VideoNovember 5, 2009November 3, 2009Doing Business in China: An Eastern PerspectiveThis clip is about numbers, and the varying ways to make sense of them in China. At one extreme the power of numbers is of obvious and unignorable importance. The opening scene of the clip, on a winter day in Shanghai, give a glimpse of the sea-of-people effect of many Chinese cities. On the other hand, neither Shanghai nor Beijing nor any other city in the mainland seems as densely packed as either Tokyo or Hong Kong. The difference with mainland China is that there are so many multi-million person cities across so huge a landmass, plus plenty of well-populated rural areas too.At the same time, just about any number concerning China is an approximation, from economic growth rates to literacy or environmental readings, or anything else. This clip mainly talks about the implications of that rough-and-ready statistical approach for businesses, but it has international and political implications too. October 27, 2009Doing Business in China: Drinks and DealsAh, drinking in China as part of business negotiations. Where to start... This next installment of the Doing Business in China series is a beginning. It really is true that the purpose of many "business" dinners is for everyone, Chinese and foreign, to become drunk (often on Chinese Baijiu, 白酒, vodka-ish raw spirit). In becoming drunk and lowering defenses, people prove their mutual trust, or something. In any case, it's real. Note the appearance of Chinese beer, on which I often commented during my time of residence, starting about time 0:11. Main point: this sounds like a joke or cliche but actually makes a difference.October 22, 2009Doing Business in China: A Piece of the PieNext in Doing Business in China: the pizza wars! Early in our stay in Shanghai, my wife and I tried to stop in to the Pizza Hut just north of People's Square -- and were turned away, by a head waiter whose face was barely visible beneath his gigantic sombrero. We didn't have reservations, on this routine weekday night -- what were we thinking in trying to get in? This is one illustration of the social and business complications of the pizza business in China, which has been good for Pizza Hut and very rough for Domino's. This segment narrated by Emily Chang, series co-host.October 20, 2009Doing Business in China: From Supply Chains to Supply NetworksNext up in the Doing Business in China series: a clip that gives a brief look at one of several central, and complex, parts of the US-China business interaction. This clip has some worthwhile shots of the insides of several Chinese factories -- a relatively new one, and a ponderous old state-owned metal works.It also introduces an aspect of the "outsourcing" wave that I discussed two years ago in "China Makes, the World Takes": that factories in China, serving US and other foreign customers, are providing a lot of jobs for Chinese laborers, but are also providing a majority of the profits, plus most of the associated design, marketing, R&D, etc jobs elsewhere, especially in the US. The furniture company featured here had never done production inside the US: it was a pure startup, with factories in China and design/marketing/management in the US, to serve a mainly US market. The ramifications of this overall division of labor, and how it might change in the future, obviously go beyond the bounds of this clip (and are considered in the series as a whole, in my book, etc). But this is an opening look. October 15, 2009Doing Business in China: Keeping Employees HappyNext up in the Doing Business in China series: a look at an issue whose importance may come as a surprise to people who have not worked in the country. This is the challenge of keeping Chinese employees, once they have become skilled in factory or white-collar procedures. Among other things it mentions why "Spring Festival," aka Chinese New Year, is the moment of greatest turnover, as workers go to their home villages and then often shop around for new jobs when they return to factory centers. Plus, another cameo by Kaifu Lee!October 13, 2009Doing Business in China: What is Communism?I love this clip, once again from the Doing Business in China series. In particular I love the initial interviews with business people, average folk, Communist Party members, etc. about what this thing called "communism" (共产主义, Gongchan zhuyi) might possibly be. You'll see what I mean. And again this rings true to my daily experience there over the years.October 8, 2009Doing Business in China: Kissing in PublicAll I'll say about this clip, next in the Doing Business in China series, is that I did in fact frequently patronize the Haagen-Dazs stores shown in Shanghai to get presents of ice cream for my wife. The clip explains why this makes me a romantic-hearted person. The fashion show at the end also gives a little glimpse of why it can seem, well, incomplete to refer to modern China as only a grim land of sweatshops, or a culture under careful control by the central government, et cetera.October 6, 2009Doing Business in China: Battling PiratesNext in the Doing Business in China series: a look at the morass of intellectual property protection, plus ways that some foreign companies have tried to cope with it. I'm not entirely sure, but I think that the opening scenes, in which CDs of operating systems and similar big-ticket software items are being sold for a dollar or two, were taken in front of the same high-tech mall in Shenzhen that I wrote about in 2007.This clip is also notable for the cameo appearances by Kaifu Lee, a very attention-getting figure in the Chinese technology business. During the early filming for this series, he was Microsoft's man in China -- working, as the clip explains, to build relationships that would keep other companies and government ministries from simply stealing Microsoft products. By later stages of the filming, he was directing Google's operations in China. Very recently, he left to form his own VC firm. This clip concentrates on what he did with Microsoft; the whole series covers other companies' answers to the piracy problem. October 1, 2009Doing Business in China: As Good as Their WordNext up in the Doing Business in China series, a look at the implications of the heavily freighted term guanxi -- 关系, usually rendered in English as "relationship" and often thought by Westerners to indicate the shadier senses of that term. As the interviewees in this clip indicate, the emphasis on guanxi has evolved in response to China's particular circumstances -- especially, the centuries-long absence of an effective legal system. In the video series as a whole, we talk about the ways in which it persists, and doesn't, in modern China.September 29, 2009Doing Business in China: Porcelain SkinNext installment in the Doing Business in China series: a look at the cosmetics business in China, in particular the very strong market for skin-whitening creams.The desirability of "porcelain skin" in China -- like the analogous light-skin beauty images in Japan, the Philippines, much of Southeast Asia, much of India, and much of everyplace else -- has a variety of origins, largely in the tangled realm of basic color prejudice. In this clip we look briefly at a more straightforward source: the association in Chinese history between dark, tanned skin and a manual-labor, agricultural background -- which made untanned, light skin a marker of privilege and status. In practical terms this has significant business implications for cosmetics firms, as the clip suggests. September 22, 2009Doing Business in China: The Elusive Chinese InternetNext up in the Doing Business in China series: what to make of the positive and negative effects of China's embrace of the internet. My Atlantic article about the subject last year is here; previous entries about the series here. This clip, and the related parts of the series, go into some of the related and subsequent developments.September 17, 2009DVD series: The World's FactoryNext up in the Doing Business in China series (previous entries here): a look at China's factories.What I like about this segment (not including the load of industrial goo slathered on my hair by a well-meaning Shanghai stylist just before filming, but I digress) is its emphasis on the elements other than cheap labor that have been crucial to China's manufacturing success. Yes, $10-a-day factory wages give Chinese producers a big edge. As I explained in the magazine two years ago, they also affect the way the whole production process is planned and laid out. Eg: Some functions that would always be mechanized in the US, Japan, or Europe are done by hand in China, because the cost of the machines isn't worth it. This has its disadvantages, yet it also can allow Chinese factories to switch from product to product much faster than a more "modern" facility could. But there are a lot of places with much cheaper wage rates than China now. The Chinese advantage over such places -- Cambodia, Bangladesh, much of Africa -- is the combination of relatively cheap labor and absolutely superb production infrastructure. Ports, industrial zones, highways headed to airports, whatever else it takes. This clip mentions the issue; the whole series goes into it at some length, and gives you an idea of what these factories look like on the inside. September 16, 2009Discussion with John Podesta at Gov 2.0 conferenceLast week Tim O'Reilly held his debut "Gov 2.0" conference in Washington. All the parts I saw were interesting and provocative. For a list of clips, podcasts, and so on, go here. For the record, here is a clip of a session I did with John Podesta, former Clinton White House chief of staff and now head of the Center for American Progress. We decided to do it as a split-shift Q-and-A: first, improbably, he asked me questions, and then I asked him some. We ran out of time before I could get many details on something I really wanted to know about: what it was like to spend time with Kim Jong Il, when Podesta accompanied Bill Clinton to North Korea this summer.September 14, 2009DVD Series: Carrots in the Washing MachineHere's the third clip from the Doing Business in China series; previous ones here. All the clips are my favorites, but this one is a particular favorite. It's a look at one of the big unknown issues for China's commercial future: whether, how, and when its companies can rise out of the pure low-cost commodity-supplier role to have valuable brand names of their own.The starting point is the "white goods" manufacturer Haier, which absolutely dominates the Chinese domestic market for washers, fridges, and so on and is becoming better known world wide. The segment title refers to one of its breakthrough innovations. Bonus in this clip: a cameo of Kai-Fu Lee, who once directed Microsoft's research labs in Beijing, and who until last week headed Google's offices in China, before resigning to set up his own VC firm. I first met him when I worked at Microsoft ten years ago and saw him frequently in China. More later; enjoy this clip for now. September 8, 2009DVD series: The Two ChinasHere is the second in the series of "Doing Business in China" clips. As I have argued many many times, most recently here, the first step toward sanity in dealing with "China" is to recognize that there are dozens, hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands of separate realities all lumped together under that one label. This clip eases us into that concept by talking about the first big division -- between the modern, urban China we mainly hear about in the outside world, and the very different place where most Chinese citizens actually live. Click "play" for more....September 1, 2009The Real ChinaStarting this week and through the fall, the Atlantic's site will have a series of clips from the DVD series "Doing Business in China" in which I was involved before moving back to the United States. I'll have more to say shortly about the background of the project, and what I view as its potential importance. For now I'll just say thanks to: Bob Schapiro and Dovar Chen, who figured out how to get the original and quite startling video footage inside Chinese factories, bureaucracies, stores, etc over the past few years; Joe Nocera of the New York Times, who appears on the films in "what it all means" discussions with me after each segment; and Emily Chang, on-camera co-host. I'll also mention that when we were filming some of the narration in Shanghai, it was hot and humid beyond all belief, and we were standing in direct sun on a rooftop. More to come, and I will say that I learned a lot about China through the process of working on this project.July 12, 2009Atlantic interview with Eric SchmidtAs part of the series of shortish interviews of big shots by Atlantic staffers at the Aspen Ideas Festival, our they-never-sleep web team has posted this Q-and-A between me and Eric Schmidt of Google:May 31, 2009Win in China screening - Tuesday in NYCReminder (earlier notice here): If you're in New York this Tuesday evening, June 2, consider checking out the screening at the Asia Society of a new documentary on the Chinese reality TV show for budding entrepreneurs, Win in China. Screening details here; my 2007 article about the show here.  March 15, 2009For the Netflix list: 'Smartest Guys in the Room'In case you missed this the first time around (as I did), highly recommended: Alex Gibney's 2005 documentary on Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room. Apart from its original, intrinsic interest in telling the sordid tale of Skilling, Fastow, Lay, et al, the film has surprising new resonance now.On the one hand, the sums involved in this previous-world-record-scandal now seem quaintly small. Enron was a $60 billion (or whatever) corporation that went bust. Ooooooohh, say it isn't so! That is practically a rounding-error financial disaster now, except when achieved by a single person like Madoff. But the fundamental dynamics of the fraud are very, very similar to what we've heard about from a dozen other institutions in the past year. And -- the part that really got my attention -- the second-tier villains in the Enron story, the enablers and blind-eye-turners for the active fraud Enron had underway, included many that have emerged in full villainy since then, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and boosterish business journalists prominent among them. Also: if you happened to be living in California during the Enron-intensified Worth seeing a first time -- or a second or third, with the new eyes of 2009. Alex Gibney, the director, is known to the world as last-year's Oscar winner for Taxi to the Dark Side and within the Atlantic as the brother of our colleague James Gibney. January 28, 2009A project I'm proud ofAttentive viewers of this site and readers of the latest issue of the magazine will have noticed ads for a new series of DVD's called On the Frontlines: Doing Business in China. Here is the back story. I have a certain forelock-tugging reluctance to sell, sell, sell when it comes to my own personal products and projects. Just ask my publishers! But about team efforts I feel no such diffidence. On the contrary: I think this magazine is great, and I'll say so as often as I can to anyone I can. And I think that this video series, which is the product of many peoples' labor and creativity, is very, very good and worth a serious look.
A video journalist named Bob Schapiro, with his associates Dovar Chen and others, had worked for years getting on-camera interviews with many Chinese officials, industrialists, workers, analysts, etc about the current situation of the country. About two years ago I met them in Shanghai, when they were continuing their reporting and I was one of their B-roll interviewees. Later, as they put the series together, I saw some of the early cuts and was genuinely impressed with what they'd been able to see and record and present on screen. I happily accepted an offer to be involved in further shaping of the series and to be one of the on-camera hosts (along with the young journalist and performer Emily Chang). Joe Nocera, my long-time friend from the Washington Monthly and Texas Monthly who is now the king of the business journalists, eventually joined the project to provide talk-show type analysis after each segment, in on-camera discussions with me. What I particularly like about the series is that it shows people, places, and things -- inside factories, inside Chinese companies, workers from remote areas -- that are hard for most Westerners to see, and that finally leave a different impression if you actually see them as opposed to reading about them (even in the best magazines). It also shows you a little bit of the hosts: mainly, you're seeing real Chinese people in action. This is very much a team effort. I'll have more to say about it periodically. The Atlantic is a partner in presenting it, and I have the same enthusiasm for it as for other projects under our label. The main site is here; a few previews and trailers are here. If you enter a "member code" Atl-Fallows there is a $50 discount. What a deal! Seriously, I learned things about parts of China I hadn't seen by working on the project, and I think others will find it informative too. December 6, 2008Non-politics, non-tech, non-China: Istanbul!Twice during our past two and a half years of living in China, my wife and I have made vacation trips to Turkey. I had not been before and now really regret that fact.My brief travel article in the new issue of the Atlantic, here, offers a vignette that may convey part of what I found so intriguing about Istanbul. This slide show, with the Atlantic's slickest new video-effect tools by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, has more of the Ottoman empire look. Go see for yourself -- I mean, not just via the articles but with a trip to Turkey. 
August 22, 2008Media note (updated)Late Thursday night, Beijing time, I did an interview about the Olympics for the Lehrer News Hour show that I think will be shown early Thursday night US time. This was foreign-correspondentry from Ye Olden Days: hearing a question over the telephone, carefully putting down the telephone so it's out of camera frame, and then answering the question into the camera -- and those recorded answers being FTPd to the US to be spliced with the questions. OK, semi-olden days. Basic theme: Zhongguo Jia You! Aoyun Hui Jia You!* Update: Apparently not shown Thursday. Maybe Friday? Que sera sera. ** Updated update: The segment did run on Friday. Info here, with link to streaming video here. October 19, 2007Media watch: C-Span Sunday morningYou've heard about the gala feature-packed 150th Anniversary issue of the Atlantic Monthly! See it discussed, in real time and with exciting viewer call-ins, on C-Span's Washington Journal this coming Sunday morning, Oct 21, 9:15-10 am. (Assuming I can get up by then.) October 17, 2007More Google Zeitgeist on YouTubeIt turns out that quite a few sessions from last week's "Google Zeitgeist" conference are available via YouTube, here. The session that starts up when you hit that page is a conversation between Tom Brokaw, of NBC, and his friend Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and very much a non-digital-age guy. (Chouinard says that his fingers have never touched a keyboard.) Clip starts with a brief setup of their discussion, by me. The other interviews and clips are linked from that page. October 16, 2007What I was doing last week: interview with Larry Page and Sergey BrinThe Google founders, at the "Zeitgeist 2007" conference on the Google campus: July 6, 2007Video link: Lehrer News Hour interview about ShenzhenJust before leaving China last month, I showed up in the pre-dawn haze (referring to my state of mind, not the weather) at the Shanghai Media Group TV studios for an interview with Jeff Brown, of the Lehrer News Hour, about the nature of Chinese factory life. Streaming video is here; RealAudio here; MP3 here; transcript here. March 28, 2007Colbert interview linksHere is the main index page for recent Colbert interviews, and here is a direct link to the one I did with him (or he did on me, or whatever) last night. Another direct link: here. March 16, 2007Improbable but true: Colbert Report appearance March 27Or at least, improbable but currently scheduled. First trip to the US in six months coming up soon. If current plans hold, it will include an appearance on the Colbert Report on March 27. We'll see. I just hope that my latest unfortunate made-in-China haircut, an unintended Tintin-style (but for the middle aged) fauxhawk has come closer to growing out by then. November 15, 2006China slideshow at the Atlantic, plus SlateA narration of daily life in Shanghai and Beijing here, at the Atlantic's site. Of course accompanied by my wife Deb's "Diarist" this week in Slate. October 22, 2006Interview with Sir Richard Dearlove at AspenSir Richard Dearlove was the former head of British secret intelligence, and a central figure in the famed "Downing Street Memorandum," reporting eons before Bob Woodward that the intelligence had been "fixed" for the plan to invade Iraq. Here is a .WMV file of my interview with him and Shashi Tharoor at Aspen. It is notable especially for his argument about why the U.S. was destroying itself by cutting legal and ethical corners in the Global War on Terror -- as described at the time here. October 21, 2006Interview with Bill Clinton at AspenThis was at the "Aspen Ideas Festival," co-sponsored by the Atlantic, in July. Hour-long video, availabile in MP3 here and in a variety of other formats here (at bottom of page). It was the interview I described on the Atlantic's Aspen blog. Interview with Michael Dell at Google ZeitgeistDell has released a video of the interview I conducted with its founder and CEO at Google's recent Zeitgeist conference, here. My main personal impressions of him: mensch-like, good sense of humor, and although he traveled with what appear to be bodyguards, much less air of a big shot than a lot of other big shots. April 19, 2006Guest Hosting on the Charlie Rose Show - Tom FriedmanTom Friedman of the New York Times with Guest Host James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly. Charlie Rose show, April 19, 2006. On Google Video. March 31, 2006Guest Hosting on the Charlie Rose Show - IraqGuest Host James Fallows talks about lessons learned in Vietnam and the U.S. Military strategy with Lt. Col. John Nagl, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Lewis Sorley, U.S. Army (Retired) Lt. Col. Conrad Crane, U.S. Army (Retired) on the Charlie Rose Show. (On Google Video.) July 4, 2005UC Berkeley ConversationsJim Fallows, National Correspondent of The Atlantic Monthly, joins Conversations host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of foreign policy decisions in the administration of President George W. Bush. Fallows talks about the factors shaping the choices made, the resulting opportunity costs, and alternative strategies in the war on terrorism. (On Google Video.) September 30, 2004Iraq, Osama, and the Global War on TerrorJames Fallows and Peter Bergen dissect the Bush Administrations approach to Global War on Terror in a 2004 panel for the New America Foundation. (On Google Video.) |
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