At dinner last night with a PhD student to celebrate her landing a job with a giant state-owned oil company, she confided “I owe this job to Xi Jinping.” That didn’t make sense as surely the President of China had no hand in her appointment as a new start.  She went on that 5 of the 8 division chiefs had just gone to jail and they had always appointed new people based on payments and “relationships.”  Now candidates were vetted for merit. She had no “connections” but a PhD including a semester at Penn State Uni, and I knew her as a person who would be an asset anywhere.  Pleasant news.

The night before key interview she practiced presentation for me