Established in 1857, the Birla Group has developed into one of the largest conglomerates in India. The firm has invested in a wide range of industries, including textiles, cement, tea, sponge iron and aluminum, and in dozens of small companies. The death of Birla's president in 1995 shook the company. His son, Kumar Mangalam Birla, took over at the age of 28 and, through the period of India's economic reforms, redirected the focus of the group's investments. Along with increased investment in holdover industries such as cement, sponge iron and carbon black, the group has pursued investment in new industries, including viscose staple fibre, non-ferrous metals, branded apparel and financial services. The reformed Birlafiber Group could be seen as following the model of General Electric circa mid-1980s, with a mixture of the old and the new, unsure of its future direction. Rival Indian conglomerates such as Tata and Reliance have also changed since the beginning of the economic reform period. They have shed moribund low-margin firms and industries and have concentrated on new high-margin, high-growth investments. Still claiming to be "Birla #1"-its rallying cry for several generations-is the group actually still number one, or is it being left behind by its more aggressive rivals?

In 2006, SK-II, a skin care brand, was close to becoming a billion-dollar brand for Procter and Gamble ("P&G') and China was seen as a key source of future growth and is soon to be the largest market in the world. On 14 September 2006, Chinese authorities banned the sale of some of P&G's skin care products in the SK-II line. P&G feared that public protests against these products could spread and infect the brand equity of its other products in the country. Everything that P&G tried to resolve the scandal failed, leaving the media, consumers and government feeling enraged. P&G pronounced confidence in its SK-II products in China, saying it would work with government agencies to resolve the problems, but repeatedly botched public relations and was accused of "arrogance" toward consumers. Although P&G had experience in defending its SK-II products in court due to a lawsuit the previous year, the company seemed to have learned nothing about preparing for a future crisis. P&G, one of the most trusted corporate brands in the world, was close to losing Chinese consumers' faith in SK-II and perhaps in P&G as well just by the poor way it handled the crisis. Many analysts claim that doing business in China is significantly different from doing business in developed markets. When it comes to public relations, how can the rules be so different that even experienced country managers repeatedly get it wrong? The case allows for discussion on how to respond to a public relations crisis, salvage brand equity after a disastrous incident, react to a situation and pre-empt damaging information in the media.

In 1908 Henry Ford revolutionized the car industry by drastically cutting production costs using assembly lines. A century later, on the other side of the world, an unknown Chinese car manufacturer, Chery, was partaking in an ostensibly similar revolution: producing inexpensive cars, priced around US$5,000, for the masses of the Chinese middle class. To achieve its objective, Chery originally adopted a cost strategy based on imitation. In December 2004 GM Daewoo filed suit against Chery for design piracy. The success of the QQ model and the possibility of greater future success nonetheless led Chery's management to dream of evolving Chery into a more mature auto-maker. In December 2006, two years after GM launched its lawsuit, Chery was the top candidate on Chrysler's list to produce a small car for sale in the United States. The question remained whether Chery could transform itself from a local manufacturer to a truly global player in the crowded and largely unprofitable car industry