Jonathan Xavier Weinert 2008

Oct 21, 2005: I just attended an interesting conference last week in Tianjin on the "sustainable" (economic) development of the Chinese Auto industry. The info below is a summary of information Jason and I have compiled on the key insights gained, contacts made, notes from presentations, and other observations from the conference. 

A. Insights:
As usual at conferences, we learned both from what was said...and what was not said. 
What was said (repeatedly): 
1. The success of the industry depends on breakthroughs in vehicle efficiency and quality
2. Safety, efficiency, and environmental effects are very important for the sustainable development of the industry. 
2b. Probable fuel pathway : Diesel -> GasToLiquid,BioTL,CoalTL -> Hydrogen
3. China must cultivate their own independent capability to innovate, lest they find themselves in the same situation as the Latin American countries are in now.  (more on the L.A. effect in the report). 
4.  Need to improve the reputation of the China brand.  Reputation now= "low-quality". 
5.  IP.  Don't steal IP, respect it.  This is key to enabling more technology transfer from the multi-national companies.
6. The importance of the Chinese "Mini-car". They want to develop a chinese-only brand, efficient, affordable vehicle to reach the middle classes. (picture below: road construction, getting ready for the cars to come)
   
What was not said:
1. Why China has not been yet been successful developing an internationally recognized China-only brand car?  Why has both Korea and Japan been able to do it, but China has not?  Both Korea and China started around the same time.
2. When the new environmental emission standards will go into effect?  A rep from EPA spoke about some new standards, and the crowd had hoped they would give more specifics on when the standards would go into effect. 
3.  From what we heard from other participants, they were a little disappointed by the lack of concrete facts and information given at the conference. Rather the speakers made a lot of forecasts and general observations, rather than tackling some of the more difficult questions facing the automobile industry (like the ones listed above).   
 
C. Other Observations:
Jason had a chat with an 30 yr veteran employee of Dongfeng Motor.  He had some interesting comments about why China has of yet been unsuccessful exporting a China-only brand car and the "slow" development of China’s auto industry. What he pointed out is the lack of innovation due to the failure of technology transfer. China used to exchange its big market with developed countries for their technologies. However, because China didn't respect the IP, foreign partners learn to block the "core technology" to China. At the end, Chinese auto industry still means low-end and labor intensive. Korea respected IP more, and that's why have received more trust (and the know-how) from their foreign partners.

September 21, 2005: It's now been 7 weeks since I've landed in China. Classes started up here a couple weeks ago here so life at Tongji's Jiading campus is now in full swing! A brief update since last time:

1. Visit to Taiwan:
I got the chance to go to Taibei, Taiwan for a week to visit Jason Ni (my UC-Davis colleague, also doing research now at Tongji) and observe the city. Some of you suggested I note the differences between the two cities in terms of transportation and fuel.

Overall, on the long and winding road to development, they seem to be right in between China and the US. Transportation there is much more orderly, less chaotic than Shanghai. Two wheel scooters and cars dominate the roads. Bike's are almost non-existent. Alternative fuels have minimal penetration (as far as I could tell). The air is much cleaner than Shanghai. Buses are a lot less crowded.

During our visit, Jason Ni and I met with his former advisor (Dr. Jason Chang), who is really well connected in Shanghai and often serves as a transportation advisor here. Dr. Chang illuminated two important principles about working in Shanghai.
A) The first deals with Planning vs. Implementation. Shanghai has excellent transportation planning/modeling capability. The actual implementation however rarely follows the plan. Why? Because (as I understood) when it comes to implementation, politics gets in the way of implementing the plan due to special interest groups (e.g. developers) swaying the few decision makers in charge of implementation (sound surprising?). An example, many very tall office buildings have been built right next to the highway, rather than directing development along subway lines. This will only lead to greater automobile growth and congestion.

One conclusion to draw from Dr. Chang's insights is that Shanghai doesn't need more modeling/planning, rather it needs more enforcement of the plans. How to apply this principle to my research on automotive fuel transitions in Shanghai? I will spend the next few months coming up with answers. Of course, I welcome your thoughts/reactions to this question.

B) The second is "Friends first". I had heard about the principle of "guan xi" (relationships) before, but Jason re-iterated it to us, that in doing business or any sort of work in China, it's important to become friends first. Also not too surprising, but a good tid-bit of wisdom.

2. The Shell Hydrogen Lighthouse Feasibility Study; wrapping up.
My colleague and I completed the rough draft of the final report for Shell a couple weeks ago and they are now reviewing it. I contributed to the report by applying my H2 Station Cost Model to estimate the cost of several hydrogen fueling station options for the city. We will meet with Shell in Early October for a final wrap up meeting.

3. Automotive Fuel Transitions (i.e. My dissertation)
While I have spent most of the last 7 weeks working on the Shell project and Chinese, Dr. Ma and I have begun discussing my research topic in more depth. He knows people at the Shenhua Group, China's massive state-owned coal company. Their R&D center is in Shanghai and they are working on synfuel production technology so I hope to pay a visit sometime in the next couple months and find out more about their plans for synfuel production. You can check out the company here: http://www.shenhuacoal.com/english/e_index.htm. I've begun pouring through a few of the "suitcase o' books" I brought over from the US on technology evolution and innovation. That should keep me fairly occupied for a while.

3. Conference on Intelligent Transportation Technologies
I attended a conference on intelligent transportation technology put on by Tongji's Transportation Studies Department. It was a good opportunity to rekindle some of the contacts Jason and I made last December with some of the transportation teachers and students. While their studies are not directly related to my research, they are quite familiar with Shanghai local gov't and the planning process here.

4. Met with Lee Schipper and crew
Last weekend, Jason and I had dinner with Lee and his colleagues, Dr. Yoshi Hayashi from Nagoya University, and Peter Roberts from the World Bank. All have extensive international experience in the development of transportation infrastructure. They and a few more of the world's leading sustainable transportation professionals/reserachers are in town for a special workshop with Shanghai Planning Commission to talk about how other mega-cities around the world have dealt with congestion. Shanghai needs them badly!

Overall life in China is a great adventure; every day I see/learn something new. Just the other day, I walked into my friend's apartment to find that their were 12 beds (and one small puppy, awww=)) in the one medium size room. I now understand how the population is so dense here. It's not the size of the building, it's the amount of people crammed into each building.

A few week ago, my friend brought me to her grandpa's house (see picture below) in the countryside, a +1000 year old settlement where the roads are barely wide enough for one car. From there, the wealthy uncle of the family then drove me in their (brand-new!) Buick sedan to their beautiful new villa in one of Shanghai's new suburban developments (satellite cities). From the roof, I could see hundreds of identical houses being constructed, each separate, though packed tightly together. Two very different extremes in one day.

In one of my "Expression Sessions" with my classmates (see below), I asked them hypothetically what they would like to do if they had enough money that they did not have to work. I thought they'd say something like, join a punk-rock band or study poetry (kidding =)). Actually, 2 out of 3 said they would first buy a car and go drive somewhere! Yes, I think impending car growth is definitely on it's way to China!

Qiao Wenxuan (Jonathan)

Aug 17, 2005

Hey all, Just wanted to send a little hello from Shanghai. Things are going pretty well here. I was warmly welcomed by Dr. Ma and his students as soon as I arrived and everyone's been helping me get settled and adjusted. Getting over the first week language barrier was pretty tough, but now Mandarin is soaking in a little bit and I can now go shopping by myself, take public transportation, and order Zhongguofan (Food=)).

The facilities at Tongji are very impressive and growing rapidly (see picture); they have a large laboratory for developing environmental vehicles technologies, part of which is devoted towards fuel cell vehicle and hydrogen technologies. In the lab garage, students and faculty work day and night, even on weekends on the fuel cell vehicles and H2 experiments. Last Saturday I ran into Wan Gang, president of all of Tongji University, stopping in to check on the progress of the cars accompanied by Yu Zhouping (Dean of the College of Automotive Studies).

Each night, my classmates and I have what have now been dubbed, "Expression Sessions". We talk only in Mandarin for 45 min, then we talk only in English for the next 45. We both learn new "expressions", and we get to "express" our thoughts on a range of subjects from personal experiences to fuel transition strategies for China. They seem happy to practice their English, and of course I learn a ton of Mandarin since I'm surrounded by so many teachers.

So I know you told me to hold off on data collection until I get the lay of the land, but I just wanted to present you with some quick quantitative statistics I've collected so far:

Fuel Cell Vehicles at Tongji: 10
Tube Trailers of hydrogen: 1
Students in the H2 Lab: ~10
Time to get to downtown Shanghai: 1.2 hr by bus
Meals purchased at my cafeteria with a $12 card: 25 and counting
Typhoons encountered: 1
Paper products dispensed at my cafeteria: 0
Pieces of donkey flesh consumed: 1 (a small piece)
Ice cubes I've seen, let alone consumed: 0
Other white people I've seen on my campus: 2 (but they've since left)
Towns visited by my new bicycle named "Huahua": 1, An Ting (aka International Automobile City)
Times people have chuckled and told me my Chinese name sounds like a girls name: 3

Jonathan (Qiao Wenxuan)