News from Asia - The day after tomorrow !

[Gentle]

While Singapore is 4th...Bangkok is now the 3rd most popular city to visit in the world behind only London and Paris.

Sure looked nice on New Year's Eve...
http://www.thephuketnews.com/bangkok-welcomes-the-new-year-36106.php

Looks like they will get their 1st High Speed railway.... way before us !

 

[Gentle]

Shipping industry.

While more than half of the world fleet is being owned and operated in Asia, 92% of global shipbuilding capacity is based in the region of South East Asia (China hold around 57% and S.Korea hold 29%, Japan hold 5%).

But even if cargo industry is huge in Asia, it's time to get a decent cruise ship industry.
Which is why China will build its first luxury Cruise ship by 2017.
The design (inside) will be done by the same firm that made the QE2 and Rotterdam.

Anyway this industry being largely dominated by Norway, Germany and Italy, it should take a long time before Asian ship builders like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd or Samsung Heavy Industries Co. can be a factor.

For even if Mitsubishi is building ships for Carnival corp., it's far from the luxury of Europpean liners !




As for Titanic II ? who knows, looks like it will be built in China.

 

[Gentle]

Car industry.

Even if Japan, South Korea and China's rank of cars per population are 18, 42 and 100.
China (rank 100) having only 85 cars per 1000 people vs. the United States which is rank 1 with 812 cars per 1000 people.

China's combine total growth for car sales (2010 numbers) was 27% of all the cars sold in the world in one year.
Thus China has now the 2nd largest world car population.

China would have to increase their number by 60times to get as many cars per people on their roads to equal Americans.

Thank God they are not about to do it blindly since... that would mean more than 1 Billion cars in China alone.
With transportation currently accounting for 1/4 of all the world's greenhouse-gas emissions; it would be a total mess for the world.

 

[Gentle]

Indonesia is cruising nicely to buy 200 Airbus to add to its fleet...

And more investments are on the way for this 240-Million people country which is growing at a 6% rate.
This would bring the total number of middle class to 90 Millions in 15 years.
At this rate it means there is another 10K people per day; getting out of poverty and getting in the middle class range.

http://goodnewsfromindonesia.org/investments-to-hit-29-billion-in-2013/

 

[Gentle]

Located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR_8p3HVlVo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExzT35CfpsY

Not bad... for this place of the world !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGWfmSv3fCM

 

[Gentle]

Taxi industry in Beijing.

There is around 66K taxis in Beijing even if it is getting harder and harder to get one.
In comparison there is 50k taxis in New-York, including all the limos and car-services vehicules.

According to AFP China’s automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has made an offer to buy out Manganese Bronze Holdings (MHB), the makers of the iconic London taxi.
BTW Zhejiang Geely already owns Volvo.

 

[Gentle]

Airplanes.

China is now making a national importance out of building it's own commercial airplanes (to compete Airbus and Boeing) as in the same league as that of the Three Gorges hydro power and the manned spacecraft project.

The new set backs on the Boeing's Dreamliner will most probably start helping (just like with Japan before) people (who thinks that cheap quality is only reserved to Asian manufacturing) to STFU.

 

[Gentle]

PHL (The Philippines) is set to compete for manufacturing.

A survey of South Korean conglomerates (Samsung, Hyundai, SK and LG) cites PHL to be a 'good production base' and an attractive investment location because of its lower labor cost of only US$ 300 per month which is half the wage compared to China and of better infrastructures like roads and power compared to Vietnam.

You can bet that North American co. too, will transfer more of it's manufacturing facilities to PHL.

 

[Gentle]

Luxury.


Seems like even in this category...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's fashion-forward men are driving a rebound in the luxury market, months after a slow down in spending by the world's biggest luxury goods buyers spooked global investors.

Chinese account for one-fourth of all luxury purchases globally and last year surpassed U.S. consumers to become the world's top spenders on luxury goods, according to consulting firm Bain & Co.

When China's economic growth slowed in the middle of last year, luxury demand dropped suddenly, sending shudders through a global market worth $280 billion last year.

 

[Gentle]

Internet Speed.

This one would have to be verified ??? but apparently....

"South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong topped the list of highest internet speeds for the 'average' connection speeds of 14.7 Mbps, 10.5 Mbps and 9 Mbps, respectively.

While the U.S. is ranked 12th ???

There are two main reasons why the US is comparatively low in terms of global Internet connection speeds:

The first reason is a comparatively lower investment in broadband infrastructure in the US, as compared to many Asian nations such as South Korea and Japan, whose cities tend to dominate the list. In addition, Wall Street frequently punishes carriers in the short-term for making long-term investments in network infrastructure.

The second reason is that getting a high speed Internet connection in the US costs consumers more money than it does in other countries, so less people can afford it. This pricing issue is due in part to a lack of effective competition amongst Internet service providers in the US. This lack of competition has also provided a disincentive for broadband providers to significantly raise the speeds included in their service tiers.

Ah well !!!

 

[hungry101]

Captain Renault, I spent a week in Guangzhou 2-years ago. My eyes burned at the end of every day from the smog. I have never witnessed anything like this.

 

[Gentle]

Events.

Indonesia has been chosen to present The Miss world 2013 event next September.
Where Yu Wenxia of China will crown her successor at the end of the contest.

While the US has won 3 times, China has now won twice (in 5 years) but both countries are far from the United Kingdom with 5 titles and India who won 4 of her 5 titles in a short span (6 years only)...

So far though, Venezuela has the most with 6.

 

[Gentle]

Pollution vs. economic growth !

World carbon dioxide emissions are one way of measuring a country's economic growth.

• China now emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together - (up by 171% since the year 2000)
• India is now the world's third biggest emitter of CO2 - pushing Russia into fourth place
• The US has had declining CO2 for two years running, the last time the US had declining CO2 for 3 years running was in the 1980s


But if you look at per capita emissions, a different picture emerges where:
The US is still number one in terms of per capita emissions among the big economies - with 18 tonnes per person
• China, by contrast, emits under 6 tonnes per person, India only 1.38
• For comparison, the whole world emits 4.49 tonnes per person

 

[Gentle]

Number of deaths caused by Nuclear testing.

While North Korea is now threatening to do another Nuclear test.
It is important to notice that the world scientific comittee on Nuclear has numbered the death resulting from pollution from nuclear energy and weapons programs up to 65 Million people so far.

A total around 60 tests were done in Asia with China made the bulk of it (45).

Since Russia and the United States account for 88% of all Nuclear tests made (around 1760 out of 2000), the correlation of total deaths caused by their pollution is :

Russia : 23 Million deaths
United States : 34 Million deaths
vs.
China : 1.5 Million deaths

And some... still think they can give lessons on pollution :lol:

Isn't this pathetic !

 

[hungry101]

That's OK Mao killed 50 million of his own people with his great leap forward so they don't really have to catch up with the USA.

That truely wonderful country that you speak of, South Korea, owes their liberty to the 35,000 Americans who died during the Korean War (of course they killed 1.5 MM N. Korean and Chinses troops doing so.) The US currently deploys 28,500 troops along the DMZ to guarentee S. Korea's liberty. The people in N. Korea are an average of 5" shorter than the people of S. Korea due to malnutrition. They often lose their vision to cataracts as a side effect of malnutrition. This is something that is unheard of in the west. The people of N. Korea live in squaler while the S. Koreans have a high standard of living and a robust economy thanks to the USA.

The South Koreans can also thank the US for defeating the Japanese. The atomic bomb saved millions of Americans and Japanese alike. An invasion of Mainland Japan would have cost several million more lives than a few bombs.

I have never heard of these estimates by the the World Scientific Comittee on Nuclear ___. But the east is good at mimicking the USA. The irony is, with Obama in office, the Chinese are more capitalistic than the United States.

There is nothing worse than a self loathing leftist.

 

[Gentle]

That's OK Mao killed 50 million of his own people...That truely wonderful country that you speak of, South Korea, owes their liberty to the 35,000 Americans who died during the Korean War...The atomic bomb saved millions of Americans and Japanese alike...

I was replying on pollution but you're the one saying that South Korea is a truly wonderful country bringing Mao, Hiroshima, capitalism and communism into the discussion. Ever tried Tide's new Acti-lift for brainwashing ?

Funny, you didn't even caught the fact that you would have to substract the underground testing (800 of them from the United States) for which there is no definite data vs the result in pollution.

That could bring down the numbers to around 6 Million deaths instead of 34 for the US.

C'est pas wonderful ca ?

 

[Gentle]

Space programs.

Japan launched a new intell gathering radar satellite which can take images whenever needed, even at night or in bad weather.
Sunday's event also marked the 16th consecutive successful liftoff of an H-2A rocket.

Japan BTW, is the first nation to successfully send a probe (Hayabusa) in 2003, to mine an asteroid and bringing back samples.
http://www.spaceanswers.com/space-e...ory-of-the-first-mission-to-mine-an-asteroid/

 

[Gentle]

Laughing all the way to the Bank !

Here's a nice making of for those (who didn't see it) and think South Korea is a truly wonderful country...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HPiBJBCOq8

Look at 3:03min. cuze this is how you have fun laughing all the way.... while stupid people invest millions to get the same result !

------------------------------------------------------------

Here's a good article on how and why a language barrier didn't mean squat in getting the whole world hooked on !

By: Rajeshni Naidu-Ghelani
Assistant Producer, CNBC
Indonesian Marcia Tianadi started listening to South Korean pop music last November after being introduced to the genre known as “K-pop” by a friend.
The 20-year-old finance student, who doesn’t understand the South Korean language, now listens to K-pop more than any other type of music including Western pop, which used to be her favorite.

Despite the release of English versions of several K-pop songs, Tianadi prefers the Korean version even though she doesn’t understand most of the lyrics.
She is one of millions of K-pop fans around the world who aren’t letting a language barrier stand in the way of consuming what is becoming a major global
powerhouse in the music scene.

The industry’s revenues jumped 112 % compared to 2010.
Exports have been growing on an average annual rate of nearly 80 % since 2007.

“People can share, distribute and consume foreign pop cultures much more easily these days,”
“It’s very significant how Korean language K-pop is popular somewhere like South America and European countries.”

K-Pop video clips were viewed nearly 2.3 billion times in 235 countries in 2011. The views have now jumped three-fold since.

 

[Gentle]

China will be a major consumer of Iraqi oil.

Exxon Mobil Corp wants to sell stakes in the West Qurna oilfield in Iraq, and CNPC unit PetroChina, China's largest energy producer, is interested in buying 60 percent for $50 billion, according to Reuters.

Overall, in the near futur, half of Iraq's oil production should eventually go to China.
And they didn't even fire a single shot !

 

[Gentle]

Culture and social influence.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are learning Mandarin.
There may be a 7th adoption coming and it may be from China.

"They want their kids to be a 'reflection' of the world and since they feel China will become the next superpower and has one of the oldest and greatest culture on earth, that it would be wise to have a Chinese kid".

And since language is part of culture, both French and Mandarin are now in constant progression in the world specially because of demographics in Africa which is rising fast.
Even though French lost 1% in North America it has exploded in Africa and Mandarin is typically exploding in Africa.

Since Mandarin is already spoken as a 1st language more than any other language, the latest estimates are that it will be spoken both as a 1st and 2nd language more than english in 25-30 years from now.

Unnnnnbelievable ! :smile: