For junior’s achievement
Li Li

Born in Taiwan but emigrating to the United States when he was a baby, Paul C. Chou grew up fantasizing over images of Beijing. Chou’s parents, who were both born in Beijing but went to Taiwan in 1949, told their six children about the good old days of eating Tanghulu, a traditional snack of crystalline sugar-coated haws on a stick, watching Peking Opera, visiting temple fairs during Spring Festival and shopping at the century-old Dong’an Market in the heart of the city. After the family settled in the United States for a decade, the parents still diligently taught the children to speak Chinese in the belief that the family would some day move back to Beijing.
Whereas most members of the four-generation immigrant family are living on the U.S. East Coast, the influence of the long-remembered family education remains vivid in the minds of Chou and his siblings. “I am very Chinese,” said the 56-year-old successful scientist-turned-entrepreneur who started as an engineer in the Bell Systems Laboratory and later founded two software companies in the United States.
Growing up with dreams of China, doing something for his ancient homeland was always Chou’s passion. Yet he did not discover the perfect combination of his dream and passion until 1993 when he was admitted to the board of Junior Achievement (JA) International. In the same year, Chou founded the Chinese branch of this non-profit organization (NPO) devoted to offering free business and financial education to young people. After a long preparatory stage of localizing the curriculums and pilot projects in different universities, JA China has been operating actively in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong since 2001. With over 4,000 volunteers, it expects to offer courses for 100,000 students this year.
Over the years, Chou’s commitment to entrepreneurial training has been widely echoed in China, a country thirsting for an abundant supply of quality managers to match its headlong economic growth.
Seeing others succeed
Heading JA in China is now Chou’s full-time job without pay. He spends roughly half his time in the United States, where he also engages in fundraising for JA China. His wife and daughter have also worked as volunteers for JA China. Asked how much time he devotes to involvement in the JA China programs, he replies that he hasn’t calculated and only counts how many more years he can continue to contribute to the work. “Seeing other people succeed makes me happy and I am passionate about making an impact on our society,” he says.
“For 5,000 years of Chinese history, doing charity has been boiled down to one thing: to provide food on the table by creating jobs for people,” said Chou in standard and old-fashioned Mandarin. The essence of traditional Chinese culture matches perfectly with JA’s mission in creating a healthy economic cycle.
In Chou’s words: “We teach young people to balance the individual search for well-being with care for the community and society.” JA China teaches a business and economics-based curriculum for students from kindergarten to university. In a regular course for university students called Global Business Ethics, students are educated on the need to consider their responsibilities to the community and global society as a whole in making business decisions.
The most oft-heard comment from participants of JA courses in China is: “I wish I could have learnt it earlier.”
Jin Jun is a third-year student from the School of International Business of a Beijing university. Introduced by students of higher grades, she got to know about JA courses and has taken two campus programs, Career Go and Global Business Ethics. According to her, she has learned so much from these that she could not have got from any textbook or in the conventional classroom. Her vision in career planning and achieving success in multinational companies has been broadened by the personal experiences, failures or successes, of the JA volunteers. She would like to pass on her experience as a JA volunteer once she landed a job at a leading company.
Besides translating core curriculum designed by JA International in the United States, JA China also designs programs particularly targeted at China’s needs. Since 2003, JA has started a project of organizing business volunteers to teach JA programs in schools for children of migrant workers in Beijing and Shanghai. China now has 120 million rural workers in its cities and these are mostly working without any form of social security and have to pay a higher entrance fee when sending their children to local public schools.
The migrant schools on the outskirts of big cities have a very basic curriculum and no resources to provide knowledge on economics and business from a global perspective. “Every student, whether with advantages or disadvantages, has the potential to create wealth for society,” argues Chou. “I believe migrant school students might some day create the biggest company in China.”
In visualizing ways to expand JA’s operation in China, Chou is determined to design an efficient business model using the knowledge it teaches. While partnering schools to reach out to students, JA’s programs largely rely on resources from the business world for corporate sponsorship and volunteers as teachers and lecturers.
Chou said he was lucky to make a lot of friends in his business career by exercising his leadership. Among these are Boeing China President David Wang, CEO of Microsoft Greater China Timothy Chen and Cummins East Asia President John Watkins, who allot some of their valuable time to volunteer as lecturers or competition judges for JA China. Meanwhile, their companies have become major corporate sponsors and important sources of volunteers. But, for Chou, their most important contribution is their endorsement, and the credibility and enhanced reputation they give to JA. So far, no Chinese company has become a corporate sponsor. This, Chou believes, is partly because JA is a fairly new thing to homegrown managers and corporate social responsibility is also a relatively new concept to corporate China. However, he believes Chinese companies do have the heart to do something for society and JA China will take a more aggressive approach in raising public awareness on corporate social responsibility and encouraging Chinese business to support youth education.
Besides changes in the social environment, he believes the Chinese Government could help the growth of non-profit organizations by passing a law to govern non-governmental organizations. According to current laws and regulations, international NPOs, like JA China, are not allowed to publicly raise money in China. Another big challenge faced by JA China is human capital: How to attract the best talents to staff JA and make them believe in a viable career in a NPO.
Meeting the gap
In a country that underwent three decades as a centrally planned economy, from the 1950s to the late 1970s, entrepreneurship is a concept that was long played down if not totally forsaken. In reawakening youth to the tradition of entrepreneurship, JA China devotes itself to teaching participants of all ages what it takes to become entrepreneurs and then giving something back to society. The three key qualities that JA China is targeting are character, creativity and leadership.
“I find that Chinese students are just as creative as their peers in the United States and Europe,” said Chou. Echoing this assertion is the tremendous performance of one team sent by JA China to the 2006 Global Business Challenge, a youth competition involving simulated management of an imaginary company, which placed second out of 556 teams from 24 countries.
However, Chou still thinks China lags far behind Western countries in providing a tailored curriculum on entrepreneurship for students. Chou said that, when he was young, there were hundreds of NPOs in the United States providing students with training in leadership and entrepreneurship. He thinks he benefited a lot from such courses. In the landscape of China, JA is still a pioneering NPO in this regard. “It is my dream to see 50 years from now when a Chinese company call a young employee to set up a company with $100 million right away, she or he can stand up and just say ‘yes, sir’,” said Chou.

The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles (Exchange Item)


Revisiting Simla Agreement
Momin Iftikhar

Ever since it’s signing on 2nd July 1972, Simla Agreement has remained a much misinterpreted document. India has excessively misused it to advance its loaded agenda on Kashmir and promoting perceptions that have pushed the dispute into a dead end. Indians have gone to great lengths to convince the world that the Agreement has divorced Kashmir of its UN linkages and turned it into a bilateral issue towards whose solution no third party involvement could be entertained. Indians also claim that the Agreement has converted the temporary Ceasefire Line (CFL) in Kashmir that came into being under auspices of the UN as the result of Karachi Agreement of 1949, into a Line of Control (LoC) which has acquired the attributes of a quasi border dividing the State of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact India’s malicious exploitation of the Simla Agreement has become the biggest impediment to the solution of the festering Issue.
Simla Agreement was signed in the aftermath of 1971 debacle when the Indian aggression had severed Pakistan’s eastern wing. It speaks volume regarding the centrality of Kashmir to the Indo Pak interaction that the Agreement that was cobbled in the aftermath of hostilities primarily concerns itself with the situation in Kashmir. Indians unjustifiably claim that the Agreement had settled the Kashmir Issue for good; but surprising as it may seem, the provisions of the Agreement fail to accord authority to Indians’ interpretations. M.J. Akbar in his book Kashmir: Behind the Vale amply brings out the discomfiture of Indian diplomats with the contents of the Agreement vis-à-vis their expectations and initial euphoria. “For some time [after signing the agreement] Indian diplomats went around congratulating themselves on how they had changed the CFL into LoC till it became bit of a joke”, he writes.
Simla Agreement, like all agreements between nations, is a meticulously crafted document on which the President of Pakistan and the Indian Prime Minister affixed their signatures only after the two sides had spent endless hours in deliberating the nuances of each and every word and phrase and their implications. But, strange as it may seem, there seem to be a vide chasm in interpretation of its vital clauses by India and Pakistan. In particular it is amazing to observe the brazen manner in which India has used the non existent clauses of the Agreement to promote pernicious themes on Kashmir viz calling into question the validity of the UN Resolutions, metamorphosing LoC turning into a quasi border and brandishing an ironclad bilateralism over Kashmir which has precluded any facilitation by outside agency including the UN. Given the context it should be worthwhile to visit the Agreement on its 35th birthday and see how has India, through convoluted logic, subverted the spirit of the text to its own self serving interpretations.
Indian claims that the Agreement has cut off Kashmir from its UN dimension is given a staggering blow by the opening commitment of the pact. Clause [1 (i)] of the Agreement states; That the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries. If that be so where does the question arise of the Issue having been being withdrawn from the UN and the UN resolutions losing their validity?
Regarding Indian assertions of ironclad provision of bilateralism provided by the Agreement, let’s turn to clause 1 (ii) of the pact; “That the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them. Pending the final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organization, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations”.
Read in conjunction with the preceding clause, the Agreement thus enjoins upon both parties to engage in bilateral negotiations in accordance with the resolutions endorsed by the UNSC. It also carries the clear implication that negotiations be undertaken to reach a “final settlement” of the Issue. In this context it needs to be acknowledged that while Pakistan has been constantly striving to engage India in a substantive dialogue over Kashmir (Ongoing efforts to address Kashmir in the framework of the Composite Dialogue Process being the latest endeavor) but the Indians have been stonewalling any forward movement by posturing that the Kashmir issue was already settled through provisions (?) of the Simla Agreement. Indian occupation of Siachin Glacier in 1984 through aggression, which it continues to hold to date, also comes across as a flagrant violation of this clause of the Simla Act. Prof. Ali Khan, a legal expert, writing in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law provides an incisive insight into the Indian illogical interpretation of this clause. “It would defeat the purpose of the Agreement if bilateralism is invoked to merely cut off the Kashmir dispute from the international forum that can contribute to ending it. Furthermore, it would be unlawful to use the bilateral clause to postpone indefinitely the final settlement of the dispute, with the intention to freeze the status quo.


The Zionists conspirators
Col ® M Zaman Malik

Two leading US periodicals, News Week and US News & World Report, have described both North Korea and Pakistan as rogue states, blaming the former for having nuclear device and the latter for assisting it in development of the nuclear device. The whole world knows that Pakistan’s nuclear programme is based on enriched Uranium whereas, North Korean has nothing to do with Uranium; it is based on plutonium. Why Israel or others never ever raised a little finger on India’s nuclear explosions continuing since 1974? India’s nuclear programme is entirely based on Plutonium, like that of the North Korean. Sometime back India alone, therefore, was being held responsible for providing all that was needed by Iran and Iraq both, with its enriched plutonium programme. None of the mentioned states indeed, need Pakistan’s nuclear assistance. At one stage, Pakistan was also going to believe in what the Zionist’s - driven world was being fed with, e.g., the fabricated stories and transcripts. But, as of today, Pakistanis are going to believe that the US is limbering up to take on Iran. The propaganda thrust against Pakistan has therefore been rejuvenated afresh so as to divert every body’s focus from Iran, while keeping it fixed on Pakistan and North Korea. It’s a deceptive measure. America can never take a single step effectively against North Korea, in any case. It is bound to take on Iran.
India and Israel are interconnected at least by two most prominent and most evident and visible proofs that need no explanation. Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of about one hundred villages in the hill country North of Jerusalem, which have been dated to about 1200 BCE. The Civilization had begun in Mesopotamia. The king of Babylon was the greatest Power in the Middle East and Judah was the vassal of Babylon. At this point in time, Mohanjo Dharro (before the Cataclysm) and Judah existed in their respective regions, contemporarily. The worship of Oxen, Cow and Calf were in practice seriously among both the peoples; one can see the same in the Shrine in West Jerusalem houses and the Dead Sea Scrolls.’ “The sexual imagery embodied in the Shrine shows how deeply the Secular State of Israel had assimilated the ancient myths of sacred geography.” (A History of Jerusalem-one city, two Faiths, by Keren Armstrong, P.XVI). The Oxen, Cow or Calf and the marble-made organ of the human male fixed in the Hindu Temples are still being worshipped by men and women in India with the same belief and enthusiasm. BJP was always preferred by the Jews and their vassals, over Congress, for these good old similarities that existed among both the orthodoxies.
Muslims, despite being the believers of one of the Faiths of Abraham, are frowned at, by Jews and their vassals. They don’t believe in what has been mentioned in the Holy Qur’an about Ishmael and his father Abraham; instead they believe that the Holy Kahba was raised by Ishaque and his father Abraham. How sad, they always rebelled against most of the Messengers and made fun of them when they didn’t say what they were told to say by the Jews. The Bestowal of Prophethood was always there to guide His Messengers and He saved them from the false and fabricated revelations, approved by the Jews. These are the reasons for Zionist’s likings for Hindus and hatred against Muslims. However, the today’s likings are preferred over the old similarities. Japan, India, Israel and The United States are One Group of the WTO’s Nihilism and they share common security concerns. They use phrases “International Community” and “shared sovereignty”, which are, if not quite, oxymoron, at least charged with wishful thinking. They are hollandaise sauce and their incompatible ingredients can not be made to blend by beating them together hard enough.