Paris - Shanghai

Denna dag kan man knappast göra något annat än att fundera över vad som händer i vår värld efter illdåden i Paris.

Mina tankar går kring resonemangen att försvara öppenhet (Kinberg Batra) å ena sidan och skoningslös vedergällning (Hollande) å andra. Någonstans går de inte ihop. Vi måste antagligen vänja oss vid:
- flygplatsliknande kontroll vid besök på alla stora arenor, skolor, sjukhus och offentliga platser
- telefonavlyssning och kontroll av ekonomiska överföringar osv.

I slutändan kan det sluta i att folk inte vågar ha med muslimer att göra. Man avböjer kontakter, även med människor man tror sig känna, kommuner kommer att vägra byggnadstillstånd av moskéer för att inte attrahera muslimska invandrare osv. Även om ordföranden i svenska islamiska förbundet kommer att säga att gärningarna strider mot islams kärleksbudskap kommer ingen att lita på att de unga muslimska fundamentalisterna bryr sig om vad han säger.

Jag kan inte låta bli att tänka på världsutställningen i Shanghai 2010. På utställningsområdet fanns en halv miljon nya människor varje dag. Det fanns en del diskussioner om risker för masspsykos om folk blev instängda, men knappast om terrorism. Det fanns ingen kontroll av väskor när man tog sig in på området. Kanske var det det sista stora eventet i världsklass som kunde genomföras i klassisk öppenhetsstil. Och ingen incident från de 183 dagarna finns noterad.

Kan man jämföra Shanghai med Shenzhen?

Båda har ju börser. Ungefär där slutar likheterna. Här är min rapport från ett veckoslut i båda städerna. Den blev dock på engelska för jag ville testa den på en del kännare.

Shenzhen – model for China

After arguing a lot for Shanghai over the years I visited Shanghai and Shenzhen over one extended weekend.

Shanghai seems to have lost some steam. Not much is going on. Foreigners now tend slowly to leave the city in favour of Hong Kong and Singapore (pollution + more and more severe internet restrictions) but I had no statistics.

Shenzhen on the other hand is proud to continue to grow and being home for many Chinese high-tech companies. The city is clean and no house is older than 20 years. Pollution seems to be low, no traffic jams and the shopping areas are full, but not overfull, with nicely dressed customers.

The proximity to Hong Kong is an asset but I also heard thinly veiled criticism of Hong Kong and everything Hong Kong represents in China. People in Shenzhen are fed up being looked upon by Hong Kong sales people as second class citizens. They now prefer to go shopping in Japan instead. “Hong Kong has to face up to realities” was one comment. As Shenzhen today has more than 10 million inhabitants, compared to Hong Kong’s 7, I felt they might be on the look-out for what will happen 2047 when the SAR model might be scrapped.

I had a long meeting with the leading think tank China Development Institute (CDI) in order to talk about CSR. This is what came out:

1. CSR was very much on people’s minds 10 years ago and has now been integrated in the normal thinking. I know that people in China like the most recent fads and old ideas are not of much interest but this argument was not to my liking even if I can give it some credit regarding for example the reporting requirements of the stock exchanges. My counterargument to this was:
   
   

1. Yes if you google CSR + China/Shenzhen/Guangdong or whatever you come to a lot of papers and events during the years 2005-08. That is a pity as what is not spoken about is often forgotten. In Sweden we have CSR events every month and new people turn up to listen and learn. Also the CSR thinking is developing every year. China has not grasped this as they do not take part in the international debate.
   
   
2. China has mostly seen CSR as a tool to facilitate sales to MNCs. China has not understood the domestic need to improve. I took examples of environment and anti-corruption, which cannot be addressed if companies do not have an advanced CSR strategy, but got the feeling we were not quite understanding each others.
   
   
3. When foreign demand now has decreased China has to send more companies out to export. The CSR issue is more important than ever. I am not sure Chinese officials understand how big problems Chinese companies are meeting abroad.
   
   
4. I mentioned SASAC as the leading instrument for state owned companies in China and their interest in CSR. To my surprise they had problems in understanding which organization I talked about! Obviously the SOEs are not dominating Shenzhen.
   
   

2. China needs innovation. This is what everybody is craving for now. Anybody who has good ideas how to improve innovation is welcome. My answer to this was: yes innovation is crucial but its nature is that you cannot plan it from above, deep changes has to be done inside the society. I then got a strange argument. “An example of a company that has not been successful in modernizing itself is Volvo that turns out the same style car year after year”. When I “admitted” that Volvo is from my country they apologized for their sincerity.

3. Shenzhen has a lot of famous companies. We all know the successful ones like Huawei, ZTE, Tencent, BYD but what about  Foxconn? Foxconn is a Taiwanese company manufacturing laptops, mobiles etc. for large international companies. The answer was that yes, Foxconn like some other Taiwanese and South Korean companies have Japanese inspired military organisation and it is not to the liking of everybody, but they had done a good job an employed many people. This was the second time I heard that top Chinese thinkers refrain from criticizing Foxconn.

4. Will the Guangdong model survive when foreign companies withdrew following the economic crises in 2008? The answer was that Guangdong is not one system, it is a ladder of different models where Shenzhen is on the top. Some cities have relied on migrant labour for low end production. They will have a problem. The migrant labour is not about to come back, the pay difference has decreased and China is not going to allow whole families to resettle. Therefore these cities have to move up the value chain.

5. I had to go back to the car industry. Can BYD (Beyond Your Dreams) really compete with the international giants in the area of electric cars? Toyota and others are spending billions in developing new batteries! The answer was that BYD has been successful on several export markets (they had forgotten which) and batteries is their speciality so no worries there.

Conclusions.

1. We have overlooked Shenzhen as we don’t go there and Shenzhen itself has a weak external profile as they have limited exposure and few international contacts. This is after all the 22^nd largest financial centre in the world (Stockholm is 36 according to WEF).
   
   
2. It is hard to get meeting with people in Shenzhen, as in other cities in China. If you are not an organisation that is well known you have to fight for every contact. This works very much to Shenzhen’s disadvantage. Hong Kong is in this case the extreme opposite.
   
   
3. To discuss in a way that can yield understanding requires rather long and deep meetings. Panel debates when you deliver a couple of punch lines are less efficient. The think tank I visited had few international contacts and none with Sweden. It is a pity.
   
   
4. Needless to say the relations with Hong Kong were rather tense. For a Shenzhen person Hong Kong is clinging back to old ways of thinking. To a Hong Kong person Shenzhen people are laid-back and do not work what amount of hard labor you must put in to be competitive.