WHILE wonks argue Sachs verus Easterly versus Collier over brie and chianti, and Angelina, Bono, Oprah, and Madonna fall over each other to raise awareness about the importance of raising awareness, the Chinese have set about actually rebuilding (or building for the first time) much of Africa's economic infrastructure.
According to Akwe Amosu, an Africa expert for the Open Society Institute, "over 800 Chinese companies, the vast majority of them state-owned, are operating in 49 African countries." They are drilling for oil, extracting minerals, and building roads, railways, hotels, and factories.
China's willingness to support some of Africa's worst regimes in exchange for special access to African resources raises a number of serious worries, such as those laid out last year by Joshua Kurlantzick in The New Republic. One such worry (or hope, depending on your angle) is that increasing Chinese heft might reduce the power of African labour unions to negotiate stricter labour standards. An oft-overlooked aspect of this story is that Chinese companies working in Africa often insist on bringing their own workers. As Amosu reports:
It is a common complaint that when China contracts to deliver infrastructure projects in return for raw materials, it insists on the use of mostly Chinese labor, even in situations where African labor is abundant and desperate for opportunities to acquire new skills.
This may be a way for Chinese companies to steer clear of costly conflict with native unions. It may also be a way for African leaders to accelerate development while hoarding more of its spoils. If a prudently predatory autocrat has a way of increasing wealth creation in his domain without at the same time enriching potential political opposition, he will probably try it. But the explanation may be far simpler: Chinese companies prefer Chinese labour because it is more productive.
In an article this February in the Guardian, Lui Ping, the general manager for China's largest construction company in Zambia, is quoted as saying:
Chinese people can stand very hard work. This is a cultural difference. Chinese people work until they finish and then rest. Here they are like the British, they work according to a plan. They have tea breaks and a lot of days off. For our construction company that means it costs a lot more.
This may be sheer cultural bias, but it is also consistent with the sure-to-be-controversial thesis of Gregory Clark's forthcoming A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Mr Clark argues that differences in modren economic development are rooted in differences of labor quality. That is, rich countries are rich because their workers are better. This is one reason why offshoring may be an overblown worry: it may take so many additional lower-wage, lower-quality workers to produce the same product as a single, more expensive domestic worker that there is ultimately no savings. If Clark's thesis does in part explain African underdevelopment, then importing higher-quality labour, even if it is only slightly higher quality, may be crucial to setting Africa on a path to growth.
Mr Clark is perhaps wisely circumspect in his (non-)explanation of the underlying causes of differences in labour quality. He rather unhelpfully posits that "economies seem, to us, to alternate more or less randomly between relatively energetic phases and periods of somnolence." Whatever it may be, China these days seems to have acquired some of that economic élan vital. Whatever our well-placed worries about Chinese support of African illiberalism, if imported Chinese labour helps jolt Africa from its somnolence, it will have done more than fifty years of Foggy Bottom five year plans.
From here - http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/07/chinafrica.cfm Image from - http://worldnews.about.com/od/majornewsstories/ig/Top-10-World-News-Stories/China-in-Africa.htm
posted by ubaid - Thursday, August 02, 2007 at 7:21 PM -
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Slam Dunk
I fail to see why this is news. Everyone was in on this, Mr.Tenet is just trying to sell books I say.
posted by ubaid - Friday, April 27, 2007 at 10:22 PM -
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The Future of Car
The BMW Concept CS, unveiled at the Shanghi Auto Show. I think this "four door coupe" looks far more satisfying than the Mercedes-Benz CLS.
posted by ubaid - Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 9:50 AM -
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I've been mulling over a post on the inherent inconsistency of the concept of paradise but haven't gotten around to putting my thoughts down on paper yet. Meanwhile, Cato Unbound has an article on the futility of trying to achieve a state of continuous bliss. This is broadly my own view - I don't think it is possible for us as human beings to stay ecstatic for very long periods of time, for, it seems to me that happiness is relevant in context and vivid only when it is juxtaposed with periods of calm or even suffering. The Cato Unbound article discusses this issue at length and I'd recommend reading it in full. A selection follows.
[...] Thus, one of the most striking developments in Western societies over the last several hundred years is the steady expansion of the hope and expectation of happiness in this life. Concomitant with this expansion has been the steady erosion of other ways of conceiving of life’s purpose and end. If other ways of doing so have not been entirely abandoned — there are those who still live for virtue, honor, one’s homeland, or family name — in a world that places a premium on good feeling and positive emotion, these other ends have nowhere near the power to channel and constrain our choices that they once did. The same may be said of religion — long considered the ultimate end — but which today, even in places like the United States, where religious observance remains strong, is more often than not treated as a means to a better and happier life. The American author of the 1767 True Pleasure, Cheerfulness, and Happiness, The Immediate Consequence of Religion was undoubtedly ahead of his time.[10] And yet only decades later, that famous observer of the young republic, Alexis de Tocqueville, found it difficult to be sure when listening to American preachers “whether the main object of religion is to procure eternal felicity in the next world or prosperity in this.”[11] Today, when not only Protestants, but Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims regularly offer their faiths in America as effective means to earthly happiness, it is more difficult still to discern religion’s main object. In a sense, they too serve the greatest of the modern gods, the most uljavascript:void(0) Publishtimate of ultimate ends: the god of good feeling, who now reigns here below. [...]
Update 1, April 6 2007 The article link to CATO Unbound no longer seems active and I can't find the essay in the archives either. I'll update the link if I can find it.
Update 2 April 7 2007 The mysterious disappearance of the The Pursuit of Happiness in Perspective has been explained. Thank you Will!
Update 3 April 9 2007 The article I was referring to in this post is now available.
Yukio Mishima was one of Japan's most prolific writers in the past century and is well known for his The Sound of Waves amongst other works. I've just finished reading Forbidden Colors in a translation by Alfred H. Marks.
Forbidden Colors is the story of Yuichi Minami, a young Japanese student whose beauty overpowers everyone who sees him, irrespective of their sexual leanings. Yuichi is gay and harbors a deep hatred for the strictly heterosexual culture he finds himself in. With the encouragement and guidance of Shunsuke Hinoki, a retired novelist, he marries Yasuko, a young beautiful woman Shunsuke was involved with before she met Yuichi. Yuichi's beauty allows him to carry on simultaneous (asexual) affairs with several different women while also enjoying the indulgence of practically every gay man he meets at Rudon's, an underground gay bar.
Shunsuke's relationship with Yuichi and the young man's overall personality is reminscent of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, and like his victorian counterpart Yuichi is a difficult character to feel any sympathy for. Even though Yuichi feels frustrated about the constraints he finds himself in he never exhibits any tenderness or love for anyone at all. Throughout the length of the book he continues to exploit everyone around him, from Shunsuke, who believes he's using Yuichi to avenge the affronts handed over to him by younger women, to Yuichi's silently suffering wife Yasuko.
If you've enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray then you'll probably enjoy Forbidden Colors. I certainly did. Recommended.
H-1B Cap For FY2008 Reached In One Day The USCIS announced today that the H-1B cap for FY2008 was reached on the first working day that applications were accepted, Monday April 2nd 2007. From the notice posted on the USCIS site -
As of late Monday afternoon (April 2), USCIS had received approximately 150,000 cap-subject H-1B petitions. USCIS must perform initial data entry for all filings received on April 2 and April 3 prior to conducting the random selection process. In light of the high volume of filings, USCIS will not be able to conduct the random selection for several weeks.
This is incredible, they received a 150 thousand applications on the very first day, and they will randomly select 65000 from the total received on April 2nd and 3rd, which means the probability of getting a work visa is less than 30%. Where are all these applications coming from though? From the various mailing lists I'm on I get the impression a huge percentage of these applications will be filed for contractors. The contractor system is something I've completely failed to grapple with so far. Most big firms hire short term contractors for specialized projects, paying hundreds of dollars per hour for these supposedly highly skilled engineers and analysts. The ground reality however, is quite different. There is an entire ecosystem of contractors and sub-contractors called dallas (slang for pimp) who train fresh graduates for a few months on tools like CrystalReports and Documentum, then create resumes showing several years of experience and get these graduates placed. Amazingly, this crackpot system works - the engineer ends up getting a tiny fraction of the actual billing rate and the rest gets distributed amongst the layers of dallas he's had to go through to get the job. There is no doubt in my mind that the deluge of applications received by the USCIS is driven in no small measure by these very unscrupulous firms.
posted by ubaid - Tuesday, April 03, 2007 at 11:15 PM -
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Movie Recommendation: Stranger Than Fiction
With a protagonist who seems to have stepped out of a Haruki Murakami novel, Stranger Than Fiction is supremely satisfying cinema. The movie stars Will Ferrel as Harold Crick, an IRS agent on the edge of OCD, who starts hearing what seems like a narrator telling the story of his life - and imminent death. He enlists the help of a literature professor and then falls in love with a baker he is auditing, hoping to change the course of events and the novel's character from a tragedy to a comedy. I really enjoyed the movie and would highly recommend it. It is available on DVD now.
In an open letter posted on the Apple website, Steve Jobs explains why iTunes uses the FairPlay DRM and proposes a gradual move towards DRM free music. I've been a very satisfied user of eMusic's DRM free catalogue of Hindustani and Western classical music and I think allowing consumers to play their music on any device they wish is the only way to go. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft's Zune strategy evolves in comparison to iTunes - though I don't think the four major labels are anywhere close to getting used to the idea of DRM free music. Following is an excerpt from Jobs' letter. The entire text is here.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.
In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.
So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.
An Interview With the Late Chicago Economist Milton Friedman
An interview with Milton Friedman (1912 - 2006) - Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles.
Interview conducted 10/01/00
On Freedom and Free Markets
INTERVIEWER: Why are free markets and freedom inseparable?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Freedom requires individuals to be free to use their own resources in their own way, and modern society requires cooperation among a large number of people. The question is, how can you have cooperation without coercion? If you have a central direction you inevitably have coercion. The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
INTERVIEWER: Marxists say that property is theft. Why, in your view, is private property so central to freedom?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Because the only way in which you can be free to bring your knowledge to bear in your particular way is by controlling your property. If you don't control your property, if somebody else controls it, they're going to decide what to do with it, and you have no possibility of exercising influence on it. The interesting thing is that there's a lot of knowledge in this society, but, as Friedrich Hayek emphasized so strongly, that knowledge is divided. I have some knowledge; you have some knowledge; he has some knowledge. How do we bring these scattered bits of knowledge back together? And how do we make it in the self-interest of individuals to use that knowledge efficiently? The key to that is private property, because if it belongs to me, you know, there's an obvious fact. Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.
Barack Hussein Obama Living in the world's richest democracy after spending twenty one years in the world's largest, my dislike for politics has only deepened. This month marks the beginning of the 2008 Presidential campaign and the innuendo and name calling that would be more appropriate in a high school playground, but is so remarkably characteristic of American politics, has already begun. Chapati Mystery requests Barrack Obama to reissue a campaign statement in which the senator from Illinois sounds horrified at the very idea of being called a Muslim. I agree that Islam and its interpretation is flawed, but I also think the concept of religion itself is deeply flawed. To use someone's faith to cast aspersions on their qualifications or competence is wrong and unconstitutional and Obama should refrain from reinforcing such stereotypes. Even the Economist, a respected, even handed publication slips -
It has also emerged that his middle name is Hussein, and that his ears stick out. If this is the worst that can be said, so much the better for him.
