Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Last week my Doing Business in China class for MBA students travelled to China. The group spent a week visiting companies, hearing from government officials, and meeting with experts from top legal, consulting, banking and research firms.

As last year a significant focus of the course was on China’s financial sector. The students were very fortunate to meet with Stephen Green of Standard Chartered, one of the world’s leading economists specializing in China.

They also met, as last year’s class did, with economist Situ Danian at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. He gave them a very informative and candid assessment of some issues the SHSE is confronting.Afzal Tarar, a managing director at BearingPoint also spoke to the students, discussing his interesting work leading the firm’s financial services efforts in China.

A new focus of the course this year was the real estate sector. We were privileged to meet with J. Scott Kilbourn, a vice president of the global architectural firm RTKL which has done some important projects in China, including the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Pudong.

We also met with Linda Liu, a principal in Oxford & Associates Property Consultants. She gave the students an informative presentation on Shanghai’s property sector. Linda is also in the Smith School’s EMBA program in Shanghai.

As another part of the real estate segment the students toured Shanghai’s impressive Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Like every group I’ve taken there, they were impressed by the scale of Shanghai’s development plans.

For overview material (to supplement their extensive pre-trip readings and the lectures on Chinese history, culture and current issues that I gave before the group left the US), the group met with Jonathan Heimer from the Commercial Section of the US Consulate in Shanghai.

They also got a briefing from Prof. Zhou Dunren, a retired Fudan University professor and excellent comparativist of US and PRC political and economic issues.

We spent one night in Hangzhou, one of my favorite places in China.

In Hangzhou we had lunch as guests of Wang Zhongde, head of the commission on foreign trade and economic cooperation. The restaurant was located in the impressive complex where the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress meets. My lectures on Chinese culture in DC had included material on Chinese banquets, and I was glad the student got to enjoy a somewhat formal one.

In Hangzhou we also visited two listed firms—the first a PRC IT firm named Hundsun (listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange) and the other UT Starcom which is listed on Nasdaq.

In Shanghai we also visited Alcatel Shanghai Bell where Kang Wuping, an HR vice president, told us about some of their challenges in integrating PRC, European and now with the Lucent acquisition US practices.

Besides these three listed telecom/IT firms, we also met with Sage Brennan, general manager of Pacific Epoch, a research firm covering China’s internet, online gaming and telecom sectors.

To give the students a better sense of the regulatory environment, we met with Yingxi Fu-Tomlinson, a partner at the law firm Kaye Scholer. She gave the students an excellent talk, highlighting some of the macro-level differences between the Chinese and US legal environments and sharing some observations about how M&A is changing in China (and some of its distinctive features).

We also met with Jim Healy, president of the China divisions of WR Grace.

As last year, we also toured the Shanghai GM factory. We also attended an acrobatics show and visited a temple. The students also worked in some shopping and an exploration of some of Shanghai’s night life. The final night the students had a dinner with some local alumni and current students in our Shanghai EMBA program.

I believe the course was a great success; the students were active and engaged and got an excellent introduction to China.

Jim Curtis from the Maryland China Center again provided great assistance all week.

I again required the students to work in teams to produce daily content for a course blog while we were in China.