Day 31 – 恭喜发财 – PassageMaker’s Chinese New Year party!
February 15, 2010 by whit · Leave a Comment
恭喜发财, gōng xǐ fā cái, wishing you a prosperous new year!
More articles and weird stuff:
Toxic Linfen – regardless of Climategate, there is still room for commonsense pollution controls in developing nations
Think You Know China? Eight Things Foreigners Get Wrong
Interesting talk on Vested Outsourcing – not sure if I care for the new buzz word, but [...]
Days 27-30 – Plenty of hard work and plenty of visitors
February 15, 2010 by whit · Leave a Comment
I’ve already returned to the States a few days ago, but the last couple weeks in China were so hectic, I am filing these posts late. Days 31-37 to come shortly.
Articles, articles, articles…
Chinese diplomat: Ties with US deteriorated recently – no, really?
More from Reuters
This is just wrong – Chinese girl, 9, becomes one of world’s [...]
Days 15-26 – Pollution, street food, deadlines, Hong Kong and crossing the road in China
February 5, 2010 by whit · 2 Comments
Our founder, Mike Bellamy, who evidently doesn’t have enough WORK TO DO posted the Rick Roll the other day under my name. That was his hint that I should blog more often, so here goes. Sorry for the Rick Roll. Sorry for the absence. And sorry in advance for the length of this post.
More interesting [...]
Day 14
January 19, 2010 by whit · Leave a Comment
Day 14 – Tuesday – Some interesting China article links to kick things off:
Daring blogger tests the limits
Article with some interesting graphs on Chinese military spending
Article on Google
Power rationing in China
Why America and China Will Clash
Avatar banned in China
chinaSMACK – this is an awesome news aggregation site sent to me by Dave Learn – a [...]
I sure hope he’s wrong…
November 7, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
A very disturbing piece from Michael S. Malone about the “hollowing out” of America’s innovation capital, Silicon Valley. It seems there are no new start-ups, due to lack of venture capital, onerous regulations from Washington (that make it damn near impossible to do an IPO), etc. If America loses the mantle of world’s innovation engine, what [...]
Mike Bellamy knows his stuff (part 2)
October 22, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
For anyone thinking of doing business in China, please listen here for an excellent interview with PassageMaker founder Mike Bellamy. In this interview, he focuses on practical measures to protect your Intellectual Property (IP) when dealing with Chinese suppliers.
PassageMaker has years of experience protecting our clients’ IP, including filling Chinese patents and trademarks using our [...]
They levelled the playing field
October 21, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
There has been lots of ink lately about Mao the “political philosopher”. I won’t get into that other than to say that if any one person deserves credit for China’s economic transformation over the last 30 years, it is Deng Xiao Ping, not Mao.
It was either Mr. China or China Road (both wonderful books) that [...]
Consultants are a waste of time and money
October 16, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
Today my state and federal tax returns were due. I paid my (substantial and onerous) estimated taxes back on April 15th, but extensions were filed to finalize some deductions and so today was also tax day. Oh, the rhapsodic joy of having two tax days this year! Everyone should be so lucky.
Despite being assured by [...]
There’s a lotta stuff you can’t learn from a textbook, because no one ever wrote the textbook
October 9, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
When Mike Bellamy started PassageMaker, it was a typical trading company. Mike had a relationship with a particular set of factories, and sold their services to customers (like me) at a mark-up, taking ownership of the parts and assuming warranty risk. It worked well for a while, but soon enough, despite all our efforts, things [...]
Who Dares Wins
October 5, 2009 by whit · Leave a Comment
This is the motto of the British Special Air Service. It is also great advice for any entrepreneur.
I had my first job at 14 running a lathe in a machine shop. I am sure I did a horrible job that first summer. I’ve worked in factories many times since then, and all those experiences taught [...]
I was fed up with middlemen & poorly run factories distorting pricing, failing to control quality and allowing intellectual property (IP) to be knocked off, so I decided to do something about it. 
