In our recent Podcast series, we have been talking with Bill Powell, senior writer for Time and Fortune magazines, based in Shanghai.  In the last Podcast, we got into, what I thought, was a VERY interesting discussion about the uniqueness of what is going on in China these days.  Literally, what we are seeing in China is unprecedented … never before has an economy (and a society) grown and changed so much in such a short period of time.  Understanding it, let alone predicting it, is very difficult and we are all, in a sense, working without a script.  We talked earlier about what the U.S. and other Western economies could learn from China … to wrap up our conversation, I started by asking Bill what he thought China could (and should) learn from the West …

We are in the middle of a discussion with Bill Powell, senior writer for Time and Fortune magazines.  In the first part, we talked about China and the rest of the world, how we try to make comparisons to what is happening in China with what we have seen in the past.  In this Podcast, I wanted to start off by getting Bill’s take on the challenges of covering China.  I prefaced my question by saying that, in our consulting practice at Technomic Asia, we are very careful not to talk about “THE” China market … there are, in fact, MANY China “markets” taking into account big cities, small cities, northern cultures, southern cultures, urban and rural, etc.  I asked him to talk about the practicalities over covering such a vast subject and the challenges he finds in trying to do so …

Over the past 4 years of the China Business Podcast we’ve done many interviews with business people in China, typically leaders of companies or operations.  We’ve talked about the intricacies of doing business here, the opportunities and challenges, and specific strategies and tactics that have worked for them.

Well, I would like to take a chance to back up a bit and view the China environment from a different perspective through an interview with someone who has been reporting on the action, not only in China but around the world.  Bill Powell is the senior writer for Time and Fortune magazines and is based in Shanghai.  We’ve known each other for a couple of years and he calls every now and then to bounce around some ideas and perspectives.  I have always appreciated his perspective and I thought he would make a great interview … and I was right.

Here is part one of that interview …

Last week I posted the first part of an interview with Sayed Jafry of ThermoFisher where we discussed their decision to located the global headquarters for their environmental division in China.  Even though China is not currently a big part of their business, ThermoFisher management thinks that this will change and Asia – particularly China – will figure heavily into their business.  In Part 2 of my interview, we talk about the challenges in making China a global headquarters and how that is signaling some important changes in this market.

Those of you who are long-time listeners to the China Business Podcast have heard us talk, endlessly, about ways that companies need to be looking at the potential opportunities in China, not just the actual ones … to look not only at the present, but the future of China.

I loved to play and watch hockey when I was a kid, and nothing was more thrilling than to see the great Wayne Gretzky play … it was magical, how he would always be in the right place at the right time.  Someone once asked him why he was such a good hockey player and he said, “because I skated to where the puck was going to be.”

And that’s the challenge, isn’t it … to start working in China today based on where it is going to be in the future.  In today’s Podcast, we have a very special treat … we are going to talk with someone who is actually putting this adage into practice.  Syed Jafry is the President of the Global Environmental Division for ThermoFisher Scientific, a very diverse, publicly traded company.  Syed and ThermoFisher are on, what I believe, is the cutting edge of global business and we sat and had a conversation in his Shanghai office on a rainy morning just before the National Day holiday.

The story can be summed up in Friedman’s first paragraph: “I believe future historians may well conclude that the most important thing to happen in the last 18 months was that Red China decided to become Green China.”  While the juxtaposed color metaphors are cool, I think he might be reading too many of the government’s brochures!

Yes, China is starting in invest massive amounts of money into exploring green-tech initiatives, much of it coming from their economic stimulus plan.  However, China will have two ends of the spectrum … one VERY high-tech and “green” development and the other VERY old-school with polluting factories that will continue to dump junk into the environment for many decades to come.  China still generates 70-some percent of their energy through burning coal … I heard a statistic (but cannot support it) that China  brings on one new “clean” power plant a month (water, wind, nuclear) and yet a new coal-burning power plant still opens here EVERY WEEK.  This is the irony of China … kind of like the brand new airport built so far out of town that it is only reachable by dirt roads.

The air and water quality in China’s cities are still some of the worst in the world.  I was out in a Western city a few months ago and refused to eat any of the local seafood … I had seen the state of the fish ponds sitting right next to the chemical factories!  And just yesterday, there was a yellow haze in Shanghai that reminded me of a scene from Blade Runner.  New, high tech, green initiatives will certainly help China going forward, but there is a TON of damage already done to the environment here that is going to be difficult to help with the new magic.

Hopefully, the aggressive, growing edge of China’s green-tech developments will spur the U.S. and other Western countries into truly innovating, as did Sputnik.  China might be able to grow their leading edge, but it is going to leave the trailing edge even farther behind.