On a miserable drizzly Friday afternoon, a minibus from the Chongqing city government turned up at the university gate, blaring Michael Jackson’s Thriller over the sound system. An import/export company had arranged the bus to drive us to their offices for a price discussion. Jackson and, surprisingly enough, several familiar and unknown faces greeted me from inside the bus. There were ten of us, including the driver. ‘Come on, we’ve decided to bring you to the…

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We’re getting a little more visibility into the nature of this crisis, and the good news is that we are starting to understand the bad news. China isn’t going to be a safe haven – though it may not be battered as badly as the US and Europe.

But just because China will be less damaged, it doesn’t mean that all you have to do is wait for things to become ‘normal’ again after Chinese New Year. Your…

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Brrr! Even though the sun is shining, it’s cold. It’s always cold when the economy slows, and it’s not just psychological.

Hiring freezes are in place in many of the world’s leading companies, and on a world-wide basis. This means that corporate staffers and line managers cannot hire anyone for a fixed period of time, or until an open-ended freeze is cancelled.

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I have an American friend who recently joined a Chinese PR firm. When I asked him how it was going he mentioned that the experience was ‘totally different’ to working for a PR company in the west. Although this is expected, he went on to talk about swipe cards that recorded his times of entry into the office and how the company would fine him half a day’s salary if his swipe card indicated he was just one minute late. This, along with being allocated…

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As the Sichuan dishes entered in a well-orchestrated ballet of flavours, the waitresses started to take away the little cups and replace them with bigger glasses that could handle a more manly volume of rice wine. The drinking now took off in earnest, every toast demanding another, more bottles opened and circulated around the table. As the empty bottles started to clutter the little trolley, the heads of some at the table transformed into a wide spectrum of…

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