Eight+ Things to Read About China and Other Things, Part 11

This is part 9 of our series on eight+ things to read about China and a lot more. We constantly get emails from readers asking what to read on China and all sorts of things related and even barely related to China and this series is intended to constantly and consistently answer these questions.

As we said in our initial post on this, our plan is to list out eight (or so) articles we benefitted from reading and think you our readers would also benefit from reading, along with a very brief explanation as to why the particular article was included. More specifically:

The articles will likely include many on China and on Asia and a few on international trade, international politics, Spain and Latin America, economics and really just anything else we believe might benefit our readers or even that we just want people to read. We do not plan to choose articles that push our or any other political agenda or any other agenda for that matter, but having said that, we are not objective and our views may creep through. Our goal though is to focus on articles that are important or helpful or — most importantly — that make you think. Our posting of an article will NOT mean we agree with all of it or even any of it. Most of the articles will be from the week preceding the post but we will also sometimes throw in older articles (classics if you will) as well.

Please do not hesitate to comment at the end of this or any other post. We cannot tell you how much we appreciate your comments, good, bad and indifferent.

Here we go, in absolutely no particular order.

1. I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.  New York Times Magazine. Because it’s super interesting.

2. Hoi An Is the Best City in the World — and the Street Food Is Only the Beginning. Travel + Leisure. Because I’ve been there and totally loved it, but is it really better than Paris, Barcelona, New York and Tokyo?

3. Globalization will unravel and be replaced by different trading regions. CNBC. Because there will almost certainly be different trading and political regions and  it is important to know which countries will go into which regions. How do you see the world dividing?

4. Wolverine Pivots Away From China, But Calls Vietnam “Unsustainable” for Footwear Sourcing. Sourcing Journal.  Because Wolverine Shoes describes Vietnam as a “short-term fix for all of our issues . . . but Vietnam is unsustainable. . . .  [because] “there’s really no labor availability to be found.” Because our clients are seeing this same thing, which is why so many of them are looking at or moving their manufacturing to Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, Mexico, Turkey, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan or elsewhere. See Moving Your Manufacturing Out of China: The Initial Decisions.

5. Foreign Applicants for United States Trademarks Must (NOW) Use U.S. Licensed Attorneys: Is China to Blame? Because China’s size and rampant cheating on the world stage is having huge impacts outside China.

6. What Happens in Sudan Doesn’t Stay in Sudan. Foreign Affairs. Because what is happening in Sudan is super important and yet the Western media is mostly ignoring it.

7. Syria war: World shrugs as 103 civilians killed in 10 days. BBC News.  Because immediately after I read this BBC article on how the world has been virtually silent as Russia and Syria kill tens of thousands of innocents I read this BBC article on the “international outcry” over Israel destroying 17 buildings built by Palestinians too close to a West Bank barrier. The juxtaposition of these two articles got me to wondering whether the world will ever care more about people to whom bad things are done than it cares about who does the bad things.

8. Has College Gotten Too Easy? Atlantic Magazine. Because it sure does seem like there are a lot more people graduating with a 3.8 G.P.A. these days.

9. Chinese Money in the U.S. Dries Up as Trade War Drags On. Because Chinese investment in U.S. companies is trending (fast) towards zero. 

10. The 20 Best TV Dramas Since The Sopranos. New York Times.  Because this is the sort of thing everyone is always talking about. Because it rightly includes The Wire and Deadwood (both of which belong in the top 5 of all time), but it does not include Game of Thrones, which also belongs in the top 5. See China Product Safety. U.S. in 1887 = China in 2007: It’s All Deadwood To Me and The US-China Trade War: Winter is Coming.

Please share your thoughts by commenting below.