I tend to receive a recurring misconception about the Chinese labor market from overseas-based clients. This misunderstanding primarily affects overseas-designed provisional staffing budgets as well as the perceived value of quality of China-based recruitment agencies. In short, agencies are perceived to attempt inflating candidate packages for higher fees. While some rogue agencies do, there is a distinctive trend that the cost of Chinese talent is catching up with…

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By Andrew Reich 

Developing a QC Checklist will have an immediate and dramatic effect on your product quality and the understanding level of your Chinese suppliers. The QC Checklist is basically a written guide for your product’s: contents, packaging, color, barcodes, appearance, possible defects, functions, and special requirements. Such a checklist is generally developed with the assistance of a 3rd party quality control company, but by following the points below you can create a simple and effective one your own. The KEY to making your QC Checklist effective is providing it to the factory in a bi-lingual format that includes Chinese. So, once you have written the checklist based on the below suggestions, make sure you have it translated. Here we go… start with a blank excel spreadsheet and clearly organize the following: Read the rest of “Dramatically Increase your Quality and Communication Level with Chinese Factories - Develop a product QC Checklist” or post a comment

By Jack LeBlanc

In the meantime the College of Architecture, which sits a ten-minute walk from Chongqing University, had somehow heard of the barbarian with slides of Western-style buildings. Over the course of three weeks I ended up giving four lectures, in front of an audience of specialists, about a subject I had only begun to grasp. In China, faith is definitely put through unexpected twists and turns. It so happened that among the audience were a couple of employees from the Chongqing Design and Architecture Research Institute, who seemed to have been inspired by what they saw.

In a planned economy those institutes can be likened to the R&D department of a company, except these guys worked on behalf of all the state-owned enterprises involved in the construction industry. Read the rest of “The great glass curtain walls of China. Part 3″ or post a comment

By Ron Cune 

When talking about meetings in the Netherlands people tend to think about a continuous flow of opinions and the exchange of thoughts about specific subjects. People have meetings to ventilate their own viewpoint, to inform one another about processes or to endorse each other with comments and suggestions.

The Chinese meeting culture operates somewhat differently. A meeting is often a one-sided flow of information, a top-down briefing from the management and an instruction for the work floor. The lively interaction and brainstorming sessions will occur sporadically in Chinese organizations. Read the rest of “Divided Unity” or post a comment

By Drew Ross 

One of the greatest frustrations for many foreigners when they begin working in China is the inability for many people to say one simple word: no. Saying the ‘n’ word sounds easy, but it is actually, for the vast majority of us, incredibly difficult. Whether one does not have the ability to do something or does not have the time, learning how to politely refuse a task is an essential tool that can both improve productivity and maximise time.

Teaching your staff and the people around you to say ‘no’ can be hard - especially when we are, after all, in China and saying ‘no’ can sometimes be regarded as impolite in Chinese culture. Read the rest of “The ‘N’ Word” or post a comment