Jennifer Hudson performs tribute to Whitney Houston (2012) | ABC News
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Korean Blood Thicker Than Japanese Water
We humans are troublesomely tribal. We were reminded of this yet again by a new poll showing that more South Koreas would support North Korea than Japan in a war between the two. The Japan Times reports that South Koreans were asked who they would support “Under a rather extreme hypothetical situation in which war may break out between North Korea and Japan.” As it turns out, 45.5 percent of South Koreans would choose to help North Korea, and only 15.1 percent would choose Japan. Meanwhile 39.4 percent responded that they ‘have no idea.’” Yes, Korean blood trumps Japanese democracy in favor of North Korean totalitarianism. It is true that Japan and South Korea relations are more tense recently because of trade disputes and other issues. But that does not seem to be what’s driving the results seen in this survey. Similar polls have been conducted since 2007 with all showing comparable percentages. In 2016, Xi Jinping famously said about Taiwan that “blood is thicker than water.” Perhaps everyone should drink some good Japanese whiskey or Korean soju and contemplate their tribalism for a moment.
Love the SUV, Learn to Drive the SUV
In the parking garage the other day, we yet again watched a guy unsuccessfully try to park an enormous SUV, blocking the rest of us for quite some time. If you can’t drive a vehicle that large, then don’t buy the SUV in the first place. But we better get used to it because SUV sales have skyrocketed this decade and not just in the United States. A transportation planning professor at UCLA reports that there has been a 410 percent increase in the use of SUVs around the world since 2010. The share of car sales that are SUVs has increased tremendously in Europe, China and India, not just in the United States. The good professor wants to eliminate SUVs because of their impact on climate change with the added benefit that I would be spared watching bad parkers. But, if the SUVs became electric, and the electricity was generated cleanly, that would do the trick for climate change…but alas I would still get annoyed watching people park…in Seattle, Bonn, Shanghai or Mumbai.
Young Europeans Top Priority
The young Swede, Greta Thunberg, has received great acclaim and publicity for her climate change efforts. While we disagree with her on her degrowth advocacy–urging the contraction of economies (degrowth is a view only someone in the developed world would hold—it would condemn hundreds of millions of people in the developing world to early deaths and lifelong poverty), she justly should be applauded for getting more people to pay attention to solving climate change. A Eurobarometer survey asked Europeans what the EU’s top priority should be. For only one country was fighting global warming number one: Sweden, Greta Thunberg’s home country. Interestingly, as Ian Bremmer’s Gzero website points out (you should make Gzero a part of your regular reading habit), for young Europeans, a majority of EU countries list fighting global warming as their top priority.
At a lunch event earlier this week, the person across the table from us kept calling us “Peter,” a fine name from the Bible but not ours. He was one of those people who constantly uses your name in a sentence. “Peter, can you pass the bread…that would be a great idea to do, Peter…If I were you, Peter, I would…” We eventually corrected him, even pointing to our nametag. Even though we thought he heard us this time, he kept calling us Peter for the rest of the lunch. A colleague of ours recently excitedly told us they were getting a puppy and were naming it Nala after the female lion in The Lion King. We told her how cute the puppy looked in the photos and what a great name Nala was. A week later she came into our office and said, “Hey Sam (notice she didn’t call us “Peter”) and sheepishly reported her puppy wouldn’t be called Nala anymore. We asked why and she explained her boyfriend wanted to call it Cardi, after the rapper Cardi B. To resolve the dispute, they put each name in a hat and out came Cardi. I asked who drew the name and she said her boyfriend. I asked how she knew her boyfriend didn’t cheat, but she assured me her boyfriend was honest. So as we wonder whether the guy seated across the table from us at lunch was our colleague’s boyfriend, we name names in China, present Pakistan(!) as a possible future business opportunity and worry about our favorite underrated country, Ethiopia. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the puppies of international data, the kittens of global information.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Sleeping With the Enemy
This week America held another one of its regularly scheduled elections in which tens of millions of people voted across the country. Two weeks ago, rather than an election, the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee concluded its fourth plenary session. Leading up to and following the three day session, Beijing analysts examined every word and movement to determine what, if anything of substance, happened at the meeting. The Communique of the Plenum says China’s governance system has many strengths, including: “Upholding equality between all ethnic groups, creating a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation to work jointly for common prosperity and development.” Meanwhile, Radio Free Asia reported that, “Male Han Chinese ‘relatives’ assigned to monitor the homes of Uyghur families in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) regularly sleep in the same beds as the wives of men detained in the region’s internment camps…” So we assume China is arguing to create “a strong sense of community,” Chinese strangers must share beds with Uyghur women. We also assume the pillow talk consists of Xi Jinping Thought*. Talk about challenging house guests. You now feel much better about your relatives staying with you over Thanksgiving. And don’t forget the Globe and Mail reports that China is staging prayers and street scenes for delegations visiting Xinjiang, where over a million Uyhurs are held in “re-education camps.” China’s government is paying Uyghurs to pray, when ordinarily they can’t, to show visiting outsiders there is no repression. Our forthcoming book will try to understand China’s role in the world, America’s democracy and more. In the meantime, be concerned about the China version of Airbnb in Xinjiang.
*For those who haven’t downloaded the app, this is the political theory of Xi that all party members must study daily
Doing Business in Pakistan
When thinking of markets in which you want to expand your business, you probably don’t think of Pakistan. And with good reason since it is full of challenges economically, socially and politically. But, in recent years there has been some improvement. Last week, the World Bank’s 2020 Doing Business index, which attempts to rank how easy it is to conduct business in a country, showed Pakistan jumping 25 spots from the previous year. Granted Pakistan was starting from a very low position—190 (there’s only 195 countries in the world), but still Pakistan had one of the best improvement rates on the list. According to the World Bank, Pakistan “improved in six areas measured which are: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, paying taxes and trading across borders.” Pakistan’s GDP growth rates have increased to a little over 5 percent each of the last two years from 3 to 4 percent previously. That’s not great for a developing country but at least things are on the upswing for a place we used to call in the early 2000s, the most dangerous country in the world.
First the Prize…and Then the Test
We first wrote about Ethiopia as the most underrated country in the world in July, 2018. So International Need to Know readers should not have been surprised when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize last month. But, as the 17,000th Spider Man movie tells us, with great prizes comes great responsibility. Prime Minister Abiy is being tested even as he instituted reforms, lifted repressive policies–including against ethnic groups–and made peace with Eritrea. Earlier this year, we noted ethnic tensions were rising and last week they exploded in protests with more than 80 civilians dying as the government tried to control the demonstrations. So far, Prime Minister Abiy is still planning to hold elections next year. Let’s hope he continues his conciliatory approach and policies that led to his award.
Listening to the first episode of the podcast Dolly Parton’s America (brought to you by the geniuses of Radiolab) reminded us of the book* we would like to write about how all music is connected, which is to say that we are all connected. Dolly is a woman of the mountains as is her music but of course early on such music was informed by the banjo, an instrument brought to America from Africa. The trumpet, a foundational instrument of jazz, that great American art form originated by blacks in New Orleans, is as old as Ancient Egypt but became a truly musical instrument (rather than a mere war horn blown in battle) in Europe in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The predominant current musical genre, rap, has sampled everything from R&B to classic rock and roll to other genres. New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band who we saw perform at the Crocodile Cafe last week did a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, a post-punk, gothic rock British group. One of our favorite Dolly Parton songs is a cover of The Grass is Blue by Norah Jones, the daughter of an Indian sitar player and American record producer, with a voice as sultry as an August evening and as gentle as a lake’s lapping shores. It’s all connected as are the geopolitics of business, decisions on Fukushima and how plastic flows into our oceans. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, handing out mounds bars of international data, candy nuggets of global wisdom.
Norah Jones – The Grass Is Blue
*Alas that book awaits our retirement many years from now, but we have a book in the wings that will be of great interest to International Need to Know readers–stay tuned!
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
The Geopolitics of Business
China is more assertive internationally nowadays in a whole host of ways. Case in point is the Chinese video game company NetEase which makes an online role playing game called Onmoyji. We have never played it and bet neither have you, but it is a very popular game. However, NetEase recently introduced an update to the game that did not go down easily in Vietnam. The Chinese company added a map showing the “Nine-Dash Line” that depicts China’s view of borders in the South China Sea. China’s envisioned borders, as you know, are expansive (ruled illegal by an Intl Tribunal btw) and disputed by other countries, including Vietnam. Consequently, Vietnam has shut down Onmoyji. Vietnamese can no longer access the game there. The world rightly worries about China’s growing assertiveness but often China’s aggressiveness backfires. Even in the NBA imbroglio, mostly what China has accomplished so far is to create awareness among millions of NBA fans, who probably never thought about China at all previously, of how un-free, aggressive and silly the Chinese government can be. In the mid to long term their strategy may prove more successful but as we have said before, striding onto the world stage brings many complications for a country.
The Unseen Dead
The Fukushima nuclear accident was tragic. The reaction to it may have been tragic as well. A new paper published in the Institute of Labor Economics found that there were negative consequences to Japan pulling back from nuclear power in the wake of the accident. The paper states, “We estimate that the increase in mortality from higher electricity prices outnumbers the mortality from the accident itself, suggesting the decision to cease nuclear production has contributed to more deaths than the accident itself.” We’ll let that assertion sink in for a moment. Go ahead, think about it. Higher prices led to decreased energy consumption, especially during extreme weather, which led to more deaths during such weather. We are conflicted about nuclear energy. On the one hand, we have never understood how one can guarantee the safety of nuclear waste since it must be stored for such a long time*, long after we and our children and their grandchildren and the grandchildren’s grandchildren are all gone. On the other hand, if the world had been using nuclear energy more the last 30 years, climate change challenges would not be so great, and as this paper shows, there are other risks to not using such energy. Humans continue to not be very good at weighing risk.
*Some of the new nuclear energy technology recycles waste so reduces this challenge to a certain extent
Heavy Concerns on Plastic
Like any dutiful Seattleite, we somewhat carefully divide up our household waste in recycling, yard/food waste and garbage containers (the process for selecting INTN stories is eerily similar). Plastic, of course, goes into recycling and we’ve been limiting our use of plastic to begin with to do our part to prevent the mounds of plastic floating in the ocean. But, it turns out, the U.S, which has 4 percent of the world’s population and 25% of its GDP, is only responsible for one percent of the plastic going into the world’s ocean. So while we need to continue to be vigilant of our plastic use, the real progress must come from the countries listed below who account for most of the ocean polluting plastic. In fact, just eight countries are responsible for 63 percent of plastic disposed into the ocean. China, unsurprisingly is the number one culprit, dunking not only plastic arguments on Daryl Morey but also actual plastic into oceans. Indonesia is second, followed by the Philippines and Vietnam (plastic was a big topic of discussion when we were there last month). As with climate change, the U.S. can and must do more and should be a leader, but real progress will come from other countries.
In the future, instead of 15 minutes of fame, everyone will loudly declare they are morally superior to 15 other people. Of course, there’s no time like the present as Marty McFly would attest, and as the NY Times and a congressional committee proved this week. After someone texted us that the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airlines had resigned. We quickly did an Internet search and saw the New York Times headline, “Boeing Executive to Leave as 737 MAX Crisis Swells.” It was a curious headline for the NYT to write since the crisis “swelled” due to the newspaper and other media mis-reporting that Boeing had hidden texts which revealed the company knew the 737 was unsafe back in 2016. Within days that story was debunked by pilots and aviation experts but not before cementing in public opinion that Boeing was an evil company. After the initial release of the texts, the Chair of the House Transportation Committee Peter DeFazio said, “This exchange is shocking, but disturbingly consistent with what we’ve seen so far in our ongoing investigation of the 737 MAX.” Thus far he has neither amended nor retracted that statement. Now we are not defending Boeing’s behavior throughout the rollout of the 737 MAX–we await the completion of the investigation before making any final judgements on the extent of Boeing’s mistakes and how its organizational structure and/or culture may have contributed. But we do wish a compulsion for truth would outweigh the desire of people to feel morally superior to others. Too often the desire to express moral outrage is what drives people nowadays in news, politics, social media and elsewhere. Everyone craves a Marvel movie-like villain and thought those texts gave them one. Let’s aim for 1970s movie complexity instead. And in such spirit, we admit to overselling reforestation as a solution to climate change, ponder the possibility of an Asian recession and wonder at the absence of EU unicorns. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, you talking to me, you talking to me…and my international information and data?
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
We Missed the Forest Through the Trees
Last week we pointed to another resource and study on how planting trees can be a contributing solution to climate change. We were a bit too enthusiastic in our Treebeard love it turns out. All this tree planting mania was based on a July Science article claiming reforestation as a climate change champion. But the paper overstated things considerably according to a new paper in Science Magazine criticizing the original July paper. Among the criticisms are that they “inflated soil organic carbon gains, failed to safeguard against warming from trees at high latitudes…and considered afforestation of savannas [etc] to be restoration.” On that last point about savannas, a number of scientists have expressed alarm that planting trees in grasslands and savannas will actually harm the environment. The original paper writers dispute the criticisms. We do not have the science chops to referee this dispute but since the original authors have now changed their paper from claiming “tree reforestation is the most effective climate change solution” to “one of the most carbon drawdown solutions” we’d have to say they oversold reforestation as a solution. To the degree we’ve done the same, we apologize.
Asian Recession?
All the pieces matter, we imagine the Lester Freamon of economists muttering to themselves as they examine a slowing economy. This is especially true in Asia where both the Japanese and Korean economies are slowing down even amidst their own bickering over trade issues. The latest data shows exports from Japan contracted for the 10th straight month in September. According to Ministry of Finance data, “exports in September slumped 5.2% from a year earlier.” Meanwhile in Korea, the economy grew just 1.9 percent in the first half of this year and exports plunged there too, down 19.5 percent so far in October from a year earlier. The biggest culprit for both countries’ economies? China. Exports from both Japan and South Korea to China are way down. China continues to export at a fairly robust pace but its imports are down. If Asian countries were an NBA basketball player, they might be making different statements than LeBron James. Oh, and by the way, this is evidence that China’s GDP is not growing at the 6 percent rate they claim, but probably at a much lower rate. All the pieces matter.
Where are EU’s Unicorns?
We continue to disparage the overuse of the word unicorn in economics and sports but since our eight-year old niece, the cutest little girl in the world, loves them, we turn to a list of all the unicorn companies in the world and discover it tells much about the global economy. Remember that a unicorn company is a private business with a valuation of over $1 billion. The list of unicorns in the world is full of U.S. and Chinese companies which makes sense given they are the world’s two largest economies. This is one reason why so many of us keep a worried eye on the U.S. – China relationship. When one looks at the 50 largest unicorns, we need magical glasses to find EU unicorns. There is one UK company, but of course, the UK may not be long for the EU. Sweden is the only other EU country that is home to a unicorn in the top fifty. Interestingly, Indonesia has two among the top fifty, as many as the EU combined. Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world and the possibility of its continuing to develop economically is one of the nine most important economic pivot points of the next decade.
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admin2019-10-24 11:00:312019-11-07 04:10:49We Missed the Forest, Asian Recession Where Are The Eu’s UnicornsAs we gazed with wonder at Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture depicting Apollo consumed with desire chasing after the unreachable Daphne in Rome’s Borghese Gallery, we came to realize we must make an apology for our most recent edition of INTN. We regret any offense we may have caused for claiming China’s economy has slowed down. Similarly, we were out of line to imply that other countries are taking actions to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Clearly we were uneducated and misinformed. We apologize profusely for implying the Belt and Road is not embraced at all times everywhere. And we lie prostrate begging for forgiveness for touching the third rail of politics in talking about the separatists in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang. We recognize, as President Xi said in Nepal this week, that rightfully “anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones.” We did not intend for the October 3rd issue to cause any offense to INTN fans and friends of ours in China. We were merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. We have had a lot of opportunity since to hear and consider other perspectives. But we don’t apologize for comparing Italy and Vietnam, how Ents may rescue us from climate change and how coal is losing in India. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, willing to serve on Ukrainian gas company boards in return for good international information and data.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Italy and Vietnam’s Futures
We enjoyed tremendously, as we always do, our trip to Italy last week. We ate delicious meals, saw amazing sights and generally drank up both Italian culture and its wine. And yet it was striking to see both Italy and Vietnam in a month’s time. Italy’s GDP per capita is ten times higher than Vietnam’s, but in many ways feels more like a developing country than Vietnam, or at least Ho Chi Minh City. Crumbling infrastructure, inefficient bureaucracies, laundry hanging from windows, dodging Vespas instead of Ho Chi Minh City’s Honda scooters—Italy’s future worries us. Don’t get us wrong, by almost any economic measure Italy is still far above Vietnam, but one country’s line is sloped upwards and the other’s is at best flat. We have traveled to both countries for over 20 years and wonder whether Vietnam will surpass Italy before our travels are done. Of course, that is only if Vietnam continues to liberalize, one of the world’s six most important pivot points.
Ents to the Rescue
While you despair at mitigating the worst consequences of climate change, we turn to Treebeard for hope. We noted recently that Ethiopia planted 350 million trees to reforest the country and combat climate change. Now comes a study from the Crowther Lab of ETH Zurich, which investigates nature-based solutions to climate change, that shows how much land in the world is suitable for reforestation and where. According to the study, 2.2 billion acres could be reforested that would “ultimately capture two-thirds of human-made carbon emissions.” But we need to act quickly since the forests need to grow for two decades to reach their full carbon capture potential. Below you see the countries with the most suitable land. Trudeau, if he can stop partying in brown face for a moment, should make this a major policy priority, given his vocal support for climate change initiatives. Similarly, President Xi could take a break from hectoring basketball executives and make a big contribution to climate change. The U.S. has major potential but we’re curious how much of this could be done federally and how much must be done by states. Check out their interactive map and list of reforestation organizations to think through how you can help.
Dying Indian Coal
India is one of the five most important countries in the world, partly because of its impact, one way or another, on climate change. Currently, coal supplies 80 percent of India’s power but that is likely to change significantly over the next ten years. This is because new renewable energy “is now 20 percent cheaper than existing coal-fired generation’s average wholesale power price” and “65 percent of India’s coal power generation is being sold at higher rates than new renewable energy bids.” Renewable energy is not only cheaper than coal nowadays, it is, of course, cleaner. And that will drive the change from coal but not necessarily over concerns for climate change but instead because of pollution. Remember that India has eight of the ten most polluted cities in the world. “Coal is responsible for 80% of India’s mercury pollution, 60% of airborne particulate matter, 45% of Sulphur dioxide emissions, and 30% of nitrogen oxide levels.” People don’t clamor about climate change but they do about air pollution which they can see and taste. Air pollution is being cleaned up in China and other places due to these complaints and the same too will happen in India.
In the era of continual accusations of fake news, sometimes we wonder if we understand what is really news at all, at least in America. Last week, when newscasters were literally breathless about impeachment proceedings (I was worried Mara Liasson might actually be having coronary problems), we read about Google’s apparent breakthrough in Quantum computing. As important as impeachment is, we wonder 100 years from now what has more ramifications for human kind? In fact, we speculate, as others have, that history focuses too much on political figures and not nearly enough on inventors, business people and even certain cultural personalities. Was not Steve Jobs more important than Bill Clinton? Tarana Burke more than Mike Pompeo? Jawed Karim more than Barack Obama?8 But our news media is fixated on politics. Impeachment is, as our spouse noted, the Super Bowl for journalists. But that begs the question of whether our journalists are playing the right sport (we’re an NBA and MLB fan ourselves). Perhaps the problem is most journalists in America are located in Washington, D.C. and New York and believe they are at the physical center of what is important. They are not. We need a national newspaper headquartered in Oakland, a radio show in Seattle, TV news in Atlanta…oh, wait a minute. We need to think this through some more and will next week during a trip to Italy. But before we leave, and as China celebrates the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China—not quite old enough to qualify as a U.S. Presidential candidate—we focus on the Middle Kingdom: the yin and yangs of its economy, the recalibration of the world to China’s new assertiveness and China’s continued repressive policies. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the Three Body problem of international information and data.
*I’ll bet most of you don’t know who two of these three non-politicians are? QED
As noted above, next week we’ll be sipping Montepulciano while gazing on the ruins of Pompeii and the splendor of the Vatican. INTN will make its drammatico return on Thursday, October 17th.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
We Want a Good Economy
For forty years, China has been an economic marvel, achieving high levels of economic growth and not coincidentally pulling hundreds of millions of women, men and children out of abject poverty, something of which they should be proud and that is worth celebrating. But its economy has slowed and in recent months wearisomely so. This is not due to the U.S. – China trade war, or at least not mostly. China’s imports have slowed considerably but that is not the case for the U.S., which means China’s slow down is more than just a trade war problem. Something is happening with China’s economy in particular. As we’ve noted before, for demographic reasons, China will no longer experience rapid GDP growth. This is challenging because China may grow gray before it becomes rich. Remember that China’s per capita GDP is still below the world average. Yes, there are millions of successful households in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and other Chinese cities, but China is a country of 1.3 billion with hundreds of millions of Chinese still not sharing in prosperity. And, there are other worrying signs. China’s real estate development market will likely continue to be a positive driver for the economy but even here there are concerns with Alicia Garcia Herrero noting, “…the leverage of Chinese developers is almost four times higher than global peers, and this gap continues to widen.” Meanwhile, both household and corporate debt have risen significantly. To counter the economic slow down, China will presumably insert both fiscal credit and monetary easing into the economy, but increasingly China has to inject more Yuan to achieve more GDP. China continues to be a marvel of innovation and economic dynamism, but it is hitting headwinds. I know some people view the Chinese and U.S. economies as in competition and some in America root for China to lose. But remember that the world economy is a bakery, not a pie with a finite number of pieces. The more bakers, the more treats–if China loses, the world economy loses.
All the World’s a Stage…With Lots of Hams
China has become more powerful economically and militarily. The U.S., under the current administration, is not as interested in exercising world leadership. This has made China more assertive on the world stage but other actors want their own lines, taking lessons from Stanislavski. Japan, for example, Brando-style, in its annual defense review now lists China as a bigger threat than North Korea. At the same time, the EU and Japan signed an infrastructure development deal designed in part to combat China’s Belt and Road Initiative. At the signing ceremony, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said, “Whether it be a single road or a single port, when the EU and Japan undertake something, we are able to build sustainable, rules-based connectivity from the Indo-Pacific to the Western Balkans and Africa.” The rest of the world is not content to just let China act like a bull in a China shop (China in a bull shop?) imposing its own plans of how the world should be ordered. Meanwhile, there is beginning to be push back on its Belt and Road initiative from Pakistan, once an ardent supporter. Farooq Tirmizi opines, “because the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is not an investment into Pakistan, it is structured as a resource extraction exercise.” It is easy to be an economic upstart without global ambitions. But once one strides onto the world stage, matters become ever more complicated. As people have noted, it’s easy to be a manager except for the people, or in this case countries.
Acting Good Is Not Bad
And finally, despite China’s remarkable 40-year run of revitalizing their economy and bringing hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the country remains ruled by an authoritarian government, one which in recent years is embracing its inner Darth Vader. China’s heavy hand of oppression has been noted in Xinjiang, it looms over the freedom protests in Hong Kong and it is an ever gathering shadow over Taiwan. It also has the potential to kill the golden goose. The Asian Swine Flu which some estimate has killed up to 50 percent of pigs in China has spread so wide and deep in part because of lack of transparency in China. A few weeks ago it was reported that in Hangzhou, a major center of China’s tech world, and where Alibaba is headquartered, that the local government is sending representatives into the top 100 companies to “coordinate policy and investigate problems.” And increasingly China is exporting its surveillance technology to other less than savory regimes and interfering in other countries such as Sweden. Can China continue its economic success if it does not reform politically? This is one of the four most important questions in the world today.
A couple of jerks traveled around the world with recording equipment from California to Nepal, from Bahrain to Austin, Texas, and a dozen other far-flung places, spewing who knows how much climate change gases into the atmosphere. They took a fifty-year-old song inspired by the Mississippi Delta written by some Canadian half indigenous, half-Jewish dude culturally appropriating others’ musical heritage and forced a bunch of other musicians from different cultures to play it. Then, to make matters worse, for you and I to access it, server farms were built, again using lots of energy, and it was placed on social media platforms such as Facebook and Youtube where the damn Russians and Chinese spied on us listening and bobbing our heads to the beat. Or, rather perhaps, in yet another week of people dooming and glooming us, we should simply thank our friend, Kris Edmonds, for pointing us to a wonderful video displaying what’s right about our current globe which you can view below. And to remind all of us that modern technology enables all sorts of wondrous moments and connections even as with everything in life, there are trade-offs, and that the worst trade-offs can be mitigated, if we’re smart about it. And so while we catch the cannonball to take us down the line, we remind you about progress in the under 5 mortality rate, why authoritarian governments aren’t so good for pollution and what are the highest grossing media franchises of all time. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, taking the international load off Fanny and putting it right on me.
The Weight | Featuring Robbie Robertson | Playing For Change | Song Around The World
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
No Better Time to Be Under Five
As others ditch rose for cyanide colored glasses seeing nothing but doom, we do not have to look far for news from the rosaceae family. Last week, the UN released a new report on child and maternal mortality estimates. In the last 28 years, while many continued to bemoan the state of the world, and many more are calling for revolution, or a return to once discredited ideas due to how bad the world is, the mortality rate of children under 5 dropped by 59 percent. Further, “the reduction in the under-5 mortality rate has accelerated and nearly doubled since 2000. It now declines by 3.8% annually, compared to 2% between 1990 and 2000.” Meanwhile, the maternal mortality rate dropped by 38 percent the last 17 years. Now that’s the good news. The less than good news is the world is not yet on track to meet the goal of reducing maternal mortality to less than 70 per 100,000 births by 2030 and even the goal of reducing the under 5 mortality rate to 12 per 1000 births is not quite on track. Nonetheless, amazing progress has been made and if Sub-Saharan Africa sees the economic gains we expect over the next ten years, these goals might yet be achieved.
Can Polluted Minds Clean Polluted Skies?
Here in Seattle at the much needed climate protests last week, the local organizers invited noted socialist Kshama Sawant to speak, one of the only local politicians asked to do so. We wish the well-intentioned organizers had read the new paper on The Political Pollution Cycle which found that “top prefectural leaders in China ordered laxer regulation of pollution towards the end of their tenure so that the delivery of social stability and economic achievements boded well for their career advancement. Such regulatory forbearance came unintentionally with tremendous human costs.” In other words, incentives matter, and democracy matters. Socialism, not Democratic Socialism of a Nordic nature, but the actual socialism Sawant advocates, should remain on the ash heap of history. It will not help with climate change and will harm people’s lives. As we’ve noted before, solving climate change is a global problem, will take technological advancements and smart incentives, not ideological relics of a bygone age.
Pokémon Kills Mickey
Walking down the broken sidewalk of District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City a few weeks ago, we saw a gaggle of youthful Vietnamese grouped together staring at their phones. We stopped to figure out what was going on. One of them turned to us and said, “Pokemon.” Ah yes, the giant Pokemon game which we’ve never played. But as the list of the highest grossing media franchises published by Title Max of all places shows, we are one of the few who haven’t. Pokemon ranks number one all time with over $92 billion in revenue, two-thirds of which is derived from merchandise, not from video gaming. Hello Kitty comes in second and undoubtedly much to President Xi’s chagrin, Winnie the Pooh is third. Mickey Mouse and Star Wars round out the top five. As you see below, merchandise provides the large majority of revenue for these media franchises. Our distant descendant archaeologists will know us from our landfills.
My colleague and I walked into the pharmacy in Vietnam and I typed “constipation” into the translation app on my phone. It translated it to… “constipation,” which was very unhelpful. Let’s stop here and note the medicine was for one of the students on the Follow the Supply Chain Study Abroad trip we were co-leading. I don’t want you thinking there is anything wrong with our digestive system. But back to the story–since neither my colleague nor I speak Vietnamese, she wrote down on a piece of paper the word, “constipation,” and showed it to the Vietnamese pharmacist. The pharmacist looked at the piece of paper and started giggling which while it might be unprofessional I found very endearing. I pointed to my colleague and said the medicine is for her. Strangely, our colleague did not find this very funny, but the pharmacist kept giggling, gave us some medicine, which we in turn gave to the student and mission accomplished. 16 students from four colleges participated in the study abroad program and they were the sweet sixteen—smart, engaged, asking great questions throughout the program, fun and helping each other and even their leaders out when needed. We have organized many business and public officials overseas in a past career and these students were more mature and asked better questions. The future is in good hands. So as you eat bananas, prunes and sweet potatoes, we serve up the future of factories in Vietnam, the world’s most censored countries and the age of peak child. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the giggling pharmacy of international data and information.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Managing Taiwan
The factory in Vietnam hummed as we chatted with one of its Taiwanese managers. Vietnam has been the beneficiary of China’s higher labor costs and the U.S.-China trade war, both of which leading to numerous factories of many types moving to Vietnam from China in recent years. Indeed the one we stood in moved from Shenzhen in 2015. But Vietnam is not as populous as China and will likely soon cycle to a higher labor cost level meaning manufacturing will move somewhere else. The manager we chatted with said they will be moving on from Vietnam, like they did from China, within ten years. Already they are looking at Indonesia with Africa a possibility too. The challenge with Africa for this particular factory line is it stretches the supply chain because most of the materials for the products made here are sourced from Asia. But Africa’s time is coming, sooner than people realize. We didn’t just talk about factories. When the Taiwanese manager expressed concern for the protesters in Hong Kong, we asked if they were worried about what China will do in Taiwan. They said no they weren’t worried, that Taiwan is friends with the U.S. and the U.S. will protect Taiwan. They have more confidence in America than we do.
World’s Most Censored Countries
While in Vietnam, I came across the Committee to Protect Journalists list of the ten most censored countries in the world and discovered I was sitting in one of them. Yes, Vietnam is number six on the list even if we were not censored from learning this fact while on the Internet in Saigon. The Committee found that “These 10 countries flout the international standard by banning or severely restricting independent media and intimidating journalists into silence with imprisonment, digital and physical surveillance, and other forms of harassment. Self-censorship is pervasive.” North Korea surprisingly is only number two on the list, behind Eritrea, which helps explain the Eritrea immigrant on our Vietnam trip talking so harshly about its government. The list is a who’s who of countries afraid of information getting out to their populations, so really a portrait of leadership cowardice. China, which seemingly now aspires to be a 21st Century leader of the world, should feel a little silly being grouped with Turkmenistan, Belarus and, well, North Korea.
The Age of Peak Child
You’ve probably heard someone say “the world is getting smaller all the time.” They’re talking about how connected the world is but sometime this century, this will also be true about population. According to OurWorldinData, “Peak population growth was reached in 1968 with an annual growth of 2.1%. Since then the increase of the world population has slowed and today grows by just over 1% per year.” After amazingly large increases the last two centuries, the world’s population growth has slowed to a crawl. Or as OurWorldinData notes, “The world is approaching what the late Hans Rosling called ‘the age of peak child’.” Population growth is not slowing because of more people dying but rather because fewer are being born. This will have great consequences in the coming decades as more and more of the world is old. There will be less innovation, for example, more people telling you to get off their lawns and many more who think they should run for president. It’s a dystopic future for sure.
Dear Jeff Bezos:
We know others may have different complaints about you and your company, and perhaps they feel theirs are more important, but once you read this we’re sure you’ll move ours to the top of the priority list. Our concern is the types of ads that display on our Kindle screen (we are too cheap to buy the non-ad Kindle). Here is a list of what we have recently bought and/or read on our Kindle—a device we love and have used daily for years:
Belt and Road, a Chinese World Order by Bruno Macaes
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Xi Jinping: The Backlash, by Richard McGregor
The Proncane Chonicle by Ross Thomas
On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 by Robert Whitaker
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
There are many other books on our Kindle, of course, but none, we assure you, are bodice ripping romance novels full of lurid tales of desire and passion (although we haven’t finished Xi Jinping: The Backlash and maybe there will be steamy scenes in its final chapters). That being the case, why are the ads on our Kindle almost always romance novels featuring strong jawed men and usually less clothed than the ones in the ad I photographed from my Kindle below? Please take a break from creating a very powerful company, national newspaper and pretty darn cool outer space company, and fix the advertisement algorithm for the Kindle. But save a little attention for the Belt and Road’s carbonization of the world, where Hong Kongers may flee to, and how esports is taking over the world. It’s this week‘s International Need to Know, the Nora Roberts, the Fabio, of international information and data.
We are headed back to Vietnam tonight with 16 students who are participating in a Follow the Supply Chain Study Abroad Mission (thanks to our sponsors: Boeing, Lynden Logistics, UW CIBER program and the Federal Way Chamber). We’ll be back on September 19th.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Decarbonizing the Belt and Road
We saw a headline recently about whether parents should tell their kids about all their drug use in their youth. A tough decision we’re sure but even more difficult is asking up and coming developing countries not to make the same polluting mistakes developed countries did. The U.S., Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and others all developed while emitting huge amounts of climate change gases into the atmosphere. The new kids on the block want what those countries have and it’s a bit awkward to tell them no, or at least that they have to do it in a more expensive, more difficult way. And, of course, it’s not just Europe and the U.S. helping developing countries anymore, China is a big part of the game with its Belt and Road Initiative. A new study, Decarbonizing the Belt and Road, quantifies how emerging countries that develop economically under conventional methods will affect climate change efforts. It’s not good news. The study finds that if they follow the usual carbon intensive development pathway these countries will account for 66 percent of global emissions by 2050 “and result in global carbon emissions double the 2-Degree Scenario, the upper limit of the Paris Agreement temperature target.” Determining policies to prevent this from happening is the most important policy challenge of the climate change debate, and one we see most U.S. politicians ignoring, even and perhaps especially those most concerned about climate change. The report also provides recommendations on how to decarbonize the Belt and Road. Get to work policy makers.
Where Hong Kongers Want to Move to
As the situation in Hong Kong becomes ever more perilous for Hong Kongers, both those fighting for freedoms and your average person, some are contemplating moving away. But where to? According to the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Shot via Noah Smith’s tweet, fifty percent of Hong Kongers want to move to Taiwan. That seems like potentially a hot pot into the fire situation given China’s statements on Taiwan but it’s easy to see how the people of Hong Kong would be interested in moving to a place where both Chinese and democracy live. Perhaps just as interesting, as Smith points out, is how far down the U.S. is on the list. Perhaps it’s time the U.S. hands over its statue of liberty to Taipei?
The Esporting Life
Here in the United States the NFL American football season starts tonight. It’s a big deal but not when compared to esports. Next Big Future points out that the NFL has approximately 100 million viewers around the country and world. The audience for esports, according to newzoo (which has much better data than oldzoo), is 198 million occasional viewers worldwide with 245 million “esports enthusiasts.” Asia, and especially China, makes up the largest percentage of those enthusiasts and viewers. And those figures will only grow larger with newzoo calculating that 2.5 billion people will play video games in 2019—many of these couch loungers, especially the youthful demographic, will be prime targets for watching esports. So, yes the first NFL game is tonight and it’s a big deal, but a mere opossum to esports’ giant panda.
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