November
2006: Cynthia Carroll, former President of Alcan Primary Metal Group,
has become CEO of Anglo American on March 1, 2007. She will join the
Anglo American Board in mid January 2007. Cynthia is a member of the
International Forum and has participated in the Forum in Belgium(1998) Japan
(1999) and China (2004).
October 2005: Jim McGregor, guest resource of The International Forum and formerly Chief Representative for Dow Jones in China and Vice President in Dow Jones International Group, has just published a new book: One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Line of Doing Business in China.
Reviewers wrote: The
promise and perils-mostly the latter-that Western businesses face in China's
huge but chaotic market are probed in this illuminating if not quite reassuring
primer. Ex-Wall Street Journal China bureau chief McGregor presents a series of
case studies from capitalism's Wild East, including a rocky joint venture
between Morgan Stanley and a Chinese bank; the rise and fall of a Chinese
peasant turned billionaire smuggler; Rupert Murdoch's travails in bringing a
satellite TV network to China; and a muck-raking Chinese financial journalist's
battles with both government censorship and the private media's cozy
relationships with advertisers. He caps each chapter with gleanings of wisdom
("assume your procurement department is corrupt until proven innocent") and
pointers on such topics as which bribes are ethically acceptable (expenses-paid
junkets to America "with generous opportunities for tourism and relaxation") and
which are not (suitcases full of cash). McGregor writes with the confidence of
an old China hand, occasionally lapsing into generalities about Asian
"shame-based" cultures, but generally treating the Chinese businesspeople he
profiles with the same sympathy and insight he accords Westerners. Still, the
picture he paints of the Chinese economy is a daunting one, ruled by over-mighty
Communist officials, bribe-hungry bureaucrats, Byzantine regulations and a
murky, cut-throat business culture structured by personal and family ties.
Westerners contemplating a plunge into this shark tank will profit from
McGregor's cautionary tales.
August 2005:
Ambassador Joseph Caron, guest resource of The International Forum in China is appointed
Canadian Ambassador to Japan after serving as Ambassador to the People's
Republic of China with dual accreditation to the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea and to Mongolia from 2001-2005.
Reviewers wrote: DeWoskin moved to Beijing in 1989, shortly after the military squashed the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, but just as China's younger population began embracing Western ideologies and commodities. This entertaining romp through her five-plus years in Beijing details her life as a PR consultant—and as the star of the wildly popular Chinese nighttime television drama Foreign Babes in Beijing. After getting the gig on a lark, DeWoskin became known, sometimes even in her real life, as the character Jiexi, an American who falls in love with a married Chinese man, in the 20-episode drama, which aired to an estimated 600 million viewers. Her memoir weaves humorous tales of Sino-U.S. culture clashes both on and off the set with astute observations of the two cultures, as well as a significant amount of Chinese history. Though she admits frequently to being homesick for New York, DeWoskin feels for the loss of more traditional Chinese culture: "Consumerism became a religion; companies arrived like missionaries... seducing the average Zhou Schmoe with products he had never known he needed." Hers is the ultimate insider's view, living witness to the philosophical and practical aspects of a traditional and repressed society's tumultuous confrontation with liberated, energetic, and economically dynamic Western influences. Exhibiting sensitivity and uncommon wisdom, DeWoskin delivers a candid and valuable portrait of a China few Westerners get to see.
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