One of the many reasons we like going to New Orleans, where we just returned from, is there are things we can only do there or that only happen to us when we traverse the bend in the river. Watching the angelic voiced John Boutte perform a Christmas concert at St. Louis Cathedral, his stand up bass player grinning in glee and taking a selfie at the end of the show, so delighted was he to perform in that venue with that man on that occasion? Only in New Orleans. Sitting outside eating brunch and an old man on a Rascal mobility scooter rides by blaring Donna Summer’s Bad Girls, makes eye contact with us and nods (we nodded back). Only in New Orleans. Going to the legendary Maple Leaf to see Chief Joe Boudreaux and the Rumble perform, only to discover they are recording a live album? Only in New Orleans.
Diving into a bar at 11 am in the French Quarter to take shelter from a downpour only to learn the bar stayed open throughout Katrina without electricity to serve drinks to first responders (their patches lined the bar) and then for the most elegantly dressed old man you’ve ever seen amble in hunched over with a cane and sit next to us at the bar and to discover from the bartender that “Shadow” is a famous artist who was wrongly convicted and spent 20 years in Angola prison where he learned to become an artist and now has works hanging in the Smithsonian? Only in New Orleans. To stumble upon a Vietnamese-American wedding with a second line—bride and groom and attendees bouncing their umbrellas and handkerchiefs in rhythm to the music, the elderly grandparents (transported in carts), who originally came to America in the 70s and were successful enough they can now afford a second line wedding?
Again, only in New Orleans, a place that takes different parts of the world, stirs it up, and concocts a delicious cultural gumbo. Only in International Need to Know will you learn about what languages the world speaks, who is the oldest country in East Asia and what a billionaire told us about China. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, striving to be the Wille Mae’s Scotch House of international information and data.
Africa is the future of the world, as you’ll read below. What are China and the U.S. up to in this complicated continent of 54 countries? How do these countries view and interact with China and America? You can find out next Tuesday at 11:30 am when we moderate a World Affairs Tacoma program (on Zoom) with William Campbell, Senior Economic Officer, U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and recently digital economy officer in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Look Who’s Talking
Two weeks ago we tried to understand the future by displaying which countries have the largest populations of young people. This week we explore what are the most spoken languages. You might be surprised that more people speak English than Mandarin Chinese as you can see in the chart below courtesy of Visual Capitalist. But for more than 700 million of those English speakers, it is their second language. Among those for whom it is their native tongue, Mandarin is by far the most spoken language. Spanish is second and English third. Ahh, but remember that chart of the young from a few weeks ago showing China shrinking and India at least for now still growing? There’s a good chance sometime later in this century that Hindi—the fourth-most spoken language in the world–might catch Mandarin. English speakers will likely increase too. Bengali, currently ranked fifth. will also rise in the rankings. But we expect fewer Russian and Japanese speakers in the future.
Old East Asia
The world is always changing. For example, for years Japan was the World Cup holder of low fertility rates. But now Japanese are knocking out kids left and—what’s that? Japan still has a low rate of 1.4 babies per woman? Okay that hasn’t changed but what has is that Japan now has the highest fertility rate in East Asia. Yes, every other country in the region is having even fewer children than Japan. South Korea is the Morocco of fertility rates to kick this metaphor into the ground. In fact, East Asian nations treat fertility like soccer, not scoring very often. China in the last few years is down to 1.3. South Korea is barely above 1. Taiwan is at about 1. This will have profound effects on the countries, region and world in the coming years. Of course, lots of European countries have low fertility rates too. We’ve been predicting there will be a great battle for immigrants in the coming decades. Japan, once known as insular, already is allowing in more immigrants. These other countries will need immigrants as well. But which country will folks from, say, Africa, where most countries still have young demographics, want to move to? Which system of government would you prefer? Would you rather move to Japan, South Korea or China? This leads us to believe China is likely to change dramatically in the coming years…or if not, their demographic challenge will become even greater.
China Corner: A Chinese Businessman’s Perspective
We had occasion recently to lunch with a prominent Chinese business person who helped shed light on some burning questions. For instance, did China’s government end its Zero Covid policy in response to the protests? Likely it was already in the works but this business person thinks the protests sped up the process. With a tough economy there was real dissatisfaction among people and he feels the central government had no choice but to end the policy due to the protests. What will happen to China’s economy after re-opening? This person noted that even before Covid the central government had clamped down on businesses. But because things are so tough now (data released yesterday showed retail sales plunged 5.9% and youth unemployment is now 17.1%) he believes policies are already changing and the government is easing up on private businesses and won’t help SOEs as much. Maybe so and it will be good if true but China’s economic problems aren’t merely about its moving away from a market oriented economy. China’s problems are due to an economy that relied too much on subsidies that were increasingly unproductive, an over reliance on real estate that is likely to take a long time to unwind and increasingly difficult demographics. The working age population has been declining for years and now the overall population is on the wane. Even if China smartly starts to unleash the private sector again, that won’t mean China will again achieve five to ten percent GDP growth as in the old days. China has entered a new economic era of low GDP growth.
Will these chart lines go up in December? January? February?
