Inside Asia Podcast

Mark Clifford: Hong Kong's Changing Landscape

This episode our topic is the changing Hong Kong landscape. My guest is Mark Clifford, Executive Director of the Hong Kong-based Asia Business Council. Over the last twenty years Mark has served as lead editor for some of the region’s most prestigious news and business publications, including The South China Morning Post, The Standard, and the much admired, now defunct, Far Eastern Economic Review.

Among other things we discuss the newly opened sea bridge linking Hong Kong to the mainland have started to bring about. On the one hand, the bridge is paving the way for a new Greater Bay Area – the brainchild of Chinese Communist Party planners who believe that linking Hong Kong with ten South China cities, they can incite a tech and development revolution. It’s a glittering 21st century set of mega-cities with a chrome plated infrastructure to match.

It might look great, but Mark Clifford has reservations. He puts more stock in the free flow of information than mass transit. In many ways, China is simply doing what China does best – building stuff! What happens, asks Mark, when the country exhausts the three cheap inputs—labor, land, and capital—that til now have powered decades of double-digit growth rates?

Change is in the wind. But how prepared is the South China workforce to toggle from export-led to import-driven? Is there enough slack in the domestic economy to get behind a new generation of software developers, robotics engineers, data scientists and entrepreneurs?

It’s a fascinating discussion. As always, thanks for listening.

Clay Chandler: China's Digital Discontinuity and the Efficacy of the Great Firewall

My guest this episode is none other than Clay Chandler, Executive Editor, International for Time Inc, and Asia Editor for Fortune. He’s also the author of the special "Sino-Saturday" edition of Alan Murray's influential Fortune CEO Daily newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed to the newsletter, my advice to you is to do so immediately – exceptional weekly insights from news veterans.

This is a wide-ranging, must listen to conversation that eventually alighted on the topic of Artificial Intelligence superpowers. It raises some interesting—and also pressing—geopolitical questions. For example, should efforts be made to restrict China’s access to overseas markets or are we in a brave new world where data access is fair game for anyone who can access it?

As Chandler points out, contrary to what many imagined, the Great Firewall has proved effective. China has been successful in limiting market penetration of digital giants Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, otherwise known as FANG. In retrospect, the story we told ourselves about the globalizing power of the web was part of a bigger story about China opening up and engaging with the world. Digital had the power – or so we believed – to eat away at the edges of Communist ideology and make way for new modes of thinking.

None of this happened. As Chandler points out, China moved to capitalize on its digital blockade, and in a two-decade frenzy of innovation and investment, created digital service alternatives that are not only better, but oftentimes superior to anything FANG has to offer.

But is that the whole story. Chandler warns of a potential pivot away from China as multinationals reassess the role the country plays in their global portfolios. If, over the past quarter century Asia, generally, and China, specifically were seen as critical features of a global strategy, that may be about to change. The big question is whether we will still feel that way when more severe economic implications start to kick in and the cost of goods start their precarious climb. How will global consumers feel about China then?

As always, thanks for listening.

Julien de Salaberry: Innovating HealthTech in Asia

Returning to the program this episode is Julien de Salaberry, Founder and CEO of Galen Growth Asia. He and his partners at Galen Growth identify and catalyze connections between investors and healthtech entrepreneurs.

We last spoke some six months ago when he gave us the rundown on the general state of healthcare in Asia and some of the groundbreaking projects under way that will one day change the face of healthcare services as we know it.

Julien and his partners at Galen Growth are doing some stunning work to spur healthcare innovation by identifying burgeoning healthcare startups across Asia and then awarding innovators. They kicked things off last year and now are coming up on the announcement of the 2018 winner. I asked him to take us into the process for deciding which startups advanced.  

A key takeaway from our conversation: People matter. Technology is sometimes given the credit – or the blame – for whether a startup succeeds or not.  Yet, it’s people that drive the business, who unleash technology need to be part of the equation as well. Sit investors down and have a deep-dive conversation about why they favor one start-up over another and you witness a subtle shift into a discussion on the entrepreneurs themselves.

This is also a fascinating discussion about the opportunity for innovation that China represents. It’s not just vast market size or relative sector immaturity; it’s the level and intensity of government buy-in. The Chinese government is focused on supporting any initiative that might hold the promise of improving the quality and cost of healthcare in a nation of 1.4 billion people.

This is a subject we’ve touched on from various directions in previous episodes. China’s population is both aging and subjugated to a spate of hazardous environmental conditions that threaten to test the limits of the Chinese healthcare system unless something is done about it.  

What does this mean for the world of healthtech investing? Will it become the case that the biggest breakthroughs come not in markets with the best technology, but with the most open and receptive market conditions?  What’s the tipping point for data privacy in the realm of healthcare?

As always, thanks for listening.

Jim McGregor: A New Paradigm - US China Cold War

In the wake of deteriorating relations between China and the United States, I decided it was time to give our old friend Jim McGregor a call. He needs no introduction to regular listeners. Author of "No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers” and “One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China,” Jim is a regular commentator on China business trends and advises some of the world’s leading multinationals.

I had questions—beginning with asking Jim what he really thought about the current standoff. Is this a matter of routine diplomatic brinksmanship, or is there more to it? Is the real agenda of the Trump’s aggression toward China an attempt to destabilize it in the wake of its growth and increasingly central position in the world?

Will the Trump doctrine be remembered as: “Rant loudly and swing to kill?” And should China’s economy begin to falter – as some observers say it has – will Xi Jinping fold, restore order if only to preserve power?

It took me back to the Cold War. And that made me wonder if maybe this story is about more than a stand-off between two authoritarian figures. During the last Cold War—the US-Russia standoff—the two systems were diametrically opposed. Soviets were cast as the Great Enemy and in the absence of high-speed data networks that link one nation to the next, all we could do was believe it.

China is different.

The country embraced capitalism and showed what ingenuity and grit could do to catapult a nation from poverty to wealth.

There’s also very tight integration between China and the U.S.. Consider the 350,000 Chinese students studying in American Universities, the tens of thousands of Chinese graduates working in Silicon Valley, and the legions of Chinese executives working in U.S. cities?  

All have a vested interest in a peaceful outcome. It could be that is going be what makes the difference.

Ken Mandel: The Dilemma of Ad Tech

This episode I’m at the American Club Union Bar in Singapore with digital media and advertising sector veteran, Ken Mandel. The topic of our conversation:  the past and the future of advertising. It’s a space Ken knows better than most, having held Asia-wide leadership positions at Publicis, 141 Worldwide, XM Asia, Ogilvy & Mather, Yahoo!, Salesforce.com and Hootsuite.

Advertising is big business and still growing. Today nearly half of the $630 billion in global ad spend has gone digital with Google and Facebook. Together they generate $150 billion per year, feeding targeted ads to billions of digital addicts.

Where will those eyeballs roam in the near future? That’s is, literally, a $100 billion-dollar question.

Ken makes a number of striking observations, including a skepticism about what Facebook and Google advertising has been able to accomplish. Facebook and Google have a lot of data and they combine it with a platform that allows for ease of access as well as scalability. But has it been effective? Will it continue to be effective?

There are some signs that advertisers may be re-thinking their global digital strategies. As Ken points out, the conversion funnel—the Facebook and Google clicks that turn into actual purchases—is narrow. While those social networking and internet search platforms might be effective tools for shifting public opinion, they do not necessarily translate into an O2O transaction.

That’s a key buzzword one needs to know because it’s the holy grail of digital advertising. O2O means “online to offline.” That’s what advertisers are really after, the key to moving someone out of the digital environment to the real world, from seeing a product on their iPhone to actually holding it in their hand.

Ken’s take on what the future holds might be surprising and that’s what makes this episode essential listening.

Richard Vevers: Chasing Coral

My guest is one of the most dedicated and articulate environmental activists working today, Richard Vevers, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Agency.

Richard is a pioneer of underwater 360-degree photography, and invented the cameras that took Google Street View underwater. It was while working on that project that he became aware of the fact that much of the planet’s coral  – and with it, 25% of all sea life – is at risk of disappearing. He committed himself to raising public awareness, and one of the results is the Netflix documentary film, Chasing Coral.

 For those of us who’ve lived and worked in Asia, this environmental crisis has a particular urgency. On the one hand we’re confronted by a bounty of natural resources and a variety of natural environments that are unmatched anywhere on earth; however, we also see levels of indifference to preserving those environments that are astounding.

Developing Asia has been magnificent in leveraging technology to side-step or leapfrog problems that once stumped today’s more advanced economies. But there’s also a dark side. While technology might aid us in raising awareness and monitoring mankind’s impact, it won’t save our oceans.  

The developed and largely industrialized countries of the world have been the greatest abusers, choosing maximum economic growth over environmental protection. Now it’s Asia’s turn. Will countries in this region wake up to the fact that economic growth at the expense of the planet may not simply mean a dirtier place for all of us, but indeed, the difference between life and extinction?

It’s a fascinating and urgent discussion. As always, thanks for listening.

Suzanne Shugg: Telemedicine Solutions to Sleep Disorders in Asia

How did you sleep last night? It’s a simple question that should admit of a simple answer. Sleep, after all, is a relatively uncomplicated act. Night falls and you brush your teeth. You lie down, turn off the light, your breathing deepens and the next thing you know you’re out.

If only things were that simple. Every week, it seems, there’s a new study proving how sleep is necessary. Without sleep, scientists say, you’re prone to gaining weight, feeling sad and losing your sex drive.

The problem is we’re not getting enough of it. Some estimates put the incidence of severe sleep apnea in the western world as high as two percent for women and four percent for men. That’s millions of people tossing and turning. New research suggests the problem may be even worse in Asia, and specifically in China where due to a confluence of health, environment and anatomical issues, people are starved for sleep with a dire shortage of resources to address the issue.

To help us get an handle on this, this episode we reached out to Dr. Suzanne Shugg, Professor of Adult Medicine at Rutgers University in New Jersey and co-founder of Teleplus Healthcare, a company that is focusing specifically on improving the sleep situation, targeting patients in China and Taiwan specifically.

As Dr. Shugg points out, in developing markets where resources are limited and physicians are focused on the two extreme ends of the medical spectrum – primary and chronic care – many underlying causes associated with sleep, psychology or fitness sometimes fall by the wayside.  For millions of Asians, the advent of industrialization, urbanization, financial and work stress and bad technology habits are conspiring to leave people sleepless. Add to this some of the anatomical complexities associated with being ethnically Chinese, and you can see just how severe the sleep apnea issue in Asia could become.

Enter Dr. Shugg and her associates, who are in the process of leveraging digital platforms and testing technologies that patients can use at home to test their own sleeping habits. It’s not a matter of the digital disrupting the ways in which things have always been done. It’s a case of the digital finally getting at the outcomes we would have wanted all along. Sleep is the perfect of example of what is possible in terms of preventative healthcare in the digital age.

Thanks for listening.

Assaad Razzouk: Clean Energy in Asia

My guest this episode is clean energy entrepreneur, investor and commentator, Assaad Razzouk. He is Group Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Sindicatum Sustainable Resources, a global clean energy investment firm headquartered in Singapore.

Razzouk points out that the need for clean energy throughout Asia is not an abstract notion. There’s an urgency to the situation and everyone knows it. We don’t have to imagine it any more. It’s here. Pay a trip to China’s Hebei Province and witness an environmental calamity in the making. Shaking people out of their comfort zones and getting them to own a long-term solution is never easy.

What China does – or doesn’t do – in other words has major repercussions for the rest of the region. Carbon has made a precipitous climb over 25 years, earning China the dubious title of world’s biggest polluter. Annually it emits 10.4 billion metric tons of the stuff, or about 30% of the world total. If that’s the price one pays to become the world’s largest manufacturing base, the Grim Reaper is on the move and looking for payback. More than six million Chinese die annually from pollution-related diseases and analysts predict that as the population ages, these numbers are bound to grow.

Still there’s hope. China knows it has a problem and isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to tackling pollution. Already it leads the world in solar and wind power and plans are in place to do more. There are also signs that carbon levels are peaking. Now it's game-on to reduce those levels on pace with California’s progress in recent years. To that end, California Governor Jerry Brown is looking to partner with China. Last year he signed a wave of cleantech cooperation agreements and today scores of technical and design exchanges are under way. But is it too little too late?

Thomas Morgan: Film in Asia

Longtime listeners of the Inside Asia podcast will know this is not documentary filmmaker Thomas Morgan’s first appearance on the program. About a year ago I sat with him on a roof-top bar in Singapore’s trendy Club Street district while he was in the throes of completing a film he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get finished.

That film was Soufra—the tale of a Palestinian entrepreneur and refugee living in Beirut who builds a better life through a business run out of the back of a food truck.

And yes, it did get finished after all. This episode begins with Thomas filling us in about the rest of this remarkable story.  

I then turn to discussing Crazy Rich Asians. The movie, that is. Box offices receipts have blown past the $100 million mark and show no sign of slowing. For Hollywood’s first all-Asian cast film, that’s a major accomplishment and signifies a recognition that Asia-focused films are here to stay.

Gaining global recognition has been a four-decade endeavor for the Asia film industry.

The story we’ve been telling over the last year and a half of Inside Asia is one about the way in which people are slowly—and often out of necessity—changing the way they think about Asia. Tech innovation, AI, healthcare innovation, e-marketing, mobile payments, robotics, you name it…the days when innovation was understood to move from west to east are over.

Crazy Rich Asians is one more addition to this chapter in that story. The film’s ambitions – like those of Asia at large – are global, not local. Thomas Morgan tells us this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

As always, thanks for listening.

Chris Graves: Behavioral Science in the Age of Trump

We're taking liberties this episode to reach beyond our traditional stomping ground in Asia. We're talking about the essential nature of communications and its central role in maintaining peaceful human coexistence. Whether subjugated to the salvos of a certain US President or manipulated by global social media corporations, toying with the truth can have serious social and political consequences.

To explore this issue, I went to Washington, DC to meet with Chris Graves, President and Founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science. He's former Global Chairman and Global CEO for Ogilvy Public Relations where he landed after two decades in media and news, including 18 years with Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.

Graves and his team at Ogilvy have created a set of diagnostic tools that aid in mapping cognitive bias and tap into the hidden forces that determine--often irrationally--the choices we make. What Graves is telling us is that human beings are hard-wired to make bad decisions. We look first for the information that confirms what we want to think in the first place. This is Behavioral Science in the Age of Trump.

It's an illuminating discussion. Thanks for listening.