Recently, I feel slight positive trends in China.
Resume from U.S.
3 years ago, if you’d asked me, “do you think it possible for foreign university graduates to apply jobs in Shanghai?” I would say “you are crazy”. But recently, I received many good resumes from top universities in U.S, like Stanford, or Chicago University, for jobs in Shanghai. On my blog, we also see the trends of more and more people coming to the country.
Also, people from China went aboard for study and even settled for years, and recently, they started to think to come back. I can easily write down a list of 10 of friends who came back to Shanghai in the last two years.
Quality of “Made in China”
I am not sure about this part. So I’d like to ask for your opinion. Some of my friends in the States told me, “Made in China” does not always mean cheap and low quality as before. Many goods from China means “high quality” and some means “not cheap” now. I read news that many OEM vendors in south China start to turn their huge manufacturing capacity to their own brands, instead of just manufacturing for orders.
Chinese Company’s Acquisition
This is also new. It starts with the Lenovo’s Acquisition of ThinkPad business from IBM. Recently, although the CNOOC’s acquisition attempt to Unocal Corp. was stopped by the U.S. congress, it is breaking news for me too.
It is the same. If you ask me “can you imagine these acquisition?” I would say, I believe it would happen, but didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
I have More and More Foreign Goods in my Daily Life
We went to Carefour the other day, and bought many goods back home. After we are back, I found we bought the Florida’s Natural Orange Juice. They claimed it as 100% pure orange. We also got Australia milk. I didn’t notice it when we put them into our shopping cart.
I have been used to electronic goods from aboard, like TV, camera, and cars. But recently, I found more and more foods appear to be imported from outside.
Is it a sign of the entry of WTO? I am not an economist. I have no idea. It is just the small change I saw.
I Felt the Positive Trends
When I chatted with my friends who is younger than me (5 years or more younger), they are feel their future is promising and there is nothing to worry about. This is called “Confidence level”, right? It is also good.
This is a positive change. Changes happen slower than we expected. However, when it really happens, it seems faster than our anticipation.
It is too fast to draw the conclusion that the country is definitely going to the positive direction, but at least it shows some trends.
Disclaimer: When I talked with my friends in middle China, especially in villages, they showed completely negative expectation for the future. Some felt hopeless about future. The gap within the same country is big and obvious.