Difficult Time Came    

China's Customs Administration reported a 9% decline of import/export in November. The monthly exports decreased by 2.2% year over year and the imports fell 17.9%. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the PPI grew 2.0% yearly in November, while the growth of CPI was 2.4%, both growths fell down than previous months.
    Any word but difficult can not be used to describe the current economy. The central government again organized an economic meeting December 8th-10th and finally unveiled itself five major targets for 2009. The first, an active financial policy and moderately loosing money policy will be operated in the coming year. Developing agriculture is the second important target.

Zhong Weike
December 12th, 2008


In China, the fastest growing construction market of the world, the projects of chemical, refining and energy are rapidly increasing. This brings unprecedented business opportunities to contractors involved in FDI projects. As the size of projects grows and as the presences of diversified co-operational patterns increase, technical competence is no longer the only success factor in complex projects.
    Multi-company participation in project management makes it critical to ensure that the complexities are addressed on time and within budget while meeting quality, safety and environmental requirements stipulated by the project owners.
    Within this context, at China Complex Project Management Excellence (CCPME), a China market-focused project management seminar held in Beijing on December 9th & 10th, 2008 - chemical enterprises gained expert insight while learning about the most up-to-date practices from authoritative experts involved in projects such as Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group's Coal to Chemicals, PetroChina Guangxi Refinery, CNOOC, Shell.
    Graham Wilson, project director of AMEC, shared his experience in dealing with cultural diversity and working with multicultural teams. Frans van Gunsteren, Adviser of Shell/Daman, retired from Shell in 2006 after completion of the Huizhou CNOOC Shell petrochemical Nanhai project, shared his 25 years experience with Shell, reviewing administration in Nanhai project and analyzing solutions for technically, contractually and culturally complex projects. Others harangued top management covering oil and gas, process, power, mining and allied industries.
   "Spent a very productive day in the conference, we talk about events with very strong emphasis on engineering practice, like how to overcome cultural differences in work- a real problem exists not only in multinational corporation but also in everywhere when dealing with people from different countries." said Ju Zhijian, CSCEC AECOM Consultants Co., Ltd.
   "We have realized deficiency in our own work, but we learned more and improved a lot through communicating with other relative companies." said Min Jian, China Petrochemical Consulting Corporation.   By Amy Lee, December 10th, 2008