Post Trip Report

Ethical Issues In My Profession:

Chinese industries and United States industries are both similar in some ways and complete opposites in others. I think the biggest newly-regulated impact that was most prevalent in China was the pollution. It wasn’t as noticeable in Beijing surprisingly, but in Shanghai it was absolutely horrific. I feel that the United States, while still having some issues, are much more environmentally aware than the Chinese. When it comes to wages and hours, while it seems bad in our prospective, they actually somewhat enjoy factory assembly lines and supervising automated machines because compared to their life in rural areas, doing serious manual labor. But the wages are still lower and you still see why American company’s are being outsourced to China. It is much more profitable to begin your business due to the lower wages and cheaper retailers. When it came to working conditions, some companies just took better care of others. ASA Group was a very run down building and it didn’t seem like they put much too much focus on the workers for the company. Other companies such as HKSTP and China Telemcom had much nicer accommodations for their employees, making it look like an enjoyable place to work.

Educational Breadth as Professional Development:

I felt that this trip was an absolute amazing experience educationally wise. By traveling by different modes of transportation each travel and making company visits to corporations who are all in different phases of their lifetimes, we were able to learn a lot. The reason students should have outside of the country experience is because the economic power of other countries is rising, and there will be a much larger need to employees who are familiar with other parts of the world in order to thrive in today’s society. Learning a foreign language would also be extremely helpful has virtually all countries are getting involved with each other one way or another. Unfortunately, I am not very good with learning foreign languages, so that will be a no for me. Some classes I would take are international business, foreign economics, and maybe even level 1 mandarin!

Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education as Professional Development:

When we went to the Beijing Foreign Studies University, there were giving us a lot of information about how to transfer to the University and how much would dorming costs. The payment for the dorm rooms was dirt cheap, only 700 US dollars for the entire year. I’m sure that schooling has assisted these software company employees to succeed in their careers, but I’m sure it had much more to do with the experience they gained of technology progressing throughout the year. Since almost all of the companies were cell providers, phones, and tablet manufaturers, they had to deal with rapid changes in technology, so I’m sure that it wouldn’t affect their strategy too much. Especially Lot of the technology that is rising in China is already being made and owned in the United States, there will be so much opportunity or growth/

The Social Environment of Professional Life:

We were told during one of our briefings that in order to do business with the Chinese, you must be personable and be able to set up that emotional connection and trust. This just shows that the social environment always resides in the professional environment, forcing a social aspect into business. I never kept up to date with current events that were going on, except seeing that the Baltimore riots were seen on the TV on the metro, which was weird to see. I would also imagine that, since China is communist, that anything that happens were bad in China, we won’t hear much about it due to censoring. It seemed like in the work force, many Chinese businesses were looking for ethnic business people, such as ourselves. Apparently, bankers make a good amount of money in China and especially in Hong Kong, and I would love to live somewhere in China one day, doing just that. I feel like engineers wouldn’t be too interested in jobs in China because the get a paid a very small amount. The average engineer earned 12,000 a year, which is below the poverty line in the states.

 

Functioning on Multi-Disciplinary Teams:

When working with teams who have people of all types of expertise, language is the biggest barrier. For example, even in our small presentation for the company we started, the two engineers in our group were using words like “OperationX” and “Java C++”, both of which I have what the mean. And same with the business students, as we discussed price penetration and skimming, which the engineers probably had no idea what they mean. But no matter how different the groups are, it is always good to have an even mix of professions, that way you can capture more sides to an issue or idea, and to perform at a grearter rate. Engineers and business students have a different thought process on how to do different tasks, which is good because rather than having conflicting views, the best strategy will probably be a combination of both thought processes.

Day 14

Thinking I set my alarm for 6:00 o’clock in the morning, it never went off. My roommate and I were awoken by a wake up call from the hotel, informing us that the bus to take us to the airport was waiting on us outside. We rushed as fast as we could and we were checked out of the hotel in three minutes. We got to the airport and through customs, which was surprisingly a breeze, and we had a good amount of time before our flight. I was the only one traveling back to New York, but it was luckily pain free. Nevertheless, it was the longest day of my life. We took off from Hong Kong as 11:30 in the morning, and I arrived to San Francisco at 9:00 on the same morning, which I thought was really cool. It was only about a three hour layover in SanFran and it was a straight flight to JFK airport. The 737 Boeings are much more comfortable than the 747 Boeings. The smalled plane had more leg room and even TV’s installed into the back of the headrests. They had many free, new movies that were available for viewing, which I found extremely enjoyable. Once I touched down and got home, and although I loved it, it felt good to be home. This was a once in a lifetime experience that I am going to remember for the rest of my life, and I am so happy I received the chance to do it with all of my classmates that also attended.

Day 13

Today was actually the last day of China. I couldn’t believe how fast it went. I enjoyed it so much that I have even had the thought of living here! For our last presentation, we had a briefing on doing business in China. It was an informative session, but I feel that I learned a lot of aspects in the presentation already from the company visits. I have learned so much in those company visits because they speak of actual experience that they have in their industry and how they go on to prepare for future change and challenges. I really enjoyed seeing how different businesses in China than compared to ones in the United States because of the different types of government rule. After the briefing, we visited Victoria Peak, which was a beautiful view of Hong Kong the top of a mountain. We were so high up that we were looking down at the massive skyscrapers of Hong Kong, which was absolutely breath taking. After the peak, we went to an extremely nice restaurant for our closing ceremony. It was very western styled, as they served bread with butter when we sat down, and it was also western style food. It was good to use a fork again without the feeling of being judged. We all presented each of our group’s presentation. It was sad to see that and end had come, but I was just thankful to have this opportunity to travel around and tour an entire country with my classmates.

Day 12

Today we visited both Modern Terminals and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. First was Modern Terminals which was a container-shipping operator in the 4^th largest shipping port in the world. They gave us a power point presentation about their company, a layout of the port and where their container terminals were, and then and overview look of the entire shipping operation. We then visited the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, which was a company that lends rental space and opportunities to promising start-up businesses. One of the presentations we received was from an actual company that has been working there. It was called “Artist” and it integrated your phone with your coffee maker in order to find recipes and find a perfect company that fits your taste. I found it to be a fantastic idea and I really think I will be seeing that product in the future. The overall campus of the park was beautiful and right on the water, and almost gave off that Silicon Valley feel to it in terms of entrepreneurial start-ups. Once the two tours were over, we made group meetings in order to work on our group project presentation. We decided to create an app for the sick and elderly in order to keep track of medication schedules, doctor visits, prescriptions, etc. Dr. Gao felt that it was a good product because in China, there is a growing mistrust between patients and doctors, and he feels technology will be a more pleasing resource for them.

Day 11

Today was a travel day as we left Shenzhen for our final, Hong Kong. After departing the hotel by bus around 9 in the morning we soon arrived at the Chinese border check. Here we all had to get off the bus, collect our luggage, and make our way through customs. Even though it belongs to China, Hong Kong completely open and free territory, with no censorship of the Internet and a capitalistic economy. Thinking we were on our way to the hotel, there was a second stop another stop soon after. Now we had to go through the Hong Kong border check. After we made it through customs again, we reconvened on our bus and were on our way to the hotel. We stayed at the Penta Hotel which was probably the nicest hotel we’ve been at, but we had to leave soon after check-in to go to Lantau Island, home of the Great Buddha. We took a cable car to the top, a ride that took about 20 minutes. We had to opportunity to enjoy the great scenery such as the water and skyscarpers, and even those poor hikers who were walking up this massive hill. We also saw the foundations in the river for a bridge that is being built to link Hong Kong with Macau and mainland China, which will be about 50 miles long. Once we reached the top we toured the Tian Tan Buddha and a neighboring monastery, and both views were absolutely breathe taking.

Day 10

Today was probably my favorite company visit so far, as we spent almost the entire day at Huwaei. As the company is the 3^rd largest cellphone provider in China, and they certainly had the technology to prove it. When we first arrived, we were given a tour of their exhibition room and then were given a chance to play with the latest phones and tablets. All of the technology they had to show off was very interactive and fun. The operating system seemed a lot like a mix of both Apple and Google. We then received bus tour of the corporate campus as the company has over 30,000 employees working at the location we visited. Most of the buildings were in a modern office architectural style but the corporate headquarter building was built in a style resembling ancient Chinese architecture. After a delicious lunch in one of the company’s cafeterias we received a tour of another exhibition hall focusing on enterprise solutions. Here, there were many different types of storage units that held an extreme amount of data. There was one that held sixty Petabytes of storage, which is sixty million gigabytes. The guide who was leading us through the exhibition site said that if you were to load the entire storage unit with movies, it would play non-stop for two thousand years. At the end of the visit, we were given a presentation about Huwaei’s current market share and future outlook. As a group, we were curious as to why a company so successful as this one has yet to touch into the American market. The presenter then told us that the US Government has been skeptical of Huwaei and other Chinese phone companies, suspecting that they would have other intentions other than cellular networks—such as spying.

Day 9

Today we visited ASA Group, who makes smartphones and DVD reader chips. The company manufactures their own phones, mainly made for elderly people (a small colored screen with large numbered buttons). Sony used to be their number one customer when they started, but now their top customers are ZTE and ATC. We had a factory tour after the presentation and it was strange because the factory was really empty. They claimed everyone was at lunch, but the cafeteria was also empty. A lot of the workers in the factories lived in a dormitory located on the company’s campus. For us as American’s it’s a hard concept to understand why people would want to work in these factories. But for these Chinese workers, factory work is easier and more beneficial than working on their family farms out in the country. Compared to the other companies we visited, ASA Group seemed quite far behind in terms of their factory set up and quality of their campus. After the visit, they served as lunch which was surprisingly good relative to the aesthetics of their cafeteria. We then had a presentation by Mark Davis, who discussed a case study about FairPhone, and also discussed about the supply chain of the smartphone globally. We then went back to the hotel where we grabbed dinner and took a quick nap. It was Christine’s birthday that day, so we decided to go to Party World, a karaoke bar, as a group and I had a very fun night with everyone.

Day 8

Today was yet another travel day, and this time, by plane. After departing the hotel at 6:45 in the morning we drove for about 45 minutes to the airport and checked in as a group. After everyone had received their boarding pass and dropped their checked luggage we made it through airport security. Unlike TSA security, the airport security in China was much less intense, where we were able to keep on our shoes and belts and we all made it through rather seamlessly. In order to get to our flight, we boarded a bus that took us out on to the plane, which is something you don’t usually see when flying out of big airports in the US. It was only a 2 hour flight, which I was very pleased about since it seemed that all the traveling we have done before this took an eternity. Once we touched down, you could immediately sense the difference in the climate. It was extremely hot and humid, and you began to break a sweat just from standing around. Once we got to the hotel and had a quick lunch and then made our way back to the bus for a city tour. We first stopped at the Shenzhen museum where we viewed things ranging from ceramics used by the early Chinese to animals that inhabit this part of China. Our next stop was at a famous city park on the bay, where we could see Hong Kong in the distance. We walked along a path filled with walkers and bikers, enjoying a breeze that was coming off the water. After about an hour enjoying ourselves, we made our way back to the hotel. We had dinner in small groups around the hotel and soon went to asleep, worn out from all of the traveling

Day 7

Today we were given a city tour of Shanghai. We first were driven to the Oriental Tower. Here we took a tour of the Shanghai museum, which summarized the history and culture of Shanghai over the last few centuries. I wish we were able to travel through the tower upwards, especially to the rotating restaurant located in the second Pearl. Right outside of the museum was a year-by-year timeline of the city of Shanghai since 1993. It was astonishing how barren the city looked then, and how monstrous it looks now, all in the matter of about twenty years. After the museum visit, we took a trip to the Bund. It wasn’t completely new to me since I went to visit it the night before. You definitely get a different feel when visiting it at night as opposed to during the day. It was a gloomy and cloud covered day, so I definitely enjoyed it at night with all of the lights much more. We then took a quick trip to the French Concessions, which was a maze-like area with many shops and eateries. It gave off a very cultural feel and it was no doubt my favorite stop of the city tour. Later on that night, we decided to take a trip to the Han Market on Nanjing Road. We took the subway for the first time, which I was a little hesitant about in case of getting lost. Luckily, it was extremely easy to navigate and much cheaper than a taxi.

Day 6

Two more company visits today, traveling to China Telecom and TE Connectivity. China Telecom is one of the main service providers in China, but since they didn’t have any English speakers, it was hard for them to truly explain the nature and focus of their company. Rather than explaining to us what they currently offer to the Chinese smartphone community, they decided to focus on one of their newly implemented business plans that works with their entrepreneurial employees. If any of their employees feel that they have a good business plan and idea, they will present it in front of a panel of executives. If the panel agrees that the company has potential, they will fund it and provide office space for a share in the company. If the company turns out to not be what was expected, then the incubation process will seize, and the employees who were a part of the company can go back and continue their previous office positions. I felt this was a great way to not only encourage high-level thinking, but to also extinguish the worry of being unemployed if the idea turns out to be a bust. We then toured one of these start-up companies which was creating an online educational platform. In the office were graphic designers, computer programmers, and software engineers all working together, which was a pretty cool sight. Later we traveled to TE Connectivity, who creates small necessities for smartphones such as sim card readers and cell phone antennas. It was interesting to see how a company that makes such inexpensive pieces is still a very profitable company. We also toured their manufacturing plant, which was almost entirely automated.