Said Charles Dickens of the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities, written more than 100 years ago: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Today there are many blessings: drastic improvement in modern medicine, extremely high productivity because of mechanization and automation, the vast application of computer and internet, the comprehensive growth of global trade, and the relatively peaceful period of time since the World War II. But at the same time, there is worsen intractable problems facing the entire human being: poverty, religious conflict, environmental degradation, political dictatorship, corruption, the 2008 global financial crisis which is testing the fundamental economic infrastructure preset by Adam Smith. Leaders who must plan the future of their organizations are challenged to find a way that makes sense. Change is occurring at an accelerating rate; today is not like yesterday; and tomorrow will unlikely be the same as today. Continuing today's strategy is risky; so is changing to a new strategy. There are a few trends we have to pay attention to: First, global powers will continue to affect everyone's business and personal life, but the infrastructure is changing gradually from one super power to a multi-polar world. Manufacturing and services will continue to move to more economically favorable locations. Second, technology will continue to innovate and please us. Third, more and more countries will move to free market system regardless of their political, religious, and cultural differences from the developed countries. These three developments -- globalization, technological advances, and deregulation -- pronounce endless opportunities. As John Gardner noticed many years ago, 'Behind every problem is a brilliantly disguised opportunity.
But what is globalization and what does it have to do with these issues? Globalization refers to the shift toward a more integrated and interdependent world economy. Globalization has two main components: the globalization of markets and the globalization of production. The former refers to the merging of historically distinct and separate national markets into one huge global marketplace. The tastes and preferences of consumers in different nations are beginning to converge on some global norm, thereby helping to create a global market. Coca-Cola, Levi's jeans, Sony PSPs, and KFC's fried chicken are all frequently held up as prototypical examples of this trend. The latter, the globalization of production refers to the tendency among firms to source goods and services from locations around the world to take advantage of national differences in the cost and quality of factors of production (such as labor, energy, land, and capital). By doing so, companies hope to lower their overall cost structure and/or improve the quality or functionality of their product offering, thereby allowing them to compete more effectively. The typical example of cost lowering location of the globalization of production is foreign direct investment in China, where firms can spend just a fraction of cost as it will spend in US to build an all functional manufacturing facility. But in recent years, the traditionally FDI concentrated Chinese coastal areas have increasingly burdened by the relatively high costs of labor, land, size of land availability, housing and commercial real estates, etc. These serious factors have at least partially driven the trend of the moving of FDIs toward the inland West China, such as Sichuan Province, where overall operation cost is just around one third of that at coastal areas. This trend has been evidenced by the fact that 135 companies of the Fortune Global 500 have set up their R&D centers, manufacturing plants, branch offices in Sichuan. Among them, Alcatel, Bayer, Cardinal Health, Coca-Cola, HSBC, IBM, IFC of World Bank Group, Intel, International Papers, Kimberly-Clark, Lafarge, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Pepsi Americas, Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc., have their major investment in Sichuan. Sichuan Province boasts one of the most diversified industrial bases in China, ranking as No. 1 in the west China in terms of comprehensive competitive economic strength; and for thousand years has been named as "The Province of Abundance" for its local abundance of natural resources and historically better living standards in China. Doing business in China is not always easy for foreign companies; the key for success in China depends on one's ability to cross-culturally communicate well with local Chinese government, potential partners, prospects, etc.With years' experiences in Sichuan, China, Amerson is able to leverage its local knowledge, stories of success and failure, and unique local relationship marketing capability, to help our current and future prospects drive down their learning curve and overall cost for investing and operating in Sichuan Province, in order to achieve a higher return on investment. With difference from other consulting firms, at Amerson, we are doing the best we could do and outsource all others to those who can do them the best. Around 1,400 years ago, China reached its most glorious pinnacle as the world's most powerful country, then it gradually became in-ward looking and sleeping behind the closed door. "China is a sleeping giant," Napoleon once said. "Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world."
Nearly 200 years later and China is well and truly awake.
While the United States still sets the tone for global economy, there is a growing awareness that, as China's economy expands exponentially, the balance of power is shifting in its direction.
Facing this change, at Amerson, our most utmost task is helping your organization embrace it, with even higher performance and return on investment in its heartland -- the Sichuan Province.