Another Civilization's Increasing Prowess

This company claimed they were the best in the world at what they did.  Others can only do what we do in a highly compromised fashion.  We however, can go eight times deeper, we are nine times stronger, and six times faster. Of course, we’re concerned with IP protection.  We look at each market in terms of the maturity of the legal infrastructure and develop or strategy about IP protection and other matters, incrementally. 

It all sounded quite familiar, except that this was a Chinese company considering the world beyond its boarders.  They were as convinced as any shop I’d ever met in Silicon Valley that no one could touch them.  “Who do you understand to be your competition?”  “No one.  We don’t really have anyone who can do what we can do.”  How many times have I heard that?  But hearing it from this group I must confess I had a broad mix of feelings.  On the one hand, I was proud of China and proud of them that that they had apparently built something so distinct.  I told them as much: China successfully disrupting other parts of the world, including my home, was a manifest possibility.   Of course I also felt skeptical, and perhaps, if I’m candid, disoriented considering another civilization's, increasing prowess. 

My colleague had to buy me the coffee when we arrived, as I was cashless and they didn’t take foreign cards.  After the meeting I was determined to sport the next beverage for the follow on meeting we were to have, there at the same shop.  I asked and there was no ATM in this enormous lobby we were waiting in.  The young, female attendant suggested thought ‘just over there, behind that building’ was Minsheng Bank ATM.

I dialed into a conference call, en route, which I could largely let run in the back and began a somewhat distracted search. I walked into one and then another lobby in the adjoining compound.  People kept sending me further and further backward.  Finally, just as I was required to actually say something, I found a door which suggested a Minsheng Bank building.  But the people inside waved their hands and shook their heads.  The ATM is down that way, around the corner.

And the ‘cash recycling’ machine at the Minsheng bank wouldn’t work with my card.  I fretted for just a few seconds there that it might not spit the card out at all.  Chatting away about the deal we were working to close, I considered the neighborhood, walked back the way I’d come and across the street and over to an ICBC sign which eventually allowed me to get my old-fashioned paper money. 

Friday 3/15/19