1、高考资源网（） 您身边的高考专家The Australian Government is pushing for the countrys top business leaders to deepen their understanding of Asian cultures and business practices.This comes as part of the governments recent release of a much anticipated white paper on Australia in the Asian Century.CRIs Alexandra Bl
2、ucher has more.The Australian governments Asian Century white paper states that one third of the board members of the top 200 public companies should have a deep understanding of Asia by 2025.Many business leaders and analysts in the Asia-Pacific region have welcomed this; however some say that it i
3、s long overdue.Cui Lin is a Senior Lecturer in International Business in the Research School of Management at The Australian National University in Canberra.He says that the white papers goals are a good starting point but putting a number on the ratio of board members with a high level of Asian lit
4、eracy is impractical:Realistically I dont think that you can put an artificial number on the composition of the board. Obviously it depends on the nature of the business, it depends on the focus of the industry each company is competing in. Not all the industries and all of the firms need to engage
5、closely or directly with Asia. Some of them might engage in Asia through indirect channels or their supply chains which means that they dont necessarily need a third of their board members to have that capacity.After the release of the report last Sunday the Australian governments rhetoric has echoe
6、d the report, using phrases such as a high Asian culture IQ or Asian Literacy levels.But Cui says that this way of talking about cultural knowledge is too broad:The definition of the understanding of Asia, the literacy, its very vague right so how can you define that a person has expertise in Asia r
7、elated business issues. You could define it by the educational background, sometimes you can define that based on working background or sometimes you know just remote personal experience. Its a gesture, but it can not be seen as a very restrictive requirement.Australias largest trading partner is Ch
8、ina, followed by Japan and the United States.China accounts for almost one third of Australias exports, with a large chunk of that coming from the mining sector.Wang Zhenyu, an Assistant Research Fellow at the China Centre for International Studies, says that the white papers recommendations are ver
9、y positive and timely.Wang says that while business is booming between the two countries, cultural misunderstandings in business relations are a common occurrence.One of the most common, he says, is the perception of what the Chinese term guanxi or connections and relations means in practice:I think
10、 this term is very much misunderstood or misread by the Australian business society. When a person has guanxi with another they know the concerns of each other. Theres a kind of sincerity I think and also a strong sense of credibility. Thats I think the essence of guanxi rather than what a lot of ot
11、her people alluded to bribery or corruptive activities; I think we should appreciate this word in a better way rather than in a negative way.Wang says that Australian business leaders need to look at deeper philosophical aspects of Chinese culture in order to improve relations in the long term.Its m
12、ore about a difference of culture in general, so I think that Confucianism is a very important aspect of Chinese culture that deserves more attention from the Australian side including business communities. This is a kind of shift of mindset or paradigm shift.For CRI, Im Alexandra Blucher. 版权所有高考资源网
