In his column for Salon.com, Andrew Leonard (’91) contemplates what it means for an Indian outsourcing giant to start up a branch in China:

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest software outsourcing company, is planning a big push in China, reports the Financial Times. “If any country has the potential to scale up like India, it’s China,” N. Chandrasekaran, TCS global head of sales and operations, told the F.T.

When a U.S. company sets up shop in China, it is often accused, sometimes correctly, of sacrificing the interests of American workers for the benefit of its bottom line. But what do we say when an Indian company opens for business in Shanghai, with plans to hire Chinese software engineers to handle operations for Fortune 500 multinationals? The exploitation dynamic isn’t quite as crystal-clear. TCS isn’t moving to China because programmers are cheaper there, but because that is where the action is.

Read the full piece here.

by Toni De Aztlan (’08)

Two hours north of Beijing, Xingshou is a village overrun with strawberries, literally. Vendors line the streets plying piles of the juicy red berries. The sidewalks are strewn with them and miles of farmland have been converted to produce them.

But nothing captures the farming craze that has turned Xingshou into China’s “strawberry city” more vividly than the Tianyi Farm Strawberry Emporium.

The shiny new store sticks out from the gray background of China’s industrialized countryside. Its cheerful exterior, complete with cartoon mascots—happy strawberry boy and happy strawberry girl—welcomes visitors. Out front, a billboard-sized map shows the half-dozen strawberry farms in the area. If you came to China specifically to find a strawberry farm, this map is all you need. Inside, however, is where you get a real sense for how much berries mean to Xingshou. Busy employees in berry smocks cart in boxes of merchandise: cold strawberry drinks, bags of dried strawberry and baskets of fresh berries. And next to a colorful children’s play area, there is a café that serves, of all things, berry burgers.
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Ling Liu (’06) contributed reporting to this week’s TIME Asia cover story on a wave of guilt rippling over Asian fathers who don’t have enough time to spend with their children.

It’s a Saturday morning in Singapore, and around 20 men have turned up at the Chongfu Primary School to hear Wong Suen Kwong give a talk about fathering. Wong, who heads an NGO called the Centre for Fathering, begins his presentation with a PowerPoint slide declaring his organization’s purpose: “Inspiring fathers to be involved with their children’s lives.” A little way into the meeting, one of the men explains his way of rising to this challenge. He has rigged up his home with over $2,000 worth of remotely operated camera equipment, so that when he’s at work he can log onto the Internet and see what his kids are doing. A ripple of laughter spreads through the room, but there’s a touch of ruefulness about it because many of today’s fathers find it equally hard to be fully involved with their children.

Read the full story here.

Shen Rujun (’05), a researcher in the New York Times’ Shanghai bureau, contributed reporting to the first piece in a recent Times series exploring China’s impact on classical music. The piece was written by Joseph Kahn and Daniel Wakin.

Yu Zhenyang, a self-assured 15-year-old violinist with a picture of Jascha Heifetz in his bedroom, glided through the Mendelssohn Concerto from memory. His teacher bounded across the room, flailing his arms, swooning to demonstrate pathos and urging Zhenyang to play with more passion.

“You are the lead,” said the teacher, Lin Yaoji. “Be bolder. Stretch the distance between the notes, and then close the distance. I don’t want symmetry. Surprise me.”

Zhenyang is one of the brightest young stars at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, which has in recent years become part of China’s huge export machine churning out musical virtuosos.

Read the full piece here.

Rong Feiwen (’03) reports for Bloomberg on a global plunge in corn futures after US corn farmers announced they would plant their largest crop in six-decades to meet an ethanol-driven rise in demand. The effects of the announcement reached as far as Dalian’s commodity exchange:

Corn prices in China, the world’s second largest grower of the grain, also fell as traders speculated a further drop in global markets may prompt domestic users to import the grain.

The contract for delivery in September on the Dalian Commodity Exchange slumped as much as 3.4 percent to 1,630 yuan ($211) a ton, and settled at 1,654 yuan.

“Domestic corn is much cheaper for now, but if prices keep falling, imports will become an option for large users,” said Nie Ben, research manager at Liao Ning Cifco Futures Co. in Dalian. “So far the reaction has been more psychological.”

Read the full article here.