Dear students and colleagues
One of the big impacts our students felt on visiting China is the realization that it is not only cheap labor that makes it a formidable international competitor. An outstanding achievement by the Chinese has been the ability to attract and develop industries through the affective integration of central, provincial and municipal level governments, together with investors, entrepreneurs, unions and workers. Even considering the existence of a strong central government, a single political party in power, environmental costs and worker safety issues still to be resolved, it is no small achievement to put together a competitive infrastructure for modern industry in a newly developing country.
Our alumni have created a magnificient social consulting program which has trained and implemented projects in over 500 social entreprises in Brazil.
The new challenge I would like to make to our students and friends worldwide is to discuss how Latin America, and Brazil in particular, can learn from some aspects of the Chinese experience, and promote rapid and sustainable growth of selected industries and regions in our country.
I specially invite to participate in this discussion not only our current students, but alumni from our International Executive MBA, our colleagues from partner schools overseas and other interested contributions. This effort will be open, non partisan, and focused on accelerating development and improving the quality of life of the Brazilian population in general.
Thanks for joining in !
James Wright
Director, FIA Business School
PS: If you feel more comfortable writing in Portuguese, we will translate your submissions.
3 comments:
Dear colleagues.
It was a nice experience to visit China and capture some aspects on how business are made in there and revealed some important differences.
Indeed not only low costs were attractive but business environment and internal potential demand; despite the wealth distribution's picture.
So on top of bureaucracy, the concern of the State is to develop the country. So, once a decision has been taken the project goes at full speed, although a final decision on a specific project might take sometime.
Another huge difference is the internationalization degree which is one of the key factors for China success. Brazil is far behind regarding this issue and still have a long way to go. Investments on education are also a big gap amid these two countries.
So considering restrictions China is about to face, energy supply, political situation in near future, Brazil has opportunities if:
- Speed up internationalization;
- Invest in education;
- Invest in macro infrastructure;
- develop wealthy distribution;
Dear Mr. James and Friends,
I congratulate the initiative of blog and believe that the subject on China is more than opportune. I understand that the colleagues who will have given quantitative information on this powerful market, could share these data with us. Particularly I search knowledge on long-distance education.
Regards,
Prof. Higino Viegas.
Dear Friends,
Having read many articles about China, but not actually gone to, I’d like to take the risk and post a comment from an outsider perspective.
Yes, I agree that China case should be analyzed considering broad vision, not only by the shortcuts that one could easily take. And by doing this we will be able to make a very useful parallel with Brazil and some of our neighbor countries.
China, like any other nation in Latin America, aims to fast growing. What really catches my attention is the fact that they are able to deploy strategic plans through an integration of actors in all sectors of public bureaucracy and involving so many different stakeholders. Investors, foreign companies, workers, even governments have played a key role in the dynamics of Chinese economy and, world economy by consequence of that.
It would be easy to repeat what’s been said: “Ok, these investors, companies and entrepreneurs have done what should be done: Today, China is the place to be!”. Yes, it’s the place to be, and what would make Brazil become the place to be too? What are the differences and similarities between both countries?
Fabio has suggested a bottom-up analysis, proposing actions in areas where a good implementation could empower Brazil’s aspiration to become “the place to be”. I’d like to suggest a top-down analysis to add to the point. I think China has been trying to shortcut the access to the top. So far it’s been successful, however we must not ignore that fast growing like we have seen in China will charge a full billing ticket some point in the future. There have been negligent decisions concerning environmental and sustainability issues. In terms of institution, a single political party in charge has conditions to make the “visible hand” take control and be proactive to get all steps in line with the main project. That’s an advantage, at least in the short term.
Brazil, on the other hand, has a different approach: we are a democracy, and that means we have to sum the parts to achieve goals. And these parts have to negotiate through republican institutions to decide what projects should come first. And here we have a problem: We are not culturally prepared to plan from an inter-generation standpoint. Ruptures and discontinuities have impacted our long range projects, and they come from political changes caused by the short term interests overcoming long range ones. And these ruptures come from all parts of society, not only politicians. Furthermore, unfortunately some key politicians in Brazil think and act like they were bigger than the institutions they represent. That’s a priority inversion.
Despite these issues, there are advances we could try to rely on to continue climbing the steps.
Our democracy could achieve the integration and orchestration presented by the single party China system: (1) Planning should be performed considering next generations. It is strongly advisable that we should not expect benefits to return on time for our generation. (2) Political stability comes from strong institutions. Brazil has the challenge to show the world that it does not depend on a single “el salvador”. (3) Long range goals in key areas, e.g. infra-structure projects and educational objectives should be implemented and controlled independently of political mandates. It is strongly recommended that we should have metrics and quantitative goals to be achieved through commitment of republican institutions, our politicians should commit to these long range objectives.
Considering other aspects, Brazil has opportunity to grow considering sustainability and environment. There are natural resources which could be explored in an innovative way. The lack of educational background must be reduced to improve our human capital.
China will have to payback its slackness on sustainability. Brazil does not have the right to take this risk, given its comparative advantage. This is a long range asset we must preserve and develop for the next generations.
China has been growing because there are huge investments in infrastructure, facilitating natural dynamics in a flow through economic efficiency. In Brazil there is near limit infrastructure, which blocks the dynamics of economy. Investments are required to preserve our capacity in competition and prevent future gaps, improve efficient value creation and national and international market development.
Priorities are to be decided.
This is my start contribution to the thinking. Hopefully I’ll be able to add more “down to earth” ideas in the future. To my colleagues of class T31, I really look forward from hearing your opinion, especially from those who’ve been to China.
Regards,
Nelson Yoshida T31
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