At the end of last year, I toured Tsingtao, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other industrial cities in China. Manufacturers that had located there in order to take advantage of low labor costs were struggling with losses, while consumer-oriented service industries were eager to expand their market share. I concluded the time had come to “change players.”
The owner of a toy company in Suzhou lamented that he was like “a lost migratory bird.” His losses will mount if he keeps the factory running, but he hasn’t found another place in Southeast Asia that meets his logistical needs.
If he comes back to Korea, he would struggle to find affordable workers. What about companies from other countries?
Last year, “reshoring” was a buzzword in the American manufacturing sector. Companies that had relocated abroad - especially to China - began to come back.
GE moved back a portion of its home appliance manufacturing capacity, and Apple decided to make computers in the United States. The toy maker K’Nex, bioplastics company Trellis Earth Products and bra manufacturer Handful announced reshoring plans as well.
The wage level in China is going up by nearly 20 percent every year, and the U.S. shale boom has cut down the cost of production in America. In August 2013, Walmart declared it would purchase an additional $50 billion in U.S. products in 10 years.
Japanese companies began to exit China in the 2000s in the face of growing anti-Japanese sentiment. Many of them moved to Southeast Asia, and the Japanese government offered generous subsidies for industrial complexes. Japanese operations are now strategically located in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
The emergence of China in the 1990s reorganized the global manufacturing system. Products made by 400 million low-wage workers began to encroach on markets in the West, and as China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the country became the “factory of the world.” But rising wage levels, the revaluation of the Chinese yuan and environmental pollution have made China’s industrial conditions less attractive.
The Obama administration is promoting its “Make It in America” initiative. Japan is using Southeast Asian industrial complexes as post-China alternatives. But what about Korea?
Rather than bringing back the companies that have moved abroad, thriving conglomerates are moving their establishments to other countries.
I am worried that the entire Korean economy may feel like “a lost migratory bird.”
*The author is the director of the China Institute of the JoongAng Ilbo.
by HAN WOO-DUK
Saturday, January 25, 2014
0128-Amid Chinese New Year Frenzy, City Offers to ‘Mail’ Children Home
Ahead of the weeklong Lunar New Year celebration, one Chinese city is offering to help ship home a precious cargo: children.
The eastern city of Qingdao is setting up a service to escort the children of migrant workers home for free as part of a “children mail” service, according to official Xinhua news agency.
The service targets families that want to send their children back to their hometowns before the parents head back. Many schools have already closed for the long holiday break, but most workers won’t get off until Jan. 31, the first day of the Lunar New Year and the start of the nationwide holiday. The service will transport the children by bus under the care of drivers with the help of video surveillance, Xinhua cited Jiang Shiqun, Communist Party secretary of the Qingdao long-distance bus station, as saying. Bus staff would exchange special codes with relatives who come to pick up the children.
Many of the country’s more than 260 million migrant workers choose to leave their children behind in their hometowns, in the care of grandparents or other relatives, because China’s strict household registration system ties access to subsidized social services to a person’s legal residence. That system often prevents migrant children from attending decent urban schools or getting health care in the cities where their parents are working.
Some cities have started experimenting with granting migrant workers and their children hukou, the household-registration document that entitles them to live there and grants access to subsidized social services.
In November, China’s Communist Party announced that smaller cities will relax residency requirements to allow children to settle with their migrant parents, confirming a change already under way in some cities for years. Officials also have set up more boarding facilities in rural schools. The moves likely will have little impact. Officials haven’t budged on rules that keep migrant workers from bringing children to China’s largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, where the better jobs are. Officials there are worried about the health and education costs of taking in so many kids.
About 61 million Chinese children—one of every five in the world’s most populous nation—haven’t seen one or both parents for at least three months, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party advocacy group. The total has grown so big that the children are widely known as left-behind kids.
fSome of the working parents in Qingdao said they see the “children mail” as a useful service. Tan Hongwei, a seafood shop assistant who applied to send his 12-year-old son to their hometown of Jinan, about 350 kilometers away, told Xinhua the lead-up to the Spring Festival is usually a busy time for the workers.
“In the past, my son had to stay home and had nobody cooking for him or taking care of him,” Mr. Tan said.
Qingdao’s “children mail” service covers 14 long-distance bus routes in Shandong province. It isn’t the first city to offer the service. It’s previously been used in Wuhan, Hangzhou and a handful of other cities.
Every year, hundreds of millions of Chinese travel back to their hometowns to celebrate the traditional Lunar New Year, China’s most significant holiday. Government officials earlier estimated that this year people will take to the air, roads and railways 3.62 billion times over a 40-day period around the holiday, about 200 million more than last year, in what is known as the world’s largest human migration.
Some Web users were skeptical of the service, noting that it would be too risky to send their children with strangers.
“Qingdao station once sent three pieces of my luggage to a wrong address,” one user of China’s Sina Weibo microblogging platform wrote. “Be careful this time.”
Others were hopeful the country could expand on the program to help the migrant workers themselves make it home for the holidays.
“It will be even better if adults can be mailed too,” another user wrote. “Many migrant workers are too poor to go home.”
–Brittany Hite, with contributions from Liu Jing
The eastern city of Qingdao is setting up a service to escort the children of migrant workers home for free as part of a “children mail” service, according to official Xinhua news agency.
The service targets families that want to send their children back to their hometowns before the parents head back. Many schools have already closed for the long holiday break, but most workers won’t get off until Jan. 31, the first day of the Lunar New Year and the start of the nationwide holiday. The service will transport the children by bus under the care of drivers with the help of video surveillance, Xinhua cited Jiang Shiqun, Communist Party secretary of the Qingdao long-distance bus station, as saying. Bus staff would exchange special codes with relatives who come to pick up the children.
Many of the country’s more than 260 million migrant workers choose to leave their children behind in their hometowns, in the care of grandparents or other relatives, because China’s strict household registration system ties access to subsidized social services to a person’s legal residence. That system often prevents migrant children from attending decent urban schools or getting health care in the cities where their parents are working.
Some cities have started experimenting with granting migrant workers and their children hukou, the household-registration document that entitles them to live there and grants access to subsidized social services.
In November, China’s Communist Party announced that smaller cities will relax residency requirements to allow children to settle with their migrant parents, confirming a change already under way in some cities for years. Officials also have set up more boarding facilities in rural schools. The moves likely will have little impact. Officials haven’t budged on rules that keep migrant workers from bringing children to China’s largest cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, where the better jobs are. Officials there are worried about the health and education costs of taking in so many kids.
About 61 million Chinese children—one of every five in the world’s most populous nation—haven’t seen one or both parents for at least three months, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party advocacy group. The total has grown so big that the children are widely known as left-behind kids.
fSome of the working parents in Qingdao said they see the “children mail” as a useful service. Tan Hongwei, a seafood shop assistant who applied to send his 12-year-old son to their hometown of Jinan, about 350 kilometers away, told Xinhua the lead-up to the Spring Festival is usually a busy time for the workers.
“In the past, my son had to stay home and had nobody cooking for him or taking care of him,” Mr. Tan said.
Qingdao’s “children mail” service covers 14 long-distance bus routes in Shandong province. It isn’t the first city to offer the service. It’s previously been used in Wuhan, Hangzhou and a handful of other cities.
Every year, hundreds of millions of Chinese travel back to their hometowns to celebrate the traditional Lunar New Year, China’s most significant holiday. Government officials earlier estimated that this year people will take to the air, roads and railways 3.62 billion times over a 40-day period around the holiday, about 200 million more than last year, in what is known as the world’s largest human migration.
Some Web users were skeptical of the service, noting that it would be too risky to send their children with strangers.
“Qingdao station once sent three pieces of my luggage to a wrong address,” one user of China’s Sina Weibo microblogging platform wrote. “Be careful this time.”
Others were hopeful the country could expand on the program to help the migrant workers themselves make it home for the holidays.
“It will be even better if adults can be mailed too,” another user wrote. “Many migrant workers are too poor to go home.”
–Brittany Hite, with contributions from Liu Jing
0127-Traditional games for healthy holidays
By Song Sang-ho
We are getting close to the Lunar New Year’s holiday, when people will gather for large family reunions to share good wishes and traditional food.
Although it is a time for the family and relatives to gather from all over the country, many of us do not know how to make our time together enjoyable. For instance, adults often watch TV and children spend hours playing games on computers or their mobile phones. In the end, these long family gatherings can sometimes grow tiresome.
If you would like something different to do this time, I would suggest you play some “traditional” games. This will remind many adults of their childhood, and children can learn about traditions. Above all, playing many of the folk games is one great way to check your joints.
Let me explain.
Let’s start with Yut Nori, one of the most popular folk games. Yut Nori is helpful in keeping your back (spine) healthy. When you cast the four yuts (sticks) or move your mal (tokens) on the board, you need to sit up straight or stand up; this activity will prevent a stiff back. Moreover, if you get lucky either to cast “yut” or “mo,” which gives the biggest points, or to catch the opponent’s mal on the board, players and audience cheer with screams and clapping; this will relieve stress on our shoulders, knees and wrists. Besides these positive aspects, however, keep in mind that sitting or kneeling for hours playing Yut Nori may strain your knee or back. Therefore stretching exercises during the game are advised.
Next, we will take a look at “jegichagi.” In this traditional outdoor game, you kick the jegi, which looks like a badminton shuttlecock, continuously without dropping it on the ground. This game is good for the knee joints and leg muscles. It works great especially for inner and outer muscle strength on your legs. Since it requires using a lot of movement of the knee and hip joints in order to kick the jegi, you need to take care of them. If there is any pain around your buttocks, or in the knee or hip joints while kicking the jegi, it may be a sign of a joint disease. If you are a middle-aged person and feel consistent pain during or after playing jegichagi, I advise you to visit a nearby clinic for a check-up.
Playing “Tuho,” you can check if you have frozen shoulder or rotator cuff tear. You may have a frozen shoulder if you are too uncomfortable to lift your arm, or feel pain while throwing the stick. And it might be a rotator cuff tear if you have trouble lifting or rotating your arm. Both frozen shoulder and rotator cuff tears seem similar but they are different in terms of the range of movement. In short, it is a frozen shoulder if you are unable to lift your arm even with somebody’s help. Otherwise, it is probably a rotator cuff tear. In any case, it is highly recommended you visit a clinic for your shoulder pain, because you can get great results with simple therapy.
Lastly, it is “neol-twigi,” another outdoor game for women. You can check your knee joints playing this game. Moreover you can enhance muscles around your knees as you continuously bend and straighten the knees to jump. This jumping game also helps blood circulation and metabolism. However, you need to be careful with your knees and hips if you have weak bones. The sudden weight may place stress on your joints as you come back down.
I hope this coming Lunar New Year’s holiday is a pleasant time for family bonding. Instead of playing computer games alone or watching TV all day, I encourage you to take your family and relatives outside and play traditional outdoor games together. It will be a fun and healthy family activity. But if you have joint disease, you need to check your condition before joining the activity. Why don’t we all try to bond with our family and relatives in this holiday season with healthy traditional games?
The writer is the president of Wellton Bone & Joint Hospital.
We are getting close to the Lunar New Year’s holiday, when people will gather for large family reunions to share good wishes and traditional food.
Although it is a time for the family and relatives to gather from all over the country, many of us do not know how to make our time together enjoyable. For instance, adults often watch TV and children spend hours playing games on computers or their mobile phones. In the end, these long family gatherings can sometimes grow tiresome.
If you would like something different to do this time, I would suggest you play some “traditional” games. This will remind many adults of their childhood, and children can learn about traditions. Above all, playing many of the folk games is one great way to check your joints.
Let me explain.
Let’s start with Yut Nori, one of the most popular folk games. Yut Nori is helpful in keeping your back (spine) healthy. When you cast the four yuts (sticks) or move your mal (tokens) on the board, you need to sit up straight or stand up; this activity will prevent a stiff back. Moreover, if you get lucky either to cast “yut” or “mo,” which gives the biggest points, or to catch the opponent’s mal on the board, players and audience cheer with screams and clapping; this will relieve stress on our shoulders, knees and wrists. Besides these positive aspects, however, keep in mind that sitting or kneeling for hours playing Yut Nori may strain your knee or back. Therefore stretching exercises during the game are advised.
Next, we will take a look at “jegichagi.” In this traditional outdoor game, you kick the jegi, which looks like a badminton shuttlecock, continuously without dropping it on the ground. This game is good for the knee joints and leg muscles. It works great especially for inner and outer muscle strength on your legs. Since it requires using a lot of movement of the knee and hip joints in order to kick the jegi, you need to take care of them. If there is any pain around your buttocks, or in the knee or hip joints while kicking the jegi, it may be a sign of a joint disease. If you are a middle-aged person and feel consistent pain during or after playing jegichagi, I advise you to visit a nearby clinic for a check-up.
Playing “Tuho,” you can check if you have frozen shoulder or rotator cuff tear. You may have a frozen shoulder if you are too uncomfortable to lift your arm, or feel pain while throwing the stick. And it might be a rotator cuff tear if you have trouble lifting or rotating your arm. Both frozen shoulder and rotator cuff tears seem similar but they are different in terms of the range of movement. In short, it is a frozen shoulder if you are unable to lift your arm even with somebody’s help. Otherwise, it is probably a rotator cuff tear. In any case, it is highly recommended you visit a clinic for your shoulder pain, because you can get great results with simple therapy.
Lastly, it is “neol-twigi,” another outdoor game for women. You can check your knee joints playing this game. Moreover you can enhance muscles around your knees as you continuously bend and straighten the knees to jump. This jumping game also helps blood circulation and metabolism. However, you need to be careful with your knees and hips if you have weak bones. The sudden weight may place stress on your joints as you come back down.
I hope this coming Lunar New Year’s holiday is a pleasant time for family bonding. Instead of playing computer games alone or watching TV all day, I encourage you to take your family and relatives outside and play traditional outdoor games together. It will be a fun and healthy family activity. But if you have joint disease, you need to check your condition before joining the activity. Why don’t we all try to bond with our family and relatives in this holiday season with healthy traditional games?
The writer is the president of Wellton Bone & Joint Hospital.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
0124-Are You Vain Enough to Get Ahead?
You don’t have to be a total narcissist to be a successful executive – but a solid dash of ego can help.
Self-aggrandizing individuals with a need for impact and power are slightly more likely to become leaders than the general population, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and personality testing firm Hogan Assessment Systems. But while a dose of self-confidence is necessary to raise your hand for the top job and steer a big corporation, too much can cause a leader and company to falter.
The study, set to be published in the journal Personnel Psychology, analyzes 54 prior studies touching on narcissism. Some of those studies relied on surveys, which asked leaders whether they identify with statements like, “If I ruled the world, it would be a much better place” or “I think I’m a special person.” Others analyzed clues in shareholder letters: the number of self-references, for example (is it just a string of “I, I, I”?), or the size of the executives’ photos.
It’s helpful to think of narcissism as distributed along a spectrum. On one end, self-doubt isn’t a useful characteristic in a leader—they can look weak or have trouble making decisions, according to Peter Harms, one of the study’s authors and a management professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. But individuals on the other end don’t take feedback well and can make reckless choices, he says.
Examples of too much self-confidence abound in the world of politics. Harms cites Jonathan Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate who spent lots of time grooming his hair and had an extra-marital relationship on the campaign trail, as displaying the vanity and self-centered nature emblematic of narcissists.
Another researcher went on the hunt for CEOs that display humility. Analyzing earnings call transcripts – comparing the number of times executives said “me” and “mine” versus “we” or “our,” for example – an Australian management expert compiled a list of the least narcissistic American CEOs. The line-up included Target’s Gregg Steinhafel, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi and Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan.
Rodney Warrenfeltz, who administers personality tests to high-level leaders as a managing partner at Hogan Assessments, uses what he calls “the bold scale” to measure where the corporate executives he works with fall along the continuum. The test incorporates statements that participants have to check off as true or false, such as, “I could get this country moving in the right direction.”
Warrenfeltz says a bold score of 70 to 90 on the 100-point scale signifies someone is truly confident. Anything above that can indicate arrogance or entitlement.
“When things go wrong, they blame other people,” he says of those who score at the very top of the scale. “When things go right they take the credit.”
In addition to narcissism, Harms, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor, studies other “dark traits” like Machiavellianism and psychopathy. (A 2010 study found that psychopaths are more likely to be found in the corner office than on the street.) At lower levels, these attributes can be useful in the corporate setting, he says—a little psychopathy often translates to being brave. A bit of Machiavellianism is really just political skill, being able to manipulate coworkers or sell people on an idea.
Harry Kraemer, a former CEO of the health-care company Baxter International Inc., says being able to influence people is a crucial part of effective leadership. He also thinks executives need “true self confidence,” a mentality where positive thoughts abound: “I know I’m good, I know I can add value, I’m going to make good decision, I’m going to get a lot of stuff done.”
But he also says humility is key. If an executive’s ego gets out of hand, employees won’t follow him or her.
Unless, of course, you’re someone like former Apple chief Steve Jobs– so intelligent and brilliant that the rules don’t really apply.
“If you’re that one-in-10-million person, even though you’ve got a mammoth ego, even though you don’t treat people very well, you’re so unusual that maybe people are willing to put up with it,” Kraemer says.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
0123-10 tips for working smarter
Forbes reported 10 tips for working better. David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of “Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long,” provides the tips.
1. Don’t check your email first thing.
2. Make your first task of the day prioritizing your top three goals.
3. Conserve your decision-making energy at every opportunity.
4. Find and protect your quality thinking time.
5. Reserve meetings for your low-focus time.
6. Don’t waste precious energy multitasking. Single-task as much as you can.
7. At the beginning of each meeting, decide where you want to be by the end and the most effective way to get there.
8. Learn to maintain a positive state of mind.
9. Carve out down time.
10. Celebrate small wins.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
0122-Google unveils smart contact lens project to monitor glucose
Google Inc. is diversifying into contacts lenses -- sart ones.
The Mountain View, California-based company said in a blog post yesterday that it’s testing an ocular device that’s designed to measure glucose levels in tears, as the company pursues long-term projects at its secretive X Lab research group. The lenses use a tiny wireless chip and glucose sensor to provide readings once per second, project co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz wrote in the post.
Google is expanding beyond its core search-engine business by investing in new technologies that can lead to new business opportunities, including the Google Glass devices, driverless cars and high-altitude air balloons to provide wireless Internet access. The contact lenses could address the challenges of diabetes, including the process of getting readings from blood, the company said in the post.
“It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype,” Otis and Parviz wrote. “We’ve always said that we’d seek out projects that seem a bit speculative or strange.”
Bloomberg News reported last week that Otis and Google employees with connections to the X Lab had met with Food and Drug Administration officials who regulate eye devices and diagnostics for heart conditions.
Otis is on leave to Google from the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is an associate professor in the electrical engineering department, according to the university’s website. Otis has worked on biosensors and holds a patent that involves a wireless powered contact lens with a biosensor.
Parviz was involved in the Google Glass project and has talked about putting displays on contact lenses, including lenses that monitor wearers’ health.
In 2012, the two were among the co-authors in a paper titled “Glucose Sensor for Wireless Contact-Lens Tear Glucose Monitoring” for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
Google said in the post that it’s in discussions with the FDA and will need to do more work to make the lenses a viable product. The company said it plans to look for partners to bring devices like these to market.
The lenses may be able to act as an early warning system for wearers, Otis and Parviz said in the post. Tiny LED lights could be integrated to light up if glucose levels significantly deviate from certain thresholds, they added.
The company declined to comment beyond the post or make anyone available for interviews.
Google is committed to making bets on research and development even if they don’t deliver significant profits and revenue, Chief Executive Officer Larry Page has said.
“Our main job is to figure out how to obviously invest more to achieve greater outcomes for the world, for the company,” Page said during a call with analysts last July. “And I think those opportunities are clearly there." (Bloomberg)
0120-Literature goes online for free in Norway
Most books published in Norway before 2001 are going online for free thanks to an initiative that may have found the formula to reconcile authors with the web.
At a time when the publishing world is torn over its relationship to the Internet -- which has massively expanded access to books but also threatens royalty revenues -- the National Library of Norway is digitising tens of thousands of titles, from masterworks by Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun to the first detective novels by Nordic noir king Jo Nesboe.
The copyright-protected books are available free online -- with the consent of the copyright holders -- at the website bokhylla.no ("bookshelf" in Norwegian).
The site currently features 135,000 works and will eventually reach 250,000, including Norwegian translations of foreign books.
National Library head Vigdis Moe Skarstein said the project is the first of its kind to offer free online access to books still under copyright, which in Norway expires 70 years after the author's death.
"Many national libraries digitise their collections for conservation reasons or even to grant access to them, but those are (older) books that are already in the public domain," she said.
"We thought that, since we had to digitise all our collection in order to preserve it for the next 1,000 years, it was also important to broaden access to it as much as possible."
The National Library has signed an agreement with Kopinor, an umbrella group representing major authors and publishers through 22 member organisations.
For every digitised page that goes online, the library pays a predetermined sum to Kopinor, which will be responsible for distributing the royalties among its members under a system that is still being worked out.
The per-page amount decreases gradually as the collection expands ? from 0.36 kroner (0.04 euros, $0.06) last year to 0.33 kroner next year.
"A bestseller is treated on an equal footing with a regional almanac from the 1930s," said Yngve Slettholm, head of Kopinor.
Some measures have been implemented to protect the authors: "Bokhylla" does not feature works published after 2000, access is limited to Internet users in Norway and foreign researchers, and the books cannot be downloaded.
An author or publishing house that objects can also request the removal of a book, but relatively few have done so.
Only 3,500 books have been removed from the list, and most of them are not bestselling novels, but rather school and children's books -- two very profitable genres for publishers.
Among all the works eligible to appear on "Bokhylla" by household names Stephen King, Ken Follett, John Steinbeck, Jo Nesboe and Kari Fossum, only a few are missing.
So far, sales do not appear to have been affected by the project. Instead, "Bokhylla" often gives a second life to works that are still under copyright but sold out at bookshops, said National Library head Moe Skarstein.
"Books are increasingly becoming perishable goods," she said.
"When the novelty effect fades out, they sink into oblivion."
Eight-five percent of all books available on the site have been accessed by users at some point, proving that digitising does not only benefit major works.
While many countries' attempts at digital libraries have gotten stuck in complex copyright discussions, Norway has been successful partly due to the limited number of stakeholders -- the library and Kopinor -- and the near-universal coverage of their agreement, which even includes authors who are not Kopinor members.
"In other countries, you need an agreement among all the copyright holders," said Slettholm, the head of Kopinor.
"But it's hard to find all of them: old authors that nobody knows, publishing houses that closed in the 1960s, every illustrator, every photographer."
"Instead of spending our money on trying to find the copyright holders, we prefer to give it to them," Moe Skarstein said. (AFP)
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