2011 Asia Business SA

This news item concerns all of the countries we will visit that have stock markets. The WaPo reports that "Asian markets perked up" today when Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.5 percent to 24,279.15 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose to 9,617.34.

According to this article, about 1,000 university graduates are currently living on CSSA welfare payments and this number is growing rapidly—20% growth a year. Highly educated young people are well able to find a job and earn a living but they simply do not want to. This article says that those young people find there is no way to move upwards, no matter how hard they try, until they finally give up trying. I think this is very interesting, because Hong Kong is full of businesses and I think there would be more opportunities to be succeeded. This is very ironical to me. I want to go see Hong Kong, what’s going on, with my own eyes.

Minji Choi

This is rather sad news right after the General Conference. As you can see from this title, this article is basically about how thousands of people pre-purchased the 3D pornography movie tickets. This might be showing that there is a big pornography industry in Hong Kong, which it would be very sad. The director is proudly saying, “It will leave audiences feeling like they are sitting right there at the edge of the bed. I don't think anyone has ever seen a film like ours.” I knew pornography is universal problem, but reading this news right after the General Conference is very sad. The church has a lot of works to do and I hope we can be the example of good saints there.

Minji Choi

Hong Kong has a company, specializing in coral reef fish aquaculture worth around one billion dollars. The company see the fish to restaurants, stores and diners. they also say for an excellent looking and good size, it will sell for a 100$ each. The fish grow in large tanks kept under UV lights to generate perfect growing environment. Also Moskalik says " The demand for live coral grouper completely exceeds supply. If demand keeps up, you won't see this species in the wild in three to five years." For the fish that is sold certificates are not needed by the Fish Marketing Organization concerning how or where they are caught. This article was interesting to be because we are visiting Hong Kong and will be eating in restaurants, and I like to know where the food is coming from. I hope I can learn more about heir culture when we visit.

I don’t know if we will have any formal dinners, but this article is good for understanding business customs in Hong Kong and China. Business dinners, which usually include alcohol, are an important part of the negotiation process. Paying attention to detail will improve your standing. Making sure that your cultural and behavior knowledge is greater than your language skills is very important, and will help you avoid offending anyone or causing them to lose face.

Jonathan

The article “Asian IPOs are Mixed Bags” discusses the effects of the Japanese earthquake and the overall economy on many different Hong Kong Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). Most companies priced their offerings at the lowest end of their range and ended up having successful offerings. Other companies were not so lucky and $4.2 billion in IPOs have been postponed in Hong Kong and Singapore alone. Another factor that has helped companies price their companies is the presence of cornerstone investors, or investors who pay the same price per share but receive a predetermined number of shares. Throughout this article I got the feeling that while the Asian countries are interconnected and depend on each other for economic stability, the entire world is now connected with each countries business. I found it interesting that the article mentions that although the Japanese disaster threw a glitch in Hong Kong’s IPOs, the rest of the world was still supportive and invested which allowed companies to have successful offerings.

Pollution is a big problem in most developing countries and even in more developed areas like Hong Kong. A new weapon to fight pollution in this major city of Asia is art. An auction of more than 50 modern art works to raise the society’s awareness was hold on Monday. There were paintings, photographs, and sculptures that illustrated environmental disasters created by pollution. It’s said that Hong Kong’s air is three times as bad as that of New York and twice as bad as that of London, which is really surprising to me because I always thought Hong Kong wass pretty clean compared to other big cities in the world.

My Nguyen