Today we visited the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) office in Shanghai, an

organization that monitors and reports on business and trade between China and America. Despite how official the name sounds, the office isn’t actually related to other American Chamber of Commerce offices in different countries. I absolutely loved the presentation at AmCham. The presenters were great and personable and the contents of their presentation was very interesting. One of the presenters worked for AmCham and the other worked at the PNC office in Shanghai. They talked mostly about the trade climate between China and other countries, especially the United States as Donald Trump had just imposed new tariffs on China while we were still there. We also learned a lot about Xi Jinping, the current president of China, and his goals while in office. According to AmCham, Jinping has control over the three most powerful branches of the Chinese government including the military. This makes Jinping the most powerful president since Mao Zedong, and apparently some argue that he holds even more power than Mao did. While we were there the U.S. ambassador was also there in the next room over. According to the AmCham representative the ambassador comes in every few months to get an understanding of how businessmen think business in China is doing, especially compared to the U.S. When we left AmCham we got back on the bus and drove an hour outside of the city to the next company, Horiba, a Japanese hardware manufacturing company that operates in China and the United States. Horiba was the first company we visited that actually showed us the engineering portion of their facility. Before we were allowed to walk into the facility, the workers there made us put on foot coverings to bring as little dirt as possible into the building. This was important because Horiba manufactures semiconductor chips, which can be damaged by even the smallest particle. Once inside with our foot coverings we had a brief meeting with two Horiba executives who gave us a presentation describing what the company does as well as a paper copy of their 2017 financial year in review. After the presentation the workers split us up into two groups so we could tour different buildings simultaneously and not overcrowd the work space. My group started out in the business area where marketers and accountants worked at computers, all wearing company polos or button downs. Then we moved over into the manufacturing facility where we saw people putting together tiny semiconductors in lab suits. The rooms they were in are called clean rooms because of all the precautions set in place to keep as many foreign particles out of the air as possible, even water. The tour guide said that the rooms were very dry and sometimes workers eyes would be red and their lips chapped from the lack of moisture. I really liked the facility tour because we got to see people actually working at their job, as well as some of the interesting projects Horiba is working on. Overall, this was one of the best days on the trip because everything we encountered was engaging.