The Great Wall of China That I Built

For half of each year, if I have totted up and accounted for the days correctly,  I couldn’t care less that every piece of electronica in my life is spying on me.

The rest of the time I sink into techno-paranoia: I put stickers over the cameras on my computers, I unplug Alexa,  I cast aside my Apple watch, turn off the location tracking on my mobile phone,  switch on my VPN and change all my passwords.

And then life gets really complicated. I can no longer shout “what time is it?” from my bed but instead have to reach for the watch that I forgot to wind up. I demand to know how the weather is but like the school disco of yore I am relentlessly ignored. With a groan I am forced to turn my head to the window and look outside. And after all that strain and effort it is still grey.

Eventually I switch it all back on. I mean, really, what have I got to hide? And who cares? Who’s watching and weighing and scrutinising? Get real! I shake my head and embrace the tech. I ask the AI what film I should watch and it says: “I’m pretty sure you’re the kind of person that will like the Edward Snowden film”.

A few hours later I am taping up all the cameras again and longing to go back to a  time when things were more simple. Way back, like that time I helped build the Great Wall of China.

This was in the 1980s. I had taken a bus and a cab and a bicycle from Beijing to the Great Wall. There was a sketchy car park, very few people and a very long line of steps. I climbed the path to the top of the hill and along the ascent posed for photos for people who did not seem much used to exotic folk like your correspondent. When I reached the wall I strolled along the curving, turning, undulating and magnificent path. Once I had passed a few hundred metres I had it all to myself.

I walked past a string barrier with a mysterious sign written in Chinese and eventually came across a handful of labourers who were laying stones on a broken section of the wall. Undaunted by the absence of a mobile phone, an ipad, a smart watch, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, wifi or a google translation app I waved. They waved back.

Not long after that I laid a few stones and played my part in building one of the wonders of the world. It didn’t take long because no-one had ever heard of “Stopping for Selfies”. It would have been a good one, though. But as I say this was the time before Instagram not to mention WeChat, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Pinduoduo, Meituan, Huawei, Xiaomi, DJI, Ant Financial or any of the other formidably giant and fast paced Chinese tech companies that are making Silicon Valley look sluggish.

If these companies are unknown to you it is not surprising. Just as the Great Wall seperated the Middle Kingdom from outsiders, the Great Firewall (in combination with cultural, political and economic barriers) have kept many of these businesses out of the West.  Such unfamiliarity does not mean they are not enormous or influential. The combined turnover of the first three of these companies alone was about $120 billion in 2018. Like the Paypal mafia in the US, the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent mafia are at the heart of almost all innovation and investment in China.  So what do they do?

Baidu owns search

Alibaba leads e-commerce

Tencent dominates gaming and social networking

We are, according to Rebecca Fannin’s book and other observers, approaching a technological cold war (Silicon Dragon versus Silicon Valley) so you might want to know more. This is a spare and utlitarian guide to what China’s helter skelter tech industry.  What you learn is that we may be entering a time when what happens in China, rather than America, presages what happens elsewhere.

Not only does this suggest you read the book it also means that you might want to prepare for the all-seeing Chinese social credit system that “judges a citizen’s trustworthiness through technological surveillance and encourages compliance by giving ratings that can determine access to loans, jobs, schools and travel.”

Switch off Alexa while you can…

I read: Tech Titans of China

By: Rebecca A. Fannin

7.39 Newtons

The Martial Path to Peace in the Board Room…

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the glint of one of those sharp tools that dentists use to probe at suspect cavities. “Open wide…”, he said.

“Upper left 7, upper left 6, ok“, he said. “Hmm… looks like you’ve been biting your cheek. Lower left 6, lower  left…Incidentally which way did you vote in the referendum?”

“Ung?!” I said

“Brexit”, said Marcello, waving the sharp sickle probe in the air. “Which way did you vote?”

“Unnng…” I wavered.

“It’s just that I don’t think you normally bite your cheek. Maybe you’re stressed… maybe…well, you know a lot of people have got Brexit Jaw.”

I made throat noises of surprise. And Marcello, as he speared gums, and chiselled at molars, shared news about this unfortunate condition. It seems that Brexit has provoked a nationwide outbreak of aching facial muscles and tendons; A consequence of three years of clenching jaws and grinding teeth. It’s been a mini boom for dentists. Maybe they’re behind all that chaos? Someone had to be profiting. 

Actually, there’s a few. It’s not just Brexit Jaw, there’s also Brexit Bones (the stress of it all has caused the afflicted to lose bone density which is good news for calcium suppliers); there’s Brexit Brow (the demand for dermatological wrinkle fillers has shot up to address the permanent crease of fury in the foreheads of the electorate) and needless to say there’s Brexit Heartburn (Reflux acid is at flood level and manufacturers of chalky tablets are rejoicing).

But you know all this. You probably have Brexit Throat (And Brexit Eardrum) from screaming so much. That’s why I’d vowed never to write about the dreaded B-word but then this book landed. “Look, man”, it argues, in the hippy voice of Neil from the Young Ones. “There must be another way, yeah?”.

The other way that it proposes is the way of Wing Tsun, an ancient Chinese martial art. It’s presented first and foremost a business book but I think the lessons can be safely extended to the B-word. The promise of “Winning Not Fighting” is that by incorporating the central tenets of Wing Tsun into your business –  or your national psycho-drama – you can achieve your ends without conflict. If so, I’m in. 

Wing Tsun, one learns, is a martial art that strives not to create conflict. Think of a a restaurant that doesn’t want to serve food but if it is forced to then the food’s amazing. It seems to be something like that.

The world of business is harmfully possessed by the idea that business is engaged in a war, say the authors. The mental models and the language used in business at large are based more on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt”) than anything collaborative and constructive. Competition must be annhilated, markets must be conquered and targets must be smashed. This approach fuels tension, conflict and fear and results in unecessary pain, waste and destruction.

And Brexit Jaw. 

What if we could approach business, negotiation and management differently? If, just imagine (and pass the peace pipe) it could be pursued without conflict. This seems naive, 51.9% of referendum voters will tell you so. And so will a further 48.1%.  The solution is philosophical and much stems from the definition of winning created by the Wing Tsun masters round about 500 AD. It’s a combination of:

1. Enjoying the present

2. Achieving longevity

3. Being yourself

Alas, this seems to have little to commend itself in the heat of battle, business and B-.  However, I think the authors have a point. One is a master of Wing Tsun and the other is a co-founder of the “healthy fast food” chain Leon. This philosophy has been applied to Leon apparently with success and many examples of how it has been applied in practice abound.

Of course, applying the eight wisdoms of Wing Tsun in a healthy food chain may be a different kettle of fresh fish to say, running a courier firm or construction company.  To me this feels more like a manual for living a peaceful life than a business book. And that’s no bad thing. Unless your business is reliant on a stressed out populace. I’ll recommend Marcello leaves the Art of War on the waiting room table, not this one. 

I read: Winning Not Fighting

By: John Vincent and Sifu Julian Hitch

7.84 Newtons

If you are surrounded by idiots you are an idiot

Poor, young Yossarian. In World War 2 the young bombardier is drafted into the US Air Force to fight the Nazis. From the small Italian island of Pianosa his squadron launch bombing raids over theAxis powers. Friend after friend is killed each night. 

How to always be on time (and beat transit-time-cognitive-blindness)

You’re born with, on average, 42 million minutes available (less 2.5 million minutes if you have what the kids call male privilege).

Friends who suffer from migraines tell me that they can be chatting to someone and suddenly their face disappears from view. It sounds bizarre and hard to believe. But apparently it’s quite common and they just carry on talking to their headless counterpart.

Consequently, life is a mad scramble and I have never walked to the tube station. I always run, always panicking and always yelling curses at myself.

I read: Spending Time

Thoughts On Being The Son Of A Capitalist Running Dog

Not long after Ronald Reagan said it was “Morning in America” and Margaret Thatcher said “Labour Isn’t Working” and then, thanks in part to their catchy slogans but also due to their radical economic policies, each came to power I caught a train from London to Manchester and learned all I needed to know about economics. Or at least I learned enough to survive this heavy doorstop of a book.

Manchester was supposed to be a grim northern town in decline. Instead it was bursting into music-driven world-leading fashionability. Lesson 1: The markets do not possess perfect information.

At my first economics tutorial we fresh students were asked to introduce ourselves. “I’m from Pontefract and me dad’s on strike. Up the miners!” growled a gravelly-voiced giant on my right .

The chap on his right was also the son of a miner from a fabled mining colliery: “Down with Thatcher!” The next was the daughter of a striking miner as well: “Smash the fascists!” The pattern was set. It turned out that almost everyone in my tutorial was the child of a striking miner. This was either an interesting matter for my statistical analysis class or one for the behavioural economists. Lesson 2: Don’t trust surveys.

In any event one thing was clear; This was a sub-optimal manner of making friends for the son of a financial PR man from Weybridge, Surrey. When my turn came I jumped up and raised my first: “My father is a capitalist running dog. Shame on him. Viva la Revolucion!”

Later that year I took some classes on moral philosophy.

The economics lectures were turgid. Worse yet, each time you applied yourself to understanding one economic theory the following week you’d be told it was no good and so you’d learn another one. We advanced from one economic theory to another and none of them worked. Lesson 3: Economics is not a science.

I switched to politics because there was less pretence that it was a science and thereafter I left economics alone. And then this lump turns up on my desk.

Jospeh Stiglitz is a much-lauded economist. He has won a Nobel Prize as you can see on the dust jacket. But he’s an economist and by my reckoning that means sometimes he might be right and other times and certainly in the long run he won’t. Please let it be at least a fun read, I silently prayed as I opened the book.

On page one the author explains that while he grew up in the golden age of capitalism it was upon reflection rubbish but since then things have got worse. Much worse. That sets the tone folks. If you’re looking for something less dark to read on the beach this Summer I hear there’s a mind—bogglingly gruesome new book out by the author of Hannibal Lecter.

Anyway we plough on. “Trump doesn’t have a plan to help the country; he has a plan to continue the robbery of the majority by those at the top”. There’s a lot of Trump Derangement Syndrome in here. And if you like that sort of thing then this might be for you: You’ll get a little hit of dopamine every time Mr. Stiglitz says something mean about Trump and by the end of each chapter you’ll be high as a kite despite the bleak message therein.

It’s not just Trump, though. It’s not even the Republican Party but it’s anyone to the political right of the author that gets him foaming: “In pursuit of their naked self-interest, the super-rich have thus formulated a three-part strategy: deception, disenfranchisement, and disempowerment.”

An evil strategy? Well, up to a point. That big firms and the rich are turning their wealth into political power to pursue tax cuts and deregulation and economic protection is evident. Are the rich conspiring to disenfranchise left-wing voters ? Is it a plutocrat stitch-up? Personally I don’t buy it but I err on the side of the cockup theory over the conspiracy theory. However, like everything else involved here: it’s a matter of opinion. You can read about the super-rich’s evil plan in the book but you’ll do so knowing by now that the author is very political and thus warned you can take the analysis and his prescription with the pinch of salt you find appropriate. Ah, yes the prescription. What is it?

This is the part I was most interested in because although I found the one-sided analysis unconvincing (in short: the political left in America is above reproach and everything else is malign) the target of his objective focus is not. Namely: how do we fix the growing problem of inequality, the absence of meaning, and the need for self-determination in this fast changing techno-driven economy.

It won’t surprise you that the answer is government intervention and more regulation. The problem began with Reagan and Thatcher’s prioritising of the free market, he says. The answer is to prune it right back. “Progressive capitalism” will increase taxes, spend more, protect the environment through carbon taxes and scale back the influence of the banks

But as I learned in Manchester, economic theories each have their time. And after that time each one is, in the end, found wanting. In the meantime, as Mick Hucknell of the then unfamous Simply Red used to sing as he cycled back and forth past the university student union, “the money’s too tight to mention”.

I read: People, Power and Profits

By: Jospeh Stiglitz

Modern Book Reviews Need No Words

“The Visual MBA”…

…What a promise! Here is a book that takes the achingly time-consuming and hideously expensive business of studying a two year MBA and  condenses the whole thing into a picture book.

Here it is.

This is not to say that all this theory is not useful because that is not my argument at all. In fact if I may be slightly nuanced about things, I think it is invaluable but it is not the whole story and for many a shortcut to the rudiments of MBA content may be all that’s necessary. And for that task then the book you need is this one. The author skilfully steers a path between baffling the reader by assuming too much prior knowledge of MBA abbreviations and being patronising by treating the reader like a dummy. Much of its charm and the effectiveness derive from the sketches and indeed I already find that as I seek to recall ideas from the book it is these that my memory calls on. This is not surprising since, as the blurb tells us, brains process pictures 60,000 times faster than text….👍