Look to Youth

There's a huge need for developing business leaders with practical experience and good education. While China's universities have grown rapidly, business schools lag behind, mostly because of a lack of qualified teachers. Business training is a great field for development, as noted in this LA Times article.

...MBA[s]... are highly sought after in China, whose scorching growth has left companies scrambling to fill management positions. Foreign firms complain of high turnover and poaching wars in their executive suites.

"China has a real leadership development crisis right now, mostly because of the unique circumstances of the Cultural Revolution," said Doug Guthrie, a China business expert at New York University.

Guthrie was referring to the period from 1966 to 1976, when Communist leader Mao Tse-tung closed the universities and sent the country's brightest young people to the countryside to be "reeducated." Instead of managing companies, these now 50- and 60-year-olds are toiling in factories and driving taxis.

When Rafael Pastor, chief executive of Vistage International Inc., an organization of CEOs, interviewed people to run his new office in Shanghai, he was shocked at their youth. His top candidate for the managing director's job is 39 years old.

"He's great," said Pastor, a former investment banker and executive at News Corp. "But he's only got as much experience as a 39-year-old person can have. There's no way I can find a more seasoned person."

In an effort to close this experience gap, Chinese universities such as Tsinghua are reaching out to U.S. institutions such as MIT's Sloan School of Management and USC's Marshall School of Business for help establishing programs to teach China's first generation of professionally trained business leaders. Universities have formed transpacific partnerships, sharing professors, students and curriculum.

That infusion of foreign assistance has helped boost the number of Chinese MBA programs from nine in 1991 to more than 100 today. In 2004, China graduated about 10,000 MBAs, compared with 139,000 such degrees in the U.S.

But Chinese universities, like the companies they are serving, can't expand fast enough because of a shortage of teachers, Pastor said.

The Much Exaggerated Death of Europe

Philip Jenkins takes a less pessimistic view of Europe's future than many current observers.

Here's a lengthy report on his new book God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things Journal.

“Nobody can deny,” writes Jenkins, “that European nations in coming decades will have to take account of aspects of Muslim culture, or rather of the north African and Asian cultures brought by Muslim immigrants; but that is quite different from envisioning wholesale Islamization. . . . Yet matters are not so terrifying [as many contend]. While sections of European Islam in recent years have acquired a strongly militant and politicized character, we have to understand this as a response to temporary circumstances; moreover, hard-line [Islamic] approaches still command only minority support. In the longer term, the underlying pressures making for accommodation and tolerance will prove hard to resist.”

It's About Excellence

TOKYO (AP) — Toyota Motor sold more cars and trucks worldwide than General Motors in the first three months of 2007, marking the first time that Toyota has outsold GM.

Most auto analysts have predicted that Toyota will surpass GM this year as the world's largest automaker — a position the Detroit behemoth has held for 76 years. Toyota's global sales for the January-March quarter rose 9% to a record 2.35 million. GM reported last week that its global sales rose 3% to 2.26 million vehicles.

Toyota has steadily gained on GM in past few years, aided by a shift in the U.S. market away from SUVs and toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Toyota's U.S. sales, led by the Camry and Corolla, rose more than 12% last year and sales are increasing at a double-digit rate again this year. In March, Toyota's share of the U.S. market climbed to 16%, behind GM's 22% and Ford Motor's 17%.

In 2006, Toyota's global production surged 10% to 9.018 million vehicles, while GM and its group automakers produced 9.180 million vehicles worldwide — a gap of about 162,000.

It's no time to start popping the champagne, however, because overtaking GM is not Toyota's first priority, said Paul Nolasco, a spokesman for Toyota.

"Our goal has never been to sell the most cars in the world," Nolasco said. "We simply want to be the best in quality. After that, sales will take care of themselves."

Indeed, it is Toyota's reputation for quality and fuel efficiency that has lifted its global sales, including the popular Camry, Corolla and Prius gasoline-and-electric hybrid.

Beijing's War of Words

This story warms the heart of any English-speaking foreigner who has lived in China. From Singapore's Today newspaper:

A campaign to correct the notoriously goofy English translations on city signs in time for next year's Olympics could mean the end for the misnomers that have confused and amused visitors for years.

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Officials are taking aim at menu items such as "Fried Crap" and "Acid Food", and slippery-when-wet signs that read: "To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty".

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The campaign began last year to avoid causing confusion and possible offence when visitors from around the world descend on a city that has for years featured a "Racist Park" dedicated to ethnic minorities.

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But to some, the "pubic toilets" and "harsh browns" will be missed.

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"It's too bad. They give the city a little more character," said Mr Ian McCulloch, a Briton who studies Chinese at a local university.

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"It's almost worth a walk down the street just for that."

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Officials have launched several parallel campaigns — some aim to discourage spitting and queue-jumping while others encourage smiling and other civilities — in a bid to soften a city that has its share of rough edges.

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But the authorities have pushed the language effort as much as any other, sending out camera-wielding inspectors to comb the streets in search of offenders like "Deformed Men" on handicapped restroom stalls, and "liquor heads" seen on signs banning public drinking.

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