china

20 October 2017

Posted on October 20, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Economist’s “China’s leader Xi Jinping declares the start of a ‘new era’” neatly captures the ambition of the 19^th Chinese Communist Party Congress held this week: “revise the party’s constitution, reshuffle the leadership and set the tone for policymaking in the next five years”. The ‘new era’ is one where China becomes a “great modern socialist country” by mid-century. I found Bill Bishop’s “19th Party Congress Work Report” [shared by Guy Taylor and which just added a paywall] very useful in pulling together articles from diverse sources and structuring some of the key take-aways. They include the positioning of Xi Jinping in the legacy of Chinese leaders, the characteristics of the “new era”, the strategic opportunity for China to “take center stage in the world”, the clearly articulated leadership on climate change, and the strengthened role of state enterprises. All of which very relevant to our work either directly or indirectly (through South-South and regional/international organizations).

I recently suggested to a young female professional who introduced herself as “just an intern” to consider introducing herself as a “reverse mentor” instead. That was based on the fact that pretty much every millennial who has been in my team has opened my horizons. And as Kevin Roose reports in his “Executive mentors needed. Only millennials need apply”, reverse mentoring schemes are trending in many industries. As an organization servicing the young, shouldn’t we formally develop such as system?

My graph this week if from IFPRI’s “2017 Global hunger index”. While broad numbers are positive, the index report presents important inequalities between and within countries, illustrated below for child stunting rates. It also argues that 52 out of 119 countries for which data are available, are in serious risk of hunger or alarming states of hunger. Together with FAO’s “2017 State of food security and nutrition in the world” showing that the absolute number of hungry people rose in 2016, it rings the alarm bell on a possible reversal of long term (taken for granted) trends.

My quote this week is from Muhammad Ali’s 1971 Parkinson interview: “When one man of popularity can let the world know the problem, he might lose a few dollars telling the truth, he might lose his life but he is helping millions. But if I keep my mouth shut just because I can make millions this isn’t doing nothing.”

19 May 2017

Posted on May 19, 2017 Leave a Comment

Delivered earlier this week during the Belt and Road Summit, Zheng Bijian’s “China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) plan marks the next phase of globalization” presents OBOR as a global game changer. Indeed, this is the biggest infrastructure plan ever: 65 countries, 62% of the world population and 30% of global GDP. The total investment need is $5 trillion. China already pledged $113 billion, 9 of which in the form of aid to poor countries. More funding will come from the BRICS’s New Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. Unless you are in the Americas, chances are that what you do is somehow connected to this initiative. I guess, even if you are in the Americas, there will be externalities. Looking at power dynamics in the region, much of the talk focused on India’s lack of support. Next summit scheduled for 2019.

Danny Hernandez’ “How our company learned to do better predictions about everything” is what I shared when asked about best practices to improve organizational data literacy. Let me be clear here: I don’t know anything about best practices in that area. But I read this interesting article the day before I was asked the question. The company is Twitch, an Amazon offshoot. It invested in growing the predictive skills of every single staff member irrespective of functions and ranks. An initial phase warmed up employees by asking them to play with past company metrics, like “how much do you think our sales grew last quarter?” Once they got comfortable, they were asked to make predictions that would impact their work, like “how confident are you that you can complete this project in 3 weeks?” At first, Twitch employees were not excited: they did not believe in predictions, were afraid of making bad predictions, and thought that there was not enough evidence to make good predictions. But after the training, 96% of them said they would recommend it to a colleague. This initiative improved Twitch’s collective forecasting capacity. And it boosted efficiency as employees got better at evaluating ideas, defending funding proposals, and setting expectations. Other good ideas I heard this week: have data days in your teams or spend 10 minutes everyday on data issues. I am adding the latter to my daily routine.

CBinsights’ “From virtual nurses to drug discovery: 106 artificial intelligence startups in healthcare” maps the growing AI health market which is revolutionizing the whole industry from direct assistance to patients, to diagnosis, to drug discovery and mental health treatment.

My quote this week is from Elon Musk’s “The future we are building – and boring”: “I am not trying to be anyone’s savior. I just want to think about the future and not be sad.“

5 May 2017

Posted on May 5, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Financial Times Foreign Affairs chief Gideon Rachman published “Easternization: Asia’s rise and America’s decline from Obama to Trump and beyond”. I have not read the book but this interview gives the gist of the argument. It is not new, it strengthens the message around a trend that many have documented. What was interesting to me was Jessica Mathews saying that she was not convinced because (i) global leadership takes more than global economic (and even military) power; (ii) China has to balance between global, regional and national hot issues; and (iii) there are other forces in “the East”, such as the rise of India, that are still looking West. And what was equally interesting was to read, in parallel, Danny Quah’s (Eastern?) perspective. In “Can Asia lead the world?”, Quah agrees that it takes more than a growing economic, military and population footprint to lead globally. He argues that Asia’s leadership strategy should focus on soft power and that its driving values could be different from liberal democracy. Ultimately, he says that Asia will only be able to lead if it has a story. For him, that vision does not exist, yet.

Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson’s “Writing that works” is the book I recommended when a colleague asked me for guidance on improving writing skills. I love that book. It identifies the most common writing weaknesses and gives specific tips that you can use to practice, practice, and practice until you get it right. I don’t, so I go back to it regularly and am never disappointed. They give guidance on how to write memos that get things done, plans that make things happen, proposals that sell ideas, and resumes that get interviews. It is a good way to spend 11 dollars. At one point, I also had Josh Bernoff’s “10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them” pasted on the wall next to my desk so that I could check it from time to time. I should put it back.

My graph of the week is from NYU Center on International Cooperation’s Global Peace Operational Review which, among other things, tracks the new Secretary-General (SG)’s senior appointments (USG and ASG) throughout the system by gender and nationality. 17 male vs 14 female so far in 2017. That’s for his new appointees. Overall, at this level, the situation today is 71% male vs 29% female. Not great. The SG committed to reaching parity at senior level by 2021 and across the system before 2030 and he asked his Gender Parity Task Force to come up with a plan to get there. Let’s watch and see.

My quote this week is from 80-year old Nobel Prize Daniel Kahneman: “There are studies showing that when you present evidence to people they get very polarized even if they are highly educated. They find ways to interpret the evidence in conflicting ways. Our mind is constructed so that in many situations where we have beliefs and we have facts, the beliefs come first. That’s what makes people incapable of being convinced by evidence. So education by itself is not going to change the culture. Changing critical thinking through education is very slow and I’m not very optimistic about it.”

17 February 2017

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Katja Bego’s “The end of the web” predicts a balkanization of the internet as a result of co-existing forces: the rise of cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure such as air traffic control towers or nuclear plants; the increasing vulnerability of the web’s under-sea system of cables; the failure to design an internet governance system; the non-neutrality of big techs; and the growing number of countries building alternative island internets. She also sees an opportunity in this chaos to create a new decentralized internet and tells Europe to go for it. No matter how probable the prediction, envisioning our business model with no internet or a fragmented one is a useful scenario to consider when stress-testing the delivery of our strategies.

I’ve flagged the growing impact of the refugee crisis on in-donor expenditures before but in “Making waves: Implications of the irregular migration and refugee situation on official development assistance spending and practices in Europe” Knoll and Sheriff systematically review what’s happening in Denmark, the EU, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. They show a significant increase of in-donor spending (fourfold in Sweden!) affecting long-term Official Development Assistance (ODA); and a reallocation of ODA to humanitarian contexts with direct ties to EU migration, affecting the funding of far-away crises. They also document a shift in the discourse away from maximizing-the-positive-impacts-of-migration towards dealing-with-the-many-challenges-associated-with-migration (eg, smuggling, border governance, return and reintegration). They show how refugee-related data are all over the place and call on better harmonization of reporting via the OECD-DAC. Three other things caught my attention. One, policy papers increasingly make reference to “root causes” by which they mean youth unemployment, access to basic services for refugees and host communities, peace and security, human rights, governance and resilience. But, this growing focus has not led to any changes in funding practices. Two, when ODA is used to support voluntary return and reintegration, higher development impacts are “expected for projects supporting migrants faced with specific socio-economic vulnerabilities”. But programmes are typically not accompanied by vulnerability assessments nor sustainability evaluations. Three, the crisis has accelerated efforts to link humanitarian and development approaches. Most donors are discussing joint strategies and some have started to combine funding (eg Germany tying refugee cash-for-work programmes with funding for permanent waste management structures in Lebanon).

My graph this week is from the World Wealth and Income Database (WID.world) which just updated their profile of inequalities in China combining unpublished fiscal and wealth data with national accounts and surveys. It shows higher level of inequalities than previously estimated: “the share of the poorest 50% in the national income in China fell from 28% to 15% between 1978 and 2015, while the income of the 10% richest rose from 26% to 41%.” Launched in January, WID.world is a Piketty-driven open-access database with income and wealth time series from an increasingly large number of countries. It is a space to watch as the expanding network of associated economists looks into disaggregating datasets.

Two quotes reflecting different (generational? geographical?) perspectives of the vibe at the World Government Summit. Take your pick! Geopolitical Futures’ George Friedman: “Nations are going to be much more important than multinational organizations. [The] complex commitments by all countries to each other haven’t been working well for most countries so I think we are going to see the nation-state far more important than it was.” And Impact Squared Noa Gafni: “Many of the conversations that took place during the Summit revealed the days of multilateralism are not over. Although traditional players such as the United Kingdom and United States appear to be taking a step back, many frontier markets see this as an opportunity to play a more prominent role.”

And in case you need a boost, read the Bill and Melinda Gates’ 2017 Annual Letter.

11 September 2015

Posted on September 11, 2015 Leave a Comment

Mark Jones’ “6 video quotes from Jack Ma at our China meeting” gives a glimpse of Alibaba CEO ’s views on the future of e-commerce. I circulated Jack Ma’s Davos interview last January saying that it was my favorite WEF 2015 video.

My visual this week is from “The inclusive growth and development report 2015” website where you can visualize the performance of 112 countries against 7 indicators that matter for inclusion. You can also compare the performance of the country you select with other countries in the same income category. Pretty cool.

My quote of the week is from IMF Christine Lagarde’s “Delivering on the promise of 2015” at the Women-20 launch event held at the margins of the G20 Finance in Turkey: “Women’s empowerment is not just a fundamentally moral cause, it is also an absolute economic no-brainer.”