A "New" Wonder Material – Super Concrete

Super Concrete viewing deck in the Netherlands

The Romans mixed crushed rock with burnt lime and water to build the Pantheon, which still holds the title of the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. But modern concrete has typically proved miserably inferior and vulnerable to a slow deformation process called "concrete creep."

French researcher Joseph Davidovits uncovered the chemistry of geopolymers, or super-cements. Davidovits also promulgated the theory that the Egyptian pyramids were built using a similar type of geopolymer limestone concrete - an idea supported by X-ray and microscopic study samples.

Recently the US Air Force Research laboratory has backed using geopolymers to build runways, rocket nozzles, and even glue for satellite components. Iran, situated geographically in an earthquake zone has similarly invested in the idea of super-strong concrete, its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world.

The new super concrete – ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC)

Super concrete  is based on the traditional ingredients of sand and cement. But, in addition, pure powdered quartz (rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibres are added to it. This is why super concrete can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. Super concrete is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can withstand pressure many times higher than normal concrete can and therefore can be used to make lighter and more slender structures.
 

For this reason, Iranian civil engineers are interested in using it in structures as diverse as dams and sewage pipes and are working on improving it still further. Researchers in the University of Hamadan in Iran for example, are using polypropylene fibres and quartz flour, known as fume, in their mix. It has the flexibility to absorb far heavier blows than regular concrete. Furthermore researchers at the Ottawa University in Canada are working on enhancing the molecular structure of cement. One way to enhance the internal structure of concrete is to use nanoparticles. For example, using different types of metal-oxide nanoparticles such as oxides of iron, aluminium, zirconium, titanium and copper. At the nanoscale materials can take on extraordinary properties. Although it has been demonstrated only in small samples, it might be possible, using such nanoparticles, to produce concrete that is four times stronger than the current ultra-high performance concrete. 

 

Uses for both civil and military purposes

Super concrete also has considerable military applications. A study, published in 1995, showed that although the compressive strength of concrete was enhanced only slightly by the addition of polymer fibres, its impact resistance improved sevenfold. Hence super concrete has the potential to withstand the impact of big blasts.

An Australian study carried out between 2004 and 2006 confirmed that super concrete resists blasts as well as direct hits. The tests, carried out in Australia, involved a charge equivalent to six tonnes of TNT. This fractured panels made of super concrete, but did not shatter them. Nor did it shake free and throw out fragments, as would have happened had the test been carried out on normal concrete.

The New Geo-Trade Order - the Chinosphere, the Hispanosphere and the Anglosphere

Culture Map from the World Values Survey

In a recent paper published by a London think-tank, the Legatum Institute, its author the Geographer, Joel Kotkin, looks at the world through the prism of culture. The ties of history and habit and of shared experiences and common customs can explain a lot about who does business with whom. For example research shows that two countries that share a common language trade 42pc more with each other. Two countries that once shared imperial ties trade a massive 188pc more. Imperial ties affect trade patterns more than membership of a common currency which boosted trade by only 114pc. 

The Chinosphere

China's growing might is reinforced by its links with the overseas Chinese. Around 70m ethnic Chinese live outside mainland China. Some are descended from those that moved abroad during China's imperial expansion from the 12th to 15th centuries, settling in what is now Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanmar. More recently many have migrated to the US and to other developed countries. 

Overseas Chinese are the biggest innovators in mainland China, around 68pc of the foreign direct investment that China received in 2009 came from places where ethnic Chinese are the biggest group such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Moreover China's government has funded hundreds of Confucius institutes to teach the Chinese language and nurture China's soft power abroad. In business, cultural ties matter because they lower transaction costs. And cultural affinity can super charge communication and foster instant trust the glue of successful business. In this way kinship still counts to foster relationships. Chinese-Americans naturally do business with Shanghai and Singapore.

The Hispanosphere and the Anglosphere

In a similar vein research shows, for the hispanosphere and the anglosphere, the two great European cultural blocks, that the flows of people and information are a massive 93pc higher when compared with traffic flows with the rest of the world. Moreover it is calculated that Spain's ties with its old ultramar provinces in América Latina are even closer than Britain's with its ex-colonies in the US, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Interestingly, the World Values Survey divides the world into big cultural zones as the chart above shows on the basis of common values. The Anglosphere is currently the world's biggest economic block, it accounts for more than 25pc of the world's GDP. It produces more scientific papers than any other country. In addition, English is the closest the world has to a lingua franca. It has dominated international business and diplomacy in the 20th century and into the 21st century. 

Language Diversity in the 21st century

The Chart below shows the US, China, Mexico and Russia have over 100 languages each, but score relatively low on the diversity index, because English, Chinese, Spanish and Russian have grown to the point where they threaten to destroy the many tiny native languages. By contrast, linguistic rivalry and relative poverty have kept a single language from dominating countries like India and Nigeria, which score high on the diversity index. Both poverty and geography combine to make Congo and Papua New Guinea the most linguistically diverse countries in the world.

Chart of Language Diversity in 21st Century Source: The Economist

Nollywood - Nigeria's thriving Lagos based film industry

Nollywood the second most prolific film industry in the world after India’s Bollywood.

In Lagos, Nigeria's financial capital, and other cities in the South, it's possible to imagine that Nigeria is going to be the next Brazil, an emerging giant. In the North, blighted by environmental degradation, struggling agriculture and collapsed industry, life is no better than in neighbouring Chad, Niger or Mali.

Lagos, the Nigerian business capital, is said by locals to have produced more films than there are stars in the sky. The streets are flooded with camera crews shooting on location. It is hard to avoid Nigerian films in Africa. Public buses show them, as do many restaurants and hotels. Nollywood, produces about 50 full-length features a week, making it the world’s second most prolific film industry after India’s Bollywood. 

Nigerian films are as popular through out Africa as they are at home. It is said that Ivorian rebels in the bush stop fighting when a shipment of DVDs arrives from Lagos. Zambian mothers say their children talk with accents learnt from Nigerian films.Millions of Africans watch Nigerian films every day. 

How did Nollywood come about?

The first true Nollywood film resulted from a failed business venture. In 1992 Kenneth Nnebue, a market trader, ordered a large consignment of blank videotapes from Taiwan. Finding them hard to sell, he hired a theatre director to make a cheap film and copied it onto the tapes to boost their appeal. “Living in Bondage”, the story of a farmer in a big city who loses his wife and is haunted by her ghost, sold more than half a million copies.

Interestingly the market traders still control Nollywood to this day. They make films for home consumption. DVD discs sell for a dollar. Print runs can reach a million. Studios, both in the physical and the corporate sense of the term, are unknown. Market traders double as financiers. All scenes are shot on location and with a shoestring budget of no more than $100,000. Most of the financiers are based in the massive, chaotic market of Idumota in Lagos. 

As soon as a film is released, pirates rip it off. It takes the pirates just two weeks to copy a new film and distribute it across Africa. The merchants must take their money during that fortnight, known as the “mating season”, before their discs become commodities. As soon as the mating season is over they start thinking about the next film.

The merchants curse the pirates, but in a way they are a blessing. Pirate gangs were probably Nollywood’s first exporters. They knew how to cross tricky borders and distribute goods across a disparate continent where vast tracts of land are inaccessible. Sometimes they filled empty bags with films when returning from an arms delivery. Often they used films to bribe bored guards at remote borders. The pirates created the pan-African market for Nollywood films. 

The Secret of Nollywood's success 

One of the key ingredients of success is that the actors in Nollywood films speak English, rather than one of Nigeria’s 514 native languages. Large parts of the continent are familiar with English due to colonialism, and Nollywood’s influence is continuing to spread the language more widely. A further ingredient that adds to their success is that the films’ plots have strong pan-African appeal. They often revolve around the difficulties of new arrivals in big cities, an experience familiar across the continent. The epic film “One God One Nation” portrays a Muslim man and a Christian woman who struggle to marry. “Caught in the Act” (see poster below) shows a wife who is wrongly accused by her own mother-in-law of abducting a child. The overarching theme of Nollywood films is Africa’s trials and tribulations of living in the 21st Century in an increasingly globalised world.

Film Poster for Caught in the Act

Markets and the Power Shift to the Emerging Economies

The weight of economic activity is shifting from the US & Europe to Asia & Iberoamérica

Energy squeeze – higher prices

The longer-term energy story is complex. The developed world is now barely increasing its use of energy and energy demand is projected to remain stable for the forseeable future, at least for the next couple of decades. Energy use in the emerging world, by contrast, continues to grow relentlessly every year.

The emerging world now uses more energy than the old developed world. This is what you would expect to happen, for as the weight of economic activity shifts from the US and Europe to Asia and Iberoamérica, so too will demand for energy. But it means the price paid by the developed world will be increasingly determined by the emerging world. The so called “West” (the US and Europe) has never been in this position since industrialisation. There is a weak parallel with the rise of Opec in the 1970s when the oil producers cut supply and quadrupled the price. At that time, the US and Europe found other sources of oil and reduced their dependence on Opec. But this time the squeeze comes from the demand side, not the supply, and there is not much the US and Europe can do about it.

And what next for the commodities markets 

The Chart below provides an overview contrasting developed countries with emerging economies' share of GDP and their world share of some of the most important commodity markets and other indicators:

Source: The Economist Daily Charts

Many analysts believe that the long-running boom in commodity prices (for some of the world's most important raw materials) has been driven up by financial speculation as much as physical need. Hence the commodities market may be heading for a massive crash on the scale of sub-prime. The commodity boom has not reached the excess so evident in the subprime era but it is pretty big nevertheless. Recently, some analysts have speculated that the gigantic merger between the mining company Xstrata and the commodity trading house Glencore is a signal of the prospect of a looming crash in the commodities markets. Just before the subprime crash, many massive subprime acquisitions came at the end of a massive boom in the securities markets and those doing the deals appeared to have sensed that the party was coming to an end and that they had to do something spectacular to be able to reap the super profits to be had in the final stages of the blowout. The Geo-Trade Blog believes it is possible that this deal may be the signal that the commodity markets are today where debt markets were on the eve of the credit crunch.

Printing Money and Bubbles in Markets

In the immediate aftermath of the subprime crash, printing money or quantitative easing (QE) as it is also known helped a wide variety of financial institutions to avoid facing up to their losses, covertly recapitalising US and European banks that were, to all intents and purposes, insolvent. Over the last few years protests from countries including Thailand, Australia, South Africa and China have been heard complaining that the US' unprecedented monetary expansion was responsible for causing dangerous bubbles in commodity markets going way beyond US equities. The US government also knows, although it denies it, that the more money it prints, the more speculative pressures push up global food prices. 

While the causes behind the Arab Spring unrest in 2011 are complex, it must be noted that it was surging food price that provided the spark. Hence the large emerging economies view "quantitative easing" as a developed country policy aberration, dressed up as a "legitimate technical solution" that they do not agree with at all. Brazil's finance minister has described it as "throwing dollars out of a helicopter and the Russian PM has described it as "economic hooliganism". The emerging economies clearly perceive the current trials and tribulations of the developed countries very differently to the conventional wisdom that underpins the policy decisions and assumptions that justify QE in the developed world. Emerging Economies are aghast that the US is now shouldering declared federal liabilities of $9,100bn - making it by a long way the world's largest debtor. Furthermore US Government debt is set to reach 42pc of GDP by 2015 according to official estimates. And more and more interest is being shown in the fact that the US' total sovereign liabilities including off-balance sheet items such as Medicare and Mediaid amount to $75,000bn - no less than five times annual GDP.

 

South Korea - the Asian "France" or "Germany" of the 21st Century

 K-POP Video on YouTube

 

Overseas trade and the industrial revolution of 19th and 20th centuries

As overseas shipping costs fell during the industrial revolution, it became possible for massive industrial cities to specialise in large-scale production and ship their goods to customers all over the world. The concentration of industry in cities, however, was still largely a product of the fact that it was costly to move goods over land. In a port city, you could bring in inputs, process them into outputs, and ship them back out. If it had been necessary to move intermediate goods well inland for manufacture at any point, costs would have soared, making profitable production impossible.

But transport costs continued falling. Shipping became much cheaper and more efficient. Air freight became an economic possibility. And improvements in trucking and freight rail led to stunning drops in the cost of moving goods over land. And so where once producers had crowded on top of each other in cities to take advantage of specialisation without blowing their budget on transport costs, they now began to spread out: first into the suburbs, then into cheaper regions of the same economy, and then, finally, into vastly cheaper economies abroad. This process facilitated the rapid industrialisation of Asian giants firstly Japan and then South Korea.

South Korea's 20th century economic success
 

In 1960, in the aftermath of a devastating war in the Korean peninsula, the exhausted south was one of the poorest countries in the world, with an income per head on a par with the poorest parts of Africa. At the beginning of 2012 it is richer than the European Union average, with a gross domestic product per person in US dollars of $31,750, calculated on a basis of purchasing-power parity (PPP), compared with $31,550 for the EU. The below graph shows GDP per capita levels projected to 2050.

Goldman Sachs - IPPR: Third Wave of Globalisation Report

 

 

 

Much of South Korea’s economic miracle has been the work of big family run conglomerates, or chaebol. Samsung Electronics, for instance, one of 83 constituent parts of the Samsung empire, has become the market leader with its smartphones overtaking Apple. Korea’s shipyards have just started work on a new class of container ships called the triple E-class which are the largest container ships ever built. Korea’s large companies employ slightly less than a quarter of the workforce and produce more than half the country’s output. 

The chaebol system as with any family business, the moment of greatest danger is when the leadership passes to the next generation. Samsung passed this test in 1987 when the founder handed over to his son, Lee Kun-hee. Now Mr Lee’s son, Jay Y. Lee, has been appointed chief operating officer of Samsung Electronics and a new transition looms. 

The South Korean model of heavy state intervention combined with an aspirational and entrepreneurial culture has brought it huge economic success. The model is being studied closely by Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Mongolia as well as the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. But aside from the economic success, South Korea dominates the cultural sphere too through the immense popularity of Korean pop (K-pop) (see above video) and television dramas and soap operas in the rest of Asia, as part of the "Korean wave" phenomenon washing across Asia.

Challenges ahead for 21st century

To some extent South Korea’s economic success is dependent on China. South Korea exports more capital goods to China relative to the size of its economy than anyone else, even Germany. 

 

But, there are signs that the chaebol may be stifling innovation and entrepreneurship. They have proved expert at applying and improving existing technology, even the high technology of touch-screen smartphones. But except in some internet businesses and computer gaming, South Korea has few start-ups or cutting-edge technology firms.

South Korea lacks nationwide venture-capital businesses because each chaebol has one of its own. The firms snap up the best and brightest graduates and turn them into company men. In this way the conglomerates act like light-hogging trees in a forest: their canopy may be impressive, but it is hard for anything to grow underneath. As South Korea moves towards the technological frontier, such attitudes will have to change. Innovation is not going to come if everyone shelters from risk in the chaebol.

Furthermore, there is a huge productivity gap between South Korea’s export-oriented chaebol and small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) which dominate services. Value added per worker in small firms is less than half that in large ones. SMEs’ operating profits were 4.5% of sales in 2007, compared with about 7% for large firms. Small firms spend about half as much on research and development as large ones per unit of sales and borrow far more relative to assets. Over time, their performance seems to be getting worse. South Korea, in other words, has first-world manufacturing exporters but currently has third-world services.

Nuclear powered aircrafts, could they become a reality?

Artist's impression of a nuclear powered aircraft

A recent work by Cranfield University's Bhupendra Khandelwal on an air transport model that combines nuclear-powered cruisers with chemical-powered short-range transports considers this possibility. As these long-range cruisers continually fly looping tracks that cross oceans and take them over major population centres, shorter-range aircraft would bring up passengers and cargo that would ride on the cruiser until they reach their destinations, where they would transfer to other short-range aircraft and fly down to land.

He has developed an air transport model (below) that combines nuclear-powered cruisers with chemical-powered short-range aircraft.

Graphic courtesy of Cranfield University Study, UK.

Taking off from conventional airports, flying to and landing on the cruiser, the chemical-powered transport would be optimised for take-off, climb and landing, with no need to cruise. This would reduce emissions, says Khandelwal, as the nuclear-powered transport would carry the aircraft to its destination, where it would detach from the cruiser to descend and land normally.

The cruiser, meanwhile, would have taken off from a remote site. This and its extreme endurance, which significantly reduces the number of take-offs and landings, would minimise the risk of a crash leading to a nuclear incident. Also the cruiser would be unmanned, he says, improving safety and avoiding the risk to a crew of prolonged radiation exposure during the cruiser's extended voyage. For further safety, the cruiser would have back-up chemical propulsion.

Khandelwal calculates this air-transport model could produce a fuel saving over conventional point-to-point flights of 40% for a 1,000km mission, rising to 85-90% for a 10,000km mission, where the chemical-fuelled flights to and from the cruiser would be a smaller fraction of the total.

Nuclear propulsion could be either direct or indirect cycle. In direct cycle, air flows through the compressor, into the reactor where it is heated, and out through the turbine. The risk here is radiation in the exhaust gases. In an indirect cycle a heat exchanger transfers energy from the reactor to the airflow. The radiation risk is reduced, but so too is thrust. 

Khandelwal's work provides much food for thought on new models of air travel in the 21st Century. The Geo-Trade Blog will continue to follow new innovative models for air transport with the potential to reshape travel and trade.

中国 China in 年 2012 – Challenges ahead in the Year of the Dragon 龙年

Special Postage Stamp issued for Chinese New Year - Year of the Dragon 2012

A new political theory: universalists v exceptionalists

In recent years the battle lines in Chinese politics have become clearer. They appear to be drawn between universalists, who believe China must eventually converge on a new value based political theory, and exceptionalists, who believe that China must preserve and perfect the current "Chinese Model". The context for this debate takes place within the political uncertainty in the build-up to the leadership transition combined with a phobia amongst the Chinese elites of political reform.

Nevertheless the philosophical political debate is more real than ever. On the one hand, the term “universal values” 普世价值 is a new one in Chinese Political debate. Many Chinese scholars believe the debate really took off in 2008 after the earthquake in the Sichuan province 四川省 that killed around 80,000 people. A liberal newspaper in the southern province of Guang dong 广东省published an editorial that praised the government's swift response. It said it had “honoured its commitments to its own people and to the whole world with respect to universal values”. The debate continued in December 2008 when a manifesto was issued in support of universal values known as Charter 08. It said, China faced a choice of maintaining its authoritarian system or recognising 普世价值 "universal values". However there is no real agreement on what the universal values are. Some Chinese scholars prefer to contrast what they see as a Confucian stress on social harmony and moral rectitude with the West's emphasis on individual rights.

Furthermore many Chinese scholars are surprised by the notion that multi-party democracy is the form of government towards which all other systems naturally evolve. Chinese academics do not subscribe to the concept of the nation-state, the basis of modern diplomacy developed in Europe. Rather they have developed a different Chinese theory of International Relations. Much of the Chinese theory is based on the notion of 天下, or in English, “all under heaven”. This dates back to the golden age of classical Chinese philosophy, of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and the rest in the “warring states” period before China's unification in 221BC under the first Qin emperor. 天下 is widely understood as a unified world dominated by one country to which neighbours and those beyond look for guidance and pay tribute.

The concept of 天下, as advocated by the Beijing philosopher, 赵汀阳 Zhao Tingyang, is a utopian concept of universal harmony, unattainable, he concedes, for 200-300 years, where everyone opts into a system of global government. There is no compulsion to opt in and the system is one of equality. However he stresses 天下 is a voluntary choice. There are echoes of 天下 in the 2008 Beijing Olympics slogan “One World, One Dream”. There are also echos of it in the blockbuster film Hero released in 2002 set in the time period of the Qin unification.

Moreover Chinese scholars criticise the notion of "supposed" equality between nation-states, they note some countries are more equal than others. For example, China is a big country and other countries are smaller countries and that is just a fact. They also perceive that national governments often ignore the interests of those without a vote, such as unborn generations (not a usual consideration of Western Politicians) and foreigners.

On the other side of the debate is the exceptionalist camp. It's main ideas have been recently summed up in a book by 张维为Zhang Wei Wei called “The Rise of a civilisational state".中国震撼:一个"文明型国家"的崛起 In this book, Mr Zhang argues that China is unique as the world's only amalgam of an ancient civilisation and a huge modern state and is increasingly returning to its own norms and standards. Liberal Chinese are worried that the exceptionalist school of thought is also attracting the most ardent nationalist supporters, who often claim that the West is trying to undermine China's achievements and keep the country from its rightful place as a great power. 张维为Zhang Wei Wei, recently wrote that China's evolution was “as if the roman empire had never collapsed and had survived to this day, turning itself into a modern state with a central government and modern economy, combining all sorts of traditional cultures into one body with everyone speaking Latin.”

Consequently the new communist party leaders when they come to power during 2012 and into 2013 face a daunting task, to navigate their way through these two competing political philosophies both vying to win the battle of ideas for the future of Chinese political thought.

Demographic challenges on the horizon too

A further serious challenge is related to China's demography. Over the last three decades, China has had its fertility artificially suppressed by the one-child policy and as a result it is ageing at an unprecedented rate according to statistics from the UN's Population Division. In 1980 China's median age (the point where half the population is older and half younger) was 22 years, a common developing country figure. But UN statistics show a worrying trend, China will be older than the US as early as 2020 and older than Europe by 2030. This will likely bring an end to its cheap-labour manufacturing and its dependency ratio with rise from 38 to 64 by 2050, one of sharpest rises the world has ever seen.

Furthermore China will have the added challenge of sexual imbalances, after a decade of sex-selective abortions, China will have 96.5m men in their 20s in 2025 but only 80.3m young women. Given these alarming figures, demography is set to become another serious looming challenge for the new leaders of the Communist Party in 2012. The diagram below shows the UN statistics of the Chinese population on the left in 2000 and a projection on the right for 2050:

Chinese Population Pyramid Source: UN Population Division

Here comes Iberoamérica - a new regional power in 21st Century

Leaders arriving at the CELAC Summit in Caracas, Iberoamérica

The 33 Heads of State of the Iberoamerican countries met in Caracas at the beginning of December 2011, when they left they had created a new International Forum for Integration for Iberoamérica called  Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Celac). This organisation excludes the US and Canada and its main objective is to build its own financial architecture that will protect it from the financial crisis that has hit the US and Europe. The new CELAC bloc accounts for a population of around 550 million people with high GDP (PIB, Producto Interior Bruto) growth rates as the diagram below shows:

The idea to found a new Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños has come about over the last three years. Just when the markets were beginning to crumble in December 2008, the then, President of Brasil, Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva, called the Presidents of the 33 countries to the first Summit, Cumbre de América Latina y en el Caribe (Calc) to discuss strategies to safeguard the region against the financial crisis. Later in February 2010, the Calc met again in Cancún, México and it was there that they agreed that they needed a permanent forum for discussions, hence the birth of Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Celac) at the end of 2011 in Caracas. 

As well as discussing the financial crisis, the Presidents of Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños also discussed other business related to the cohesion and stability of the region. President Evo Morales asked for support for Bolivia to reach an agreement for sea access for his land-locked country. The President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, advocated for a common policy to rid the region of narco-trafficking. 

Español, common language of the 21st century

The potential of español as a world language is increasingly based on its great diversity. The hybridisation of español in so many countries is becoming a major advantage in a globalised world. At the beginning of the 21st century, many believe there is a renewed "Siglo de Oro" in the Spanish language, partly because there has never been so many people writing in Spanish and writing in such an interesting way. The existing prejudices between Iberoamérica and Spain are being broken down and eliminated and a new common linguistic territory is being created in español. Evidence of this is the founding in 2011 of Amazon.es, selling books, DVDs and other products to the increasing market of Spanish speakers worldwide. Amazon (and its Kindle e-reader) already has plans to enter Chile, Argentina and Brazil too.

Interestingly, speakers of español are not limited to América Latina and Spain, instead within the EU (excluding Spain) there are 30 million Spanish speakers. Currently in the US, there are 40 million Spanish speakers and in Brasil, 5.5 million Spanish speakers. The US is further predicted to be the world's largest Spanish speaking nation by 2080 according to recent studies.

The recently celebrated XXV Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, México in 2011 celebrated its 25th anniversary  with a list of 25 secretos literarios de América Latina. In the video below, the writer, José Saramago, explains in his own words the importance of the cultural and commercial exchanges already taking place within the Iberoamérica region in the 21st Century.

New APEC Trans-Pacific Partnership - Spanning the Pacific Ocean from Coast to Coast

APEC meeting to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economy Leaders gathered in Hawaii for the final APEC Leader's Summit on 12-13 November 2011 of the US Presidency. The aim of the 21 member APEC forum is to lower trade barriers and increase economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. At the Summit, APEC leaders pledged to work together to achieve the broad outlines of a plan that could work as the model of a new Trans-Pacific free trade zone, spanning the Pacific Ocean from coast to coast, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). 

The proposed free trade zone could serve as a model not only for the region but in light of the failure of the latest Doha Round negotiations, it could also serve as a model for other global trade pacts. The current Trans-Pacific Partnership members include Chile, Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore, with America, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Perú, and Vietnam already in negotiations to join. Canada, México and Colombia are also considering joining.

The US President, Barack Obama, has said publicly that he hopes the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be the cornerstone of an APEC-wide free-trade area. In a similar statement, the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, too said that China supported the proposal for an APEC-wide free trade area from coast to coast in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Many of the smaller Trans-Pacific Partnership countries welcome Japan’s participation for the access it would give them to a second giant market, alongside America’s. The treaty’s ambitions are for free movement of almost everything with the exception of labour. Japan hopes to influence global technological standards in industries like electric cars and clean energy by joining with the US. 

US and China - both part of the Asia-Pacific Region

By agreeing to open negotiations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US President is clearly seeking to re-establish the US as a Pacific nation. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a symbol of the shift in the world’s centre of economic gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. If the ten-country deal is concluded, it will cover a market 40pc bigger than the European Union.

The US and Asia-Pacific countries need to maintain productive relationships with China, especially over the coming years 2012-2013, while China prepares for an internal leadership change within the Communist Party and at the same times goes through a period of introspection about its future role in the world. It is important that the US re-engagement is not seen as a path to confrontation with China. Rather, how China emerges from this process and the policies it chooses to implement in the Asia-Pacific region and globally will determine much about what the world will look like in the medium and long term.

China keeps the space dream alive - 神舟八号Shenzhou-8 Spacecraft launched on 1.11.11

China has launched the unmanned 神舟八号Shenzhou-8 spacecraft, marking the start of another key mission in the nation's quest to assemble a permanent space station within a decade.

Shenzhou-8 blasted off on board a Long March-2F carrier rocket early on 1 November 2011 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in north-western China's Gansu Province.

It was scheduled to dock with the 天宫一号 Tiangong-1 Space capsule within two days of the launch and stay linked for 12 days. 神舟八号Shenzhou-8 is then scheduled to perform a second rendez-vous and docking manoeuvre before it detaches to allow the re-entry module to return to Earth on November 17.

Astronauts are scheduled to visit 天宫一号 Tiangong-1 twice next year on the 神舟九号Shenzhou-9 and 神舟十号Shenzhou-10 spacecraft, which are designed to link with 天宫一号 Tiangong-1 to form a mini-space station.

The 神舟八号Shenzhou-8 is carrying an experimental facility developed by German and Chinese scientists. According to the German space agency DLR, plants, bacteria and human cancer cells will be exposed to zero gravity and space radiation for nearly three weeks as scientists seek to explore questions such as how gravity affects biological processes and how the immune system could be strengthened.

In one experiment, Chinese and German researchers are jointly studying a miniature ecosystem with algae and fish. They hope to develop a biological life-support system to produce oxygen and food and to treat water for longer space missions. In another, scientists will investigate the crystallisation of medically relevant proteins in space. They are interested in the development of new substances to target the MRSA "superbug" and the parasites that cause malaria.

In 2003, China became the third nation to launch an astronaut into space after Russia and the US.

Spaceport America Ready for Launch

A fly-over by Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital vehicle and WhiteKnightTwo mothership marked the 17 October dedication of the hangar at Spaceport America, the world’s first purpose-designed launch facility for space tourism and sub-orbital science flights.

The site has officially been providing limited commercial vertical launch services since 2006 but is now gearing up for SS2 sub-orbital flights within two years. This week's event marked the formal completion of Phase One of the two-part construction program, with Phase Two now getting under way. The latest wave of work includes completion of the main hangar and construction of a visitors experience center.
 
The facility for commercial space travel in the Rio Grande valley of New Mexico, Spaceport America, is the first of its kind in the world. Virgin Galactic has signed up to be the anchor tenant for 20 years and has dedicated hundreds of millions of US dollars to developing the technology. Here are some pictures of the dedication event:


SpaceShipTwo reflected in the east facing glass wall of the Spaceport terminal
 and terminal complex designed by Sir Norman Foster.

Two views of the Spaceport from the west, the structure blends
 ‘Dune’-like  into the desert scrub.



SpaceShipTwo between the Moon and the Spaceport.



Veteran Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin hands Sir Richard Branson a plaque with the
Spaceport’s new ceremonial address – No.1 Half Moon Street, Las Cruces.
The name commemorates links to Virgin’s offices in London’s Mayfair district.

Aerial gymnasts perform at the dedication ceremony.

Virgin Galactic President/CEO George Whitesides said powered test flights to sub-orbit are still on track for next year, with rocket motor maker Sierra Nevada gearing up for a further full-duration ground test in November. The company acknowledges progress has been slower than planned, but adds that the focus remains on safety. The Geo-Trade Blog will continue to report and update on future developments at the Spaceport.

中国China - 缅甸Myanmar, a new route to the sea?

Map of China and Myanmar - Bay of Bengal and Straits of Malacca

China's geography is such that sea routes between Asia and Europe are currently limited to starting in the China Sea. Commercial trade ships then navigate South from China's ports to travel through the Malacca Straits bordered by the Malay peninsula with Singapore at the tip, to gain access to the Indian Ocean and on to Europe. The above map illustrates that China's land mass extends well into Eurasia bordering India and several of the Central Asian Republics like Kazakhastan and Kyrgyzstan. Yet China is hemmed in along its southern border by a plethora of countries including Pakistan, India and Myanmar.

In purely Geo-Trade terms, Myanmar represents the shortest distance to the sea from the Chinese border with the added advantage that it is also located fairly close to to the east of China where most of China's industrial hubs are located.

Myanmar, a little known country in the 21st Century

Myanmar is not a small country, it covers an area bigger than France and it has a population of around 60m people. It's most recent history is characterized firstly by a military dictatorship under General Ne Win who seized power in 1962 and erected a virtual wall around the country, sealing it off from almost all outside influence for several decades. In 1988, he was suceeded by a Junta after nationwide protests. The Junta has since maintained the country almost as isolated as the General despite some attempts to open the country up.

Access to the Bay of Bengal for China

China's dream of having access to the Indian Ocean, it seems is about to come true. China and Myanmar have been working together on building a new port, oil and gas pipelines, and roads which are already under construction in Myanmar, giving China, for the first time direct access to the Bay of Bengal, and a new route for an estimated 20pc of its oil imports.

Dams are also springing up on Myanmar's rivers to generate hydropower to provide power to the 云南Yunnan province, in the South of China too.

China has at last found a solution to the trade bottleneck through the Malacca straits and at the same time has resolved a key Geo-Trade challenge, by opening up access to the Indian Ocean on its Southern flank, through a newly formed strategic alliance with Myanmar, uniting both their futures, inextricably together.

Indonesia – a new emerging regional player?



New Hotel Complex recently opened in Jakarta

Indonesia has a population of around 240m making it the fouth most populous country in the world after China, India and the US, with a bigger population than Brazil. Indonesia has been one of the best performing economies of the G20 over the last few years. Last year alone it had growth of 6pc. It is the giant of South-East Asia.

As a democratic Muslim-majority, but not Islamic state, Indonesia is a key bridge for anyone to the Muslim world. Indonesia has managed to silence the separatist campaigners from recruiting new followers through a successful counter- ideological campaign during recent years. What is truly remarkable is that the antiterrorist efforts are taking place in the absence of the draconian laws that once underpinned the Soeharto regime.

Leading role in ASEAN

Indonesia is the biggest and most influential member of the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). For the last year it has held the presidency of ASEAN and has sucessfully chaired and won consensus over various tricky security questions such as claims to the South China Sea and guidelines for conduct on the implementation of the 2002 declaration on the South China Sea.

Indonesia's new middle class

According to research cited by The Economist and carried out by Nomura, a Japanese Bank, Indonesia is creating a new middle class. In 2004 it numbered around 1.6m, in 2011, it now has around 50m people. For the purposes of its research, Nomura defined “middleclass” as a someone with a disposable income of over $3,000 per year. If growth continues at the current rates, the Indonesian middleclass could soon reach almost 150m by 2014 putting it on par with countries like India. This would be a stunning achievement compared with a decade earlier.

With new found wealth, affluent Indonesians are able to invest in new consumer goods. In Jakarta the object of choice at present is a scooter. Last year 8m alone were sold. Piaggio, an exclusive Italian brand has just re-entered the market selling a much more upmarket bike in Jakarta to cater to the more sophisticated tastes of the new middle-class.

Will Indonesia be taken seriously?

If population is destiny then Indonesia is well on its way to becoming a successful regional emerging player and perhaps even a BRIC. What Indonesia appears to be really seeking is recognition of its rise by other international players.

Although Indonesia is also hoping to maintain strategic relations with both the US and China. An Op-Ed in the Jakarta Post ahead of President Obama's visit towards the end of 2010 put it this way: 

"...Indonesia has always prized itself on the autonomy with which it has conducted its international dealings, it will be balanced in reaching out to America while retaining its prized relationship with Beijing."