Tag: china

They do it different over here

Microsoft and Apple discover the downside of being multinationals in China

Among expats in Thailand the saying was “the locals can ignore the law, but multinationals can’t.”

Thailand has some pretty strict laws on employee wages, workplace safety and council permits. Pretty well every business ignores them except the multinationals.

Generally Thais don’t complain about businesses not complying with the rules and the authorities are reluctant to take action.

Unless you’re a multinational, in which case the slightest irregularity in pay risks a visit from the police.

A few days in the Bangkok Immigration Gaol while the misunderstanding is sorted out is a good lesson for any sloppy farang country manager who hasn’t been ticking all the boxes.

The recent protests in China against Apple and now Microsoft over warranties illustrate a similar situation in the PRC.

What’s fascinating though is how the complaints against Microsoft and Apple are part of the rising Chinese consumer movement.

It’s a tough life being a consumer advocate in China, leading protests against well connected local companies or their government cronies could be a career limiting move, or much worse.

On the other hand it’s safe to criticise an American corporation and its much more likely to get results.

So managers of foreign companies in China have to be far more responsive to complaints than their local counterparts as Apple and Microsoft have learned.

For multinationals there is an upside to this, foreign companies tend to get better staff as they don’t mess people around with pay and their products are seen as being better because they do honor warranties.

It ends up being swings and roundabouts, but it does emphasise the traps for inexperienced expat managers who can unwittingly get themselves in trouble.

Apple and Microsoft have learned their lesson about customer service in China, you wonder how many others are still to do so.

is G’day China a good idea?

Can the proposed China Week be successful in promoting Australian business and trade?

Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister’s  of an Australia Week in China may prove far more successful than the G’day USA events the idea is based upon.

G’day USA has been run for a decade and showcases Australia’s attractions, skills and businesses at events in Los Angeles and New York.

It’s been moderately successful but an emphasis on movie stars appearing at black tie Hollywood events illustrates Australian governments’ disproportionate focus in throwing money at US movie producers.

If China Week follows the US example we can expect private, exclusive dinners where Twiggy Forrest, Clive Palmer and the BHP board entertain Chinese plutocrats over bowls of shark fin soup and braised tigers’ testicles.

Should China Week follow that model then it will probably share G’day USA’s middling successes.

The opportunity to do it differently though is great as the Chinese-Australian relationship is far younger and hasn’t been locked into Crocodile Dundee type stereotypes on both sides.

As the Chinese economy matures and evolves, there’s an opportunity for Australian businesses and industries which haven’t been available for exporters to the US.

Done properly, G’day China could help the profile of Australian businesses in many sectors, particularly in those affected by the great Chinese rebalancing.

Let’s hope they do it properly.

Image of the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Australia from Alpha on Wikimedia

Australia and the Chinese Mexican stand off

As China rebalances its economy, a new wave of change is about to sweep global trade.

Twenty years ago visitors to Sanya on the south coast of China’s Hainan Island could find themselves staying at the town’s infectious diseases clinic, converted into a backpackers hostel by a group of enterprising doctors.

The Prime Ministers and Presidents attending of Boao Asia Forum this week won’t get the privilege of staying at the infectious diseases hospital as Sanya’s hotel industry has boomed, bust and boomed again following the island being declared a tourism zone in 1999.

Instead, their focus is on the pecking order of nations and for the Australians the news is not good. As the Australian Financial Review reports, the Aussies have been seated well below the salt by their Chinese hosts.

On the Boao list, Australia is outranked by Brunei, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Zambia, Mexico, and Cambodia – even New Zealand Prime Minister John Key gets higher billing.

Central and South East Asian countries make sense as countries like Myanmar and Kazakhstan are China’s  neighbours with strong trade ties.

That the Kiwis have been given priority over the Aussies by the Chinese government is not surprising in light of this.

An unspoken aspect for the Australian attendees to the Baoa conference is how long Canberra’s political classes can continue their forelock tugging fealty to the US without offending the nation’s most important trading partner.

Mexico’s entry on that list could be one of the most important with consequences for Australia and the world.

During the 1992 US Presidential campaign candidate Ross Perot coined the phrase “the great sucking sound” in his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the risk of losing jobs to lower cost Mexico.

As it turned out, the giant sucking sound was China – it turned out China’s admission into the World Trade Organisation had far greater consequences for the United States and Mexico than NAFTA.

Mexican manufacturing was one of the greatest victims of China’s rise as US companies found it easier to subcontract work to Chinese factories rather than setup their own plants in Mexico.

Now China is finding its own costs creeping up and labor shortages developing and Mexico is attractive once again. The Chinese and Mexican governments have been working on their relationships for some time.

As manufacturing moves out of China, the shifts in world trade we’ve seen in the last two decades are going to be repeated, this time with Chinese moving up the value chain the lower level work moving to Mexico and other nations.

The leaders at the Baoa conference have their work cut out for them in dealing with another decade of global change.

Microsoft’s China crisis

Microsoft’s Chinese partner is blocking Skype messages and possibly passing user details onto PRC authorities. This security concern could damage both Microsoft and Skype.

That the Chinese Public Security Bureau is blocking your messages – and may even be reading them – would make anyone pause before they used a service.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports Microsoft Skype is doing exactly this with its Chinese customers. Anything deemed inappropriate is censored and referred to servers belonging to TOM Online, the company that runs the Skype service on behalf on Microsoft in China.

The Bloomberg story goes onto detail how one Canadian researcher is reverse engineering the Chinese blacklists, giving us a wonderful insight into the petty and touchy minds of China’s censors and political leaders.

What raises eyebrows about this story is how nonchalant Microsoft is about this issue, in a wonderful piece of corporate speak the software giant answered Bloomberg’s question with the following bland statement;

“Skype’s mission is to break down barriers to communications and enable conversations worldwide,” the statement said. “Skype is committed to continued improvement of end user transparency wherever our software is used.”

Microsoft’s statement also said that “in China, the Skype software is made available through a joint venture with TOM Online. As majority partner in the joint venture, TOM has established procedures to meet its obligations under local laws.”

Microsoft have to fix this problem quickly, glibly saying the Chinese government eavesdropping on conversations is a matter for partners is not going to be accepted by most customers.

It would be a shame should Microsoft’s Skype investment fail – Skype is a very good fit for Microsoft, particularly when the technology is coupled with the Linc corporate messaging platform, so squandering goodwill over protecting users’ conversation seems counterproductive.

One of the great business issues of this decade is the battle to protect users’ privacy. Those who don’t do this, or don’t understand the imperatives of doing so, are going to lose the trust of the marketplace.

Twenty years ago, Microsoft could have risked this. Today they can’t as they struggle with a poor response to their Windows 8 operating system and their mobile phone product.

Losing the trust of their customers may be the final straw.

Revolution and disconnected leaders

Revolutions are unexpected, but the causes are often obvious to all. The West shouldn’t be too smug about the economies of other nations.

China expert Patrick Chovanec has a provocative blog post on What Causes Revolutions, building upon the Financial Times’ description of how the Chinese Communist Party is struggling with corruption.

In his article Chovanec quotes Richard Pipes’ Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution which looked at how the fall of the Tsarist government was largely unexpected.

This is true with the fall of all great regimes, in the late 1980s the idea that the Soviet Union would cease to exist within a decade was unthinkable.

Chavonec quotes a key part of Pipes’ book;

In 1982 [Pipes writes], when I worked in the National Security Council, I was asked to contribute ideas to a major speech that President Reagan was scheduled to deliver in London.  My contribution consisted of a reference to Marx’s dictum that, when there develops a significant disparity between the political form and the socio-economic context, the prospect is revolution.

“A significant disparity between the political form and social-economic context” could be just as applicable to Western democracies.

The Economist article makes a point about the French revolution “the widely accepted theory now is that the French Revolution was one of rising expectations that eventually could not be met.”

As Stratfor’s George Freedman pointed out last week, a generation of Americans have expectations that are not going to be met. The same is true in Europe.

While there’s no doubt the China’s political structures – like those in all totalitarian nations – are more brittle than those in established democracies, it might not be a good idea for those of us in the West to be smug and complacent about our own systems.

Zapata image is courtesy of Ferferfer through SXC.

Proudly designed in Gyeonggi

Asian manufacturers are moving up the value chain. Could Korea, China and Taiwan start competing with Apple?

“Designed by Apple in California ” is the boast on the box of every new iPad or Macbook. That the slogan says ‘designed’ rather than ‘made’ says everything about how manufacturing has fled the United States.

Last year the New York Times looked at Apple’s overseas manufacturing operations, pointing out that even if Apple wanted to make their product in the the US many of the necessary skills and infrastructure have been lost.

Now the US is facing the problem that Asian countries are looking at moving up the intellectual property food chain and doing their own designs.

In some ways this is expected as it’s exactly what Japan did with both the consumer electronics and car industries during the 1960s and 70s.

The big difference is that Japanese manufacturers travelled to the US and Europe to study the design and manufacturing methods of the world’s leading companies. In the 1990s and 2000s, the world’s leading companies gave their future competitors the skills through outsourcing and offshoring.

In the next decade we’ll see the latest consumer products coming with labels reading “Designed by Lenovo in Fujian” or “Developed by Samsung in Gyeonggi”.

For western countries, the question is what do we want to be proudly be putting our names to?

Image from Kristajo via SXC.HU

Bringing manufacturing home

How GE is reviving its American manufacturing operations

In the 1980s General Electric, like most US companies, sent most of its appliance manufacturing offshore.

Now its coming home.

The Atlantic Magazine looks at how General Electric is resuscitating manufacturing at Kentucky’s Appliance Park as management finds US workers are more skilled and productive than their equivalents in Mexico or China.

An important part of the article is how critcal supply chains are; manufacturing hubs rely upon having a community of skilled service providers and suppliers around the factories while being close to customers improves and simplifies logistics.

In the latter case, it now take hours or days to deliver products to customers’ stores or warehouses rather than the five weeks it takes from China.

The cost of those goods is lower too, the Kansas made GeoSpring heater sells for $1299 while the Chinese product sells for $1599.

What is most notable though is how designers and managers now have a better understanding of the manufacturing process; where under the oustourced model the difficulties in assembly were none of their business, now they are far more deeper and directly involved.

This really goes to the core of what an organisation does – in the 1980s it was fashionable to talk of the “virtual corportation” where everything the business did was outsourced except for the managers who were employed solely to pocket their bonuses.

In the 1990s and early 2000s that “virtual corporation” became a reality as manufacturing and customer support were offshored and logistics was outsourced.

One of the best examples was customer support where looking after the needs of those who buy the company’s products were secondary to the need to cut costs.

This focus on cost cutting over customer service hurt Dell badly in the 2000s and it continues to hurt many organisations – particularly telcos and banks – today.

The weakness in the “virtual corporation” model was the company ended up adding little more value than the brand name and eventually those offshored manufacturers and call centres took control of the business’ goodwill and intellectual property.

Eventually the hidden costs of offshoring became too obvious for even the most craven, KPI driven manager to ignore and suddenly manufacturing in the Western world became competitive again.

Sadly, the fixation on dirt cheap labour has damaged many industries beyond the point where they can be salvaged with too many skilled workers lost and the ecosystem of capable suppliers destroyed. These are costs where tomorrow’s managers will rue the short sighted actions of yesterday’s corporate leaders.

Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 9: Deeper and broader relationships

Australia in the Asian Century concludes with a look at how we build relationships into Asia.

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

Australia in the Asian Century’s final chapter looks at how Australia can deepen relationships with its Asian neighbours. The chapter is full of fine ideas which don’t quite match the reality of government policies and spending.

Early in the chapter the white paper proposes increasing the number of Australian diplomats in Asia along with opening a new embassy in Ulan Baator, a Jakarta based ambassador to ASEAN and consulates in Shenyang , Phuket and eastern Indonesia.

Fine words, however Australia’s diplomatic corps has been shrinking for the last twenty years so staffing these facilities will require a withdrawal from other regions. The white paper doesn’t identify which countries Australia’s representation would be cut from and the consequences of that.

More importantly, it doesn’t identify how Foreign Affairs and Trade staff will be skilled up to man these facilities, instead we get another worthy ambition.

National objective 22. Australia will have the necessary capabilities to promote Australian interests and maintain Australia’s influence.

  • Australia’s diplomatic network will have a larger footprint across Asia.

Again, one would surely expect that Australia would already have the necessary capabilities to promote its national interest and maintain influence. Is the white paper suggesting we don’t?

Which leads us to the next national objective;

National objective 23. Australia will have stronger and more comprehensive relationships with countries across the region, especially with key regional nations—China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.

If we accept the assumption which underlies the entire paper, that Asia is going to continue to grow both economically and in influence then this will happen regardless of what governments do. It’s a meaningless and silly statement which once again ignores most of Asia and simplifies the dynamics.

The Australia Network

One of the great wastes of the Howard years was the dismembering of Radio Australia which was a cheap and effective way of projecting ‘soft power’ across the region. I personally came across this as a backpacker in China where many manual workers in the hard seat carriages practiced their Australian accented English that they’d learned on Radio Australia’s programs.

This was shut down by one of the spiteful, stupid and poorly thought out decisions that were the hallmark of the Howard government.

Replacing this was a new Australia network that replaced the previous awful overseas television service which had been a niche product on Asian cable TV channels – I had it on my Thai cable subscription when I lived in Bangkok. It was rarely watched.

The Australia Network hasn’t been a great success and that is largely due to the funding – the 2011-21 contract was costed at $221 million in the budget papers.

A break out box in the white paper boasts about the Australia Channel and its “mandate to encourage awareness of Australia, promote cross-cultural communication and build regional partnerships.”

Listed is the funding for some other services – Al Jazeera, $359 million in 2009; CCTV, $280 million in 2009 and NHK World/Radio, $226 million in 2008.

With the Australia Network receiving less than a tenth of this funding, it’s no surprise the station looks amateurish and irrelevant. Once again we see the difference between government words and government deeds.

Which brings us to the final two national objectives;

National objective 24. Australia will have deeper and broader people to people links with Asian nations, across the entire community.

National objective 25. Australia will have stronger, deeper and broader cultural links with Asian nations.

Again these are more motherhood statements and barely worth considering. The section itself skates over some of Australia’s most important assets – the cultural diversity and immigrant communities.

That the final chapter spends just a few pages on this aspect probably sums up the entire project – simple, full of motherhood statements and missing the critical strengths and threats to Australia’s, and Asia’s growth.

Overall the paper is a disappointment that tells us little we didn’t already know while stating some big ambitions which successive governments have shown they aren’t capable of delivering.

The message for those building Australia’s 21st Century links with Asia is not to wait for government but to get on and do it.

Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 8: Building sustainable security in the region

What are the security issues for the Asia in the 21st Century

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The eighth chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at the security picture of the region, this is one of the bigger chapters and like some of the others it’s as notable for what it leaves out as for what it says.

National objective 20. Australian policies will contribute to Asia’s development as a region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm.

That’s nice, worthy and has been undoubtedly true for most previous Australian governments. Except of course when Australian Prime Ministers join the prevailing colonial power in wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or kicking around the German territories in World War I.

Chapter Eight partly dives into territory already covered in Chapter Three, this time though the analysis does discuss the United States’ role in more detail and makes the observation that US military spending dwarfs that of any other Asian nation – interestingly this is one of the few times Russia gets a mention in the entire report.

Encouragingly, the paper doesn’t confine the concept of ‘security’ just to military matters and takes a broader view of issues such as guaranteeing access to resources, food and water. There is some discussion of climate change and on regional responses to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

One notable omission is that of refugees. Given that most of the asylum seekers arriving by boat are Asian – currently coming from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – and almost all pass through other Asian countries, it would be expected this issue would get some exploration. Sadly it doesn’t and once again skirting over an important issue detracts from the paper’s substance.

As befits Australia’s most important relationships in Asia, there is a lot of discussion of the three way relationship between China, the United States and Australia with a detailed breakout box in section 8.4.

The discussion on Australia’s relations between China and the US makes an interesting statement;

In managing the intersections of Australia’s ties with the United States and China, we will need a clear sense of our national interests, a strong voice in both relationships and effective diplomacy.

Undoubtedly this statement is true, however successive Australian governments have conflated the interests of the United States with being the same as Australia’s. In recent times Australian leaders have followed the US lead even when it has been clear American policy conflicts with Australia’s Chinese relations.

Moving away from a reflex support of the United States is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Australian governments in the Asian Century and one hopes the process is as gradual and incident free as the white paper hopes.

National objective 21.The region will be more sustainable and human security will be strengthened with the development of resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water.

National objective 21 is an interesting statement in itself – “resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water” smacks of the 1980s privatisation and corporatism that has left Australia with duopoly industries and an excessive financialisation of those markets for basic needs.

It may well turn out to be the case that Asian countries choose not to follow that path, particularly those like the Philippines and Indonesia who have experienced the effects of crony capitalism in recent history.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century finishes with a detailed look at the regional efforts aimed at building trust and co-operation on trans-national issues.  Much is made of various international groups such as the G20 and the UN.

An interesting case study is that of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with an examination of Japan’s and Australia’s work in that field. Sadly this is another area that’s let down by the actions of current and previous Australian governments in selling uranium to India.

The nuclear weapons stand off between India, Pakistan and China is another ‘elephant in the room’ issue that doesn’t really get the coverage it should in such a report.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century is a very optimistic section of the report however it does hint at the path Australia could follow to being a credible, medium sized economy and influencer in the region. However one has to consider the actions of Australian leaders when asking if the nation is really interested in taking that path.

Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Three: Australia in Asia

Chapter two of Australia in the Asian Century attempts to predict the development of the region’s economies over the next decade

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report. An initial overview of the report is at Australian Hubris in the Asian Century.

The third Chapter of the Australia in the Asian Century report, “Australia in Asia” attempts to define the role the country currently plays in the region. In some ways this is the most constructive part of the paper in that it describes the lost opportunities of the last 25 years.

Much of the early part of the chapter traces the development of Australia’s engagement with Asia after World War II; Chifley’s post war efforts with the United Nations, Menzies’ engagement with Japan, Whitlam’s going to China, Fraser’s opening to Vietnamese immigration and Hawke’s work on building the APEC agreement are all noted.

Again are the major wars that also formed Australia’s current position in East Asia – World War II, the Malayan Emergency, the Korean and Vietnamese wars – are barely mentioned. This trivialises some of the major influences in today’s complex tapestry of relationships

Of Australia’s closest Asian neighbour, the fall of Sukarno gets a brief nod but Suharto’s removal, the rise of Indonesian democracy and East Timor are all removed from the narrative. There is also no mention of other internal dislocations like the Cultural Revolution or the Indian Partition, all which still have echos today.

In the introduction the Colombo Plan gets a mention and it’s worth reflecting upon its effects.

When I worked in Bangkok in the early 1990s there were a number of business leaders who had been educated in Australia under Colombo Plan scholarships.

That investment by Australia paid dividends through the 1980s and 90s as many of those scholarship students were ardent supporters of Australian businesses and government.

One wonders how today’s students who’ve been treated as milk cows by Australian governments and “seats on bums” to education institutions will feel about the country when they enter business and political leadership positions over the next decade?

The examples of Australian business engagement in Asia are interesting – Blundstone’s is a straight out manufacturing outsourcing story which doesn’t really describe anything not being done by thousands of other businesses while Tangalooma Island Resort is a light of hope in the distressed Australian tourism industry.

A notable omission is how digital media, apps developers and service businesses are faring in Asia. There are many good case studies in those sectors but the writers seem to be, once again, fixated on the trade patterns of the 1980s and 90s rather than success stories in new fields and emerging technologies.

Generally though the description of the Australian economy is again more of the same; a combination of self congratulations on having a government AAA credit rating, hubris over avoiding a GFC induced recession and stating how the services sector has risen to replace the manufacturing that’s been outsourced by companies like Blundstone.

Overall Chapter Three of the Australia in the Asian Century report illustrates the opportunities missed in the last 25 years. Had this report been written twenty years ago it could have forecast a booming relationship in the services and advanced manufacturing sectors. It almost certainly would have included an observation that the days of the Australian economy depending upon minerals exports is over.

What a difference a couple of decades make.

The engagement of Australia with Asia concludes with a look at the changes to the nation’s immigration intakes and demographic composition. This point is, quite rightly, identified as an area of opportunity.

Having Thai restaurants in every suburb and Indian doctors in most country town isn’t really taking advantage of the opportunities presented by having a diverse population and workforce. Chapter Four attempts to look at how these factors, and others, can help Australia’s engagement with the Asian economies.

Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter One: The rise of Asia

Chapter one of Australia in the Asian Century looks at how the region’s economies developed

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report. An initial overview of the report is at Australian Hubris in the Asian Century.

“Just over two decades ago, the Australian Government commissioned a study of Australia and the Northeast Asian ascendancy” starts the opening of the Australia in the Asian Century report. That sentence describes how this paper is the latest of Australia’s earnest efforts to understand the region.

The opening chapter of the report follows the sensible principle that to plan for the future we have to first understand the present so this section seeks to explain the development of various Asian economies and put those changes into an Australian perspective.

Notable in the narrative is the North East Asian focus, while India gets a brief mention most of the story revolves around the development of China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. Chart 1.2, “Asia’s economic dividend” gives the game away when all but one ‘Asian’ country listed is East Asian.

Russia, along with most of South and Central Asia – not to mention other Asia countries like Iran, Turkey and the former Soviet Republics – rate no mention all.

The narratives around the countries which are covered is also deficient – for instance the discussion on Japan’s, South Korea’s and Vietnam’s developments totally ignore post-war reconstruction efforts and their relations with the United States.

China does get a more detailed examination rightly noting it was the country’s admission to the World Trade Organisation in 2001 that really set the economy’s export sector moving, however it skates over the massive dislocations and market reforms introduced in the 1980s which laid the foundations for China’s successful bid to join the WTO.

More notably, the analysis overlooks – probably to avoid upsetting PRC diplomats and making life difficult in Canberra – the role of Taiwanese investment in China and Taiwan’s development itself.

In a similar vein the scant discussion of India misses the role of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in the country’s economic development along with the concentration of power in the various industrial conglomerates like the Tata Group.

Again, the same omission is made when discussing the South Korean Chaebols and Japanese Keiretsu. Given the investments made in Australia by all of these industrial conglomerates it’s curious they barely rate a mention in discussing Asia’s industrialisation process.

The discussion on innovation in Chapter 1.3 is useful however it lacks substance in identifying exactly which sectors various Asian economies are specialising in and which industries are in decline as various countries move up the value chain.

Singapore’s success in becoming East Asia’s hub for banking and corporate regional headquarters is a notable omission and again one has a suspicion this is because of ongoing Australian governments’ doomed ambitions to establish Sydney as a regional financial and business centre.

Probably the most glaring omission in Chapter One though is the role of the United States. In tracking the rise of the Indian service sector or Chinese, Japanese and South Korean manufacturing the trade policies of the US cannot be ignored. And yet they largely are.

That failure to acknowledge the US role means report overlooks the Clinton and Bush I Administrations’ forced opening East Asia’s largely closed economies which radically changed South Korea, Taiwan and Japan in the late 1980s and early 90s. Not to mention the critical role the US had during that period in allowing China and Vietnam to join the global trade networks.

Chapter One of Australia in the Asian Century is an unsatisfactory introduction to the complexities of the Asian economies and one suspects is because of the compromises made to assuage the egos and groupthink of Canberra’s mandarins and politicians.

Most importantly, it fails to put the last thirty years’ developments in Asia into an Australian context or perspective. In this respect, it’s a fitting start to a largely inadequate report.

Gift giving in China

Giving gifts in Asian cultures can be fraught with risks

A terrific little infographic from cross cultural PR firm Illuminant shows the right and wrong ways of giving gifts in China.

The first faux pas listed is giving clocks and the advice “if you happen to receive a clock from any Chinese source, get your butt to airport pronto” is marvellous.

Giving gifts in sets of six or eight is also a great little gem.

One of the cultural differences between East Asia and the west is the habit of giving small gifts of appreciation and it’s easy to get this wrong. What is acceptable in the People’s Republic of China might be a grave mistake in Korea or Thailand.

A handy little app for dealing with cross cultural misunderstandings is Hooked In Motion’s World Customs and Cultures that lets you dial up the basic protocols like not touching heads or hand gestures which should be avoided. Sadly it doesn’t cover gift giving.

Illuminant’s infographic and Hooked In Motion’s app remind us that the whole world isn’t being homogenised by the web and global communications as each culture takes today’s tools and adapts them to their own worlds.