Today’s day in Shanghai started off with the usual complimentary breakfast in the Regal East Asia Hotel which continues to impress day after day. Following the amazing breakfast, we then traveled to Delphi ICE and got to engage with one of the companies high ranking employees as well as a take a tour of their testing facilities. Delphi is a technology company that helps to provide electronic vehicle and internal combustion engine propulsion solutions. On top of this already intense task, Delphi also helps to solve emission and fuel economy challenges for the world’s leading automotive OEM’s. Although Delphi holds its’ headquarters in London, UK, the plant we visited was one of the 24 manufacturing and customer service sites in the world. Delphi broke off of GM in the late 1990’s and in terms of their China office they have really helped with government focus on shifting towards clean energy vehicles. Additionally, the Chinese automobile market is 2 times as large as the US with continual room to grow. To add on top of an impressive and highly involved company we also got to engage with one of the company’s top-level executives regarding the company’s operations. It was funny to learn that he had gotten his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh a little while back in just 2 years! This was extremely impressive given the fact that it normally takes 4 to 5 years to complete sometimes. He now manages 1 billion dollars in revenue and 3,000 workers as he heads the Asia-Pacific region for Delphi. One of the aspects I found most interesting regarding his career was the fact that he received his PhD and studied his whole education in the engineering sector, yet his job is all business centered in sales. He told us about how he feels as if this business/sales aspect fulfills something inside of him and that it really taught him that you never know where you will end up or what you are really like inside. This inspired me to broaden my horizons when it comes to the job search and what I may be interested in.
Following another amazing lunch we headed over to AmCham, also known as the American Chamber of Commerce. AmCham in Shanghai is known as the “Voice of American Business” in China and is the fastest growing American Chamber in the Asia Pacific region. This specific AmCham was only the third American Chamber established outside of the United States. AmCham is a non-profit, non-partisan business organization committed to the principles of free trade, open markers, and unrestricted flow of information. AmCham has 3,000 members as well as 1,500 companies they help to represent. Essentially AmCham helped to work with companies that are doing business in China to help lobby and sort out any problems that may arise. They also help to build relationships within industries, assist in the startup of small entrepreneurs, inform businesses of new policy updates, and convey issues of their members to the Chinese government. We then dove into some interesting facts regarding the Chinese government and economy as a whole. China, as everyone knows, as experienced rapid economic growth which is shown by their 6.5% projected GDP growth going forward. This growth is only behind the developing economies of India and Vietnam and in terms of total GDP output China is 2nd in the world behind the United States. We also learned about the huge wealth inequality currently present in China. Our speaker Hank related it to the United States in the earlier 20th century where you had the tycoons like Rockefeller and Carnegie, but also the millions of factory workers just scrapping to get by. However, China is currently transitioning away from that and providing more and more service and technology sector jobs. We also discussed some of the Chinese government’s long-term policies such as the One Belt One Road policy which is a long-term road map of expanding Chinese political and economic influence throughout the world. Additionally, we dove into the discussion regarding Xi Jinping’s elimination of the term limit in China and the public as well as businesses reactions. Outside of possibly the trip to Xiaomi, this was by far my favorite site visit!
Following the wonderful site visits we returned back to the hotel where I was able to work out for a little before having to work on our final presentation for the trip that was to be given tomorrow evening. After some work, we then traveled out with Young, our new PC, to show us some of the most interesting spots in Shanghai! I love this city!