While others were sitting at home on New Year's Eve waiting to see whether their heat and power would go out, School of Business Professor Paul Miesing greeted the millennium in Bangkok as part of a month-long tour of Southeast Asia.

Miesing, an associate professor of management who has taught at the University at Albany for 20 years, traveled to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia in part because of the experience he had teaching as a Fulbright Scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai during the 1998-'99 academic year.

Miesing's job as a Fulbright was to teach business courses to students at Fudan. The University has enjoyed excellent relations with Fudan University for more than two decades, and has a joint B.A./M.B.A. program in which UAlbany students spend their junior year at Fudan learning advanced Chinese. In turn, top students from Fudan come to UAlbany to earn an M.B.A. The Fulbright is separate from the University's program, but Miesing used the opportunity to meet periodically with UAlbany students who were studying at Fudan.
   
I was sent to teach the M.B.A. students strategic management, Miesing said. Graduate programs in China are pretty new. And M.B.A. programs are really new but very hot.

The professor met with his first classroom surprise the day he asked who had read the assigned case. Only a few hands went up. Later, he found out that students must work for three years before they can qualify for a business M.B.A. program in China. Since they were still working, few had time to prepare class cases.
   
They are pretty responsible managers - these guys are the elite, the cream of the crop - and they are going to be running the show, he said. They go to school two days a week, work full time, and have class a few evenings a week and on weekends. And they travel for work. They told me they have to take as many as seven courses a semester. There is no way that they could have time to prepare for class, he said. They see class as a place to come in and hear you talk.

Miesing said his students tended to take a lot of notes but were not quick to voice their opinions. By breaking the class into small discussion groups and requiring each group to have a leader who would report to the class on the small group findings, he was able to generate more discussion.
   
Miesing also found his students to be enthusiastic, interested, and friendly. He played basketball with them and socialized with them. Conversation was not always easy, since Miesing did not know Chinese at the time. (He took Introduction to Mandarin at UAlbany upon his return in Fall 1999.) Most, but not all, of his students abroad knew English. 
    
Looking back on his experience fondly, Miesing said, The best place to be teaching M.B.A. students is as a Fulbright in Shanghai. That's as good as it can get. To fulfill the teaching requirements of the Fulbright, he taught business ethics in Spring 1999 in Fudan's joint program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. M.I.T. received $10 million from a Hong Kong corporation to have first crack at locating the best M.B.A. students.
   
With this money they were able to improve the infrastructure of the classrooms. These business classrooms were as good as the ones here. I just brought in a laptop and went to work, he said.

While in China, Miesing lived in the foreign experts' residence in Shanghai. He had such a positive experience there that when he returned to UAlbany, for the first time he considered the possibility of becoming a faculty member in residence. He now lives on Alumni Quad.

Miesing is philosophical about the challenges of doing business in China. American firms need to know why they want to expand in China, and to be aware of the risks going into such a venture. Some of the reasons a company may not flourish include unexpected marketplace changes, new competition and technology, or having the government step in and change the rules, he said.
    There are some inherent conflicts to overcome as well. China as a country seeks order and stability and resists drastic change, he said. 
   
There is a saying in China: The nail that stands up gets hammered down, Miesing said. American companies, on the other hand, want managers who will take risks, show initiative, and be entrepreneurial.
    
Americans sometimes operate on the mistaken assumption that based on the numbers alone, $1 multiplied by a billion people, they can make money in China. This is simply not the case. Some firms have done OK, but others have had to pull back. Few U.S. firms make money in China. There has been a rush to get rich in China, but it hasn't worked, he said. Perhaps American business should take the long view. China is patient. They have great numbers but they have time on their side too. They will remind you that they have 5,000 years as a continuous civilization. Maybe we should be patient too, he said.
   
As for Miesing, he had such a positive experience as a Fulbright scholar that he hopes to return to China again, perhaps to continue research on the topic of  Chinese Minds in U.S. Bodies, that is, examining what happens when Chinese managers work for American corporations - and how different styles of doing business can be bridged.