- Tesla’s Elon Musk Tells Trump China Trade Rules ‘Make Things Very Difficult’
Mr. Musk noted on Twitter how American-made cars imported into China face higher duties than Chinese vehicles coming to the U.S. and how foreign auto makers in China face restrictions on ownership of factories. To avoid 25% tariffs, foreign auto makers build cars in China through joint ventures with local manufacturers—something that requires a sharing of profit and potentially technology. It is an approach Mr. Musk has been trying to avoid.
“The current rules make things very difficult,” Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter. “It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.”
On Thursday, while announcing his order to charge tariffs on steel and aluminum, Mr. Trump read off Mr. Musk’s tweet regarding the higher Chinese tariffs on American vehicles. “That’s from Elon,” the president said. “But everybody knows it, they’ve known it for years. They never did anything about it. It’s got to change.”
- Is China Destined to Dominate Tech?
Because China’s privacy laws aren’t strictly enforced, tech companies can monitor their users intensively, offering them an advantage in everything from optimizing ads to assessing credit risk. As one executive put it, these companies “know where you’ve traveled, what movies you saw, what restaurants you ate at.” This intense surveillance may be a growing liability, however. A significant consumer backlash is building in China, driven partly by ubiquitous fraud and identity theft. And Chinese tech companies are running into stiff resistance when trying to expand into more privacy-conscious markets overseas.
This raises a final concern. Chinese tech firms are largely confined to China, where they’re protected from competition. This gives them a dominant market position and other advantages. But a platform that censors searches for Winnie the Pooh simply isn’t going to be competitive overseas. Google and Facebook Inc., with much more international experience, have proven adept at understanding a global audience and picking up on diverse socio-cultural norms. Extracting ever more data from local users won’t help Chinese companies compete at that level.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-05/is-china-destined-to-dominate-tech
- How to Stage a Successful Protest
- Almost 80% of Chinese concerned about AI threat to privacy, 32% already feel a threat to their work
AI will have an impact on every industry, said 77.8% respondents. 91.2% think AI has an effect on their work, made up of 50.4% saying they have already felt the impact of AI in their own work and another 40.8% believing that AI technologies will have an impact on their livelihoods.
When asked whether they thought AI to be a threat to their livelihoods, 31.7% said they already felt its threat, 50.6% said they believed it would be a threat but were yet to feel it and 17.7% responded with “no, people are the most important”.
- The Amazing History of Panasonic, Which Was Founded 100 Years Ago by a 23-Year-Old
Matsushita was ahead of his time as far as his management approach. When the company was 2 years old and had 28 employees, he formed what he called the “Hoichi Kai,” which translates to “one-step society.” It brought employees together to play sports and participate in other recreational activities.
Another unconventional leadership tactic Matsushita spearheaded was transparency. In the early 1920s, worker retention was a major problem in Japan, first due to competition among firms, then because of economic downturn. Matsushita’s philosophy was one of trust, and he decided to share trade secrets even with new employees to build trust at all levels of the organization. By the end of 1922, the company had 50 employees and a new factory.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310027
This post was becoming a downer, it needed something uplifting.
Photo: Dominik Gehl