FMCG or fast moving consumer goods sprang out of the mass industrialisation. Brands sprang up originally as a guarantee of quality. Later on as these brands needed to be promoted, we saw the foundation of the what we think of as modern marketing and advertising.
Today media and entertainment takes up an increasing amount of the household spend, as does housing, but FMCGs are a crucial part of their essential and disposable income spend.
They have nostalgia wrapped up in them, distinctive aromas, taste and packaging designs. From the smell of my Granny using so much Pledge on the TV that I was surprised it didn’t burst into flame to the taste of Cidona and texture of Boland’s Fig Roll biscuits in my mouth.
The sound of their advertising jingles was the soundtrack of my childhood. Digital advertising is largely rationale, it lacks the fluent devices that provide the centre to advertising and made FMCG advertising iconic. Fluent devices like the Peperami ‘Animal’, the M&M characters or the Cadbury Smash robots were embedded in deep marketing research. FMCG brands still sponsor the best research in marketing science.
I had the good fortune to work inhouse at Unilever and agency-side for their brands. I also managed to work on Coca-Cola and Colgate during my time in Hong Kong.
Warning: Stamps that say ‘1st’ or ‘2nd’ class are going to become unusable from 31 January 2023 – each stamp will have a proprietary QRcode type glyph. The stamp’s glyph will be linked to a digital twin. This isn’t to be used for tracking the letters and the packages that they are affixed to; but purely as a security measure on the stamps. How much effort is this going to take and is it really going to be cheaper than conventional printing technologies to limit stamp fraud? How much of a black economy is there in stamps anyway? While the Royal Mail promises innovative services enabled by the stamps, it isn’t clear what they will be at the moment. Looking at Amazon, the ‘barcode stamps’ as the Royal Mail call them don’t seem to be widely available yet. The Royal Mail has announced but not launched a scheme to swap out your existing stamps for the new design.
China
What is most interesting about Eileen Gu isn’t that she switched countries but the narrative of western decline that China is wrapping around this: Cold warrior: why Eileen Gu ditched Team USA to ski for China | The Economist and Winter Olympics: Eileen Gu and the Chimerican Dream – The Olympic freestyle skier has stirred controversy for representing China. She is the product of a vanishing shared space between the Chinese and American elite. As for Gu’s Mum’s background, it would be an ideal model if a screen writers was adapting The Americans as Chinese sleeper agents instead
Wang Huning’s career reveals much about political change in China | The Economist – As its chief of ideology and propaganda, he is in charge of crafting a very different message: that China practises true democracy, that America’s is a sham and that American power is fading. For a party locked in an escalating ideological war with America, this line is unsurprising. Mr Wang’s role in the struggle is more so. His early writing did not suggest narrow-minded nationalism. He saw weaknesses in America’s system, but did not exaggerate them. He saw problems, too, in China’s. Even more remarkably, he has been crafting the party’s message under three successive leaders.
What’s interesting about the future of the ideas that aren’t hinged in culture, is how similar they relate to 10 year predictions back in the late 1990s and early 2000s – Internet in 2035 | Pew Research Center
The Plausibly Deniable DataBase (PDDB) « bunnie’s blog – Most security schemes facilitatethe coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the passwords for these three encrypted files with names A, B and C, or else…”. In other words, security often focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data, but lacks deniability.
A scheme with deniability would make even the existence of secret files difficult to prove. This makes it difficult for an attacker to formulate a coherent demand: “There’s no evidence of undisclosed data. Should we even bother to make threats?” A lack of evidence makes it more difficult to make specific and enforceable demands.
Thus, assuming the ultimate goal of security is to protect the safety of users as human beings, and not just their files, enhanced security should come hand-in-hand with enhanced plausible deniability (PD). PD armsusers with a set of tools they can use to navigate the social landscape of security, by making it difficult to enumerate all the secrets potentially contained within a device, even with deep forensic analysis
Korea Herald – After being called feminists, these women faced online harassment – One in 2 men in their 20s in South Korea tends to be anti-feminist, according to a 2018 study released by the Korean Women’s Development Institute, a government think tank. In the same survey, only 1 in 4 young men saw women as “weaker than men” or needing protection. But such strong antagonism against feminism has puzzled many looking from the outside at a country that has the highest gender wage gap among OECD countries. Women also feel less safe than men in the country, according to a 2021 report from the Gender Equality Ministry. Only 21.6 percent of women said they felt safe from crime, as opposed to 32.1 percent of men.
On Meta’s ‘regulatory headwinds’ and adtech’s privacy reckoning | TechCrunch – “The investigation shows that gambling platforms do not operate in a silo. Rather, gambling platforms operate in conjunction with a wider network of third parties. The investigation shows that even limited browsing of 37 visits to gambling websites led to 2,154 data transmissions to 83 domains controlled by 44 different companies that range from well-known platforms like Facebook and Google to lesser known surveillance technology companies like Signal and Iovation, enabling these actors to embed imperceptible monitoring software during a user’s browsing experience. The investigation further shows that a number of these third-party companies receive behavioural data from gambling platforms in realtime, including information on how often individuals gambled, how much they were spending, and their value to the company if they returned to gambling after lapsing.”
Professional specific support – Self-Care Catalyst – is aimed at stressed and burnt out nurse practitioners in the US. I heard about it from my US colleagues and imagine that we will see similar businesses soon
Is there an end in sight to supply chain disruption? | Financial Times -There are major barriers to ending supply chain disruption by decoupling from China. Japan is trying to reduce supply chain disruption by replicating Chinese factories in other countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Here are some of things stopping multinational corporations from making that happen. In order to end supply chain disruption, I would imagine that a higher degree of automation is key, which will require corresponding improvements in automation technology. This doesn’t just mean software but also in mechanical engineering. The main issue for fine motor control in robots is the design and price of harmonic drives. This doesn’t operate on a Moore’s Law speed and scale of innovation. Increased automation also likely means major changes in approach to product design. Back in the golden era of consumer electronics just prior to the consumer adoption of the internet, circuit boards were less dense because they were designed for automated ‘pick-and-place’ machines. Nokia had a similar approach to its phones prior to the pivot to Windows and Qualcomm chips. The reason why Apple needs iPhones made in China is because a lot of the final assembly is closer to the work of a watchmaker servicing a mechanical watch than you would credit. So lots of cheap, (younger, smaller, delicate, usually female) hands are required. Our financial system’s obsessive, narrow focus on shareholder value will curtail these movements. Look at how Apple crows about how green they are and yet makes the virtually unrecyclable Air Pods by the million. Until that changes and the computers are assembled from modular boards, closer to their home market the supply chain won’t change despite the political, economic, national security and moral imperatives otherwise. Which is why Apple amongst others point out that they have an inability to move production out of China. This will get even harder as China moves up the semiconductor value chain. Once they are building memory modules and modern silicon fab processes, its game over for manufacturing elsewhere in the electronics sector. China is also the sole provider for many of the ingredients in multi-vitamins and pharmaceutical products. They process and mine just under 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals – key for a large swathe of technologies from magnets to chips and batteries. They have a similar position in solar cell polysilicon and lithium ion battery ingredients.
JAXPORT promises less supply disruption
So ending supply chain disruption would mean replicating whole ingredient manufacturing chains and industry knowhow that multinationals had migrated to China decades ago. All of these actions to reduce supply chain disruption may not be received very well by China itself. China has bought key infrastructure around the world: power generation, ports, water supply, rail networks and more. All of which means that they get a greater say in how the world’s supply chain works. Xi Jingping has been straight forward in saying that he wants the world to rely on China more, and China to rely on the rest of the world less. Decoupling from Chinese supply chain disruption has taken on even more importance with the rise of Chinese secondary sanctions. More on nearshoring to avoid Chinese supply chain disruptions here: China’s economic woes: An opportunity for U.S. manufacturing?
China
Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab – but feared debate could hurt ‘international harmony’ – An email from Dr Ron Fouchier to Sir Jeremy said: “Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.” Dr Collins, former director of the NIH, replied to Sir Jeremy stating: “I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.” Institutions which held the emails have repeatedly resisted efforts to publish their content. The University of Edinburgh recently turned down an Freedom of Information request from The Telegraph asking to see Prof Rambaut’s replies, claiming “disclosure would be likely to endanger the physical or mental health and safety of individuals”. – this is going to turn into a dumpster fire
Dutch university gives up Chinese funding due to impartiality concerns | Netherlands | The Guardian – Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit (VU), the fourth largest university in the Netherlands, has said it will accept no further money from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and repay sums it recently received. The announcement came after an investigation by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS last week revealed VU’s Cross Cultural Human Rights Center (CCHRC) had received between €250,000 (£210,000) and €300,000 annually from Southwest over the past few years. According to NOS, the CCHRC used Southwest’s money to fund a regular newsletter, organise seminars and maintain its website – which has published several posts rejecting western criticism of China’s human rights policy
Why is it still considered OK to be ageist? | Financial Times – A study by academics at Yale found that people with a negative approach to ageing deal with it worse mentally and physically and die seven and a half years younger. To put this in context, mild obesity shortens life by three years, extreme obesity by 10. Hardly surprisingly, this has prompted a great deal of fuss at government level. Policymakers and health professionals obsess over obesity. But what about the damage done by poor attitudes to ageing? Until I read about the survey I had no idea it was even a thing: the fact that ageism can actually kill you is a well-kept secret. It is also a costly one. According to the WHO report, the resulting ill health places an additional annual burden on the US healthcare of $63bn. I realise that health policymakers have been busy since the report came out last March, but still there hasn’t been a peep out of them
I love this 60 Minutes Australia film about an Australian inventor
Equations built giants like Google. Who’ll find the next billion-dollar bit of maths? | David Sumpter | The Guardian – The PageRank story is neither the first nor the most recent example of a little-known piece of mathematics transforming tech. In 2015, three engineers used the idea of gradient descent, dating back to the French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the mid-19th century, to increase the time viewers spent watching YouTube by 2,000%. Their equation transformed the service from a place we went to for a few funny clips to a major consumer of our viewing time.
Murata’s Thailand move heralds Japan tech shift from China | Financial Times – “The most populous country today may be China, but in 2030 that will be India, and further down the road it will be Africa,” Nakajima said. “Will those economies be aligned with China or the US? We don’t know. We should be able to respond to both scenarios.”
Legal
Hong Kong: how colonial-era laws are being used to shut down independent journalism – police recently told reporters that opinion articles aren’t the only ones that can be regarded as seditious. Media interviews with exiled activists and features on clashes between protesters and riot police can also be considered seditious if the content is deemed by the government to be “fake news” or inciting hatred towards the government and endangering national security
Hong Kong independence activist Edward Leung released from jail, told to stay silent — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong barrister and former lawmaker Siu Tsz-man said supervision orders are sometimes issued to released prisoners involved in violent crimes, including murder and manslaughter, and require the former prisoner to maintain contact with supervision officers and remain at a stable residence. But Siu said the order to stay away from the spotlight was unprecedented. “I have never heard of this happening before,” Siu said. “My staff have never heard of a supervision order under which the person isn’t allowed to give interviews to the media.” Siu declined to comment on whether the order was appropriate without knowing the details of the case. “The point of a supervision order isn’t to confine someone at a certain location and not let them leave,” he said. Some drew parallels between Leung’s release and the continuing controls on released political prisoners in mainland China – similar in nature to an ASBO but inherently political in nature
Virginia burglaries work of ‘crime tourists,’ authorities say – The Washington Post – Authorities call them “crime tourists.” Law enforcement experts say cells of professional South American burglars, particularly from Colombia and Chile, are entering the country illegally or exploiting a visa waiver program meant to expedite tourism from dozens of trusted foreign countries. Once here, they travel from state to state carrying out scores of burglaries, jewelry heists and other crimes, pilfering tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods each year, the FBI estimates. Experts said the groups often operate with impunity because they have found a kind of criminal sweet spot. Bail for nonviolent property offenses is often low, so an arrested burglar often quickly gets bond and skips town for the next job, experts said. The crimes often don’t meet the threshold for the involvement of federal authorities. And they attract less attention at a time when U.S. authorities are contending with a rise in homicides. Dan Heath, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s criminal investigations division, said “South American theft groups,” as the agency calls them, are a growing problem across the United States — and in countries including India, Britain and Australia, where they often employ similar tactics. “They represent an enormous threat right now in our country,” Heath said. “They are tending to thread the needle in avoiding both state and federal prosecution.”
VW fired senior employee after they raised cyber security concerns | Financial Times – A senior Volkswagen employee was dismissed weeks after raising the alarm about alleged cyber security vulnerabilities at the carmakers’ payments arm, which is soon to be majority-owned by JPMorgan. The manager alerted bosses in September 2021 to concerns that VW’s system in the region was “open to fraud” following an attempted cyber attack, and maintained that $2.6m sitting in the company’s accounts could be stolen, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. The staff member, who also told superiors that VW could face regulatory action if the vulnerabilities were not addressed, was then fired in October. – not terribly surprising
Software
After ruining Android messaging, Google says iMessage is too powerful | Ars Technica – “Google clearly views iMessage’s popularity as a problem, and the company is hoping this public-shaming campaign will get Apple to change its mind on RCS,” writes Amadeo in closing. “But Google giving other companies advice on a messaging strategy is a laughable idea since Google probably has the least credibility of any tech company when it comes to messaging services. If the company really wants to do something about iMessage, it should try competing with it.” – if this wasn’t an admission of failure by Google I don’t know what is. Google has a history of failed or closed communication services Google Talk (GTalk) (which was retired when Google decided to move away from an open messaging standard , Google Hangouts (which was spun out of Google+ messaging functionality), Google Allo and Google Wave
Christine Lee and Foreign Interference: what the UK can learn from Taiwan | China Dialogues – As part of the transition from authoritarianism to democracy, Taiwan retooled its political commissar system (zheng wei 政委) – formerly responsible for policing political loyalty toward the regime – into an institution that safeguards democracy by working to identify Chinese influence at all levels of Taiwanese politics and society. Political commissars (PCs) not only receive extensive military training but also develop a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s political warfare tactics. Most major government departments and private sector organisations in Taiwan will have PCs operating within their ranks, monitoring and reporting evidence of foreign interference. As many democracies facing Chinese influence and interference do not have such well-established systems in place, Taiwan’s zheng wei system may provide a starting point for how anti-foreign influence institutions can work effectively within democratic societies
Technology
EETimes – Arm Predicts Stagnation if Nvidia Deal Fails – without investment from Nvidia, Arm would be seriously disadvantaged in its bid to grow in data center markets and compete against Intel Corp. and x86 incumbents. The filing also explains why an Arm stock offering is a non-starter while noting that Arm faces stiff competition from emerging RISC-V competitors – interesting that they don’t mention ARM China crisis at all. Nvidia have now walked away from it and Softbank is supposed to be preparing a public offering for ARM
China’s ‘Lipstick Brother’ Livestream Has Record $2 Billion Day – BNN Bloomberg – Beauty livestreamer Li Jiaqi aka Lipstick Brother sold $1.9 billion worth of products in one twelve hour show on Taobao. That’s slightly less than the total sales from all four Selfridges stores during 2019. Lipstick Brother is one of a number of live-streaming sales stars like Mr Bags aka Tao Liang. There are clear parallels between Lipstick Brother and informercial stars on US shopping TV. The reason why live-streaming commerce happened was because of the historic iron grip that the Chinese government has held on TV station. This drove audiences online because the content was that bad and there wasn’t a QVC analogue for the likes of Lipstick Brother to appear on. The key difference is in the breadth of products that Lipstick Brother and his peers sell, Lipstick Brother and Mr Bags work with topline luxury brands in their respective categories rather than mid-market brands. It is interesting that Lipstick Brother has managed to survive the communist party’s purge from public life of sissy men across off-line and online media.
China cuts finance pledge to Africa amid growing debt concerns | Financial Times – Chidi Odinkalu, senior manager for Africa at the Open Society Foundations, said the reduced financial pledge showed that Beijing no longer had to try so hard in Africa. “China’s strategic objective was to get a foot in the door. Now that it’s in the door, it can choose to dictate the terms,” he said. He criticised some African governments for relying too heavily on loans from Beijing. “The volume of credit that some of them have binged on makes them dependent beyond any sensible notion of sovereignty,” he said.
South Korean presidential hopeful plays down reunification with north | Financial Times – South Korean ruling party’s candidate for president has downplayed the prospect of the future reunification of the Korean peninsula, as the country’s voters tire of decades of fruitless diplomacy with the North. Lee Jae-myung of the progressive Democratic party, whose manifesto includes a commitment to “seek unification through peaceful measures”, told reporters on Thursday that competition between the two Koreas in terms of ideology and efforts to prove the superiority of each system “has no meaning” and did not offer the prospect of “real gains any more” – potentially a big move from the Moon regime position, also probably linked to a more hawkish position on China
Macau casinos gamble on relations with Beijing | Financial Times – casinos increase the shareholdings held by Macau permanent residents. A speedy public consultation has ended and business is waiting for the final law to be put to the legislature, a process that is also expected to determine how many of the casinos have their licences renewed, and for how long. The situation is particularly troubling for the three Macau casino groups that are largely US-owned: Las Vegas Sands, founded by the late Sheldon Adelson, MGM and Wynn operate nine resorts in Macau, and their local subsidiaries are listed in Hong Kong. Local operators Galaxy Entertainment, the late Stanley Ho’s SJM Holdings and Melco, which is dual-listed in the US and Hong Kong, also hold concessions – guessing that this adds pressure on gaming operators to try and put pressure on the US government rather like Wall Street does for China
Luxury Stores Across the US Hit By Mass Heists in the Same Week – Robb Report – this sounds like a classic example of steaming. Steaming is a British phrase describing the phenomenon of shoplifting, when a large group of (usually youths) enter a store en masse and engage in shoplifting. Steaming puts a strain on shop security, it often causes panic in the store and creates so many suspects for the police to chase down. For the shoplifters steaming reduces the individual risk of getting caught. In large department stores, steaming becomes easier because of the number of exits. There are usually enough people involved to push past hastily set up security checkpoints during steaming. Young people are particularly attracted to steaming for a couple of reasons:
Low risk, high reward
Low impact of criminal penalties for many depending on their age
Peer pressure from other older members organising the steaming group
When I was in secondary school, we had a trip to Paris. A good number of peers one day engaged in steaming. They managed to make off to a large amount of Lacoste and Sergio Tachini sports clothing which was popular in Merseyside at the time. Steaming was also a central part of football casual culture. Much of the sportswear back in the 1980s were fenced goods. Criminal gangs followed European football games and practiced steaming in the lead up to a match at major department stores across France, Spain and Italy. The items were then sold on to groups of football fans back home through informal networks. What surprised me about this group doing the steaming was the nature of their crime. They were steaming boutiques, which have less entrances and exits than department stores. Boutiques often have queues of people to get in and security on the doors that would be bad for practicing steaming.
So what went wrong with store security to prevent steaming? Has steaming been facilitated by a cut back in security for cost cutting purposes? If so, will insurance companies honour losses incurred through these steaming attacks?
Beauty
Prestige beauty: Inside Unilever’s growth engine | Vogue Business – Dana Kreutzer, project lead for beauty and personal care at US research firm Kline, says the acquisition “demonstrates the company’s focus on expanding its portfolio to include more digitally-led brands and clinical-grade skin care, which is a fast-moving segment in the skincare space”.
Opinion | We Spent a Year Investigating What the Chinese Army Is Buying. Here’s What We Learned. – POLITICO – the Chinese military is “intelligentizing” warfare by purchasing AI systems for all manner of applications, including autonomous vehicles, intelligence analysis, decision support, electronic warfare and cyber operations. At the same time, we found reason to be skeptical of the most ominous predictions about China’s efforts to fully automate warfare through “doomsday”-like weapons. Perhaps most importantly for U.S. policymakers, our investigation into the PLA’s buying habits shows how Chinese progress in military AI is being driven, in part, by access to American technology and capital. Our report highlights the critical role U.S. companies play in supplying China with data, software and funding. This points to serious shortcomings in the U.S. export control system, which wasn’t built to screen the high volume of technology transfer and capital flows into China, and which struggles to distinguish between military and civilian purchasers. Even as the United States attempts to decouple supply chains from China when it comes to American goods, it also needs to consider new strategies to prevent American know-how from inadvertently powering China’s technological advancements
In the Russian Arctic, China treads on thinning ice | China Dialogues – In order to reach its goal of becoming a ‘polar great power’ China will need to lessen its dependence on Russian support and expand its economic and political ties with other Arctic states. This may present Arctic states with an opportunity to set limits on China’s regional influence, but the benefits of any such limitation must be measured against the importance of giving China a stake in the fight against climate change. In the traditionally calm waters of the Arctic, China’s ‘Arctic Policy White Paper’ made much of a splash when it was first released in 2018. The paper showed, as was argued at the time by politicians and pundits, that Beijing would seek to establish itself as a new Arctic power, and in the process deprive the eight Arctic states of their control over the region’s abundant natural resources
Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare faces calls to resign over China diplomatic ties | South China Morning Post – The protest began peacefully, but schools and businesses were shut by the afternoon as crowds tried to enter parliament demanding PM Manasseh Sogavare step down. Protesters were angry about lack of promised development and the Solomons government’s 2019 decision to cut ties with Taiwan and establish a formal relationship with China – the big question is what will China do to keep Sogavare or his party in power and maintain the status quo?
Secret Chinese Port Project in Persian Gulf Rattles U.S. Relations With U.A.E. – WSJ – U.S. intelligence agencies learned this spring that China was secretly building what they suspected was a military facility at a port in the United Arab Emirates, one of the U.S.’s closest Mideast allies, according to people familiar with the matter
Is the China-Europe Express becoming a political weapon in the hands of China? | RailFreight.com – China launched the Belt and Road initiative with the purpose to enhance Eurasian transport links. It includes Chinese cities, transit countries through Asia and European destinations. Understandably, such a vast investment from the Chinese side, including involvement in other countries’ economies, could constitute a political and economic hazard. Maja Bakran Marcich, the Deputy Director-General for Mobility and Transport at the European Commission, had warned some months ago that good synergies between Europe and China should be characterised by mutual respect and control over the power relations.
It seems that when Marcich was saying that, she had a similar situation in mind. The New Silk Road is a crucial and fast-developing part of the global supply chain, putting rail freight at the forefront of transportation. However, it looks like it has the possibility of becoming a dangerous card on the table of diplomatic and political games. Should China have the liberty of just cancelling Eurasian train services in the name of political disputes? And shouldn’t the New Silk Road focus only on transportation purposes?
Chinese doctors query Beijing’s Covid contact tracing policy | Financial Times – the way that the Chinese government is going about it fits in with the concept of struggle in Stalinist thought. That the struggle is not only done but seen to be done. The doctors challenge therefore represents a much more profound dissonant voice against the CPC than the content in the article suggests. For this reason alone, they’ll likely spend some time down at the local public security office sitting in a tiger chair and agreeing to sign a document apologising. They will also have earned a huge black mark on their credit score at the very least.
Kevin Rudd: “China views the UK as weaker after Brexit” – New Statesman – three core ideological undercurrents that form Beijing’s economic and foreign policy. First, China’s domineering relationship with its neighbours is shaped by its perception that it sits atop a regional hierarchy rooted in its imperial past. Second, the Chinese Communist Party’s Marxist-Leninism results in the dual conclusions that China’s time has come and the struggle between reactionary and progressive forces places China in opposition to the United States. The third undercurrent is national reunification with Taiwan – what Rudd describes as the central organising principle of China’s plans for East Asia first and then globally. Hence China’s work in the Antarctic and inserting itself as an Artic power without any semblance of claims.
China Is Jihadis’ New Target – In early October, an Islamic State-Khorasan bomber killed nearly 50 people at a mosque in Kunduz, Afghanistan. That the militant group claimed responsibility for the attack wasn’t surprising, but, in a worrying new twist for Beijing, it also decided to link the massacre to China: The group said that the bomber was Uyghur and that the attack was aimed at punishing the Taliban for their close cooperation with China despite its actions against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. China was long seen as a secondary target by international terrorist organizations. Groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State were so focused on targeting the United States, the West more generally, or their local adversaries that they rarely raised their weapons toward China, even though they may have wanted to due to, for example, China’s mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims. But in Kunduz, this narrative was brought brutally to a close. China can now consider itself a clear target. – probably more worrying for China is the risk that this kind of action will pose to them in other geographies like the Middle East and Africa and along the parts of the belt and road that go through restive muslim majority regions of the former Soviet Union
Why Is Gen Z Acting Like Boomers Right Now? – Gen Z’s frantic, chain email-flavored TikToks prove naivety and gullibility is ageless. Not surprising given the younger cohorts in the resistor segment of COVID regulation compliance that research by Kings College London found last year.
Chinese parents find new ways to give their children an edge | Financial Times – parents have been seeking new ways to give their children an edge in the cut-throat university entrance examinations. Instead of signing up for foreign language classes, barred by the regulations, parents instead opt for non-core curriculum subjects like art, which are taught in English, says Ekaterina Kologrivaya, co-founder of Edtech Expand, a Beijing-based consulting start-up. Many of the large tutoring companies have closed their physical classrooms, transferring online to save costs. But Beijing barred local firms from hiring tutors located overseas, driving up demand for the depleted number of foreign teachers in China, unable to get into the country due to strict border controls. This has pushed up the prices of classes taught by foreigners, including debate classes, another crafty way for students to master prized English skills while abiding by the new rules
Is China’s catch-up growth over? – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – But all things come to an end. Every other spurt of rapid development has eventually slowed to the stately pace of a mature economy. There are basically two reasons this happens. First, as you build more physical capital — more buildings, roads, railways, machine tools, vehicles — the added output of each new piece of capital goes down, while the upkeep costs just keep rising. This is the basis of the famous Solow growth model, and we’ve seen this happen again and again to fast-developing countries. The second reason rapid growth peters out is that it’s easier to copy existing technologies from other countries than to invent new ones yourself. The real question is when this slowdown happens. Japan’s history provides an interesting example here. Here’s a graph of Japan’s income per capita (at purchasing power parity) as a fraction of America’s: You can see that Japan’s catch-up (at least, post-WW2) really happened in two phases. There was rapid catch-up until the early 1970s, then a few years where catch-up paused, then a resumption of catch-up at a slower pace for about 15 more years. After the bursting of the country’s famous land bubble, its economy actually lost ground to the U.S. (rapid population aging was also a big part of this), and settled in at around 75% of U.S. levels (fairly standard for a medium-sized developed country). Economists have found that this pattern is very typical. In a pair of famous papers in 2012 and 2013, Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park and Kwanho Shin found that fast-growing countries tend to slow down when they reach a certain income level – peak China
Finance
The ‘Tesla-financial complex’: how carmaker gained influence over the markets | Financial Times – the real importance and wider footprint of what might be called the “Tesla-financial complex” far outstrips the company’s market capitalisation. This is thanks to a vast, tangled web of dependent investment vehicles, corporate emulators and an enormous associated derivatives market of unparalleled breadth, depth and hyperactivity. Combined, these factors mean Tesla’s influence over the ebb and flow of the stock market is far greater than even its size would imply. It may even be historically unrivalled in its wider impact, some analysts say – is there a market squeeze opportunity? The parallels with Porsche in this regard are striking
Close Reading of the QAnon Shaman’s Conspiracy Manifesto ‹ Literary Hub – the legitimate skepticism inspired by historical events like the assassination of JFK (and the Warren report’s open-and-shut verdict on it) has mutated into a toxic skepticism that is not only hostile to government institutions but has turned on gatekeepers like the press, scientists, and medical authorities, provoking an epistemological duel to the death over facts and alt-facts, truth and truthiness. The effect of these attacks and counterattacks is “mutually assured disqualification,” Bratich argued, in a 2017 lecture, punning on the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. And the effect of that is what could be called epistemological vertigo—the pervasive sense of not knowing how to sort fact from falsehood; of being unmoored from the truth. It’s what makes so many grab onto the reassuringly black-and-white theology of conspiracism. And it is a theology, Manichean in its cosmic struggle between good and evil, apocalyptic in its conviction that we’re living in the end times. “There is a war on humanity, there is a war on religion, there is a war on human assembly,” said Naomi Wolf, on Fox News Primetime. “Big Tech wants to drive everyone indoors and dissolve the bonds between people.” – interesting, though the writer shows their own belief in conspiracy theories
Carbon Counter/EVs: cleaner electricity makes a big difference to emissions | Financial Times – In the UK, US and Germany such vehicles offer large emission reductions of 76 per cent, 60 per cent and 49 per cent respectively when run on the typical mix of power sources in mains electricity. Germany’s poor performance reflects its exposure to dirty lignite and coal as fuels. Hydroelectric-dependent countries such as Norway do strikingly better. However, a much smaller reduction in emissions occurs in China, at less than a fifth. China has the biggest market for plug-in cars. Fully electric vehicles accounted for 9 per cent of its entire market in the first half of this year, more than double the figure for 2019. Every year it adds more solar power capacity than any other nation. But as of November 2020, two-thirds of China’s electricity came from coal-fired generation, says the IEA. China’s huge appetite for coal means it plans to add almost a fifth to its coal-powered generation capacity of more than 1,000GW.
Disney CEO: We’re Ready for a Metaverse Future – The Hollywood Reporter – “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”
Spanx commits to all-female board after Blackstone investment — Quartz – More than a quarter of board seats in the Russell 3000 Index belonged to women during the last quarter, compared to 15.1% just five years ago, according the corporate leadership research firm Equilar. Still, just 84 of these boards had achieved gender parity, meaning that they were represented by 50% women. And companies still struggle to achieve adequate racial and LGBTQ representation on their boards as well. Justine Smyth, chair of the New Zealand telecommunications company Spark, has suggested that while the first “diverse” appointees on company boards may feel like tokenism, those members can help advocate for change once they are given decision-making power – Spanx is an American underwear company that does foundation garments to make the wearer appear thinner. Spanx innovated around testing with real people, having multiple sizes and packaging colours that increased brand salience. The back story of Spanx is similar to the ‘founder in a garage’ story that was the starting point of many Silicon Valley firms. Spanx is a private company. It is interesting that Spanx are taking private equity money from Blackstone rather than going public. Will we get to a situation in the future where all-women boards like Spanx come under the kind of pressure that all-men boards come under now? If we got to that stage, then we’d have equality. I think that will be a while.
Microsoft Executives Told Bill Gates to Stop Emailing a Female Staffer Years Ago – WSJ – interesting that we haven’t seen this kind of expose about Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs. Secondly, there is the timing with Mr Gates’ divorce. Finally, all of the money and hard work to reinvent Mr Gates as a philanthropist looks as if its becoming undone. While Mr Gates
The soft bigotry of America’s cultural left | Financial Times – imposing conformity through intimidation is not what is supposed to happen in democracies, still less on their most-prized campuses. Crushing free thought is McCarthyism. This new consensus is profoundly illiberal. It treats a person’s race as their primary fixed identity and assigns roles on that basis. This obliterates the individual moral autonomy on which liberalism rests. Since everything in society boils down to race, everything must change. California, for example, is trying to alter its mathematics curriculum to downplay the idea there are right and wrong answers in the science. The debate is fuelled by a proposal for new math standards called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction”. The framework states that “objectivity”, “worship of the written word”, and “either/or thinking” are tools of white supremacy
Reforms in Hong Kong Encourage Homecoming of Offshore Funds | Winston & Strawn LLP – In July 2021, the Hong Kong government gazetted a fund re‑domiciliation mechanism to encourage offshore funds set up in corporate or limited-partnership form to register in Hong Kong as OFCs and LPFs, respectively. This mechanism does not create any new legal entity; therefore, it does not require the dissolution of the original funds or require investors to exchange their interests from the old fund to the new fund. Upon re‑domiciliation, these funds would be de‑registered in the original place of incorporation and would have the same rights and obligations as any other newly established OFCs and LPFs in Hong Kong. The Wealth Connect, which formally commenced trading on September 10, 2021, allows Hong Kong-domiciled funds to be offered to mainland Chinese investors in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. This adds to the Mutual Recognition of Funds scheme, which started in 2015, allowing Hong Kong-domiciled funds to be distributed in mainland China. These connect schemes serve as another incentive to encourage fund managers to re‑domicile offshore funds to Hong Kong – I suspect that this is designed to do a few things over time.
Allows Chinese citizens on the mainland access to more ways to do investments, whilst still being in full view of the Chinese government.
It allows the Chinese government to expand ‘capture’ of western financial institutions
It will allow China to put pressure on VIEs ran out of the likes of the British Virgin Island and similar territories out of scrutiny
How Hong Kong’s Elite Turned on Democracy – The Atlantic – there is something performative about the face and patriotism on display that I suspect may be driven less by a drive to get on and more by the fear of what might happen to them or their loved ones if they didn’t
Apple’s privacy changes create windfall for its own advertising business | Financial Times – “Apple was unable to validate for us that Apple’s solutions are compliant with Apple’s policy,” he said. “Despite multiple requests and trying to get them to confirm that their products are compliant with their own solutions, we were unable to get there.” Apple said its privacy features were designed to protect users. “The technologies are part of one comprehensive system designed to help developers implement safe advertising practices and protect users — not to advantage Apple.” – this has my spidey sense tingling right now
What blockbuster? China spurns Hollywood’s advances | Financial Times – “If I was an investor, I would be very concerned about a strategy at this point that depended on access to the Chinese market and the good graces of Chinese film regulators,” said Aynne Kokas, the author of Hollywood Made in China and a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. “To make very expensive films in anticipation of being able to deliver them to the Chinese market and then not being certain that’s possible is actually a much more financially irresponsible strategy from my perspective.”
Alibaba Faces New Threat: an Evolving Chinese Shopper – WSJ – consumers have started to embrace new ways of shopping that favor browsing and interaction over targeted product searches. That trend has left Alibaba playing catch-up in some areas, and competitors have used the shift to gain a foothold in the world’s largest online retail market. Alibaba remains the leading platform in online shopping, but its share of China’s retail e-commerce market has fallen to a projected 51% in 2021 from 78% in 2015, according to research firm eMarketer. Interesting that WeChat, BilliBilli, Pinduoduo and Douyin are claiming part of the e-commerce pie. What this article doesn’t cover is the relative importance by comparison of O2O (offline to online) (paywall)
