China will change us

The more I read, the more I realize that those of us in the “Western” world really don’t understand what’s happening in China, and how it’s going to rewrite the rules whether we like it or not. This is partly to do with technological development, but even more so with the culture around tech and communications.

For example, I’m going to Beijing next year to teach e-commerce. I already have the textbook, which is based – as you would probably expect – on the Western (largely US) history of e-commerce. Yet, reading blogs, tech news sites, and so on, I’m beginning to see that the way the Chinese are approaching e-commerce is going to be rather different.

I’ve been mulling this over for a while, but Niti’s post on Chinese aid to Africa has spurred to finally blog it! As she suggests, this is all about design insight drawn from market experience. China has a vast market with no pre-existing infrastructure, a hunger for Western-style affluence, and third-world budgets. Since Chinese factories already make pretty much everything for everyone in every cost range, the manufacturing capacity is present to make vast numbers of anything that can be designed to target this market.

This is leading to design innovation through rapid evolution: make lots of different designs, get them onto the market, and see what works. It produces products that are cheap, effective, and demand-driven – rather than overdesigned and over-marketed “solutions”. Result: Chinese-designed tech products that are only intended for the domestic markets, and yet find a world-wide demand – because they’re affordable and meet real needs.

As Niti’s post shows, this means that it’s Chinese-designed technology that’s being sought out in other developing countries. This is important as we go into 2008, I think, because all the indications are that the US, and perhaps Europe, will experience an economic slowdown or recession. However… the indications also seem to show that the rest of the world will not. The BRIC economies, for example, will carry on doing just fine and, since China in particular will continue to need raw materials, other developing countries will also continue to do well.

So what does this all mean? China will become the technological focus of attention for much of the world… I’m curious as to whether Chinese tech culture will also be exported, because it seems that this is where there are significant differences from the West. Some examples:

• Massively distributed collaborative tasks: Rick Martin on C|Net discusses guerrilla translation projects for pirated films. How else could this culture be harnessed or adapted? It would seem to be an open-source dream… Could it be used for coding? Design?
• A crowd philosophy. Chinese internet culture is developing along the lines of constant presence. As Professor Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences outlines in a very interesting interview:
  

  The interesting thing is that in China about more than 30% Internet users don’t have an email account. Less than 30% of those who have an email account check their emails every day. It does not necessarily mean that they don’t communicate with others. They prefer instant contact by QQ, which is a Chinese version of ICQ. People used to only have address on their business cards. Then, they have phone numbers or even fax numbers. And then, they have email address. Now, many people put their QQ account number on their business cards.

• Let’s not kid ourselves: the future of internet access in China is phone-based. As Professor Guo also says:
  

  Firstly, I would say Internet use is growing very fast in China. Currently, there are about 123 million users in China, ranking the second largest Internet country in the world after the US. Secondly, there is the issue of the digital divide, which many Western scholars are interested in. In theory, rich people and better educated people are more likely to need a computer and they can afford it. So they may access more information and may have more opportunities to get even richer. But I think the digital divide is not mainly because of digital but economy. According to my research in small towns, a lot of people don’t have to buy a computer. They just go to the Internet café for RMB 1 (US$0.12) per hour. In large cities, it’s something like RMB3 per hour

  So: most Chinese internet users don’t have their own computer, they use a cybercafe. When they get to the stage where they want to go online outside a cybercafe, I suspect they are most likely to want to do this via a mobile phone – because they already have one, they regularly upgrade it, and in most of China it’s the only available communications technology. This extremely interesting CNN article shows how competitive and ambitious the mobile market is in China.

Now this is where I get speculative. As we can see, the trends are that:

• Chinese internet users are most likely to be online through their phone, which they have with them at all times;
• Chinese internet culture is such that users like to be constantly connected to their friends, and are open to approaches from strangers;
• Chinese tech culture is increasingly collaborative and distributed.
• Chinese tech manufacturers are predisposed to developing lots of different technologies and throwing them into the market to see what works.

Now I want to throw into the mix something I wrote about before: augmented reality and extended consciousness. The technology exists, and is about to hit market at a fairly low price, to turn the internet into something we are immersed in, 24/7. It’s western-developed, and – I think – still searching for a niche outside uber-geeks. Very largely, it seems that it’s being directed at gamers. In mainstream western cyberculture, we’re still thinking of the social web in terms of Facebook etc, sites you go to visit; the immersive internet is not likely to catch on.

Once gaming brings this technology to China, I suspect we might see very different results. The Chinese internet experience is already immersive; this will just take it to a new level. Can this technology be adapted for phone-based internet access? I suspect we’ll see Chinese manufacturers and service providers willing to give it a try. Will it take off? Who knows. It seems to have a good chance of success.

If it does take off… it will be something unlike we’ve seen before. And let’s not forget where this article began: other developing countries are adopting Chinese technologies and trends, because it’s affordable and meets their needs.

The invisible red dot in the room

The saying goes “the elephant in the room…” when there’s something that needs to be discussed, but it’s so large and obvious and obviously incongruent that no-one can bring themselves to mention it.

Singapore isn’t an elephant, it’s a “red dot” – but nevertheless, I’ve read a couple of articles recently that were obviously relevant to Singapore, and yet this island wasn’t mentioned.

The most recent is this article in the Times about Dubai, and its rise as a financial capital. I’ve mentioned Dubai as a rival to Singapore before, if you’ll pardon the rhyme. Obviously, it sees the need to diversify away from dependence on oil, and is choosing to go down the road of developing as a financial centre. Key quote:

Dubai has another incentive to succeed in what may be a winner-takes-all game to become the Gulf’s financial capital. Unlike Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it has scant reserves of oil and gas. To be assured of success, it must be financially clean, and accept principles of accountability, transparency and regulatory rigour. Its development in the past decade has been extraordinary and proves that the Middle East is not, by definition, a basket case. To continue to be a model for the region and the world, it must continue to invest in integrity.

No natural resources, just people; a reputation for integrity, incorruptibility, and the rule of law. Where have we heard that before..?

So if Singapore now has a rival competing on its own turf, it needs to be making the most of its only resource, namely people. Another article that made me think of this regards China, in The China Vortex: Where’s the Fantasy, Creativity and Imagination In China?I know, it’s just about gaming. Yes, I know it’s about China, not Singapore. I know, Singapore is throwing lots of money at developing its creative industries. And yes, I know, Singapore is also trying to attract world-class industry leaders to set up shop here. And yet, and yet… I’m not convinced yet. I hope it will work, I really do. I know for sure that there are lots of bright and talented young people here… but there are so many obstacles in their way, in the shape of ‘B-Arkers‘, the middle managers who don’t contribute much and can’t see beyond “the way things are done”, who fear change and resist it, who try to stifle anything that changes or challenges the rules… These people exist worldwide, of course, but the type seems firmly entrenched here….

Pirates

Most boys grow up wanting to be a pirate at some stage, and that’s certainly going to be true now, after Johnny Depp et al have reinforced the stereotype for a new generation.

On another level, the classic pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth century have been re-assessed by the likes of Hakim Bey (Pirate Utopias) and Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic). In these historical narratives, the pirate ship is a democracy of social revolutionaries, rejecting the cruelty and authority of empire.

The inescapable fact is that piracy involves violence and suffering inflicted against the innocent; it may also be true that the pirates are themselves the victims of, and rebels against, a system that utilizes far greater violence in order to preserve itself – or it may not. It’s much easier to be romantic about pirates who died two hundred years ago, that’s for sure.

Nevertheless, pirates are alive and well today – and are a big problem in this part of the world. Some will be social rejects defying the forces of economic globalization, some will be criminals out for loot, others yet will be terrorists seeking funds. Probably, there’s a lot of overlap, and of movement between categories. This is the sort of territory explored by John Robb in Global Guerillas. It would be fascinating to hear the stories of these modern-day pirates in their own words: their own narrative of how they came to be who they are, of the societies that sustain them, and the economies they build around their activities.

That’s not likely to happen, I guess, so we only hear one side of the story – but that’s interesting enough, when you hear the details of what’s happening away from the headlines, on the fringes of the shipping lanes that tie our global economy together. Via a post on Boing Boing, I found an article – The Pirate Hunters – from the Smithsonian Magazine, which makes fascinating reading.

Skype prime, and networked China

For aspiring freelancers and knowledge workers this looks to have a lot of potential: Skype Prime apparently allows you to advertise your expertise on specific topics, and to charge people for your advice. What a pity that I know nothing of value to anyone – only a vast amount of useless trivia!

I found out about this via a post on Preetam’s blog, which has other interesting snippets. For example he finds that the Chinese he meets usually put their chat address on their business cards. I wondered about this when I printed my own personal cards: should I include MSN and Skype information? In the end, I didn’t – I already go through periods of being invited to join the friends list of Chinese people I’ve never met, and I usually refuse. Perhaps I should set up accounts that I only advertise on my cards, though. Not sure, I’ll have to think about that: Preetam is right when he says “This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn”. I need to think a bit more about my positioning first, though.

That reminds me of two articles I saw recently on Web Worker Daily:

• Three steps to introduce social software to your employer
•  The dangerous myth of the dream job

500 every day?

According to the London Times, 500 Britons leave the UK every day. By ‘leave’, that means retiring or going to work for an extended period. Many don’t plan to return. I guess that gives some perspective to my experience in Singapore – whenever people ask what my plans are, I say that I can easily see myself staying here, or going back to China, but I can’t really see myself going back to the UK. I just looked at the Aberystwyth webcam for the first time in a long, long while, and found myself surprised at how foreign it seems.

A new world, with Chinese characteristics

I’ve been writing about how globalization will eventually lead to world fashions being set in Asia and going West for a long time, most recently here (which is still getting a lot of hits). So, I’m always interested to see other posts on the topic, and a couple have popped up recently:

• Momus, writing in Wired, says Culture Flows Through English Channels, but Not for Long. As a Scottish writer and musician who splits his time between Berlin, New York, and Tokyo, he has an excellent perspective on the cultural and linguistic goings on.
• Asia Times online also has a very good article on how China is translating the influences of globalization into its own cultural terms – whilst simultaneously beginning to export its cultural influences to the rest of the world, who aren’t expecting it and may have to make some uncomfortable adjustments. The author is from the Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School, and so has excellent credentials for this kind of observation.

Malay skinheads?

“What began as a style soon became a myth, and the myth soon became more convincing than the truth.”

A quote from Gavin Watson, in an article in the Grauniad: Getting under their skins. I remember the second wave of the skins; one of my friends was one. I wasn’t a part of the scene at all, and for me it was just part of the 80s background noise. The article’s interesting in that the main interviewee, a skinhead photographer, “[i]s now keen to take pictures of the Muslim skinheads of Malaysia. ‘I promise you they exist,’ he says. ‘I often think, how did we get from our little gang to this?’”. I haven’t seen any Malay skinheads here in Singapore, though I’m told they exist; I have seen Malay youths dressed in two-tone style, which really freaked me out – it’s a style I associate with my early teens, which were, um, a while ago….

It’s a wonderful world

Inspired by Niti’s latest post, here’s my world map. I think I’ve done this once before, but this time I’ve only included countries where I’ve walked around and spoken to people, not stopovers:

create your own visited countries map

Speaking of which, I saw an article in the IHT yesterday about Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. While I was applying for my MBA, my plan B for staying in Asia was to train as an English teacher. I did some reading up on conditions in the countries in the region, and Cambodia didn’t sound fun, to say the least – there were warnings of violence, crime, shootings in the streets… Well, that was 2003, this is 2007, and things have changed: Phnom Penh is now the “next Prague”, where the young go to reinvent themselves. Guess I need to get there while I (if no-one else) still think of myself as young…