If animals could talk, what shall we do?

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-26 22:02

TIANJIN -- "In 2013, you are running a large franchised packinghouse and meat retail enterprise. Suddenly you find some mammals have learnt how to speak as human, and some cows and sheep can even talk as six-year-old kids. Then how will you act against this crisis?"

This question with a sci-fi style was unexpectedly raised by organizers of the annual meeting of the New Champions 2008 under the World Economic Forum in northern China's Tianjin Municipality for Chinese entrepreneurs attending the conference, which was scheduled to be held from September 27 to 28.

The meeting, yet with a theme of Next Wave, is filled with a sense of crisis under the shadows of the US credit crunch and the ensuing global economic downturn and of the recent production safety scandals in China.

"Perhaps an enterprise should turn a slaughterhouse into a zoo, "Pan Shiyi, a well-known Chinese real estate investor, anwsered the question at one of the seminars held Friday for the annual meeting.

The reply of Yu Minhong, president of China's largest private education organ New Oriental, was that "first of all, we should make a judgement on whether the mammals were able to speak English, then we would make a decision accordingly."

Some entrepreneurs chose to report to their superiors, while some others believed the mammals should be ordered to shut up.

Zhang Xin, CEO of the leading real estate company SOHO, said, " Maybe we can let the mammals to sing, or we can change our life style to become vegetarians, because environmental protection should be the final solution."

"Firstly we should realize information disclosure, as it would be more internationalized in 2013. The process to turn a crisis into a good chance should be humanistic. This is a problem of moral," said Wang Lifen, a producer with the CCTV economic program. Her answer was applauded.

The entrepreneurs were also caught unprepared by other questions. They included "if people cannot see clear after contracting a weird eye disease and lost their financial creditworthiness, what you shall do as a bank governor", and "if no people go to sleep any longer, what you shall do as a hotel owner".

As for the former question, we would use scientific and technological means, such as finger print and DNA identification, to re-build the credit system, said Bi Yujuan, general manager of Tianjin cotton trading market.

As for the latter one, Prof. Wang Jianmao, with China Europe International Business School, said, if no people need sleeping, more demand would likely emerge for lighting at night. Hotel workers may probe into more ways to customerize their services to make more profits.

"There is little probability for all these to happen. But once they take place, they will likely terminate an enterprise," said CTC Partner Wu Ying, which was the host of the seminar.

"Several months earlier, almost nobody thought even leading US investment banks could collapsed suddenly or such big Chinese dairy companies as Mengniu and Yili could be exposed to major crisis over one night."

In the Global Risks 2008 the World Economic Forum released as early in January, the Forum pointed out this year would beset with risks, including global economic slowdown, systematic financial crisis, and problems in environment, resources and grain supplies.

China's leaders have pointed out 2008 would be the most difficult year for the Chinese economy, which experienced 30 years of growth, and emphasized establishment of crisis on different occassions.

China was still a devleoping country, where productivity remained low and there was still a long way for the nation to go before it was modernized, Premier Wen Jiabao noted Wednesday at the general debate of the 63rd UN General Assembly.

At the above seminar held Friday for the Summer Davos meeting, Chinese participants agreed that entrepreneurs should take anti- risk actions under the following conditions: -- the supply chain is broken up; problems in product quality and intelligent property rights emerge; government and industrial policy shifts are made; crisis occurs in credit and financial regimes.

"To react to these problems, we need to cast off traditional mindset and solve them with innovative methods and approaches of imaginative power,"Wu Ying said.