Month: July 2010

That is the title of a book by Robert Kuhn I saw and bought at Hong Kong Airport. It is a book that should be read by us in India, and especially those in power in India. Here is an brief about the book:

China impacts everyone—an economic superpower competing in every arena of human endeavor. Here are those who run China, its current and future leaders. Here’s how China’s leaders think about China’s growing global strength—in trade, business and finance; in diplomacy, defense and security; in science, technology and innovation; in culture, media and sports—and what this all means for the future of the world. Here also are China’s leaders in economics, private business, state-owned enterprises, banking, foreign affairs, military, healthcare, religion, film, television, press, Internet, literature, ideology, and more.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn speaks with over 100 Chinese leaders and has inner access to Communist Party officials and material. He focuses on President Hu Jintao’s philosophies and policies, and looks to the next generation of China’s leaders. Who are China’s future leaders? What are they doing today? What’s their way of thinking about China’s place in the world? What about prospects for democracy and political reform? Is there a road map for political reform?

Political leadership and policies make the difference in outcomes on how countries develop. In the late 1970s, both India and China were in similar economic brackets. Today, one country has leapt forward – and is on a trajectory to continue growing faster. Reading the book can perhaps help us understand what we in India lack and need to do. Just because we have a growth rate of 8.5-9% again doesn’t mean that we can afford to sit around complacent. There’s more to be done at every level- and quickly.

That is the slogan one can see all across Shanghai. Efforts are on to make cities greener and much better in every aspect. China has been building new cities at a frenetic pace over the past 10-20 years. India has done little on that front.India needs to start looking at life in its cities. Delhi has gotten a lot of money thanks to the Commonwealth Games. But most other cities languish. Urbanisation is inevitable – and it is something which has to be encouraged.

In the next 10-odd years, the number of people living in urban areas in India is likely to double. What is the quality of life we are going to have if we are not going to start thinking of upgrading our infrastructure and creating dozens of new cities from scratch across the country?

Seeing Shenzhen and Shanghai, all I can say is that anyone who thinks that Mumbai can become a Shanghai or India can do a China has not visited China. Sitting here in Mumbai, we can imagine and dream. But going to the places, one is struck by the scale of what has been created in so short a time.

Two developments said it all in India while I was away. A Bandh was organised across India bringing the nation to a halt. The additional sea links that should have been built a generation ago in Mumbai were further delayed.

A friend I was talking to put it so well: “We build for yesterday, China builds for tomorrow.” In India, there is little semblance of any planning; we are always playing catch up. Three decades ago, India and China were equally behind in the development race. Today, one country has gone so far ahead, and the other still trundles along – a little faster than before, but not in the race.

Tomorrow: Better City, Better Life

A post from a year ago:

In India, the only workable way to do the “subscriber pays” model is to work with the mobile operators. Revenue shares of what the user pays are heavily loaded in favour of the operator, who tend to keep more than 70% of what the user pays. Also, the lack of an “open platform” (where any content or service provider can offer a service to an operator’s subscriber base) has limited the aggregate number of services and left users  largely with a range of operator-defined SMS subscription services, voice portals at Rs 6 a minute for access, CRBT (caller ring-back tones), and other downloads (ringtones, wallpapers, games).

Imagine now if a mobile operator can change the game by offerings its microbilling platform to anyone who wants to launch a service and offering a 60% or more revenue share of what the end user pays. The operator can also use its own portal to help in discovery of the off-deck services. Such an initiative will get the entire software and content community excited and spur a lot of services – similar to what happened in Japan when NTT Docomo launched i-mode in 1999.

These innovative services are what will attract users to the mobile operator, in turn bringing more service providers. This is what has happened with the iPhone Appstore. And it is an initiative that existing mobile operators will not match for a long time since they will seek to protect their existing VAS revenue streams.

This week’s links:

• What it takes to be a top 100 website: from Royal Pingdom. “…at least 22 million visitors per month.”
• On Google and Valuation Multiples: by Bill Gurley. “…if its not growth, competitive position, or execution, what is the shortcoming that hurts Google’s valuation?”
• The Velluvial Matrix: by Atul Gawande from The New Yorker. “You never stop wondering if there is a velluvial matrix you should know about.”
• The Medium is the Message: by David Brooks from The New York Times. “The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students”
• Comparing Urbanization in India and China: from McKinsey Quarterly. “China and India are both urbanizing rapidly, but China has embraced and shaped the process, while India is still waking up to its urban realities and opportunities.”

For me, one of the best things about the vacation was the time I got to spend with Abhishek. At 5 years and 3 months, he is now at an age where one can have interesting conversations. He is much more mature and independent than a year ago during the London vacation. He has a nice sense of humour – especially when he and Bhavana are ganging up against me!

He is full of questions. I patiently answer everything he asks. That’s how it has always been. And through the answers and his own thinking, he learns. At times, the questions do get repetitive, but I still answer each one of them. There is rarely a dull moment with him.

Besides the outdoors, there were two indoor activities that Abhishek did during the vacation. The first was playing Uno. I had just packed a set of cards before we left, and that turned out to be a smart decision. We had a lot of fun playing the game – with him threatening to show his ‘kamaal’ in every game! The second was playing with his trans, buses and taxis. He had taken a bag full of his vehicles – to which he added a few more during the trip. The hotel room became the roads and tracks as he created his own imaginary worlds.

A vacation like this creates memories that one can treasure for a long time.

Monday: China Impressions

In Shanghai, we stayed in Pudong. I had walked through Pudong during my visit about ten years ago, and there were parts of it still under construction. Since then, Pudong has been built up with plenty of skyscrapers and large roads. Again, a new city created in just about a decade.

We visited World Expo. That was perhaps the only disappointment of the trip. The queues to see the country pavilions were incredibly long – Bhavana waited over two hours to see the Korea one. And there wasn’t much to see either. We walked around and saw stuff from the outside.

The next day, saw us in Puxi, the older part of Shanghai across the river. We walked on Fuzhou and Nanjing Streets for much of the day. The eastern part Nanjing Street is pedestrians-only, and full of life with all sorts of activity on the street.

The Hunagpu river adds a wonderful dimension to the city. We took a nice long walk in the evening on the promenade on the Pudong side.

Tomorrow: Time with Abhishek

Shenzhen is a short hop away from Hong Kong. I had been there four-and-a-half years ago, for a business meeting. I didn’t see much of the place then. This time around, we actually went around the city. To think that this whole place has been created in the past couple decades is quite astonishing.

We went to “Window of the World.” The famed Chinese expertise of replication has been applied amazingly well here with about a hundred-odd famous sites re-created in a somewhat miniature format (though the Eiffel Tower replica seemed to be at scale). India’s Taj Mahal is also there.

We also take a high-speed train ride from Shenzhen to Guangzhao, and back. I was keen to experience the CHR. It covered the 147 kms in 66 minutes, with a top speed of 200 kms/hour and 3 2-minute stops en route. There is a display in the compartment which shows the speed. It was fast and smooth.

Tomorrow: Shanghai

The first day in Hong Kong was laced with heavy rains. So, we ended up staying mostly indoors in the hotel in Kowloon. We were also tired after the overnight journey. The one place we visited was the Toys r Us in Harbour City Mall, much to the delight of Abhishek.

Day 2 was Disneyland, and Day 3 was Ocean Park. The heat ensured that we spent just under four hours at both of the places. Disneyland was for me the more enjoyable one. I have visited the ones in the US. This one is much smaller, though there is construction happening to expand it.

My favourite ride is the “It’s a Small Small World” – there is something wonderful about the song and the boat making its way through the regions of the world. I took Abhishek on the “Space Mountain” and that did shake both of us up!

Ocean Park was somewhat disappointing, though Abhishek liked it for some of the games and the extraordinarily long cable car ride.

Tomorrow: Shenzhen

This year’s vacation was in China – Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Our vacations are quite active ones – walking, seeing places, a bit of shopping, and meeting friends. Vacations tend to be short (10 days or less), since we get homesick!

We picked China’s three destinations because they were closer to home than say Europe or America. It had been many years since I visited Shanghai, so I was keen to see it again. There was a mix of the known (Hong Kong) and the unknown (Shenzhen and Shanghai). Singapore was out because we had been there two years ago.

For me, the vacation was also about spending time with Abhishek. I don’t get much time on weekdays, and a nice extended period of time with just us was what I was looking forward to. As it turned out, that for me was the best part of the vacation.

Tomorrow: Hong Kong