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Search :      Wednesday, August 20, 2008


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Carrying the Torch
Jacob Fattal, Publisher
The upcoming Olympics to be held in China are providing an interesting insight into the makeup of the expatriate community there. There is a surprisingly large percentage of Westerners living in China and working in China's electronics industry β€” so many that U.S. Tech has already received a number of requests for our Chinese web edition to be made available in English. The Olympics come into play because there is a serious competition among expatriates to be chosen as torch bearers during the run that starts on Mount Olympus and ends at the Olympics stadium in Beijing. There are eight torchbearer openings for Westerners who are living in China, and there are several thousand people vying for this honor. As we go to press, the list of finalists has been pared down considerably.

High on the list of the finalists is an Israeli woman in China who lives in Shanghai where she works for a Chinese semiconductor company. Victoria Nieuwenhuis is an unusual person on many levels β€” one of the few Israelis who are very fluent in Chinese. As we go to press, she is in 30th place in the balloting for torch bearers. The balloting is by anyone who is interested in going to the website and casting a vote.

We believe that the timing of this scenario was just too good to pass up. We are an American publication with an Israeli expatriate as publisher, and currently in the process of producing an edition in the Mandarin language for Internet circulation in China. Will Victoria be one of the eight finalists who will carry the Olympic torch? We don't know at the moment, but this entire scenario is just another measure of the truly global nature of the electronics industry. This issue of U.S. Tech will be distributed at Productronica in Munich as well as at Fabtec in Chicago and IMAPS in San Jose. And through it all, we'll be rooting for Victoria, hoping she makes the cut.  

 
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