After we got back from our trip, we were required to write a paper about the trip. The first half was to summarize and explain what we learned from each of the different business trips, and the second half was to be our own research on a topic that was related to business and/or culture in China.

I chose to do my research on something that really impacted me while I was there. You may or may not know that China's government censors a lot of different internet websites and phone applications. I knew this going in, but was pretty surprised as to the extent of the censorship. I was not able to access any google app on my phone, including the app store to download new apps. I couldn't access any American social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Without those things my phone was essentially useless. So I decided to write about how this affects both businesses and the day to day lives of the people living in China.

There are currently a couple widely accepted ideas of why the government censors as many things as it does. The first is to help Chinese companies grow and profit while limiting the growth of foreign companies into the Chinese market. The second is a little more subtle -  to monitor and select what exactly they want the public to know about. They are able to screen papers and stories that are put on the internet and printed in the newspapers, giving them a ton of control on what information the public has. The rise of social media has made this increasingly difficult, and the Chinese people have been demanding more and more information than they ever have before, putting the government in a very difficult position.

Overall I learned a lot about the business and culture in China, and had a lot of fun while doing it.