CHINA, where President Arroyo just visited, shows us the importance of appointing the right persons, not necessarily the brightest and the best, to important positions.
And where foreigners are more qualified, the Chinese do not hesitate to engage their services, notwithstanding the fact that they are highly nationalistic, to the point of being racist.
They have regularly hired foreign coaches to run their sports programs. For the Athens Olympics, they got an NBA coach and a European coach for their basketball team.
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Today, Shanghai has a program to put up standard English names for all public places and to correct confusing signs, according to a news report.
The city’s main streets and public areas already carry signs in Chinese and English and sometimes, Japanese.
To its sign-designing committee of 26, the Shanghai government has appointed several foreigners as members to guide the others in the correct usage of English.
Nationalism also takes a backseat in the world of business.
China Construction Bank, one of the country’s four major government banks, has appointed Masamoto Yashiro, head of Japan’s Shinsei Bank, as an independent director, according to Dow Jones.
The bank recognizes Yashiro’s achievement in turning around the troubled Shinsei Bank into a model of profitability.
The other independent director to be appointed is a university professor specializing in financial system engineering.
Two years ago, the China Minsheng Bank appointed an American accountant as its foreign adviser.
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These go to show the weight given to making the best possible judgment for the right person for an important position, whether it is in sports, a civic project, or in the serious business of banking.
It is unthinkable for them to appoint a politician with no business experience to head the government’s oil corporation.
They will surely not appoint an aging actress with a weak academic background to head its Board of Censors, nor a former sex bomb to the board of directors of the government gambling monopoly.
Now a PR person to run a rapid rail transit organization, taking out a well-qualified person to accommodate him. Nor an old, sickly politician to head a government corporation in charge of valuable real estate.
For them, the right appointment is the difference between the success or failure of an organization. It is not the simple exercise of a prerogative.
