China Trip

In this issue: PIM In China; Business Is Back, But Which Way Will It Cut? Lourey's Announcement; Will Gambling Be Back? What Happens If Zimmerman Isn't Indicted? Bits & Pieces

• Gov. Tim Pawlenty and most of the other delegations moved on to Hong Kong last night, but I decided to stay on with the Ag. Delegation in Shanghai. Smart move, given their plane was delayed several hours to accommodate military moves in Hong Kong airspace (most likely to prep for former Pres. George H.W. Bush, who is visiting.
• As most of our readers know, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading that state's delegation on a trip very similar to ours with one exception. Last night Schwarzenegger led the Californians to the Shanghai Science Museum for a special screening of the latest Harry Potter movie.
• Target's vice president of government affairs, Nate Garvis, is traveling with the California delegation and he reports that it's a hoot. Garvis is the guest of Maersk Sealand, which ships containers worldwide. Target is now Maersk's second biggest customer.
• The Ag delegation had its final dinner last night. They hosted a turkey dinner for about 70 Chinese. Jennie O (now owned by Hormel) supplied the birds. That delegation is flying back today.
• Your publisher will take a mini-vacation starting tomorrow in Hong Kong. Some travelers make hotel choices based on location and amenities. Not your publisher. She makes choices based on culturally important things like where James Bond movies have been filmed.
• However, this won't be the last report. French Meadow Bakery founder and organic guru extraordinaire Lynn Gordon carefully documented the Shanghai Wal-Mart shopping experience.

We'll post her photos in the next few days. One highlight? To pick the best frog from a tank, the Chinese plunge their hands into the water and squeeze the frogs like melons.

Today's highlight was touring the soybean processing plant owned by Shanghai Dongchen Grain & Oil Company. Located in Shanghai on the Hang Pu River, it is one of the largest soybean processing plants in China.

Soybeans are shipped in bulk from either the west mainland coast of the U.S. (where many Minnesota beans are shipped) or from South America in boats like these:

It takes about 18 days for a boat to get from the U.S. to Shanghai, and 48 days from Brazil to Shanghai. It's hard to imagine what life is like for these men who work the boats.

To get the beans out of the boats, these machines suck up the beans from the boats and a "conveyor suction thing" moves them into the plant.

But some beans remain in the boat and have to be swept out by hand.

First stop in the plant for the beans is this big vat.

The beans will be separated into oil (which will be sent to a refinery at another location, lecithin (used in chocolate, other confections and pharmaceuticals) and meal for food and feed. Increasingly soybean meal is used in Chinese aquaculture. So, next time you pass a soybean field in Fairmont or Morris, think about how some of those beans will end up in Chinese fish.

Here are some soy flakes that have just been processed in the big vats.

The entire processing operation is run by this computer and three men.

The soybean meal is bagged by machine and dropped by conveyor belt where it is stacked by hand. Each bag weighs about 135 pounds.

I couldn't help but marvel at the worker who adjusts the bags as they come out of the shoot. A bag falls every 5 seconds. That's what this guy does for a living, and he makes somewhere between $100 and $120 a month to do the work.

Other workers lift the bags onto these carts and place them on the conveyor belt on the left, which drops the bags into a boat or onto a truck.

More than one Minnesota farm boy (now man) commented on how this is why the Chinese are so thin. They spend their lives lifting those heavy bags. This operation is different than in the U.S., where the meal is also shipped in bulk. The Chinese need to bag the meal because their railroad and road infrastructure cannot support bulk transfer, and the average size of a Chinese farm is small and they buy feed in the smaller bag quantities.

After the tour, we met around this conference room.

The Chinese man standing up on the left had a great sense of humor. He told us that Minnesota soybeans are the best--although when the Brazilians are here, he says he tells them South American beans are the best. Also, worth noting, and maybe something only women pick up on. Every business meeting I attended was similarly structured: around a table like this and always with fresh flowers in the middle.

Some soybean facts. Last year the U.S. sold China a record 11 million bushels of beans. They are the number one imported crop for the Chinese. Why? The Chinese are eating more meat and farm-raised fish and need the feed. Incredibly, the Chinese expect to double the number of beans they import in the next two years. For those interested in the organic versus genetically modified organism (GMO) controversy, all the beans the Chinese process at this plant are GMO beans.

At the end of the meeting, as always, there was the exchange of gifts. One of Minnesota's finest public servants, Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson prepares the Minnesota gifts (nice Dept. of Ag. pens). The Chinese gave us logo'ed baseball caps and keychains.

This isn't a great photo but the expression on the man's face in the middle (he was a big shot at the company) and the woman sitting next to him, well, they seem to say it all, "We are so glad to be doing business with you and we're glad you're glad you're doing business with us. It's good for all of us. You grow more beans. We'll process more beans."

God bless the 21^st century.

As mentioned in other reports, patent protection is a huge problem in China. But usually it's very easy to spot the fakes. For example on this bottle of "Coca Cola,"

...is this figure on the back:

Not exactly the family image the real Coca Cola Company wants to convey.

Here is the Chinese version of a fly-catcher.

One of the reasons Shanghai is so lovely is that there are so many parks

And who would believe windowboxes on hanging freeways?

Feng Shui In Shanghai

Yesterday after the tour of the Hormel plant, we flew to Shanghai.

I don't think any of us realized how drab Beijing was until we saw Shanghai.

Shanghai rocks. The city boasts more than 3,000 skyscrapers and the architecture of each one seems to be distinctively unique. The photos I took of the skyline simply don't do justice to the futuristic feel of the place.

There are many buildings with strange holes in them.

Hormel built a meat processing plant outside of Beijing in 1995. Some of us toured the building.

It's a striking facility with meticulously maintained grounds (unlike other nearby factories). Built to USDA standards, which are obviously much more stringent than Chinese ones, the foods processed here include hotdogs, bacon products, ham products, cold cuts, fresh pork products and a few beef, chicken and turkey products. Hormel's decision to stress "safe, wholesome product" has certainly paid off in recent years, given animal disease outbreaks and new food safety demands from Chinese consumers.

Today's first major meeting to which all the delegations were invited, was a political briefing. Media could attend but everything said was clearly "off the record." It struck your publisher that if everyone had skipped the "political briefing" and had the morning I did--all before 8 a.m.--the point of the meeting would have been made crystal clear.

Let me explain. To hit the gym this morning, I pushed the elevator button for the third floor below the lobby level. The elevator opened and I did a double take because I thought the time machine had kicked in and I was in the Amazon. There before me was an Olympic size (in length) swimming pool complicated by meandering side ponds and waterfalls surrounded by exotic flora and fauna. The ceiling was two stories high and tiny, star like twinkle lights were embedded in the ceiling.

In this issue: Politics In Minnesota Goes To China; What Does Tuesday Mean For 2006? Technology Rules In Ramsey--Seems Missing In Minneapolis; The Battle Of The '06 Session; Borden Is Back; Only Outsiders Needed To Apply; Bits & Pieces; Lobbyist Watch; Setting The Record Straight

Seriously! PIM Publisher Sarah Janecek--with PIM Publisher Blois Olson's dubious blessing--figures that, in the Internet age, why not try publishing 6,293 miles from Minnesota? Beginning November 12, she'll file daily reports, which will be published front and center, on PoliticsInMinnesota.com.

More About The Mission

Led by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the "Minnesota Mission to China" will be the most ambitious China trip any state has ever made: 218 people, 93 different events, six days and four cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen). Organizing such a trip boggles the mind. Masterfully leading all that organizing is Tony Lorusso, director of the Minnesota Trade Office.