Day 16

Weather: cold

Activities: APPG, Economy of china

After our APPG lesson today, Mr Tian Hui came in to our class to speak to us about China’s economy again. Maybe it’s because of yesterday’s ECO city visit, I can understand the things he say on TEDA better.

Mr Tian shared some of his experience working with people from different countries with us and it consists of Singaporeans, Americans, Japanese, Korean and also German.

He started off with Singaporeans and he said that Singapore business man have better understanding of the Chinese culture compared with Americans and other countries, so when companies wants to set up business in China, those holding a higher positions would be either Singaporeans, Taiwanese or from Hong Kong.

Next, he moved on to the Japanese and Koreans. He mentioned that their attitude towards business is very serious however when it comes to drinking with them, it is more relaxed and it is a form of respect to “drink till you are drunk”, like what the Chinese drama always say, 不醉不归. Another thing is that normally they don’t pour the drink for themselves, but they would pour for each other.

For German business man, they are normally more calculative and serious during business. Americans are more relaxed as long as you are serious when it comes to business discussion.

Another thing I learnt is that in order to be able to work in the government sector in china, you have to go through a test which many people fail at and for one position, there could be thousands of people applying for it.

Lastly is the retirement age in china. Over here, they have different retirement age for males and females. Males would retire at the age of 60 while females at the age of 55.

Learn quite a few things from today’s session although I am not interested in economy.

Have to prepare to tomorrow’s interactive session and all of us are doing our part by doing bits of the powerpoint slide to introduce Singapore to the china students tomorrow.