A few months into the Australian lockdown I was watching a current affairs programme that was looking at the impact of the job-keeper payment on people under lockdown. This showed a single mother who said that the job keeper payment of around A$1,500 per fortnight enabled her for the first Read more…
In May 1999 I received a call from the Hong Kong Office of IBM asking whether we, in the Enterprise Resource Planning implementation team of IBM UK, would be interested in helping a Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer to implement their Integrated Supply Chain management project. The reason we received this Read more…
In the city of Wuzhen there is a restored traditional Chinese village that gives visitors an idea of pre-twentieth century China. It is also the site of one of the communities established to build the grand canal that travels from Beijing to Hangzhou. Wuzhen Tourist Village also contains the fascinating, Read more…
The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook was published in October 2019 and, as usual, provides a valuable back drop to international business investment decisions. One of the key observations discussed in that report is not that the emerging markets are making the most significant contribution to global growth Read more…
I’m forming a view that there are three general strategy ‘domains’ that need to be thought about when dealing with China. These are interconnected and not unique to China but they demonstrate different facets to foreign interaction with the country. I call these the Economic Domain, the Nationalist Domain and Read more…
Australian politicians and government statisticians paint a picture of optimism in the first case and caution in the latter. One can see the role of politicians to be positive and for the person in the street to carry on regardless, doing the best they can. But, if you look at Read more…
One of the main elements to consider when moving into overseas markets is the geopolitics that surround a territory. For the most part, this is often background noise as the time scales that make any problems manifest are often counted in multiple years rather than months. Sometimes, though, there is Read more…