Posts of the Week: 4/6 - 4/12

Guess What's NOT in China's Auto Policy at ChinaBizGov
My first instinct was a sarcastic response along the lines of, "a design budget," but the real answer is something we should start expecting more and more of. The laws have been pushing this pay, and it looks like their will be harmonization with policy.

Quality Control Basics, Part 3/4: When to Inspect at China Sourcing Blog
I don't know anything about any of this stuff, and it is always good to learn.

The Anti-Monopoly Law: Taking the Fight to China Mobile at CER
Good for lawyer Zhou! Let's see how "nationalism-infused shenanigans" look when applied to domestic behemoths.

China Business. Which Comes First The Wealth or The Low End? at China Law Blog
Below is a comment I posted over there (plus a story that I just couldn't help but to add):

What concerns me is that the contributions of the Western company would be negligible in most cases, and any Chinese manager good enough to run your low end in China should probably be an entrepreneur (or might leave soon enough to start his/her own business). The staff and management would have to be wholly Chinese. Any Westerner on staff would be dead weight because they'd command too high of a salary while not being able to understand the low end market (at least as well as a Chinese manager for a comparable salary). The only real contribution the Western company could make is cash and a TM, and in limited cases a patent. All significant, but the banks are being encouraged to lend, low end economically exploitable patents I presume are rarer, and the use of your mark might dilute your quality in the eyes of the consumers (Buick, anybody?).

In the face of naysayers like me it is helpful to remember the words of businessmen. Before Tesco entered the largest market in the world with Fresh&Easy, they conducted years of research on their target country's eating habits, developed superior logistics lines, and imported their unique computer software which tracks and responds to customer purchasing habits unlike anything else in the country. The CEO said that it only cost $1 or $2 billion, and if they fail they can easily afford it. So, maybe it's time a Western company gave it a whirl.

Last year in Munich I was sitting in a pub on St. Patty's day having a beer, and I started talking to the gentleman sitting next to me, distinguished looking, well-coiffed, nice suit. I asked him what he did and he said that he was designing a customer tracking and response system for a German company. The details sounded similar to the one at Tesco, and I asked him about that. He said that he had actually designed the system for Tesco. Then I asked him about Tesco's CEO's words on the American market. Ashen would be an appropriate adjective to describe the color his face turned. Lesson: brazen words about $1 or $2 billion bets stay fresh in the mind, and they don't go down easy when the bet doesn't pan out.