ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606250002
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LU STAFF WRITER
A WEEK ago eight of Mongolia's top business executives and their translator left Radford University with some English words and indelible impressions of their first visit to America.
"I thought it was very interesting how everyone has a car here," Baasanjab Purejab said via a translator at a reception on June 13. Purejab is the president of Agroimpex, a Mongolian company that imports and exports farm equipment. "In Mongolia, everyone has a horse in the suburbs. Even a 3-year-old child has a horse."
Through a contract between the university's Business Assistance Center and Access II Inc., a Blacksburg consulting company for international and higher education, international business groups seeking advice and help can take business-related classes at Radford University.
"We found that Radford University was just the place because it had an excellent English-as-a-second-language program," said Eugene Carson, Access II president. "And the business assistance center was just perfect because it can give the specific lectures and seminars [a group] would want."
For three weeks, the Mongolian executives took English classes in the morning and business classes such as Corporate Responsibility and International Marketing in the afternoon. The group spent its final week in Fairfax and Washington.
"America is very friendly and calm," said Ochirbat Sod, first deputy director of Mongolia's Ministry of Infrastructure. "The modern roads and highways are of course very good. We will do something like that someday in Mongolia."
This is the second Mongolian group that Access II and Radford have invited. The first came in March and stayed through May.
"Both groups were very interested in visiting American facilities and business people," Carson said. "When they look to buy things, they want things made in America. One person refused to buy tennis shoes because they weren't made in America."
Mongolia is a central Asian country between Russia and China and a former satellite of the Soviet Union. It's about twice the size of Texas and has a population of about 2.3 million. Its high plains were the homeland of 13th-century conqueror Ghengis Khan.
Since the Soviet Union became a democracy, Carson said, Mongolia's economy has had to adjust from being completely controlled by the government to a free market economy where half the businesses are owned by the government and half are privately owned. This is why the Mongolians are interested in learning from and doing business with the United States.
"America is progress-filled and everybody is very intelligent and not angry," Zumaa Auysh, general director of Mongolia's textile company, said in English. She was the only executive who could be understood without a translator. "There's more stress in Mongolia now because we're transferring to a market economy."
But the Mongolians noticed more than just the business aspect of American life. While Sod was amazed that wild animals like squirrels run rampant and near houses, Auysh lauded the weather.
"The weather is very nice here - not too hot and not too cold," she said. "It's also not dry like Mongolia. It's good conditions for agriculture."
A group of Mongolian accountants will be the next international business people to visit Radford, Carson said. There will be a fourth group of executives coming this summer after the accountants, and Carson is negotiating to bring groups from Vietnam, Korea, China and other countries to Radford later.
"I think that if we've made any mistakes with the program, it would be that we've built too much into it," Carson said. "They're on a very tight schedule when they come, but being serious business people, they haven't complained at all."
Although this the first time the Mongolian executives have visited America, they promise that it will not be their last. Most agree that they want to learn more English before they come back.
"There is an old saying in Mongol: it's better one time to see than 100 times to hear," Sod said. "It was better for me to see one time what a free market is all about."
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. Gerald Colliflower, executive viceby CNBpresident of American ThermaSteel, shows visitors from Mongolia how
thermal panels are made at the
Radford plant. color.