Thursday, May 10, 2007

Wake up and smell the coffee

Beijing's Forbidden City palace is considering closing a Starbucks on its grounds after protests led by a state TV personality who says the American coffeehouse's presence is eroding Chinese culture.
The writer claimed that economic globalisation does not give us culture. However, I disagree with his stand. It is possible, if managers of various firms learns to be more flexible. For example, starbucks could substitute the production of coffee with chinese tea at the forbidden city. This way, starbucks could continue to make their business profits and at the same time, the chinese culture of tea tasting could be taught to and experienced by the foreigners. Moreover, if the sales of tea are successful, tea production would become a unique feature of starbucks as well. Then, starbucks would not just be glorifying the western but also the chinese culture too.

1 Comments:

Blogger Clarence Tan said...

It is clear that China has not learnt its lesson from history that being inward looking and so afraid of foreign influence can and will slow them down in a world that is moving at an unrelenting pace due to globalisation.

I fail to see how a cup of latte or capuccino can "erode" its chinese identity and culture. If a cup of coffee could be that influential, then China has to pull the plug on the internet which is even more influential. Better yet take away television and movies. Oh and while you're at it, raid every european fine dining restaurant, japanese sushi bar and south-american barbeque house because the food they serve there make you forget that you're a chinese.

9:10 PM  

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