The Korea Herald

[Warren Fernandez] Looking back to chart way forward

Jan 28, 2019

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.So the late British prime minister and famed orator Winston Churchill is once supposed to have said.This year, many will be doing so, with major milestones and anniversaries being marked around the world -- 150 years since the birth of India’s Mahatma Gandhi; 50 years after American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s great lunar “leap for mankind”; 100 years since the May Fourth Movement in China.Singapore, too, looks likely to sp
[Christopher Balding] China’s banks are desperate for capital

Jan 28, 2019

In the past decade, China has relied primarily on credit growth to fund its economic ambitions. The country’s banks are now feeling the constraints of this lending binge and need to raise a lot of capital over the next couple of years.The way China handles this challenge will determine its economic health. With 267 trillion yuan ($39.4 trillion) of total assets, and home to the world’s four largest banks by this measure, the country’s financial system doesn’t operate in isolation. Whatever happe
[Eli Lake] Trump makes the right decision for Venezuela

Jan 28, 2019

Give Donald Trump credit. On Wednesday the US president recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president. At least a dozen other countries in the Western Hemisphere have since followed suit.There were signs that such a move was in the works. Senior US officials had declared as illegitimate the 2018 election that gave President Nicolas Maduro a second term. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence released a video pledging US support for popular protests against
[David Ignatius] Can Pentagon build a bridge to tech community?

Jan 27, 2019

As the age of artificial intelligence transforms warfare, the Pentagon faces a delicate problem: How does it convince employees of high-tech companies based in the US that Americans are still the “good guys,” so that they’ll lend their talents to US national-security projects?The challenge is huge, given that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and other tech giants see themselves as global companies with workers drawn from many nations. But tapping this talent base is essential for future US secur
[Kent Harrington, John Walcott] Trump’s North Korean road to nowhere

Jan 27, 2019

When US President Donald Trump meets again with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un next month, he will be staging the second act in a comedy of manners that now passes for US foreign policy on the Korean Peninsula. Between Kim’s billets-doux to the White House and Trump’s gushing praise of Kim, the script could have been written by Oscar Wilde. Like any drawing-room farce, the plot is simple enough: Kim will pledge to abandon his nuclear weapons someday, while coquettishly concealing any details ab
[Tyler Cowen] US-China Cold War will get worse before it gets better

Jan 27, 2019

We are in the midst of a new Cold War, with the United States and China carving out separate economic and political orders. Let’s consider how it might look in a few years.There will be two separate internets, with the US and China as the two dominant players. American tech companies still will be kept out of China, and Chinese tech companies will find it hard to get Western contracts or sales, as Huawei is discovering with its plans to build 5G networks. National security and surveillance consi
[Adam Minter] Why Big Brother doesn’t bother most Chinese

Jan 27, 2019

Who says the government can’t innovate? In one Chinese city, the local court system recently launched a smartphone-based map that displays the location and identity of anyone within 500 meters who’s landed on a government creditworthiness blacklist. Worried the person seated next to you at Starbucks might not have paid a court-approved fine? The Deadbeat Map, as it’s known, provides pinpoint confirmation, the ability to share that information via social media and -- if so inclined -- a reporting
[Leonid Bershidsky] Maduro’s fall would be a defeat for Putin, too

Jan 27, 2019

If Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s regime falls, Russian President Vladimir Putin will have to write off yet another costly geopolitical bet. Just don’t expect Moscow to stop taking such gambles as it tries to counter US influence across the globe.Russia is Venezuela’s most important foreign sponsor after China. China’s investment has been estimated to be as much as $70 billion, most of it to be paid back in oil. Russia and its state-owned companies have lent and injected more than $17 bil
[Leonid Bershidsky] German ‘yellow vests’ have a case, too

Jan 24, 2019

Can the yellow vest, that symbol of French anti-elite protest, travel? Well, it’s clearly not as internationally ubiquitous as the red flag of class struggle was some 100 years ago, but most of the 700 people who demonstrated in Stuttgart on Saturday were wearing yellow security vests.　Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chosen successor, has said she sees no room in Germany for a “yellow vest” movement like the French one. In reality, however, Germans have some of the
[Noah Smith] Big cities no longer deliver for low-skilled workers

Jan 24, 2019

David Autor, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a record of attacking the biggest and most important issues. He has raised alarms about disappearing middle-skilled jobs, pointed to the downsides of trade with China, warned about increasing industrial concentration, and attacked the question of whether automation will kill jobs.　In a recent lecture at the American Economic Association meeting in Atlanta, Autor attempted to weave many of those threads together into
[Anne O. Krueger] Trump’s brain drain

Jan 23, 2019

America’s quality universities are among the key sources of its greatness. Every year, top students from all over the world vie for access to graduate and undergraduate programs in the US, and American universities occupy most of the top spots in global rankings. Moreover, the basic research conducted at US universities has been a primary driver of innovation and economic growth, as well as the source of a disproportionate share of Nobel prizes.America’s universities cater to a wide variety of s
[Emily de La Bruyere and Nathan Picarsic] China wants to dominate internet

Jan 23, 2019

For the past year, the US and China have been engaged in a wide-ranging trade war. Nominally, the dispute concerns intellectual property violations, forced technology transfers and other unfair practices. In reality, though, this clash is a symptom of a much larger strategic showdown -- one in which Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks “decisive victory.”Aided by technology, China is embarking on a new kind of geopolitical strategy. As the Chinese Academy of Sciences explained, the goal is to buil
[Lionel Laurent] Make no mistake, Davos, fat cat backlash is coming

Jan 23, 2019

Ten years ago, the Davos conference asked the question: “What must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash?” The answer probably wasn’t “Double, triple or sextuple the wealth of the most prominent conference attendees, while letting median household incomes stagnate back home.” Yet that’s what happened. Make no mistake: The backlash is coming.　There has always been a whiff of hypocrisy at Davos, where elites expand their carbon footprint, eat $43 hot dogs and throw lavish parties in the n
[Ferdinando Giugliano] Plenty of Uber drivers love their jobs too

Jan 23, 2019

The “gig economy” has become the cause celebre for people who think labor needs help from government in its struggle with capital. Politicians from the radical left and anti-establishment parties say the rise of casual work is a sign that work relationships are sliding back in time and that the state must step in to address this decline in standards.　John McDonnell, the UK Labour Party’s economics spokesman, says “zero-hour contracts” and the gig economy have produced workplace “insecurity not s
[Chun Sung-woo] Moon walled by confirmation bias

Jan 23, 2019

Confirmation bias seems to be stopping President Moon Jae-in from ending his reliance on his perspective and beliefs in favor of evidence and facts.The bias is a psychological term denoting a tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms one’s preconceived ideas, while finding fault with evidence that goes against them. It prevents people from considering other important information when making decisions.Moon said in his New Year’s press conference on Jan. 10 that employment indexes fell sho