http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/business/energy-environment/25solar.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

August 25, 2009

China Racing Ahead of U.S. in Drive to Go Solar

By KEITH BRADSHER

WUXI, China — President Obama wants to make the United States “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy,” but in his seven months in office, it is China that has stepped on the gas in an effort to become the dominant player in green energy — especially in solar power, and even in the United States.

Chinese companies have already played a leading role in pushing down the price of solar panels by almost half over the last year. Shi Zhengrong, the chief executive and founder of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings, said in an interview here that Suntech, to build market share, is selling solar panels on the American market for less than the cost of the materials, assembly and shipping.

Backed by lavish government support, the Chinese are preparing to build plants to assemble their products in the United States to bypass protectionist legislation. As Japanese automakers did decades ago, Chinese solar companies are encouraging their United States executives to join industry trade groups to tamp down anti-Chinese sentiment before it takes root.

The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.

“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products — they’ll be consumers,” said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.

Since March, Chinese governments at the national, provincial and even local level have been competing with one another to offer solar companies ever more generous subsidies, including free land, and cash for research and development. State-owned banks are flooding the industry with loans at considerably lower interest rates than available in Europe or the United States.

Suntech, based here in Wuxi, is on track this year to pass Q-Cells of Germany, to become the world’s second-largest supplier of photovoltaic cells, which would put it behind only First Solar in Tempe, Ariz.

Hot on Suntech’s heels is a growing list of Chinese corporations backed by entrepreneurs, local governments and even the Chinese military, all seeking to capitalize on an industry deemed crucial by China’s top leadership.

Dr. Shi pointed out that other governments, including in the United States, also assist clean energy industries, including with factory construction incentives.

China’s commitment to solar energy is unlikely to make a difference soon to global warming. China’s energy consumption is growing faster than any other country’s, though the United States consumes more today. Beijing’s aim is to generate 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 — or less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants that are built in China each year.

Solar energy remains far more expensive to generate than energy from coal, oil, natural gas or even wind. But in addition to heavy Chinese investment and low Chinese costs, the global economic downturn and a decline in European subsidies to buy panels have lowered prices.

The American economic stimulus plan requires any project receiving money to use steel and other construction materials, including solar panels, from countries that have signed the World Trade Organization’s agreement on free trade in government procurement. China has not.

In response to this, and to reduce shipping costs, Suntech plans to announce in the next month or two that it will build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States, said Steven Chan, its president for global sales and marketing.

“It’ll be to facilitate sales — ‘buy American’ and things like that,” Mr. Chan said, adding that the factory would have 75 to 150 workers and be located in Phoenix, or somewhere in Texas.

But 90 percent of the workers at the $30 million factory will be blue-collar laborers, welding together panels from solar wafers made in China, Dr. Shi said.

Yingli Solar, another large Chinese manufacturer, said on Thursday that it also had a “preliminary plan” to assemble panels in the United States.

Western rivals, meanwhile, are struggling. Q-Cells of Germany announced last week that it would lay off 500 of its 2,600 employees because of declining sales. It and two other German companies, Conergy and SolarWorld, are particularly indignant that German subsidies were the main source of demand for solar panels until recently.

“Politicians might ask whether this is still the right way to do this, German taxpayers paying for Asian products,” said Markus Wieser, a Q-Cells spokesman.

But organizing resistance to Chinese exports could be difficult, particularly as Chinese discounting makes green energy more affordable.

Even with Suntech acknowledging that it sells below the marginal cost of producing each additional solar panel — that is, the cost after administrative and development costs are subtracted — any antidumping case, in the United States, for example, would have to show that American companies were losing money as a result.

First Solar — the solar leader, in Tempe — using a different technology from many solar panel manufacturers, is actually profitable, while the new tax credits now becoming available may help other companies.

Even organizing a united American response to Chinese exports could be difficult. Suntech has encouraged executives at its United States operations to take the top posts at the two main American industry groups, partly to make sure that these groups do not rally opposition to imports, Dr. Shi said.

The efforts of Detroit automakers to win protection from Japanese competition in the 1980s were weakened by the presence of Honda in their main trade group; they expelled Honda in 1992.

Some analysts are less pessimistic about the prospects for solar panel manufacturers in the West. Joonki Song, a partner at Photon Consulting in Boston, said that while large Chinese solar panel manufacturers are gaining market share, smaller ones have been struggling.

Mr. Zarrella of GT Solar said that Western providers of factory equipment for solar panel manufacturers would remain competitive, and Dr. Shi said that German equipment providers “have made a lot of money, tons of money.”

The Chinese government is requiring that 80 percent of the equipment for China’s first municipal power plant to use solar energy, to be built in Dunhuang in northwestern China next year, be made in China.

Dr. Shi said his company would try to prevent similar rules in any future projects.

The reason is clear: almost 98 percent of Suntech’s production goes overseas.

Your Favorite Foods with a Chinese Twist

American Food Companies Catering to $186B Chinese Market by Adapting Offerings There to Chinese Tastes

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  Minute Maid makes flavors geared toward their Chinese customers. (CBS)

(CBS) Do palates differ around the world?

CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton reported it appears so. She said on "The Early Show" Tuesday your favorite foods might have an unexpected twist in a land far away.

Grocery stores in China, for example, might surprise American shoppers. Blueberry-flavored potato chips, strawberry and milk-flavored Cheetos and aloe juice from Minute Maid are the norm.

Why?

Because, Hatton reported, every major U.S. food label, it seems, is trying to bite into China's $186 billion fast food and processed food industries by creating new products made just for Chinese taste buds.

Hatton said grocery stores in Beijing are packed with labels that look familiar, but feature flavors that definitely aren't, such as Tropicana cantaloupe juice, orange-flavored Chips Ahoy cookies, and Chinese herbal medicine Wrigley's gum.

But, she said, it's Frito-Lay potato chips that really push the boundaries.

Taste tests, Hatton reported, revealed Chinese people didn't like popular American flavors like sour cream and onion. So, to reach their audience, researchers developed new flavors inspired by traditional Chinese food, such as savory Sichuan spicy, sweet and sour tomato and sugary options like cucumber, lychee and mango.

Harry Hui, of Pepsico, said, "The market is extremely competitive, so there are many new products that are being launched regularly."

Popular American fast food chains are also getting in on the game. McDonald's has a purple taro pie. Starbucks offers coffee drinks with jelly cubes in the bottom. And KFC goes even farther by offering spicy squid on a stick.

Even the toothpaste companies, Hatton said, can't afford to ignore the flavor game, pointing out lotus flower Crest and salty Colgate.

These products may seem wacky in the US, but she said there's serious pressure to be the object of Chinese cravings.

Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, said China is going to be the second-largest or largest consumer market in the world in the next five years.

He said, "If American companies don't figure out how to get it right in China, they'll be missing out on what should be their major generator for growth."

Shut Out at Home, Americans Go to China

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Mick Zomnir, 20, a soon-to-be junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working as a summer intern for JFP.

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By HANNAH SELIGSON

Published: August 10, 2009

BEIJING — Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home.

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Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Joshua Arjuna Stephens graduated from Wesleyan University in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies. Two years ago, he decided to take a temporary summer position in Shanghai with China Prep, an educational travel company.

Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States.

“I’ve seen a surge of young people coming to work in China over the last few years,” said Jack Perkowski, founder of Asimco Technologies, one of the largest automotive parts companies in China.

“When I came over to China in 1994, that was the first wave of Americans coming to China,” he said. “These young people are part of this big second wave.”

One of those in the latest wave is Joshua Arjuna Stephens, who graduated from Wesleyan University in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies. Two years ago, he decided to take a temporary summer position in Shanghai with China Prep, an educational travel company.

“I didn’t know anything about China,” said Mr. Stephens, who worked on market research and program development. “People thought I was nuts to go not speaking the language, but I wanted to do something off the beaten track.”

Two years later, after stints in the nonprofit sector and at a large public relations firm in Beijing, he is highly proficient in Mandarin and works as a manager for XPD Media, a social media company based in Beijing that makes online games.

Jonathan Woetzel, a partner with McKinsey & Company in Shanghai who has lived in China since the mid-1980s, says that compared with just a few years ago, he was seeing more young Americans arriving in China to be part of an entrepreneurial boom. “There’s a lot of experimentation going on in China right now, particularly in the energy sphere, and when people are young they are willing to come and try something new,” he said

And the Chinese economy is more hospitable for both entrepreneurs and job seekers, with a gross domestic product that rose 7.9 percent in the most recent quarter compared with the period a year earlier. Unemployment in urban areas is 4.3 percent, according to government data.

Grace Hsieh, president of the Yale Club in Beijing and a 2007 graduate, says she’s seen a rise in the number of Yale graduates who have come to work in Beijing since she arrived in China two years ago. She is working as an account executive in Beijing for Hill & Knowlton, the public relations company.

Sarabeth Berman, a 2006 graduate of Barnard College with a major in urban studies, initially arrived in Beijing to take a job that would have been difficult for a 23-year-old to land in the United States: program director at BeijingDance/LDTX, the first modern dance company in China to be founded independently of the government.

Ms. Berman said she was hired for her familiarity with Western modern dance rather than a deep knowledge of China. “Despite my lack of language skills and the fact that I had no experience working in China, I was given the opportunity to manage the touring, international projects, and produce and program our annual Beijing Dance Festival.”

After two years of living and working in China, Ms. Berman is proficient in Mandarin. She travels throughout China, Europe and the United States with the dance company.

Willy Tsao, the artistic director of BeijingDance/LDTX, said he hired Ms. Berman because of her ability to make connections beyond China. “I needed someone who was capable of communicating with the Western world.”

Another dynamic in the hiring process, Mr. Tsao says, is that Westerners can often bring a skill set that is harder to find among the Chinese.

“Sarabeth is always taking initiative and thinking what we can do,” he said, “while I think the more standard Chinese approach is to take orders.” He sees the difference as rooted in the educational system. “In Chinese schools students are encouraged to be quiet and less outspoken; it fosters a culture of listening more than initiating.”

Mr. Perkowski says many Chinese companies are looking to hire native English speakers to help them navigate the American market.

“I’m working with a company right now that wants me to help them find young American professionals who can be their liaisons to the U.S.,” he said. “They want people who understand the social and cultural nuances of the West.”

Mr. Perkowski’s latest venture, JFP Holdings, a merchant bank based in Beijing, hasn’t posted any job openings, but has received more than 60 résumés; a third of them are from young people in the United States who want to come work in China, he said.

Mick Zomnir, 20, a soon-to-be junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is working as a summer intern for JFP. “As things have gotten more difficult in the U.S., I started to think about opportunities elsewhere,” he said. He does not speak Chinese but says he will begin studying Mandarin when he returns to M.I.T. in the fall.

A big draw of working in China, many young people say, is that they feel it has allowed them to skip a rung or two on the career ladder.

Ms. Berman said: “There is no doubt that China is an awesome place to jump-start your career. Back in the U.S., I would be intern No. 3 at some company or selling tickets atLincoln Center.”

For others, like Jason Misium, 23, China has solved the cash flow problem of starting a business. After graduating with a degree in biology from Harvard in 2008, Mr. Misium came to China to study the language. Then he started Sophos Academic Group, an academic consulting firm that works with Chinese students who want to study in the United States. “It’s China’s fault that I’m still here,” he says. “It’s just so cheap to start a business.” It cost him the equivalent of $12,000, which he had in savings, he said.

Among many young Americans, the China exit strategy is a common topic of conversation. Mr. Stephens, Ms. Berman and Mr. Misium all said they were planning to return to the United States eventually.

Mr. Woetzel of McKinsey said work experience in China was not an automatic ticket to a great job back home. He said it was not a marker the way an Ivy League education is: “The mere fact of just showing up and working in China and speaking Chinese is not enough.”

That said, Mr. Woetzel added, someone who has been able to make their mark in China is a valuable hire. “At McKinsey, we are looking for people who have demonstrated leadership,” he said, “and working in a context like China builds character, requires you to be a lot more entrepreneurial and forces you to innovate.”

Imagethief: Public relations, communication and interesting times in China.

http://imagethief.com/blogs/china/

nciku

English: nciku.com is a Chinese-English and English-Chinese online dictionary aimed at English speakers who are learning Chinese. At the moment it mainly uses Simplified characters, although the Traditional versions of some words are given. Take a look at the nciku Tour, or just look around the site yourself to discover all nciku.com has to offer.

Arch Chinese

http://www.archchinese.com/

Arch Chinese is an online Chinese character learning tool for Mandarin Chinese language learners. Designed from the start specifically for English speakers who have no or little knowledge of Mandarin Chinese, it offers a rich set of features with a slick and easy-to-use user interface.

The features of the system are distilled from the user feedback and feature requests from the Chinese learning community. We also consult with Chinese teaching professionals, from preschools or universities, to incorporate their suggestions and ideas. Our ultimate goal is to provide a high quality, accessible learning system to help Chinese language learners to study Mandarin Chinese in a practical, effective and enjoyable manner.

China’s Dollar Trap

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/opinion/03krugman.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y