Internship update

I like my internship. Allow me to explain what I've figured out so far in a Q&A format.

How does the consulate general in Shanghai work?
The U.S. Consulate General is divided up into a lot of parts, only one of which is the FCS.

There are people that push U.S. agricultural exports (like wine - those guys are cool), people take care of U.S. residents (including those that reside in Chinese jails), people who do nothing but interview visa applicants ALL day, people who monitor the political and economic situation here, and people who provide security for these people.

There is no single building where all of this takes place. The FCS office and the public affairs' office are co-located with the Portman Hotel in one building, though we're on different floors. The consular section, where all the visa stuff happens, is in a different building three blocks away.

The main consulate grounds are a car ride away and behind much more serious security. It makes sense -- I'm sure public affairs is much more problematic when you're behind layers of security, and FCS might have a harder time attracting event attendees with a line of visa applicants out the door.

What does your office do?
The Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) promotes U.S. exports to foreign countries. We don't help companies that want to offshore. We don't help U.S. companies import. We push exports because it helps narrow the trade deficit and because all the other industrialized countries are doing it.

Though we can do many things, principally we do Gold Key Services (GKS) and Single Company Promotions (SCP). GKS is for companies who want to sell to the Shanghai market. The team that handles their particular industry will try to find the best Chinese companies interested in importing their product, and set up a full day of meetings (typically four or five).

If there's a good number of Chinese companies who are interested, we might recommend the client go with an SCP rather than spend a week in individual meetings. Maybe 50 people from 25 companies will come in and watch the client's half-day presentation. If they want, we can provide use our conference room and we can arrange catering (all for a fee, of course), and then the companies can follow up as they want after that.

How is FCS organized and what do people do?
The FCS section of the consulate is divided up into five teams, each with about four or five people on it. Each team consists of several locally hired people (FSNs) who do the market research that goes into determining how feasible a U.S. company's entry to China is, and is headed by an expatriate commercial officer.

The team I'm on is an exception -- it's just me and my boss, a U.S. citizen who's originally from Shanghai. While the other teams have their responsibilities divided among the various industry groups within Shanghai, we handle all the industries in the second-tier cities outside Shanghai (specifically Nanjing, Ningbo, and Hangzhou). To make stuff happen, cooperate with a Chinese entity called the CCPIT.

The CCPIT is sort of like a chamber of commerce that promotes international trade, and within that mandate they do the dirty work that the FSNs would do in other teams. If this seems unclear, don't worry -- I've been here a month and a half and I still don't fully grasp it.

What do you do?
Not much.

My team is in the middle of two SCPs right now -- one construction materials company and another that does cosmetics. With the economy in Shanghai (and throughout China) being what it is, it's easy to see why these two companies received such a good response.

Apart from that, I mostly draft and proofread emails for my boss, and attend functions that others with greater seniority don't want to.

There is something I volunteered for that I look forward to. The Management Section is doing a cost-of-living survey this next month, and was looking for someone to help compite the data. Since that's just my cup of tea, I jumped on that. Hopefully, there will be a lot of Excel involved.