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Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

Why do you persist in failing to recognize that there is a lot more validity to parallels between Asian countries than there is to parallels between China and the United States?

I see that as an invalid assumption. Guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

And if you prefer, you can use Indonesia or Malaysia instead of Thailand. And China does not actively oppose the United States. Hasn't for a long time. It actively pursues its own interests, just as the United States does.

Really? I seem to recall a P-3 the People's Army Air Force chewed up pretty good in international airspace. Lots of jockeying behind the scenes with the Chinese acting to counter and oppose US interests, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

Oh, and regarding unions? There are a number of unions operating in China, including unions in computer assembly plants, unions in textile mills, and unions in some bottling plants.

Do you think that they are independent unions that can strike, independently bargain to demand higher wages, picket the plant because of unfair practices or unsafe conditions, etc? Or are they essentially feel good groups with political leadership that that toes the party line?

TR

Quote:

Originally Posted by NousDefionsDoc

I'm going to split this thread and name the split "Are we at war with China?"

LMAO!

Classic.

TR

Well, considering we just finished providing training for management on negotiations techniques specifically to use with one of those unions, they must have some ability to do something.

Btw, does the US act counter to or oppose China's interests?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

One of the points I mentioned to Lancer had to do with the direction Western Europe has taken and my concern that the United States might follow the same road to ruin.

Western Europe as a whole has not created a new job in twenty years (not including the British Isles in this). A great deal of the reason is because the burden on companies created by government (socialized medicine, extensive social programs, etc.) and Unions that have made them increasingly unable to compete. The flagships of West European business, the various automobile firms, are almost entirely owned by US Automobile firms. Companies like Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson are in real trouble, finding it more and more difficult to compete in a business where small margins and creative innovation are the norm.

US businesses have done very, very well overall in maintaining a competitive lead worldwide and building it. One of the reasons they have successfully done so is because of the cultural focus of American culture on competitiveness and a willingness to take the actions necessary to be competitive. "Business is business" is an American concept, one that we have exported to the rest of the world, but much of the rest of the world really doesn't understand it. The United States has a cultural head-start on the rest of the world, IF we don't give it up.

We have all too many politicians and others who seem to want to give up that advantage (which is not about skills or resources, but attitude) by either being conservative in terms of continually moving ahead, or by burdeing the United States with a greater governmental burden in the form of social programs. Both (in my opinion) will hamstring the most important aspect of America, its ingenuity and "can-do" attitude.

No other nation could give rise to companies like Pfizer, or Nike, or IBM, or Microsoft. Companies that are not satisfied with what they have or the niche they fill, but are always innovating, improving, redefining themselves. That is the advantage America has, and the more Americans who use that advantage, the more dominating America will be. Not because of military power or economic power alone. But because of leadership.

I generally agree with you on all of this. However, a few corrections:

Western Europe has created plenty of new jobs in the past 20 years, but they have lost more, so they have a net job loss. There are innovative European and other companies seeking and finding opportunities in Europe, but the stultifying bureaucracy and regulations destroy more opportunities while not preserving the old core industries.

As for the automobile industry, it is the Germans that control many of the flagships. Volkswagen AG is German-owned, as is BMW. Daimler-Benz acquired a flagging US flagship, Chrysler, to form Daimler-Chrysler. Ford is a big competitor in the German car market, though, as is Opel, owned by GM (but Opel has been a GM division since 1929).

Besides its own brands, Volkswagen owns Audi (Germany), Bentley (UK), Bugatti (Italy), Lamborghini (Italy), SEAT (Spain) and Škoda (Czech Republic). Porsche, while independent, is closely affiliated with Volkswagen. BMW owns Rolls Royce (UK).

Ford owns Aston Martin (UK), Jaguar (UK), Volvo Cars (Sweden) and Land Rover (UK). Besides Opel, GM owns Saab (Sweden) and Vauxhall (UK).

Fiat remains Italian, and owns Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati. Renault and Peugeot remain French, though Nissan has a large stake in Renault (and Renault has a large stake in Nissan). Peugeot owns France's other major auto manufacturer, Citroën.

The flagships of the European automobile industry were in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden. American automakers have essentially acquired Sweden's auto industry (at least for cars, Scania remains a major truck builder). The US and Germany have divided up Britain's auto industry. German, French and Italian manufacturers continue to own most of their own countries' auto industry, though the Germans have made inroads in Italy.

Daimler-Chrysler:

Quote:

Company Ownership: DaimlerChrysler is owned by European, U.S. and other international investors. Approximately one billion shares are circulating.

Global Stock: The DaimlerChrysler share is traded on all of the world's key stock exchanges, among them New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

Daimler-Chrysler:

Daimler bought Chrysler, not the other way round.

TR

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Mar25.html

Quote:

Rice, who visited Beijing this week, said she had been told by the Chinese leadership that they will begin to make amends for the recent passage of a law authorizing the use of force against Taiwan if it moves toward formal independence. She said Chinese leaders understood that the law -- mainly drafted for internal political reasons -- had negative consequences overseas. "They talked a good deal about what they were going to try to do to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Straits," she said. "And we'll see. That would be a good next step."

Rice also said she made the case to Chinese officials that they cannot make a distinction between stability on the Korean Peninsula and North Korea possessing nuclear weapons. In more than two years of talks over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, a major problem for U.S. policy has been that China has been hesitant to press North Korea too hard for fears of sparking instability in the closed communist country on its border.

"My discussion with the Chinese was to suggest to them that those two [concepts] are indivisible," Rice said. "They understand that a nuclear North Korea on the Korean Peninsula has potentially unpredictable effects that will not make the Korean Peninsula very stable, will not make the region very stable. And so I didn't find much pushback on that."

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Daimler bought Chrysler, not the other way round.

TR

My point was that I discounted Daimler-Chrysler, seeing it as a true multi-national corporation, not American, German or anything else. That was based on their vision of themselves.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

My point was that I discounted Daimler-Chrysler, seeing it as a true multi-national corporation, not American, German or anything else. That was based on their vision of themselves.

Sure.

Look at the corporate leadership.

Who is really running this company?

TR

The Board of Management

Chairman of the Board of Management

Prof. Jürgen E. Schrempp
Appointed until: 2008; first appointed: 1998 (DBAG: 1987)

Members of the Board of Management

Dr. Eckhard Cordes
Mercedes Car Group
Appointed until: 2008; first appointed: 1998 (DBAG 1996)

Günther Fleig
Human Resources & Labor Relations Director
Appointed until: 2009; first appointed: 1999

Dr. Rüdiger Grube
Corporate Development / China
Appointed until: 2007; first appointed: 2001

Prof. Jürgen Hubbert
Executive Automotive Committee (EAC)
Appointed until: 2005; first appointed: 1998 (DBAG: 1987)

Andreas Renschler
Commercial Vehicles
Appointed until: 2007; first appointed: 2004

Thomas W. Sidlik
Global Procurement & Supply
Appointed until: 2008; first appointed: 1998 (Chrysler Corp. 1992)

Bodo Uebber
Finance & Controlling / Financial Services
Appointed until: 2006; first appointed: 2003

Dr. Thomas Weber
Research & Technology
Appointed until: 2010; first appointed: 2003

Dr. Dieter Zetsche
Chrysler Group
Appointed until: 2008; first appointed: 1998 (DBAG 1997)

Thomas W. LaSorda
Deputy Member of the Board of Management -
Chief Operating Officer (COO) Chrysler Group
Appointed until: 2007; first appointed: 2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Sure.

Who is really running this company?
Prof. Jürgen E. Schrempp
Dr. Eckhard Cordes
Günther Fleig
Dr. Rüdiger Grube
Prof. Jürgen Hubbert
Andreas Renschler
Thomas W. Sidlik
Bodo Uebber
Dr. Thomas Weber
Dr. Dieter Zetsche
Thomas W. LaSorda

there is a definate teutonic bias in the management of this multi-national corporation...

Quote:

Originally Posted by lrd

Interesting reading on China: http://www.ec.cn/english/publishInfo/200500.jsp

When reading, keep in mind that that is a site run by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, so a grain of salt is advised.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenhat

My point was that I discounted Daimler-Chrysler, seeing it as a true multi-national corporation, not American, German or anything else. That was based on their vision of themselves.

When they joined, it was described as a merger of equals. It was subsequently disclosed that it was effectively an acquisition by Daimler, despite the way the company seeks to portray things.

It is a multinational in the sense of diverse shareholding, though. The largest shareholders are Deutsche Bank AG (12%), the Kuwait Investment Authority (7%, representing the ruling al-Sabah family) and Dubai Holding (2%, representing the Emir of Dubai).

German companies also have another level of management, known as a supervisory board, which includes representatives appointed by shareholders and by the employees.

Supervisory Board Shareholder Representatives (4 German, 4 American, 1 Dutch, 1 Canadian):

- Hilmar Kopper, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of DaimlerChrysler AG
- Earl G. Graves, Chairman and CEO of Earl G. Graves Ltd.
- Prof. Victor Halberstadt, Professor of Public Economics, Leiden University, The
Netherlands
- Robert J. Lanigan, Chairman Emeritus of Owens-Illinois, Inc.
- Peter A. Magowan, President, San Francisco Giants
- William A. Owens, President and CEO, Nortel Networks Corporation
- Dr. rer. pol. Manfred Schneider, Chairman, Supervisory Board, Bayer AG
- Bernhard Walter, former Spokesman, Board of Managing Directors, Dresdner Bank AG
- Lynton R. Wilson, Chairman of the Board, CAE Inc., Chairman of the Board, Nortel Networks Corporation
- Dr.-Ing. Mark Wössner, former CEO and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Bertelsmann AG

Supervisory Board Employee Representatives (9 Germans, 1 American):

- Erich Klemm, Chairman, Corporate Workers Council, DaimlerChrysler
- Prof. Dr. Heinrich Flegel, Director, Research Manufacturing, Engineering, DaimlerChrysler AG
- Nate Gooden, Vice President of the UAW
- Dr. Thomas Klebe, Director, Department for General Shop Floor Policy and Codetermination, German Metalworkers' Union
- Jürgen Langer, Chairman of the Works Council, Frankfurt/Offenbach Dealership
- Helmut Lense, Chairman, Workers Council, Untertürkheim Plant, DaimlerChrysler AG
- Gerd Rheude, Chairman, Workers Council, Wörth Plant, DaimlerChrysler AG
- Udo Richter, Chairman, Workers Council, Bremen Plant, DaimlerChrysler AG
- Wolf Jürgen Röder, Member of the Executive Council of German Metalworkers’ Union
- Stefan Schwaab, Gaggenau, Vice Chairman, Workers Council, Gaggenau Plant, DaimlerChrysler AG

Seems a far stronger Teutonic bias among the workers themselves than among the shareholders, but the three groups together (including the main board), and the fact that the largest single shareholder is Deutsche Bank, make it essentially a German multinational.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

When reading, keep in mind that that is a site run by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, so a grain of salt is advised.

I saw that at the bottom of the page. It made me wonder about the rational behind what was released for the daily briefing.

The pharmaceuticals industry is probably more appropriately described as multinational. The major companies are a mix of US, British, French, Swiss and German concerns, but most are mixed through various mergers and acquisitions. The top companies are nominally American (Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Labs, Wyeth, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ely Lilly), British (GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca), French (Sanofi-Aventis), German (Bayer) and Swiss (Novartis, Roche).

An example of the mixing is Sanofi-Aventis, the result of the 2004 takeover by Sanofi-Synthelabo, a French company, of Aventis, a French-German company. Sanofi had started out by buying Sterling-Winthrop, a US subdivision of Kodak active in the world pharmaceutical market. Sanofi then merged with Synthelabo, another French company, then a joint venture partner with Searle. Sanofi-Synthelabo took over the joint venture (Searle later became part of Pfizer).

Aventis was nominally a French company, but was the result of the merger of Rhone-Poulenc Rorer, a French-US company, and Hoechst-Marion-Roussel, a German-US-French company.

Rhone-Poulenc was a French chemical company that went heavily into pharmaceuticals by buying Pasteur-Merrieux (French) and Connaught Labs (Canadian). It then bought US company Rorer (makers of Maalox).

Hoechst was one of Germany's major chemical companies, a part of the IG Farben conglomerate broken up after World War Two (as were Bayer and BASF). Hoechst bought Roussel, a French company, to beef up its pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, US chemical company Dow also tried its hand in pharmaceuticals. It acquired Marion Labs, and merged its own pharmaceutical division with Richardson-Merrell to form Marion Merrell Dow. Dow scrapped its plans and sold Marion Merrell Dow to Hoechst-Roussel, forming Hoechst-Marion-Roussel.

We use the term multi-national, meaning a company located in several nations. Some prefer the term trans-national, implying a company that operates across national borders. Perhaps a new term is needed to capture the notion that these companies are to some extent not tied to any nation, but view themselves as "beyond" the concept of nation. Meta-national corporation, anyone? :rolleyes: