China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan case
Case Written Assignments
- a) Key summary and problems: for your summary, do not copy and paste contents from the original case.
- b) Applications of key themes: specifically, relevant to the assigned chapters in the textbook, into the case.
- c) Your answers to the questions: Questions are located at the end of each case.
** In order to have full credits, formatting including each component from
- a) to c) as subheadings is a must in each case written assignment.
China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan
Today, a lot of discussion centers on how much economic power,
political influence, and international competitiveness the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) has achieved in the international marketplace
in just a few decades. Culturally, such power in the international
marketplace also begs the questions of how much influence China is
likely to have moving forward, and what this means for China’s influence
culturally around the world. So far, other powerful countries in the world
have focused on China’s economic influence, but what about the
country’s influence on culture?
China, along with India, Brazil, and Russia, form the so-called
BRIC countries (an acronym formulated using their initial letters), which
have been viewed as the business engines of tomorrow (especially China
and India), based on their immense economic potential. The BRICs,
which cover a quarter of the world’s landmass and contain 40 percent of
its population, had a combined GDP of $20 trillion in 2001. Today, these
increasingly market-oriented economies boast a GDP of $37 trillion (or
22 percent of global GDP), a figure forecast to reach $120 trillion by
2050. Together, they control more than 43 percent of the world’s
currency reserves ($4 trillion) and 20 percent of its trade. Is it too
simplistic and naïve to think that the BRIC countries–especially China
and Russia–only have a focus on economic power? Clearly, Russia has
engaged in at least some political activities that have had tremendous
global effects (e.g., election meddling). And what about China? Many
reports and investigations suggest the country is likewise engaged in
political meddling. Does that affect culture around the world also?
The BRIC countries’ economic size and population were the simplistic
starting point to group them as powerful marketplaces—to export
products to, and to buy products from. These datapoints led former
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill to first coin the acronym
BRIC to highlight the immense collective economic potential of these
four emerging markets. However, despite many countries’ and
companies’ enthusiasm for increased global interaction and economic
exchange with the BRIC economies, especially China and India, many
have found that cultural differences hinder their ability to conduct
business in these countries. Not only is the culture different between
each BRIC country and most of the globe’s remaining 191 countries, but
the business and societal cultures within the BRIC countries are also
vastly different from each other.
