Robert Madison in China 1974

Executive Training in China June 1985

The executive training tour was sponsored by the Xerox Foundation.  C.B. Sung, CEO of Unison International and a former VP Research for Bendix, was a lead organizer and accompanied the delegation.  He was a catalyst in the Jeep deal and the Beijing Great Wall Hotel in China.  

The US delegation was headed by Prof Theodore Alfred at Weatherhead School of Management at CWRU. There were four professors: Prof Walter Salmon at Harvard Business School, Prof Bill Fischer at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prof David Montgomery at Stanford, Prof Theodore Alfred from CWRU) and another executive, B. Charles “Chuck” Ames, on the team. The professors and Chuck took turns conducting individual training sessions: Chuck Ames (strategy & strategic planning), Dr. Fischer (technology transfer), Dr. Montgomery (marketing), Dr. Salmon (channel) and Dr. Alfred (strategy).  Bill Fischer was part-time in Dalian 1980-1984 as part of the US Commerce Dept-sponsored faculty at the National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Development, a condensed MBA for high-level Chinese government and industrial officials.

This was the first time that an NGO foreign delegation did executive trainings to Chinese executives. The delegation visited China under the invitation of State Economic Commission (that is in charge of economic development, probably the most powerful government agency in China.) Mr. Wang, the Vice-Chairmen of the National People's Congress (NPC) of the People's Republic of China received the delegation at the Great Hall of People (TiAnMen Square) when they were in Beijing.  It was televised that evening in prime time.

Ted sent over some basic management materials one month before the delegation arrived in Beijing.  The State Economic Commission got everything translated and sent to the trainees before they attended the training. The delegation did executive training in four cities: Changchun-northeast, Beijing, Nanjing and Xi’an. [Chanchung was the former capital of Manchuko (Manchu State,) the puppet government under the last Qing Emperor Puyi, set up by the Japanese in 1932.]  The group visited Shanghai at the end as tourists.

The State Economic Commission asked me to be the interpreter since I was one of the only one of three gentlemen who got MBA from the US: mine from Northeastern University.  The other translators had majored in English but could not understand the western business concepts and terms. I had a full-time job in Beijing. So I was not available to do the translation for the delegation in other cities. You can imagine how well or poorly the training went in other cities with interpreters without any understanding of even those basic western economic concepts, terminologies or jargons. When the delegation returned to Beijing after visiting other cities, Ted Alfred told me that I was the only one that they felt comfortable to work with....

The delegation stayed at Great Wall Sheraton, the first 5-star international hotel in Beijing.  About 40 Chinese executives attended four training days in Beijing.  

The husbands who were not lecturing on a given day joined the wives for the many wonderful tourist explorations which were arranged for the group.  These included the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and the Winter Palaces in Beijing. There were some entertainment programs (e.g., acrobatic shows) for the delegation at the evening. In Xi’an the terracotta soldiers were on the agenda, the movie industry in Changchun, and sites in Nanjing. The lecturers and their wives returned to the U.S. from Shanghai.

At that time, it is rare for the Chinese people to see foreigners, especially blondes. Some of Chinese even tried to touch Jay Ames’ hair to see if the hairs were real when the wives walking along some streets in China.  In Changhun several little old ladies reached out to touch David Montgomery’s hair, then prematurely white.

J.R. Degenfelder draft #2 December 1, 2010 from collective memory of tour group

Epilogue

C.B. Sung, is Chairman of Unison International. With his wife as business partner, he has launched over 36 American joint venture companies in China, including the Great Wall Hotel of Beijing in 1979, the largest of the first three Sino-foreign joint ventures in China. Their son manages the firm in 2010.

C.B. Sung in 1989 led the founding of the 1990 Institute is a U.S.-based not-for-profit organization by a group of volunteers comprised of academic, business, and community leaders who were deeply concerned about conditions in China and wanted to provide a forum that would investigate the challenges facing China and propose related solutions without involving itself in the politics of either country. The Institute began as a think tank dedicated to the study of major economic and social issues relating to China and has produced books and issue papers and sponsored conferences and symposia on a number of topics.

Over the years, the Institute has expanded the scope of its activities to become an action-oriented think tank that produces real and measurable results in China in areas ranging from girl’s education, to cross-cultural communication with a focus on art and the environment, to microfinance, to a biofuels initiative. Although these projects are disparate and reflect the varied interests and talents of our directors, they have in common the goal of improving conditions for China’s citizens in terms of education, socioeconomic development, and quality of life, and of improving the ever more important relationship between the U.S. and China.

Because we are an all-volunteer organization with minimal overhead, we are proud of the fact that all contributions to our 501(c)(3) organization go directly to our projects and programs.

Photo:  Institute Chairman C.B. Sung presents our first major research book, China's Economic Reform, to General Secretary Jiang Zemin on October 23, 1993 at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing.

Chairing Ceremony for Richard L. Osborne November 1, 2010

Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of Richard L. Osborne as he is named the Theodore M. and Catherine C. Alfred Professorship of Management.  Professor Osborne will present on " Talking about Teaching".

The Theodore M. and Catherine C. Alfred Professorship of Management was established through gifts from dozens of former students and business associates of Dr. Alfred.  As the first chair at CWRU not named after a single donor, it is a manifestation of the Alfred’s loyalty and affection for the Weatherhead School of Management, and of their esteem for business education. An endowed chair is the highest honor prominent faculty may receive for their leadership, scholarship, and service.

Chuck Ames and Ted Alfred brought Liming Zhao to Cleveland at the end of 1995.  He worked for Chuck at his company while pursuing a Ph.D. in management in the Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University.  Later on, my wife joined me.  I was graduated in 1991 and was on the faculty of University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa for 5 years before Lexmark International asked me to work for them.  (Lexmark was an LBO of IBM’s printer business by Clayton, Dubilier and Rice, New York, at which Chuck Ames was vice chair 1985-2009)  He is now in charge of Lexmark's worldwide business development, and will be a part-time advisor to WSOM starting in May 2011.

Passage through the Three Gorges Dam October 2010

Late on October 8th arrived in upper lake of Three Gorges Dam.  Our captain jockeyed with six other boats to go through upper lock together.  In-lock descent of 50 feet started 10:45 PM.  Two massive lock gates weigh 860 tons each; with no tiny water leaks where they meet.  We passed through the next four locks (20 meter drop each) while we slept, and the boat docked at Sandoping.

Saturday October 9

After breakfast, we exited the ship by crossing various floating steel docks to board buses to go through security at the visitor’s center at Three Gorges Dam.  Getting off bus to have our tickets punched, then back on bus, did not improve security but met their rules.  Then crossed a bridge to visit a high point on south side overlooking downstream part of dam and locks.  General overview follows;

Overview

The Three Gorges Dam (simplified Chinese: 长江三峡大坝; is a hydroelectric dam  that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in the Yiling District of Yichang, in Hubei Province, China. It is the world's largest electricity-generating plant of any kind, and second in production, only exceeded by Itaipu Dam, Brazil and Paraguay's electricity-generating plant.

The dam body was completed in 2006. Except for a ship lift, the originally planned components of the project were completed on October 30, 2008, when the 26th generator in the shore plant began commercial operation. Each generator has a capacity of 700 MW. Six additional generators in the underground power plant are not expected to become fully operational until 2011. Coupling the dam's thirty-two main generators with two smaller generators (50 MW each) to power the plant itself, the total electric generating capacity of the dam will eventually reach 22.5 GW.

The project produces electricity, increases the river's shipping capacity, and reduces the potential for floods downstream by providing flood storage space. From completion through September 2009 the dam has generated 348 trillion watts of electricity, covering more than one third of its cost. The Chinese state regards the project as a historic engineering, social and economic success, with the design of state-of-the-art large turbines, and a move toward limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The dam flooded archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people.

Back onboard and sail through the Xiling Gorge; this section with Rhesus monkeys swinging through trees on bank.  Xiling Gorge starts at Xiang Xi and zigzags for 76 km (47 miles) down to Yichang, the longest of the three gorges.

 Yiling October 9 afternoon

In ancient times Yichang was known as Yiling. There are historical records telling that in the year 278 BC during the Warring States period, in a battle between the armies of Chu and Qin, the Qin general Bai Qi set fire to Yiling, razing it to the ground.  

In 222 AD Yichang was also the site of a famous battle during the Three Kingdoms Period. The Battle of Xiaoting (猇亭之戰), also known as the Battle of Yiling (夷陵之戰), was fought between Shu Han and Eastern Wu on the plains of Yiling. Wu troops (numbering 50,000) set fire to the encampments of the Shu army, routing Liu Be.  The battle was most significant for the decisive victory of Wu, which halted Liu Bei’s invasion of Wu, causing his retreat upriver and subsequent death in a battle at Baidicheng.

In 1876, under the Qing Emperor Guangxu, Yichang was opened as a foreign trading port after the second Opium War with Great Britain. In accordance with the Chefoo(Yantai) Convention of 1876, Yichang continued to be the furthest inland treaty port for many years, as large merchant and passenger vessels were not yet able to navigate the gorges upstream to Chongqing. Cargo was unloaded from the larger boats plying the stretch of river between Yichang and Wuhan, and reloaded onto smaller ones running between Yichang and Chongqing. 
Eventually technology enabled ships to continue the journey upstream and Chongqing itself became a treaty port in l89l. During the warlord years of the early part of this century, Yichang revenue was greatly boosted by taxes imposed on boats carrying homegrown opium from Yunnan and Guizhou Provinces by its Opium Suppression Bureau. An American traveler in 1921 described Yichangt as 'crowded, incessantly busy, a perfect maelstrom of sampans, junks, lighters with cargo, steamers and gunboats.’

During the war with Japan, the gorges above Yichang again acted as a barrier. When Wuhan fell to the Japanese in l938, Yichang became the center for shipping essential personnel, machinery, libraries and museum collections up the Yangtze to Chongqing. In 1940, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Zaoyang-Yichang took place here. The Japanese capture of Yichang marked their furthest westward advance. The Japanese also used Yichang as a staging area for bombing raids over Chongqing.