How Walmart Is Changing China

 a. I found it very interesting to look see how low environmental standards were effecting both Walmart's image and the stability of the Chinese people from the viewpoint of the government.  The proposal to become a green company was far fetched to both the people of Walmart and the people of China but it became beneficial to both of these parties because of an improvement to their image as polluters. 
Another interesting and unfortunately recurring point was made at the end of the article.  The point was that although the steps taken by Walmart are beneficial to reduce environmental impact, industrial progress is still being made and in the end, the long run is still unsustainable.  After the surprisingly positive account of Walmart, I was hoping for a happy ending, but with most environmental reports on industry, the ending is not so happy. 

b.  Walmart shows a good example of how multinational corporations, economics and culture interact.  The push for higher environmental standards came first from culture.  Walmart had a bad reputation with American culture for being environmentally poor and there also was pressure from the Chinese on the government to have higher standards.  So culture affected Walmart  and then Walmart had a huge effect on the economy by putting pressure on suppliers to change their methods. 

c.  The popularity of brands like Mcdonalds in the US and our love of fast paced things can illustrate an example of how multinational corporations interact with the economy and culture.  I think because our culture is so work orientated and has a desire to be fast paced, organizations like Mcdonalds became hugely succesfull.  At the same time I think the economics of Mcdonalds has contributed to its success, namely its cheap prices.  So our fast paced culture affected corporations like Mcdonalds by making them hugely successful and Mcdonalds affects the economics of food supply by demanding large volumes of cheap food.