Burma: Lesson Learned?

In my last posting, I noted how international "outrage" wasn't going to change anything in Burma. I also complained about lack of media coverage of why Burma's government can't so easily be tossed aside: it's got billions in revenue from the export of its natural resources.

So, I was pleasantly surprised today that the media, in some quarters, does seem to understand how politics really works. A report from Paul Reynolds on the BBC today noted: "The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings." Although the report did not mention the important economic factors, it at least adds this: "External pressure, in the form of international condemnation and talk of sanctions, has not been strong enough to be decisive."

Off the Road to Mandalay

How the news changes… China and the product recalls have faded from the news, and now it’s all about Myanmar (Burma). Protests in the streets! Angry Buddhist monks! But as usual, the key components of this event are left out or obscured. The media loves putting things into polarized frameworks: it’s the evil Myanmar government versus the common people and their Buddhist muses. The U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari is off to the country in the next day or so; he plans to meet with the ruling generals there to discuss the protests and the government’s response. Bush called for sanctions in a speech at the U.N.

Therein the story ends… as far as much of the media is concerned. Despite the “outrage” of the international community, this important question is rarely asked: Where does the government of Myanmar get its money — that is, the money that it uses to keep them in power? The real kernel of this whole Myanmar story can be found buried inside a BBC report posted yesterday (Thursday, 27 September 2007): “The scramble for Burma's energy resources make it almost impossible to isolate the regime.” Yes, as usual, it’s all about resources, and Burma has lots of offshore oil and natural gas. In fact, natural gas is the most important export for Myanmar (Burma), worth some 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2005; natural gas exports make up over a third of the country’s total export revenue. It is unlikely that international “outrage” is going to limit those exports, nor the income they provide the military government. This fact should be in the headlines, not the sidelines. The media needs to start talking about hard economic realities, not bleeding-heart fantasies.

Canada, Culture, and September 11 Good Deeds

I just came back from a wonderful talk by Mr. Claude Elliott, the mayor of Gander, Newfoundland. Gander is a small but important town in the farthest eastern portion of Canada. It is an important nexus for flights both military and domestic. But on September 11, 2001, it took on even greater importance, when dozens of flights were diverted there after U.S. airspace was shut down. Over 6000 passengers ended up spending several days in Gander, all hosted by a town of only about 9500 residents. The stranded passengers were housed, fed, and given free medical treatment by the town, with assistance from the provincial and federal government in Canada. There were stories in the Canadian and U.S. media about these good deeds; the event even generated a book.

Mayor Elliott spoke today about the decency of the townspeople, but noting — with, perhaps, typical Canadian humility — that it's "just what a person does". In fact, it was a remarkable feat, not just in terms of the good deeds done, but the efficiency with which such a small community handled such a big crisis. He talked about how each flight was assigned a specific residence, so that an American Airlines flight, for example, was housed in a local church. That way, when it was time some days later to re-board, it would be easy to relocate all the passengers.

Mayor Elliot, speaking with the engaging lilt of Newfoundland speech, said that his town of Gander is ready to help the U.S. again any time, praising Americans as "good people". I hope that term is correct — certainly it applies to these Canadian citizens.

Most importantly, it should make us all take more careful note of this northern land, with a culture that is more different from the U.S. than we might think. It's a culture that despite its quiet and self-effacing reputation seems to know how to get things done...

Ay Caramba! Another Way to Think About Mexican Immigration into the U.S.

Immigration has been a hot political topic for some time now. So what. A lot of topics have become political fodder, and it almost never means that intelligent discussion will result. A media watcher only gets the impression that politicians want to use a given topic as a platform to show their resolve; in some ways, it doesn't even really matter what side of the issue they come down on. It's just important that they express a view.

That being the case, the topic itself never gets examined. Immigration becomes a bifurcated issue, and all subtleties are lost. In the case of cross-border immigration from Mexico, the debate has tended to circle around the issue of undocumented aliens crossing the border. Some say that they should be given amnesty, and allowed to enter the workforce legally. Others say that they should be sent back home and that our laws concerning entry into the U.S. and residency should be more strictly enforced.

In fact, neither of these two positions are relevant. That's right — they have totally missed the point. It astounds me that in all the debate about immigration from Mexico, almost no one has talked about what this is really all about: the poverty of our southern NAFTA partner. The most fundamental question — the one the media should be asking, and the one politicians should be talking about — is this:

Why is a member of NAFTA, and a country that is right at the border of the U.S., so poor and dysfunctional that thousands of its citizens will risk their lives to flee?

Canadians are not pouring over our northern border, and we know why: Canada is a prosperous country, with a reasonably equitable society. That fact makes us not have to worry about illegal Canadian immigration into the U.S. So, it's simple (at least, articulating the problem is simple): If Mexico were a more prosperous country, without a huge underclass, we wouldn't have the current situation of illegal immigration. U.S. citizens should ask their politicians what we're going to do to make life better for Mexicans in Mexico. That's the only way to keep people from fleeing their country. Unless, of course, we have some vested interest in wanting them to flee...

Taipei 101: New Culture and Old in Asia...

I visited the tallest building in the world, "Taipei 101" back in the spring of 2005 during a trip around Asia. It was pretty slick, although it will soon be surpassed by a series of even taller buildings in South Korea, China, and Dubai (see Philip Nobel's "Lust for Height" at American.com). For Taiwan, besides national pride, the tower was another symbol of the country's modernity and technological capacity. But I found something interesting today, as I was going through some memorabilia from that trip. I was looking at the brochure from "Taipei 101" and I noticed the following line in the section with visitor information:

"TAIPEI 101 Observatory is a non-smoking area. Betel nuts and chewing gums are also not permitted."

You can also see this on the "Taipei 101" website. It's a wonderful example of the intersection between relics of the old agrarian lifestyle that live on (lots of Taiwan truckers and taxi drivers chew betel nut) and modern standards of cleanliness and rigidity...

Asia’s Tigers, Africa’s Lions: Or, How to Make Ghana the Next Taiwan…

Everyone used to enjoy talking about the Asian “Tiger” economies — Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea — and their wondrous economic development. And it’s true: the transformations that took place in these nations — especially places like South Korea and Taiwan — from relative poverty to technologically-sophisticated, modern societies (more modern, frankly, than U.S. society at this point) was remarkable.

Lots of the discussion that’s taken place about this historical transformation focused on the economic policies that these nations employed to drive this change, but there was always some trepidation in talking about it those policies frankly. In almost every case, the governments that oversaw these transformations were not what we might consider “liberal democracies”; more authoritarian governments put policies into place as they saw fit.

But the really untold story, as always, is the cultural one. People start to squirm when someone mentions that it’s something about the “Asian character” that made this economic transformation happen, those wonderful Asian qualities of thrift, family, and the Confucian work ethic.

One reason that this side of the story is never fully articulated is that it leads to the inevitable question of why this kind of economic leap into modernity has not taken place in Africa. I’ve heard even (ostensible) liberals start to mutter things about the “African character” not being capable of the same things as Asians. Ridiculous. It’s amazing how these ideas persist, and are even held by those who think everybody is, at the core, the same.

Well, everybody is the same. All people are economic animals, and for every “Asian Tiger” there’s a potential “African Lion”. As to why we haven’t seen any African equivalent to Singapore or Taiwan, for example, well, that’s a complicated question. But what I want to point out here is that it’s economic and political, not cultural — that is, there’s nothing inherent in the various African cultures (and there are many, many very different ones on the continent) that is antithetical to this model of economic growth.

But let’s look at some factors more closely… One problem in Africa has been outside intrusion. It may seem like an old lefty’s complaint, but colonialism in Africa really did set development back. A piece by a BBC journalist from some ten years ago, “Still the Dark Continent?”, highlights some of these post-colonial woes. In places like Taiwan and Korea, too, there was colonialism — but it was by the Japanese, who at least offered a model of modern, technological and economic development. In Africa, the Portuguese, Belgians, and even the British went in and provided infrastructure in some cases, but not the kind of true development model that the Japanese carried out (admittedly, forcibly) in Taiwan. Moreover, the colonial governments in Africa in many cases viewed the local populations as incapable of the kind of economic development that were allowed the peoples of Asia.

Moreover, various accidents of geography — and geology — made Africa a much more difficult setting to allow economies like Singapore and Taiwan to arise. Virtually none of the future Asian Tigers had abundant natural resources, and so they were compelled to build models based heavily on actual entrepreneurship — Israel, with its high tech industry, is a similar case: it was one of the countries in the Middle East perhaps blessed to be sitting on no oil. A number of African countries — such as Sierra Leone, Angola, Nigeria, and Ghana — were plagued by the fact that they held abundant resources of gold, diamonds, oil, bauxite, or other resources.

On a more general level, as one scholar has pointed out in an article entitled "Does Africa Exist?", “Africa, like Asia and unlike Europe or Latin America, is not a cultural, political, or economic entity. It is a geographic collection of fifty-three states, virtually all postcolonial and recent inventions”. Africa lacks the possibilities, at least at the moment, of something like the EU; it’s AU has nothing on the EU’s structure or economic integration.

So, African countries have followed a different development path, and the results in the post-colonial era have been very mixed: places like Ghana have been reasonably stable and successful; the Ivory Coast had a rapid economic rise but recent instability; and places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, and so on, have been scenes of warfare and chaos.

But none of these histories or current conditions say that African countries are destined to permanent scenarios of this sort.

African societies have the identical potential to the Asian Tigers because they embody the same basic values: family and entrepreneurship. When I was in Ghana, I was astonished by the enormous number of small businesses and the aggressive entrepreneurship. It was like Taiwan in the 1950’s: people selling out of small shops, or by the roadside — everything from electronics to textiles to snack foods. In Ghana, people wanted to succeed, to improve conditions for their family. There’s even a book on the Ghanaian approach to business as related to their social structure.

The other place where a visitor could witness a drive for success — and the same applies to Asia — is the Ghanaian emphasis on education. The schools there are based on a strict sense of order, discipline, and vigorous mental and physical education. The schools promote a vision of achievement and success.

So, what’s missing? For one thing, models of outside aid need to re-examined, and at least now there is some debate about alternative models of such aid. In fact, there’s got to be more talk about capital investment and not aid.

At the same time, however, it’s important to note that Asian countries, as they built up a very capitalist, entrepreneurial model of success, actually backed it with an almost socialist model of education and healthcare (particularly in Taiwan). This allowed a kind of security for entrepreneurs: they had access to almost free high-quality education, and did not have to worry about being self-employed and having to purchase their own healthcare. I believe a similar approach in Africa could create a series of “African Lions”.

Finally, there’s the political angle. I don’t like treading into politics much on this blog, but when talking about Africa, it’s inevitable. Michael Radu’s article cited above takes the tack that African leaders need to stop blaming the West for what’s happening in places like Zimbabwe. There needs to be recognition that many of the economic woes there are due to corrupt leadership. I think that it’s even a bit more subtle than this, however. The real problem is not corrupt leadership per se; even prosperous countries like Taiwan and Japan have corruption. The problem is that in places like Zimbabwe, the corruption hurts the business class, and the poorest who are trying to make an entrepreneurial start, the hardest. We tend to ignore corruption in Taiwan, Japan, and other such countries, because the corruption there happens at rather high levels — the government otherwise leaves the people alone to get on with it: to build businesses, to take care of their families, to get educations, and to move their societies forward.

But I want to end on a personal note. The most remarkable thing for a visitor to places like Accra, Lagos, Abidjan, Nairobi is that they are vibrant, active cities filled with African entrepreneurs — just like the streets of Taipei, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. There are people working hard, dreaming hard, and waiting for an opportunity to take their small businesses and build them into something big.

When I was in Taiwan, I heard a story that the founder of Formosa Plastics, Yang-Chung Wang, a company that is now one of the biggest companies in all of Asia, got his start selling simple goods as a street vendor. I think that the same kind of stories can come out of Africa, and we should start pondering about how we can help the “African Lions” emerge…

Insulting “Business Intelligence"

I’ve drifted, in terms of career, between business and academia, and I’ve found that sometimes academics think that businesspeople aren’t too bright. Academics at times believe that a businessperson’s pragmatism means that they’re unable to deal with “matters intellectual”.

This belief, though, goes beyond academics; there’s a general suspicion that business people won’t engage in anything more complex, in terms of thinking, than a thirty-second “elevator speech”.

This has led to a certain approach by some consulting firms — an approach that treats business professionals like children. I remember when I worked in a branding firm, and we had consultants who came in and talked about creativity with — literally — crayons in hand.

My consulting philosophy has always been different, because I know that many businesspeople, somewhere deep in their soul, have fond memories of those old college classes they took in history, philosophy, and other non-business subjects. They’d be delighted not only to revisit a bit of that, but also to see how it might relate to their current business challenges. In a consulting gig I did last year, a Wall Street broker came up to me afterwards and thanked me for not insulting the group’s intelligence. “I like how you weren’t afraid to talk about philosophy, to talk about culture, to talk about creativity,” he said. “Yes, I spend my days crunching numbers, but I know that there are deeper considerations…”

So, I play hardball with my clients; I’ve run workshops that include everything from Plato to nuclear physics. We talk about serious issues and do some serious thinking. The result is always an enlightened business environment.

That’s also why I’ve always focused on issues of culture and innovation — they’re abstract principles, but with surprisingly tangible consequences in the global business arena…