Key Trends in Globalisation

Air China

It has been four years since I last flew to China on Air China. The reason, I have to confess, is that the last time I flew the experience was not nearly as good as on British Airways or Virgin. However on my latest trip, as I was a guest of Chinese organisations, they wanted me to travel Air China and, as the experience had certainly not been unsafe, merely a little basic, I agreed.
What a transformation I discovered. There are still some improvements to be made - seats in business class still do not go completely flat, unlike BA or Virgin, but they almost do and it is perfectly possible to sleep. The Air China website is still slightly clunky compared to BA or Virgin but not really difficult to use. The standard of service was however as good as BA or Virgin, and the food, in my opinion, better. I personally would now make the choice entirely based on price and convenience of flight times - those intent on the highest quality of service in business class and first class, rather than convenience of flight time, would choose BA or Virgin but the gap has narrowed very considerably. Certainly for any significant price advantage, in any class, I would now choose Air China.
Rather intrigued by this dramatic improvement I consulted that normally least enthralling piece of reading, the inflight magazine - in this case Wings of China (August 2008). This yielded the following information.

Racists despair - US immigration and population trends

One of the reasons for US economic dynamism compared to the UK and Europe has been its openness to immigration. Current immigration into the US is 1.3 million a year. This is projected to rise to two million a year by the middle of the century. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/washington/14census.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Immigration into the US has been particularly strong from Latin America and Asia - two of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy which therefore strengthens links between the US and these key economic regions as well as boosting the US population and labour force itself.
The current trend of immigration into the US is beginning to surpass the great wave at the beginning of the 20th century, when the proportion of the US population born abroad reached its peak at 15 per cent in 1910. The proportion of the population of the US born abroad is expected to rise from 12 per cent today, to 15 per cent in 2025, to 20 per cent in 2050.

Infrastructure investment in Beijing and London

The concentration in this blog so far, during my current visit to China, has been to give a feel of the huge drive in Chinese education. But in this field one is, however, talking of a trend. The total number of those in China who emerge with advanced educational qualifications each year already vastly outstrips Britain, and this gap will rapidly grow into a chasm, but this is due to the fact China has twenty times the UK's population. While China is setting far higher educational standards than Britain it will take some time for the average level of qualifications in urban China to overtake the UK. To bring the population that is currently in rural China, most of whom will move to the cities, up to higher educational standards than Britain will be the work of many decades.
But infrastructure can be put in place far more rapidly. The infrastructure of Asian cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong is already far ahead of Europe, the UK, and the US. It is clear that the most advanced Chinese cities are also approaching 'switchover point' - that is to their infrastructure being superior to the US and Europe.

A truly terrifying individual

In addition to the more serious issue of considering the Chinese school timetable http://keytrendsinglobalisation.blogspot.com/2008/07/worlds-future-and-chinese-school.html
it might be worth relating an anecdote on an early trip to China that helps give insight into what is occurring in the country.
While visiting a Beijing market to buy a couple of coats the young woman selling them to me said she didn't have my size on display but did have them in storage - which would take only five minutes to get. We should therefore haggle over the price of those on display and if we agreed this she would then order the appropriate size so I could try them on. Price negotiations were successful and I had to wait five minutes.
I thought 'she speaks very good English.’ And as we had nothing else to do, decided to probe her language ability. I switched to Russian. 'Your English is very good. Do you also speak Russian?’
Reply in Russian: ‘Naturally I do. We are getting more and more Russian visitors here.’
I swapped to French .'Do you speak French?'

Chinese tourism promotion - a trip to Xi'an

A trip to Xi'an was to see the terracotta warriors. But it also yielded some useful insights into the development of China’s tourism industry.
It cannot be said that international tourism promotion is one of China's strong points, despite the fact that the government actually explicitly understands its importance – in fact it is starting from a very low base. Elementary rules continue to be ignored – to take a simple example, the final editing of English guides and other documents is still done by people whose first language is not English and presumably the same applies to other languages. The result is the wasting of large sums of money on guides and promotional material that are literally incomprehensible. As it would, doubtless, be prohibitively expensive to have all such material translated by native English speakers nevertheless the employment of a few dozen native English speaking sub-editors, to do the final editing, would be one of the most cost effective investments the Chinese tourist authorities could make and pay for itself many times over.
Similarly arrival at even the most international Chinese airports, such as Shanghai or Beijing, remains a forbidding experience for tourists compared to what is possible. There are no maps or simple printed guides immediately available for visitors, and even getting into town is not clearly explained.

The world's future and the Chinese school timetable

The most important rule about finding out about a foreign country is to get as far away as possible from hotels, and business and government offices, and find out how people live. The ideal is to get into the homes of as many different types of ordinary people as possible, but that is normally difficult and takes some time, and more partial steps may have to be taken. Therefore, every possible opportunity has to be used to acquire such knowledge.
A three week trip to China, to speak on the development of Shanghai as an international financial centre and to be a guest at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, therefore yielded further useful opportunities. Most useful of all turned out to be a discussion with a 17 year old regarding his school timetable – not one in a super-elite institution but from a somewhat better than normal, but not in no way wholly untypical, school in Beijing. A cross check with a 14 year old in Xi'an revealed basically the same pattern.
It must be stressed for China that these are city schools, and a rural one would reveal a substantially different pattern. But China's cities already contain hundreds of millions of people and the number will rise over several decades towards one billion. The daily timetable was the following - the ten minute gaps between lessons are break periods.

7.00 - 8.00 Exercise and private study
8.00 - 8.45 Lesson 1
8.55 - 9.40 Lesson 2
9.40 - 10.00 Break and discussion with teacher
10.00 - 10.20 Exercise
10.20 - 11.05 Lesson 3
11.15 - 12.00 Lesson 4
12.00 - 1.30 Lunch and break
1.30 - 2.15 Lesson 5
2.25 - 3.10 Lesson 6
3.20 - 4.05 Lesson 7
4.05 - 4.30 Exercise
4.30 - 5.30 Private study
6.00 - 9.00 Homework