Another week, another example of creative, personal outsourcing. Where will it go next?
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2013/01/16/us-employee-outsourced-job-to-china/
17/01/2013
* China’s Ambitious Goal for Boom in College Graduates
NY Times: “Zhang Xiaoping’s mother dropped out of school after sixth grade. Her father, one of 10 children, never attended.
But Ms. Zhang, 20, is part of a new generation of Chinese taking advantage of a national effort to produce college graduates in numbers the world has never seen before.
A pony-tailed junior at a new university here in southern China, Ms. Zhang has a major in English. But her unofficial minor is American pop culture, which she absorbs by watching episodes of television shows like “The Vampire Diaries” and “America’s Next Top Model” on the Internet.
It is all part of her highly specific ambition: to work some day for a Chinese automaker and provide the cultural insights and English fluency the company needs to supply the next generation of fuel-efficient taxis that New York City plans to choose in 2021. “It is my dream,” she said, “and I will devote myself wholeheartedly to it.”
Even if her dream is only dorm-room reverie, China has tens of millions of Ms. Zhangs — bright young people whose aspirations and sheer numbers could become potent economic competition for the West in decades to come.
China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using the G.I. Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of millions of young people as they move from farms to cities.
The aim is to change the current system, in which a tiny, highly educated elite oversees vast armies of semi-trained factory workers and rural laborers. China wants to move up the development curve by fostering a much more broadly educated public, one that more closely resembles the multifaceted labor forces of the United States and Europe.
It is too early to know how well the effort will pay off.”
via China’s Ambitious Goal for Boom in College Graduates – NYTimes.com.
17/01/2013
* U.S., Japan review defense guidelines amid tension with China
We hope that this revision does not fall onto the ‘Law of Unintended Consequences‘ and exacerbates rather than alleviates the current high tensions.
Reuters: “The United States and Japan began on Thursday the revision of defense cooperation guidelines for the first time in 15 years as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces a territorial dispute with China and North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes.
The revision to the guidelines, which set rules on how Japanese and U.S. forces work together in or near Japan, comes after a hawkish Abe led his Liberal Democratic Party to power in an election last month.
“We would like to discuss Japanese Self Defence Forces‘ role and U.S. forces role with eyes on the next five, 10, 15 years and on the security environment during those periods,” a Defence Ministry official told reporters, without elaborating.
The revision is due because of drastic changes in the security environment over the past 15 years including China’s maritime expansion and North Korea’s missile development, the Japanese government has said.
North Korea has also twice tested nuclear devices.
Japan is locked in a territorial dispute with China over a group of tiny East China Sea islets called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, with both countries sending patrol ships and planes to areas near the isles.
The review started with a working-level meeting in Tokyo between U.S. and Japanese officials. It will likely take a year or more to complete and coincides with a U.S. “pivot” in diplomatic and security focus to Asia.
“One issue that’s prevalent is whether the Abe government will reinterpret the constitution to exercise the right of collective self defence,” said Nicholas Szechenyi, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“Should that policy decision be taken, it will obviously have an impact on the way the Self Defence Forces and U.S. military coordinate.”
Japan recognizes it has what is known as the right of collective self-defence, meaning a right to defend with force allies under attack even when Japan itself is not being attacked.
But Japanese governments have traditionally interpreted the pacifist constitution as banning the actual exercise of the right, creating a sore spot in Tokyo’s security ties with Washington. Abe wants to change the interpretation to allow Japan to exercise the right.
via U.S., Japan review defense guidelines amid tension with China | Reuters.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/08/12/beijing-reasserts-its-claims-in-south-china-sea-nytimes-com/
17/01/2013
* China Loses Edge As Worlds Factory Floor
WSJ: “China is losing its competitive edge as a low-cost manufacturing base, new data suggest, with makers of everything from handbags to shirts to basic electronic components relocating to cheaper locales like Southeast Asia.
The shift—illustrated in weakened foreign investment in China—has pluses and minuses for an economy key to global growth. Beijing wants to shift to higher-value production and to see incomes rise. But a de-emphasis on manufacturing puts pressure on leaders to make sure jobs are created in other sectors to keep the worlds No. 2 economy humming.
Total foreign direct investment flowing into China fell 3.7% in 2012 to $111.72 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said Wednesday, the first annual decline since the fallout from the global financial crisis in 2009.
Then, a 13% fall in foreign investment into China reflected dire conditions for business in the U.S. and Europe, and global risk aversion, which choked off capital flows. Economists say the drop in 2012 is partly cyclical, driven by slowing overall growth in China and Europe’s prolonged debt crisis.
But it also is the result of a long-term trend of rising wages and other costs that have made China less attractive, especially for basic manufacturing, economists say.
By contrast, foreign direct investment into Thailand grew by about 63% in 2012, and Indonesia investment was up 27% in the first nine months of last year.
Coronet SpA, an Italian maker of synthetic leather with production in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, plans a new factory in Vietnam to take advantage of lower labor costs and to be closer to its customers in the shoe and handbag businesses, many of which have already moved there.
via China Loses Edge As Worlds Factory Floor – WSJ.com.
See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/12/07/apple-to-return-some-mac-production-to-u-s-in-2013/
16/01/2013
* China trade surplus with U.S. may be a quarter smaller
“Lies, lies and statistics”!
Or as in Through the Looking Glass:
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
Reuters: “The new estimate is one of the key findings of an ambitious project by the OECD think-tank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to present a truer picture of underlying trade flows in an age of global supply chains when intermediate inputs can cross borders several times during the manufacturing process.
The political purpose of the exercise is to reduce protectionist pressure by demonstrating that governments are shooting themselves in the foot if they raise barriers to imports because, in doing so, they are also hurting their own exporters and competitiveness.
Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said the value-added approach challenged the conventional wisdom regarding trade.
“Today, we have to think about goods and services as ‘made in the world’, Gurria said.”
via China trade surplus with U.S. may be a quarter smaller | Reuters.
16/01/2013
* US employee ‘outsourced job to China’
Ultimate outsourcing – very personal. Shows real enterprise and initiative. Wonder how many others are doing the same and not been found out yet!
BBC: “A security check on a US company has reportedly revealed one of its staff was outsourcing his work to China.
The software developer, in his 40s, is thought to have spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay.
He reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary to a company based in Shenyang to do his job.
Operator Verizon says the scam came to light after the US firm asked it for an audit, suspecting a security breach.
According to Andrew Valentine, of Verizon, the infrastructure company requested the operator’s risk team last year to investigate some anomalous activity on its virtual private network (VPN) logs.
“This organisation had been slowly moving toward a more telecommuting oriented workforce, and they had therefore started to allow their developers to work from home on certain days. In order to accomplish this, they’d set up a fairly standard VPN concentrator approximately two years prior to our receiving their call,” he was quoted as saying on an internet security website.
The company had discovered the existence of an open and active VPN connection from Shenyang to the employee’s workstation that went back months, Mr Valentine said.
And it had then called on Verizon to look into what it had suspected had been malware used to route confidential information from the company to China.
“Central to the investigation was the employee himself, the person whose credentials had been used to initiate and maintain a VPN connection from China,” said Mr Valentine.”
16/01/2013
* Vietnam, US boost defence ties
US takes opportunity to counter-balance Chinese military power in SE Asia.
ANN: “The third Vietnam-US Defence Policy Dialogue at deputy ministerial level took place in Hanoi last week.
During the meeting, the two sides focused on ideas and information about issues related to defence cooperation and bilateral ties between Vietnam and the US and exchanged information about security matters in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.
The two sides reviewed their achievements in the five areas which were stated in the MoU on defence cooperation, signed by the two ministries in September 2011.
They agreed that new developments had been made in cooperation in several areas, including the missing-in-action mission; defusing bombs, mines and explosives left by the war; cleaning up dioxin pollution.
The two delegations also discussed cooperation in human resources training, UN peace-keeping missions, military medicine, natural disaster relief and search and rescue.
The delegates expressed their hope that defence cooperation between Vietnam and the US would contribute to enhancing bilateral ties between the two countries, aiming at peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.
The Vietnamese delegation was led by Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, while Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia Vikram J. Singh headed the US delegation.”
via Vietnam, US boost defence ties – ANN.
Related articles
- Vietnam, ROK stresses to enhance bilateral cooperation (nzweek.com)
- India, Vietnam to work towards $7 bn trade target (news.in.msn.com)
- PM Abe meets with Vietnam premier to discuss bilateral trade ties, China tensions (japandailypress.com)
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