Exploring China – Globalspec Search EngineEssay Preview: Exploring China – Globalspec Search EngineReport this essayExecutive SummaryGlobalSpec is a specialized search engine for the engineering, manufacturing, and industrial community. They provide a domain-expert search tool which allows users to browse online product catalogues, millions of pages of published engineering content, as well as product and industry e-newsletters. All of these tools are designed to give the user the ability to perform their job at their highest level of accuracy and productivity. GlobalSpec has nearly six million registered users, most of whom are registered in the United States; however there is quite substantial presence of international users as well.
The purpose of this paper is to study the feasibility of GlobalSpec expanding their business and sales force into the Chinese market. It is predicted that by 2011, China will become the number one manufacturing country in the world, surpassing the United States. It would make sense to explore the possibility of GlobalSpec expanding into this giant manufacturing country.
About GlobalSpecSince its creation in 1996, GlobalSpec has grown into the leading specialized search engine for the engineering, manufacturing, and industrial community. With nearly six million registered users, growing by more than 20,000 new registrants each week, GlobalSpec is becoming “the place” for the engineering community to gather and conduct business.
GlobalSpec provides its users with a wide array of products and services. The main component of GlobalSpec is their web-search tool, which is an integration of the SpecSearch database and the Engineering Web. The proprietary SpecSearch database is a database of searchable original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and distributors product catalogues. This is composed of over thirty thousand digital catalogues containing more than 2.1 million products and over 148 million searchable product specifications. The Engineering Web is a vertical search engine which has hundreds of millions of pages of indexed engineering content, drawing both from the internet and proprietary content publishers. The latest of GlobalSpecs offerings is their sixty nine (and growing) product and industry e-newsletters.
GlobalSpec offers its clients a medium to reach the worldwide engineering audience unlike any other. Through a range of marketing services, companies can receive qualified filtered sales leads, product announcements and promotions, brand advertisement, and a range of e-media advertising and marketing services. Companies on GlobalSpecs website receive full contact and measured sales leads by integrating their parts and products into the SpecSearch database, banner ads and cost-per-click programs (CPC) on the Engineering Web search engine, and through a variety of additional promotional programs such as e-newsletters and GlobalSpecs online tradeshows and conferences.
GlobalSpec has worked very hard to create an innovative search engine and linking database which can facilitate the industrial and manufacturing community. Through extensive innovation, GlobalSpec has managed to captivate this professional engineering audience. Since this audience is at the heart of the manufacturing world, users are able to capture their target market directly and easily with sales programs and measurable brand advertising services.
Chinas Political OutlookChina has been governed by the Communist Party of China for the last 60 years. The political power in China is distributed, complex and highly competitive. Chinese government is managed by the state council, which is headed by premier. Based on Chinese constitution “National Peoples Congress (NPC) of the Peoples Republic of China is the highest organ of state power.” But NPC performs as a subordinate to the state council. Although there are other minor political parties but their powers are restricted as they operate under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The policy decisions in China are driven by bureaucratic and non-central government actors apart from the Communist Party leadership. Business sectors in China also pressurize Chinese government in policy decision. Chinas basic constitution principle is freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. Chinese officials restrict these freedoms on the ground of safe guarding “state secrets”.
China officially has 34 provincial-level governments; mostly the political power resides with central government to “conduct the administrative work concerning the economy, education, science, culture, public health, physical culture, urban and rural development, finance, civil affairs, public security, nationalities affairs, judicial administration, supervision and family planning in their respective administrative areas.”
The biggest challenge and question facing China is the move toward democracy. Whereas most of the emerging economies have moved towards democratic system of governing, China is still governed by one party system. Even though China has seen growth with one party system, the growth has fueled regional economic imbalance. The eastern seaboard of China consisting of Tianjin, Shandong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces has seen the growth due to presence of industries and foreign direct investments. Fueled by this growth in the eastern seaboard, people from the western region are migrating which has prompted the Chinese government to start economic development activities. From a political outlook perspective, new generation of leaders are being prepared to take power in 2012-2013 which should ensure the continuation of reform and modernization. The greater threat to Chinas political stability is growing corruption, widening inequalities between regions, increasing rural poverty.
Economic OutlookChina is the fastest growing major economy in the world. China has a massive trade surplus and huge currency reserves which serve as a backup for any major economic issues. In 2009, China was the second largest economy of world and its GDP grew 8.7 %. Unemployment during the year 2009 was 4.8 % which was 0.6 % higher than previous years. Chinas GDP rose 11.9% y-o-y and growth was attributed to real estate growth. The local governments have been spending more on the infrastructure projects. Property prices across the country have increased in the last one year due to the stimulus package that was announced by the Chinese government to tackle the global economic slowdown. The Chinese government faces numerous economic development challenges, like environment degradation due to economic growth, increasing corruption in various governments, and
In 2005, there were two countries that showed the most significant increase in national gross private investment. In 2005, China had an astounding 7.8 % growth rate. Between April, 2005 and March, 2005, the economy grew by 6.4 % and 4.2% respectively, while the national GDP grew 1.4 % and 1.2 % respectively. As the growth rate is rising, countries tend to maintain lower tax and spending levels at such a high rate that the interest on their national bonds becomes much, much larger than the cash of their own citizens. That’s why those countries that are growing fastest or the country that is growing worst to last are the countries that are growing most. It’s a case of how, how and when we need to deal with an emerging political environment.
In the past two years, China has been spending 10% more on infrastructure building than it did in the same period of 2009. Although the national economy has not been able to grow as fast, the infrastructure investment have been more substantial. There are a number of government projects in China that are attracting investors, such as roads and roads systems and roads improvements to make the nation’s infrastructure easier to install. The most common projects that came along with the infrastructure spending were construction upgrades, and the investment made during 2006/07 had an impact on public sector spending and also public spending levels.
The infrastructure spending numbers of China have grown in the past couple of years due to increased investment in infrastructure projects, particularly in the railway, water systems, energy sector building, solar power systems and oil and gas industries. Infrastructure spending is being financed by increasing the state revenues on the infrastructure projects. The government is also using the National Industrial Policy in the form of tax credits for private sector activities (i.e., the government’s share of GDP in government spending, or INPR) and the tax credits is used up by private companies.
Government spending growth
In the last two years, the increase in the spending on public sector construction by China has been especially strong due to increased investments in the construction of highways, bridges and bridges. However, this growth has not led to many of the projects being more expensive to install and to build, for the government projects are more expensive since the government is also using increased funds for general spending projects. In the last decade, China has added 3.4 million metric tons of new construction which comes close to the cost of construction in the US (10.2 million metric tons), and 2 million metric tons of new construction comes closest to the cost of construction at the US Federal level.
As of 2013, 6.1 million metric tons of new construction or new highways have been added in the world but in 2013 were the only two such bridges to be rated as expensive by the US government. In 2013, the construction of a road span was at the highest cost to maintain, at 1.5 billion metric tons of steel. In 2013, 10.2 million metric tons of new construction or new bridges were constructed or completed. Total foreign direct investment (FDI) in capital expenditure is 3.9 billion metric tons which means that China is not the largest producer of foreign direct investment in the world now (by volume) but it has overtaken the US by more than 1 billion metric tons; however, the current Chinese demand is very large and there is no way to control that demand and hence, is not able to control the rate of import, which