Dog Meat Dropped from Two Carrefour Supermarkets in China

on June 14, 2017

The French retailer Carrefour has removed dog meat products from two supermarkets in China after an outcry from animal rights groups. Animals Asia said it had already asked the international chain, which operates more than 200 stores in China, to remove dog meat from its shelves in 2012. The company promised to do so, it said, but an inspection by the charity last month found two branches of Carrefour supermarkets in the eastern city of Xuzhou prominently featured dog meat products.

‘Lazy’ Chinese Driver Turns Shop into an Instant Drive-Through

By Tracy Hu on June 14, 2017

A man drove his car into a convenience store in eastern China to save time from having to park his vehicle, according to Chinese media. Surveillance footage from the store in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, showed a grey car being driven through the doorway late on Saturday night. The footage was shared by the People’s Daily on its Twitter account on Tuesday. It did not identify where in Jiangsu the incident took place. In the video, a staff member manning the convenience store is seen responding in shock and rushing over to attend to the driver.

Media, Society, Urban Life

Notice from the People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Public Security Concerning the Proper Performance of Work Relating to the Management of the RMB Accounts of Overseas Non-Governmental Organization Representative Organizations

on June 13, 2017

Benjamin L. Read

on June 13, 2017

Benjamin L. Read is an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His book, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei (Stanford University Press, 2012), uses surveys, interviews, and participant observation to compare the ways in which constituents perceive and interact with the urban administrative structures found in China, Taiwan, and elsewhere in the region. With Diana Kapiszewski and Lauren Morris MacLean, he is coauthor of Field Research in Political Science: Practices and Principles (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He edited Local Organizations and Urban Governance in East and Southeast Asia: Straddling State and Society (Routledge, 2009), also on the role of state-sponsored organizations, and has published research on civil society groups as well, including China’s nascent homeowner associations. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, The China Journal, China Quarterly, The Washington Quarterly, and several edited books. He earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University in 2003.

Fortune Makers

By Michael Useem, Harbir Singh, Liang Neng, Peter Cappelli on June 13, 2017

Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution.

Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation of these innovative businesses. Fortune Makers provides sharp insights into their unique styles—a distinctive blend of the entrepreneur, the street fighter, and practices developed by the Communist Party—and their distinctive ways of leading and managing their organizations that are unlike anything the West is familiar with.

When Peter Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, he revealed what made large American corporations tick. Similarly, when Japanese companies emerged as a global force in the 1980s, insightful analysts explained the practices that brought Japan’s economy out of the ashes—and what managers elsewhere could learn to compete with them. Now, based on unprecedented access, Fortune Makers allows business leaders in the United States and the rest of the West to understand the essential character and style of Chinese corporate life and its dominant players, whose businesses are the foundation of the domestic Chinese market and are now making their mark globally. —PublicAffairs

Book Review: 

Julian B. Gewirtz, The Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2017)

Michelle Eckert, University of Pennsylvania (March 14, 2017)

Mara Hvistendahl

on June 13, 2017

Mara Hvistendahl covered China’s renaissance in science and technology as a correspondent in Shanghai for Science. She has also written for The Atlantic, Popular Science, WIRED, and other publications. She is the author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A proficient Mandarin speaker and former National Fellow at New America, she lived in China for eight years and now resides in Minneapolis with her family.

Tomáš Valášek

on June 13, 2017

Tomáš Valášek is the current Director of Carnegie Europe. Before this, he was the Permanent Representative of the Slavic Republic, the President of the Central European Policy Institute in Bratislava, Director of Foreign Policy and Defense for European Reform in London, the founder and Director of the Brussels office of the World Security Institute, and the Political Director and head of the Security and Defense Policy Division at the Slovak Ministry of Defense.