Happy Mid-Autum Festival Everyone

And so, its that time of year again, you know, where I pretend to like mooncakes, where I think I should be heading back to campus (18 years after the fact) and NYC is at its peak as a place to live.

Its also a time for us all to get back to the business of business. For me that means the next 12 days in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Saigon. I plan on some frequent posting during this trip. But for today I want to share a great article from The Economist.

It is a great look-in regarding the State vs. Corporation discussion we have had here over the last two weeks. They also seem to think MNCs have reason for concern.

IN 1992 two Chinese cities, one just south of Beijing, the other just north of Hong Kong, were in desperate shape even by the standards of a desperately poor country. Their municipally run companies were in danger of bankrupting not only themselves but the cities too. Zhucheng, near Beijing, was best known as the birthplace of Jiang Qing, Mao Zedongs despotic, doctrinaire fourth wife, who died in jail in 1991. Two-thirds of its revenues were being eaten by corporate losses. Shunde, a small city in Guangdong, was buried in debt.

Meanwhile, the authorities in Beijing were becoming concerned that the state banking system, already creaking under the weight of bad debt, would be unable to bear even more. With the quiet acquiescence of the central government, Zhucheng and Shunde ignored doctrine, old laws and 40 years of failed policies in search of a better approach.
in a carefully constructed phrase subsequently endorsed, in 1993, by the all-powerful State Council, the two cities engaged in gaizhi, which means changing the system and implies the diversification of ownership. Put more simply, in words that even now the Chinese government cannot bring itself to utter, they started to privatise many of their companies. They thus began one of the Chinese states first attempts to change its relationship with its enterprises. Jiang Qing would not have approved.

http://www.economist.com/node/21528262