Hi Elmat, I am in Beijing, and it is much colder here than Thailand. I am attending a Business Week CEO Conference featuring a bunch of recognizable keynote speakers such as Wu Bang Guo, John Majors, Arroyo, Ramos, Bob Hawke, and other current and ex-national, plus many corporate leaders.
The plenary session titles are:
The Core is the Crux: profiting from corporate competencies
E-enabling Entails Everything Eventually: digitalization as managing change
Forging Competitiveness: on the challenging of instilling a performance culture
Atlas Stretched: strategic and organizational transformation in the era of globalization
Hedgemoney under Scrutiny: Pax Americana and the changing world order
There is also a gala dinner event at the Great Hall of the People (parliament building).
China's vice premier Wu is giving us the good news. All economic and profit indicators are up, strategic and currency reserves are plentiful, economic transformations continuing for the better, domestic consumption rising, smooth leadership change underway, and so forth.
The peripheral subject matters seem to revolve around CEO strategic priorities in Asia, touching on topics such as WTO, rich vs. poor, rule of law, capital markets, corporate governance, war & peace, environment protection, taxation, education, communication, etc, and you know.
I do not make time for these conferences very often, but occasionally they help me to feel the pulse, just as a conversation with a taxi driver does, but from a different angle.
I suspect that the shape of the world order construct for the forseeable future is a continuation and consolidation of recent trends, namely
(a) Europe will enjoy life,
(b) China will export goods and then services,
(c) Japan, money,
(d) US, soldiers,
(e) MiddleEast, oil,
(f) Russia, weapons,
(g) AustraAsia, Canada, South Africa, resources,
(h) India, Pakistan, N.Korea, Africa, Latin America, SE Asia, fiscal crisis, financial storms, WMD chaos, drugs, and geopolitical turmoil.
Now it is time for Philippine president Arroyo's turn to speak. Alas, she is not here, and only speaking in a disembodied manner via audio link.
She is too busy with WAT-WOT-and-whatnot.
The speech starts by talking about war on terrorism, and moves on to the battle against poverty. The lady seems busy, but still has the presence of mind to skip mentioning her new American supported war initiative against the Filipino communists even as she courts the 'communists' in China. The rest of the speech focuses on the issue of government and corporate corruption, free markets, failed societies breeds terrorism, etc.
I am getting the feeling that unless the US can keep the peace (given its military budget is equal to the next twelve largest national military budgets), resist protectionism and keep WTO on track, spread the wealth, grow the pie, the world will become messier, and in turn poorer, including the US, as in messier and poorer.
Tough job, requiring continuing operation of the printing presses for fiat money in the US and all major economies, and continuing recycling of trade dollars back to the US, allowing further weakening of national, corporate and personal balance sheets.
Chugs, Jay |
