Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts

Monday, August 27, 2018

How we help startups using big data - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean
Enterprise accelerator MOX (mobile only accelerator) let six startups show-case in Singapore last week. William Bao Bean, partner at the Shanghai-based SOSV explains how his network helps to use big data to enhance their chances on a global market, he tells at E27.

E27:
As its name suggests, MOX invests and works with mobile-focused startups to refine their solutions, business models and teams. It also helps them acquire users by connecting them with 167 million smartphone users on its platform, partnering them with brands and telcos, and also via cross-promotion with other apps (in return for revenue share). 
William Bao Bean, General Partner, SOSV, said that MOX helps startups analyse large swaths of market data so they can optimise their localisation and monetisation strategy.
Currently, MOX focuses on India, Indonesian and Philippines-based startups. It is looking to expand to other countries in the region, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, in the near future. 
That said, it is also open to companies that hail from other parts of the world — as long as they have an amazing product to share. At its 5th Demo Day in Singapore today, MOX showcased 6 such mobile startups.
More at E27.


William Bao Bean in action in Singapore
William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Will China face a pushback? - Howard French

Howard French
China's erstwhile "peaceful rise" has been less peaceful over the past years. Will China face a pushback from its neighbors, asks former foreign correspondent Mary Kay Magistad author Howard French of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power in a wide ranging interview about his book in PRI.

PRI:
French: That's really the $64,000 question, and it's kind of the core of my book really. I think that we are entering, right now, a moment of very serious danger, which in my view, and I kind of roll out this argument in an extended way in my book, is likely to last for the next 10, 15, at the longest 20 years, after which, I think, if we can get through this transitional period, tensions will subside. 
But we are entering the danger period. And we're entering the danger period because China has advanced so far, so quickly. And its strength, economically speaking, in terms of industrial competitiveness, military capability, and particularly in terms of capacities for self-defense and projection of force in the nearby seas, have come to draw close to the capacities of the United States. In a situation where you’ve had a rising power and a status quo power in history, where the gap between the two narrows rapidly and dramatically, that is the precise situation of highest danger — because neither side is absolutely certain that it is able to prevail in a moment of instability or of conflict. 
In the rising power, you have strong constituencies that are tied up in the investment and effort to acquire capabilities, which say, 'what's the point of acquiring all of these capabilities, if you don't use them?' 
And meanwhile, in the status quo power, what was once a very clear and unambiguous lead in all of these key areas from economic strength and competitiveness, to high tech to military capacity, as the gap narrows, anxiety begins to increase. And ... a corresponding constituency says, in effect, ‘if we don't do something now to nip this threat in the bud, then it's going to be too late. We have to assert ourselves now to make clear who's in charge, or to make clear what the rules are.’ 
What's happening in the surrounding region is that, again I think one most usefully must resort to the realism that political scientists speak of. The neighboring powers are watching kind of anxiously to understand which way the wind blows. And so, how did they respond to this? Well the first thing they want to do is to avoid having to explicitly choose sides. And that means that most of them will want to obtain the benefits of economic cooperation with China, because China has been growing so fast and represents a huge market that's right on their doorstep, and to simultaneously enjoy the benefits of security arrangements with the United States, because the United States is this off-shore power far away that has been the trustee and guardian of the established rules of the road and who doesn't seem threatening. 
And so you see lots of countries — Vietnam is the most interesting example of this — Indians are training Vietnamese submarine crews on how to run submarines that are used, among other ways, to deter Chinese attacks. The Japanese are helping pay for a new Philippines Coast Guard, and a Vietnamese Coast Guard as well. Australia plays in this game. All of the smaller countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand are seeking ways to balance against China — soft balancing against China in ways that are not meant to be offensive to China, but allow them to hedge their bets. 
Magistad: You mentioned an important point in your book, which is, if China doesn't show respect for the rules and norms of the region, it pretty much encourages those countries to seek assistance, to seek support, to seek backup from the United States, and that actually plays against China's interests. How much do you think China's leaders are aware of that? 
French:  So there's a political scientist named Edward Luttwak, who I quote in the book at one point, who has developed a theory. He's basically a strategic thinker. And he's developed a theory, which is not exclusive to China, but describes a mentality or mindset that's common to very fast rising powers, as they begin to emerge, and to begin to more and more obviously contend with the status quo power. This mentality that he speaks of is called Great Power Autism. And, apologies to anyone who might take offense at this — this is not my term. 
The point he's trying to make is that rising this far this fast is a giddy experience. And amid the giddiness that you experience during this rise, caution and all sorts of other perspectives are kind of lost. And so, you are not likely to be terribly perceptive of the cost that you may incur by offending other people, meaning in this case, your immediate neighbors, much smaller countries, because you think that when you rise as far and as fast as a country like China has risen, that this is an affirmation of your correctness. 
So the next 10 years could be very messy, by accident or by design, to one degree or another. China could push in a way that involves hard power, to make gains in the immediate region at the expense of the status quo powers, most importantly for this conversation, the United States and Japan, which are the most important status quo powers in the region. And there could be a war. Or there could be at least some more limited form of conflict that could be ugly and very dangerous. 
That's one scenario that's very real, cannot be discounted, which we must be very attentive to, and that our diplomats have to figure out a way to prevent. 
You can imagine a leadership that says 'look, in 10-15 years, we can be down to 2 to 3 percent economic growth per year. ... This is the moment when we have to go we have to make our big push. We have to lock in whatever gains we can lock in right now, meaning in the next 10 years.' 
Still, I'm hopeful that we'll muddle through. Once we're past this transitional period of 10, maybe 15 years, then other things begin to happen. The demographics of China, I think, kick in — with hundreds of millions of people over the age of 65, with immense costs in medical care, possibly residential care, and China doesn’t have that infrastructure yet, because it hasn’t yet been at that stage of economic development. And so, if we get past this transitional period of 10 or 15 years, I'm very hopeful that China will say, 'listen, the status quo isn't as bad as we thought it was. We don't need to be such a grudging, victim-centric country. We've done well. We've come a long way.
More in PRI.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

China´s dangerous maritime endeavors - Howard French

Howard French
+Howard French 
China has been aggressively been expanding its maritime power of the past two years. While it is now surprise it takes on that other maritime powerhouse, the US, but  - writes journalist Howard French in a comprehensive analysis in the Atlantic - there is enough to worry. For example how it deals with Vietnam.

Howard French:
China’s main frontline opponents in the South China Sea are Vietnam and the Philippines. Analysts in both countries strongly fear that Beijing will seek to make an example of at least one of them, following the venerable Chinese adage that one kills a chicken to scare the monkeys. The question would seem to be which neighbor will serve as the sacrificial chicken; which country China will bully and humiliate as an object lesson to other neighbors that resistance is futile and decisive help from the Americans is unlikely to come. 
Today, Vietnam is the only country in the region that seeks to impose serious limits on China’s maritime ambitions but does not have a defense agreement with the United States, making it an attractive target. On the other hand, even if it is scarcely more than one-30th of China’s size, Vietnam has a redoubtable martial culture, as the United States learned in the 1960s. The Chinese, too, should be familiar with the disposition toward resistance: Vietnam repelled a Chinese invasion of the country’s northern borderlands in 1979, leaving as many as 20,000 Chinese soldiers dead. Yet this incident has long since been censored out of China’s national consciousness. And just as they did at the beginning of that assiduously forgotten war, outlets of the Chinese state media have spoken recently of the need to give Vietnam “a lesson it deserves,” or to make it pay “an unaffordable price.” 
Although the two countries are nominal ideological allies, their relationship through the centuries has involved many waves of invasion and subjugation, deeply coloring the attitudes of each toward the other. “Invasion is in their blood, and resistance is in our blood” is how a Vietnamese political analyst summed up the countries’ two millennia of bitterly shared history for The New York Times in May. 
No one among the score of diplomats and officials I met in Vietnam has any illusion of prevailing in a symmetrical clash with China, naval or otherwise. But Vietnam has at times found unconventional means to overcome bigger and more heavily armed adversaries. This history of defying the odds has fired a mood of self-confidence in Hanoi that sometimes smacks of arrogance. 
“We are a very small country, but every time China has wanted to use force against Vietnam, we have stopped them,” a prominent Vietnamese military analyst told me in Kuala Lumpur early this year. We met in a formal reception room in his country’s embassy, furnished with a springy couch, a noisy air conditioner, and fading revolutionary art. High on the wall, in pride of place, hung a portrait of a smiling Ho Chi Minh. “In the Malvinas conflict, Argentina fired only three Exocet missiles; one of them sunk a British ship,” he said. “If the Chinese come with Liaoning, we will defeat them.” 
Hanoi recently took delivery of two silent Russian-built, Kilo-class submarines—four more are on the way—and the military analyst unambiguously explained such an expensive purchase for a country with a per capita GDP of only about $1,900: his country needs to be able to sink Chinese ships in order to raise the cost of Chinese aggression to unacceptable levels. “Little by little we are loosening the noose” that China has put around his country’s neck, he told me. 
Vietnam has to weigh its response to Chinese provocation with great care, given the two countries’ increasing economic integration. In 2012, at a particularly tense moment with Manila, China suspended imports of bananas from the Philippines, causing huge quantities of the crop to rot on docks. And as soon as tensions rose once the oil rig had been towed into Vietnamese waters, trade between the two countries declined sharply, with Chinese state media warning of possible long-term economic consequences. 
To the Vietnamese, the oil-rig incident did not reach a threshold that warranted war. Multiple Vietnamese officials told me that a Chinese bid to seize disputed islands from Vietnam (as it did in 1974 and 1988) probably would. The oil rig’s deployment fomented gigantic protests in Vietnam, where large public demonstrations are rare. On the first day, May 11, hundreds of people turned out peacefully in Hanoi, carrying banners with slogans like “Protect the nation.” Over the next several days, large crowds converged on several industrial parks, attacking Chinese businesses. Vietnamese analysts said that the unrest, in which numerous protesters died, carried a sharp warning that the state’s legitimacy might crumble if it failed to strike back after any new Chinese island grab. 
Many Western analysts view China’s approach in the Pacific as a sort of calibrated incrementalism, whereby a Chinese presence and de facto Chinese rights in disputed areas are built up gradually, in a series of provocations that are individually small enough to make forceful resistance politically difficult, but that collectively establish precedents and, over time, norms. The Chinese, in fact, have a name for this approach: the cabbage strategy. An area is slowly surrounded by individual “leaves”—a fishing boat here, a coast-guard vessel there—until it’s wrapped in layers, like a cabbage. (“Salami slicing” is another metaphor for the approach.) 
Surely the Chinese would be satisfied if Vietnam simply accepted their slow expansion of maritime rights and territory. But the tempo and tenor of China’s recent actions suggest that Beijing might now also be happy with a contest of strength against Hanoi, especially if Vietnam were perceived as the country that struck first. This, ultimately, is how China’s positioning of its oil rig, backed by an armada, should be understood: it would help legitimize Chinese claims if Vietnam did nothing, and would offer an opportunity to loudly squash the bug in some limited battle—and perhaps to impose crippling economic sanctions—if Hanoi lashed out. 
Indeed, given Beijing’s great advantage of force, some Vietnamese officials have recently warned that although military action by their side is emotionally attractive, and perhaps even inevitable, it may do nothing more than spring a Chinese trap. If the question of standing up to China becomes too tightly bound with regime survival, all that might be accomplished is public failure and, ironically, regime change in Vietnam.
Much more in the Atlantic.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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