not think that accepting of semi-legal or illegal ways are enforced by lack of opportunities.
I would more dare to say that it’s mainly on the account of negligence or irresponsible behavior.
What I want to say that it’s everybody’s personal decision to participate in the semi-legal/illegal activity but the person should not be surprised when confronted with the consequences.
I mean that it’s of course bad if the institution/company hires illegal workers but it’s equally ‘naive’ (intentionally avoiding the word ‘dumb’) to accept it.
Honestly in my country these teachers would all deported within short time with stamp in their passport, preventing them to enter Schengen territory for really long time. I find Chinese authorities behavior as very natural …
Thanks Danny. I will then give it a try – yearly membership they quoted me 2,500 CNY, reducing to 2,400 CNY – will try to talk to them about 1,900 CNY deal though 🙂
Hi Cheryl,
You may see on the right top corner just under the Search Forum window Forum Options list. And the first option is add a new topic.
