This week I have had the essential documents for Government approval translated by a junior accountant, employed an unfailingly happy full-time assistant and started on the media charm offensive with 3 of the 1,922 daily newspapers; as Mao said, “a long march begins with the first step.” 
In November 2004 I wrote a 23 page business plan for this China office which included the requirements for opening a Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise, two of which are a Feasibility study and the Articles of Association. This original plan was translated by Jessie, the young and able assistant to Ken Lee, and sent back to me for my approval as two documents. It was an article of faith for me in two ways; - firstly I have to trust Jessie’s understanding of my business and secondly because it commits me to a number of deliverables. In order to get a license approved the Government wants foreigners to declare how much money they will invest, how many staff they will employ and what they will do with the profits. My plan is modest with a requirement for US$25,000 capital, 4 staff and 10% profit this year. The judgement that I need from Jessie and Ken is whether this will be enough to elicit the excitement and therefore approval of some mandarin sitting in a faceless office somewhere on the 3rd ringroad. The anxiety of course, is what happens if I don’t manage to meet the targets this year, and those of the 4 year projections, plus finding the US$15,000 that I will apparently need to deposit into a Government monitored bank account within 3 months of registration. The vines of Chinese bureaucracy are slowly but surely wrapping themselves around the trunk of my business, and I pray that these ever thickening bindings will support the growing sapling and not suffocate it. I could not have managed to plough through the documents without the help of Judy, a 26 year old Masters Graduate who started working with me on Monday, supported by Grace in Singapore. It is one thing to take a risk on one’s own behalf, but to take it with another person’s well being is another responsibility. Hiring the first person is always a pivotal moment I believe as then it is no longer acceptable to be selfish or lack focus. Judy has put her faith in me, and increasingly me in her. Ken sent to me a list of employer conditions that the Government enforces, and they seem reasonable in terms of notice periods, maternity leave, and compensation. Hiring a person on a permanent basis is also an expression of trust in my own ability to make this work – I am aware that without a ‘Judy,’ I won’t be able to do anything, and now that I have an assistant, I have to find the cash to support us both. China is a society where everybody pays cash and asks for a ‘fa piao,’ which I always assumed was a receipt, but in fact is in my dictionary as ‘invoice.’ So when I asked Judy to get an invoice from Kai so that we could pay her for the Coding Technologies, and for a receipt for the first RMB500 cash that Clara wanted, we had a language challenge akin to the ‘Courier, Career, Korea’ episode with Nicole. Western business practice of asking for an invoice and then a receipt is short circuited by simply giving cash and then being given the invoice. Trusting a person to pay against an invoice hasn’t yet taken off, and I now have to be very careful with my starting capital as the more work I do, the less funds I have. I hadn’t thought of the issue of over trading, where every dollar invoiced leads to negative cash flow, and with the impending need to commit to bringing in US$15,000 I find myself contemplating the paucity of my resources compared to the challenge that I have set myself. 
The best defense in a situation like this is offense, and so I started to pay trips to the media in Beijing so that we can do the media relations work ourselves and save the cash outflow. I visited a young journalist at the Telecommunications Today journal, housed in the grandoise Telecommunications Museum building. Zhang Zhun told me that she had worked before on the prestigious ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ but for some reason that I couldn’t quite follow, ended her Masters thesis and found herself as one of 35 staff covering satellite and telecommunications in China based in the musuem that no one apparently visits. As a Government publication they don’t want money to cover stories, but it would assist our cause if we were to recommend their publication to our clients for advertising. 
On my way home I went for lunch with Qi and his colleague He. As a specialty they ordered Sichuan chicken, which could not have been very agile as it only seemed to have one foot, which was settled pride of place on the mountain of chili. Qi and his team are developing new e-commerce sites for government agencies. According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, people under the age of 30 accounted for 71 per cent of the 110 million Chinese netizens by December last year. A majority of the netizens, about 67.9 per cent, said they went online for news. In another study, CTR researchers found that people spent some 40 minutes on reading the 1.4 million copies of newspapers daily last year, but 48 minutes on the Internet. I realise that as I am here building a media relations business, the nature of the media is being transformed, and believe that I must embrace this new dimension in order to be effective here. 
Not all communication in China is on the Internet, and at the Beijing International Studies University I was entreated to consider that ‘Gratitude Beautifies Life,’ and am grateful for the experience that being here is giving me. At the church service held on the 21st floor of an office building, the pastor from Dublin said that “God doesn’t wait for a person to achieve a state of grace before he gives them atonement for their sins.” I reflected on the fact that I have too much in flux to be in a ‘state of grace,’ but that I have built the trust of some good people, and that ultimately I still have a faith in my vision for EASTWEST in China – now I pray that the Chaoyang department of company registrations have faith in Jessie’s translation ability. Source: 2005 China Journalism Yearbook Source:The state of the media. China Daily 2006-05-31
In November 2004 I wrote a 23 page business plan for this China office which included the requirements for opening a Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise, two of which are a Feasibility study and the Articles of Association. This original plan was translated by Jessie, the young and able assistant to Ken Lee, and sent back to me for my approval as two documents. It was an article of faith for me in two ways; - firstly I have to trust Jessie’s understanding of my business and secondly because it commits me to a number of deliverables. In order to get a license approved the Government wants foreigners to declare how much money they will invest, how many staff they will employ and what they will do with the profits. My plan is modest with a requirement for US$25,000 capital, 4 staff and 10% profit this year. The judgement that I need from Jessie and Ken is whether this will be enough to elicit the excitement and therefore approval of some mandarin sitting in a faceless office somewhere on the 3rd ringroad. The anxiety of course, is what happens if I don’t manage to meet the targets this year, and those of the 4 year projections, plus finding the US$15,000 that I will apparently need to deposit into a Government monitored bank account within 3 months of registration. The vines of Chinese bureaucracy are slowly but surely wrapping themselves around the trunk of my business, and I pray that these ever thickening bindings will support the growing sapling and not suffocate it. I could not have managed to plough through the documents without the help of Judy, a 26 year old Masters Graduate who started working with me on Monday, supported by Grace in Singapore. It is one thing to take a risk on one’s own behalf, but to take it with another person’s well being is another responsibility. Hiring the first person is always a pivotal moment I believe as then it is no longer acceptable to be selfish or lack focus. Judy has put her faith in me, and increasingly me in her. Ken sent to me a list of employer conditions that the Government enforces, and they seem reasonable in terms of notice periods, maternity leave, and compensation. Hiring a person on a permanent basis is also an expression of trust in my own ability to make this work – I am aware that without a ‘Judy,’ I won’t be able to do anything, and now that I have an assistant, I have to find the cash to support us both. China is a society where everybody pays cash and asks for a ‘fa piao,’ which I always assumed was a receipt, but in fact is in my dictionary as ‘invoice.’ So when I asked Judy to get an invoice from Kai so that we could pay her for the Coding Technologies, and for a receipt for the first RMB500 cash that Clara wanted, we had a language challenge akin to the ‘Courier, Career, Korea’ episode with Nicole. Western business practice of asking for an invoice and then a receipt is short circuited by simply giving cash and then being given the invoice. Trusting a person to pay against an invoice hasn’t yet taken off, and I now have to be very careful with my starting capital as the more work I do, the less funds I have. I hadn’t thought of the issue of over trading, where every dollar invoiced leads to negative cash flow, and with the impending need to commit to bringing in US$15,000 I find myself contemplating the paucity of my resources compared to the challenge that I have set myself. 
The best defense in a situation like this is offense, and so I started to pay trips to the media in Beijing so that we can do the media relations work ourselves and save the cash outflow. I visited a young journalist at the Telecommunications Today journal, housed in the grandoise Telecommunications Museum building. Zhang Zhun told me that she had worked before on the prestigious ‘Beijing Youth Daily’ but for some reason that I couldn’t quite follow, ended her Masters thesis and found herself as one of 35 staff covering satellite and telecommunications in China based in the musuem that no one apparently visits. As a Government publication they don’t want money to cover stories, but it would assist our cause if we were to recommend their publication to our clients for advertising. 
On my way home I went for lunch with Qi and his colleague He. As a specialty they ordered Sichuan chicken, which could not have been very agile as it only seemed to have one foot, which was settled pride of place on the mountain of chili. Qi and his team are developing new e-commerce sites for government agencies. According to the China Internet Network Information Centre, people under the age of 30 accounted for 71 per cent of the 110 million Chinese netizens by December last year. A majority of the netizens, about 67.9 per cent, said they went online for news. In another study, CTR researchers found that people spent some 40 minutes on reading the 1.4 million copies of newspapers daily last year, but 48 minutes on the Internet. I realise that as I am here building a media relations business, the nature of the media is being transformed, and believe that I must embrace this new dimension in order to be effective here. 
Not all communication in China is on the Internet, and at the Beijing International Studies University I was entreated to consider that ‘Gratitude Beautifies Life,’ and am grateful for the experience that being here is giving me. At the church service held on the 21st floor of an office building, the pastor from Dublin said that “God doesn’t wait for a person to achieve a state of grace before he gives them atonement for their sins.” I reflected on the fact that I have too much in flux to be in a ‘state of grace,’ but that I have built the trust of some good people, and that ultimately I still have a faith in my vision for EASTWEST in China – now I pray that the Chaoyang department of company registrations have faith in Jessie’s translation ability. Source: 2005 China Journalism Yearbook Source:The state of the media. China Daily 2006-05-31