The Power of Money: Chinese Investments and Financialization in an Asian Hinterland

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110200
Author(s):  
Hasan H. Karrar
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
North Pakistan ◽  
Silk Route ◽  
Implicit Power ◽  
Local Leaders

In February 2002, a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), Sinotrans Xinjiang, partnered with a local Pakistani collective, the Silk Route Dry Port Trust, to finance and operate a dry port in mountainous north Pakistan. Given minimal overland trade between China and Pakistan, this was an unlikely place for investment by a subsidiary of one of China’s largest SOEs. Individuals who commanded extensive social networks and possessed local knowledge were instrumental in brokering the joint venture. Brokers both Chinese and Pakistani leveraged the implicit power of money to create a new institution, the dry port joint venture, that helped normalize the presence and operations of Chinese business leaders in north Pakistan. The joint venture also enabled Pakistani strongmen to exert their control over local land and draw funds from a public bank, activities that ultimately undermined the joint venture itself. This episode is more than just a cautionary tale of an unsuccessful joint venture between a Chinese SOE and local partners. The episode highlights how, in an epoch of transnational financialization, money empowered local leaders, public officials, and official organizations to engage in and indeed benefit from loss-making activities that combine both regular and irregular processes.

EYE ON CHINA

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (02) ◽  
pp. 21-29
Keyword(s):  
Joint Venture ◽  
Green Energy ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Antibody Treatment ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Scientific Corporation ◽  
Peking University ◽  
Business In China ◽  
New Research

Hepalink signs agreement to acquire Scientific Protein Laboratories. Yasheng Group joint venture with IBC International LLC to form Angel Star Nutrition LLC. Zynex signs distribution agreement for China market. Tao Li of China Green Agriculture, receives the honor of “Future Chinese Business Leaders”. Yingli Green Energy enters joint venture with Datong Coal Mine Group. Elekta wins public tender to deliver cancer care solutions to China. Stellar Biotechnologies Announces Collaboration with Amaran Biotechnology, Inc. TaiGen Biotechnology signed exclusive license agreement with R-Pharm for nemonoxacin (Taigexyn). Eddingpharm acquires global rights to oncology assets, including Telatinib, from ACT Biotech. BioLineRx and JHL Biotech to collaborate on Type 1 diabetes antibody treatment. Bayer and Peking University establish new research center for translational research and drug discovery in Beijing. Microport Scientific Corporation and Sorin Group sign joint venture agreement for cardiac rhythm management business in China. Epigenomics signs licensing and supply agreement with Kindstar for Epi proLung in China. Abcam to open office in Shanghai, China.

Marseille

2020 ◽  
pp. 119-127
Author(s):  
Kathryn Kleppinger
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Production Capacities ◽  
The City ◽  
European Populations ◽  
Local Leaders

This contribution examines the city of Marseille’s strikingly vague relationship to its colonial past. Through an analysis of economic policies developed in response to the national government’s colonial expansion, the essay shows how Marseille’s business leaders effectively channeled natural resources from throughout the French Empire to enhance their own production capacities. Aided by the population flow to and through the city, industry in Marseille also took advantage of access to cheap colonial labor. After the independence of Vietnam and Algeria, however, local leaders were faced with a new challenge with the mass arrivals of European populations who chose to resettle in France. Today the city’s relationship with its colonial past remains palimpsestic: readily visible in heavily Algerian neighborhoods such as Belsunce but officially unacknowledged by museums or memorials.

Chinese Business Face: Communication Behaviors and Teaching Approaches

2003 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter W. Cardon ◽  
James Calvert Scott
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Teaching Approaches ◽  
Communication Behaviors ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Saving Face

Chinese businesspersons are extremely sensitive to protecting and enhancing face. The Chinese sensitivity to face is a result of their emphasis on enduring relation ships and social networks. The hundreds of phrases in the Chinese language describing face demonstrate the sophistication of the Chinese conceptualization of face and related behaviors. For the businessperson, saving face and giving face are the most important face-related skills. Chinese businesspersons use various com munication strategies in order to save face and give face, including indirectness, intermediaries, praising, requests, and shaming. Western businesspersons can pre pare to operate effectively in the Chinese business environment by learning about the Chinese conceptualization of face and related communication strategies.

scholarly journals Corporate Ethics: China vs. USA

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng S. Chan ◽  
Dennis Pollard ◽  
Shirley Chuo
Keyword(s):  
Business Leaders ◽  
Corporate Ethics ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Major Argument ◽  
Business Exchange

Fairness is one of the basic aspects of business exchange. Ethics are principles used to establish fairness. This study will look at background and origins for different American and Chinese ethical beliefs. It is important for U.S. and Chinese firms to understand each others cultural perspectives, especially as the Chinese market opens up. Methods to resolve ethical conflict will be reviewed. Business agents from both cultures can relate and deal with each other if they have the knowledge, skills, and patience to do so. This study builds on prior research that suggests that younger Chinese are more concerned with profit than with abiding by regulations or adhering to corporate ethics. The major argument of this study is that future Chinese business leaders, born after Chinas one-child policy was implemented in 1979, will be primarily concerned with self-interest and making decisions that will benefit them individually. Guanxi (interpersonal connections or human relationships), corporate ethics and social responsibility (CESR) beliefs will be reduced in importance and influence. American managers should incorporate this information when formulating a China strategy.

scholarly journals Big Business and Cadre Management in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-76
Author(s):  
Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard ◽  
Kasper Ingeman Beck
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Executive Leadership ◽  
Career Pathways ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Political World ◽  
Chinese Business ◽  
Iron Triangle ◽  
Leading Cadres

Leading cadres in China are subject to rotation. An interesting form of rotation takes place between big business and the political world. That means one fifth of China’s governors and vice governors have a business background as heads of one of China’s large State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). How this takes place and which qualifications the involved business leaders possess are shrouded in mystery. Based on prosopographical studies of Chinese business leaders who have participated in the Chinese Executive Leadership Program (CELP), this article attempts to open the black box. The study examines the career pathways of CELP participants in Party, government and business positions. The study shows that 84 of the 261 CELP SOE participants (2005-2018) were subsequently promoted, and 20 of these promotions were from SOEs to leading Party and government positions. In some cases, former business leaders became Party secretaries in important provinces or ministers in key ministries. The article also argues that Chinese business leaders have managed to keep their administrative ranking in the Chinese nomenklatura system. In fact, Chinese business leaders are quasi officials (zhun guan) and form an important recruitment base for leadership renewal. As such, the article suggests that the rotation of cadres within the ‘Iron Triangle’ of Party–government–business constitutes the main unifying and stabilising factor in the Chinese political system.

Blackout in the Name of Sunshine

2015 ◽  
pp. 2219-2232
Author(s):  
William R. Sherman
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Government ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
New Public ◽  
Open Meeting

Local governments, and particularly local public officials, have adopted online social networking tools en masse in an effort to communicate with constituents. As this chapter shows, the resulting information flow consists of communication from the public official to constituents, from constituents to the public official, and among constituents, but in the context of the public official's social network. This environment constitutes a “civic social network,” which operates as the new public square. Many local governments, however, are attempting to bar officials' use of civic social networks because they risk violation of open government laws, such as open meeting and open records laws. This effort to stifle valuable civic communication harms norms of transparency and accountability – the very values that open government laws should promote. These laws should be revised or reinterpreted to allow civic social networks to fulfill their promise as the new public square.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document