Inside Asia Podcast

Jim McGregor: Trump, China INC, and the North Korea Question

This episode is the second part of my conversation in Shanghai with author and China expert Jim McGregor. And just to recap: it’s still stinkin’ hot and Jim is still in his baseball cap.

That’s about as lighthearted as it gets.

Sorry.

In case you missed our last episode—and if so, you can download it here—it featured Jim’s worrying assessment of the current state of US/China trade. As Jim pointed out, no matter what we might tell ourselves in the US about our open system and its virtues, the fact remains that anyone—and this includes nations—who are dealing with a major Chinese investor or company are also and always dealing with China, Inc.

What are the consequences of the bargain we are striking with the Chinese? How does the US create reasonable and transparent defenses to shield our own interests while at the same time finding ways to re-energize American entrepreneurs and companies to consider the interests of the United States alongside their own?  The recent withdrawal of the US from the TPP is just one example of the American myopia that impedes the ability to answer this question effectively.

And what about the alarming headlines this morning that suggest a more serious conflict looms? As I write this, North Korea is threatening a “physical response” to aggressive trade sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration. Jim provides a frank perspective on the situation and what can be done about it. The US has made a habit of asking China to intervene with North Korea and I ask him if they are doing enough. Or is there something that China could be doing but aren’t doing because they know there might be something in it for them?

This is Inside Asia. Jim McGregor’s is a voice more urgent and necessary than ever before. This episode is required listening for anyone presuming to be informed about the current state of affairs.

Thanks for listening.

Jim McGregor: Trading with China, Inc.

Back by popular demand this episode—and the next!—it’s the inimitable and indispensable voice of Jim McGregor. Author, China expert, senior corporate advisor, McGregor remains one of the keenest observers of China when it comes to foreign business and trade matters. I caught up to him at home in Shanghai where I braved unbelievable heat to conduct one of the most bracing interviews we’ve had on the show to date. Jim was one of the very first guests I had on the podcast, and he’s back a second time by popular demand. He does not disappoint.

It’s a wide-ranging discussion and McGregor pulls no punches. We start off by discussing the current state of US-China trade. In a recent article criticizing the US for pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, Jim pointed out how the decision plays into the hands of the Chinese. Put simply, at a moment when the US is loudly retreating from the world stage, the Chinese are filling the vacuum, ramping up trade, investment and influence in the wake of American naval gazing. What are the consequences of American distraction?

During the second part of our conversation I ask if the US should be worried by the Chinese push to acquire the technologies of the future. Has the America resigned itself to the fact that the Chinese are stepping up? Are we looking at a future owned by China Inc.? Is there anything the US can do to stave off the mainland’s rise to power? Bluntly, can we compete?  

It’s not a discussion you can afford to miss. Thanks for listening.

Bill Cornwell: Executive Coaching

This episode finds me in Singapore with executive coach Bill Cornwell. All tolled Bill has logged more than 20 years in Asia and in the past decade shifted his professional focus to executive coaching, working with a wide variety of Asia’s business leaders. A short list of his clients says all that need be said about the results he delivers: BASF, Estee Lauder, McGraw Hill, Motorola, Johnson & Johnson and senior government leaders in ranging from the Singapore Ministry of Health to its police force.

Though the benefits of executive coaching are more widely acknowledged than they were once, it’s still a somewhat controversial topic. Particularly when it comes to oneself. Is coaching necessary? Does it make a difference?  Do I need a coach?

For some, seeking out an executive coach is the last thing we would do. People who need coaching have something wrong with them, we might tell ourselves. Plus, I’m pretty successful anyway—why would I turn to a coach?

This episode might just change your mind. It’s not just what Bill says about the various ways that coaching can make a difference that’s important, it’s the way he says it. This is a man who knows how to listen and that’s what makes him uniquely able to have a transformative effect on the lives of his clients—particularly in Asia Pacific. He knows people and he knows the region. It’s a uniquely powerful mix.

Kent Wertime Part I: The Digitalization of Asia

This episode I’m in the dining room of the Westin Hotel in Singapore. My guest is Kent Wertime, the Co-CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific. Our conversation took place in the brilliant sunshine, beside a wide window that overlooked the Singapore ports, towards Malaysia.

This week my topic is the shape and impact of the digital revolution in Asia. Kent first wrote about what he was seeing in his groundbreaking book DigiMarketing: The Essential Guide to New Marketing & Digital Media. That was essential reading for me when I first arrived in Asia.

During our conversation, Kent provided some idea of the ground that a history of digital emergence in Asia might have to cover. As everyone knows, Asia has been forerunner in terms of mobility and mobile applications. There’s a reason for this, of course; they didn’t have the fixed line networks that were everywhere in the West. Adoption rates of mobile devices and use of data took off immediately in Asia. It’s a history that’s sometimes forgotten—and one that disrupts our idea of the west being the home of innovation in the digital age.

But there’s also a dark side and Kent is remarkably candid about that as well. We live in a world where tens of thousands of mental actions and re-actions occupy our every minute. We intertwine (and sometimes convolute) our professional, personal, emotional lives by the millisecond and spit them out through a wild array of digital mediums. And to what end? Are we trying to he heard? Or are we trying to hear?

This is the reality of the situation, Kent tells us, when it comes to our digital selves. Our minds are made up for us and our biases are confirmed invisibly, even inevitably.

Steve Okun: Impact Investing & Social Enterprise

This episode our focus is on impact investing—investments made with the aim of generating both financial return and social or environmental impact.

The reasons for corporations wandering into philanthropy vary. Oil companies might want to change public perception. Hedge funds might be averting criticisms of greed. Brands looking to boost sales want to find ways of connecting themselves with programs that appeal to their socially conscious customers.

And yes, there are CEOs who simply want to make the world a better place.

Impact investment sounds simple. Find a good thing and throw money at it. But it’s not that easy. There have been literally thousands of attempts to try to marry for-profit with non-profit. More often than not, good intentions fall flat. Projects may help employees feel better about their employer but in many cases the experiment is short-lived and the results are simply one-offs.

Creating sustainable value requires more planning and involvement than was evidenced during the last wave of so-called corporate social responsibility, or CSR. Impact investing – as we just learned – shows promise of being longer lasting and even self-propagating.

My guest this episode is Steve Okun, a remarkable executive whose work with Bali Cashews shows what thoughtful intentional philanthropic investment is capable of, and that it needs to be closely integrated into ongoing business practices if it is really going to improve a situation.

Steve is a government and public affairs expert and most recently, a senior member of the Asia division of global private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, or KKR. A former member of the Clinton Administration—he served as Deputy General Counsel of the Department of Transportation—he also did a stint at UPS as Vice President of Public Affairs in Asia.

Thanks for listening and let’s continue the conversation. What other impact investing initiatives are you aware of? What are some of the challenges they face. Take a second and tell us about what social enterprise ventures you’ve seen which could use some backing or organizational expertise.

Clancey Houston: The Evolution of Healthcare in China

This episode I’m joined by Clancey Houston, former CEO of China Healthcare Corporation and one of the foremost thinkers on China’s evolving healthcare landscape.

As the debate on affordable healthcare rages in the United States, China too contemplates its healthcare future. This nation of nearly 1.4 billion is in a state of rapid transformation. The economy has been on a tear with China blowing past the US to become the world’s largest and most productive manufacturing center.

But every economic expansion has its dark-side—or maybe several dark sides. For China, urban overcrowding, economic disparity, and environmental decay are taking a toll. One of the sectors where we see that clearly is in health care.

None of this has been lost on the Chinese government. According to a recent report by Deloitte, China will spend a projected $892 billion on healthcare by 2018. That’s less than a third of US healthcare spend on a population one-fourth the size of China. In short: demand for quality healthcare in China is off the charts. Until recently, public healthcare was a Chinese citizen’s only choice. Now, the floodgates are open for private investment and today, for-profit hospitals are springing up everywhere.

As a former CEO of one of China’s new hospital ventures, Clancey has a unique vantage point on the country’s healthcare evolution.

One note about the interview. There’s a bit of background noise. True to this program, I recorded this in the field, and this particular field was the bullet train from Shanghai to the capital of Beijing. It’s a twelve-hundred-kilometer (or 745 mile) journey and we traveled at 350KM/H (or 217 miles per hour). For five hours we reclined in our Business class seats intermittently talking and watching the Chinese landscape fly by.

Mark Clifford: The Greening of Asia

This episode I’m in Hong Kong—at the foot of the Great Escalator—with Mark Clifford Executive Director of the Asia Business Council and author of The Greening of Asia—essential reading, if you ask me.

The question of China and the environment is a timely subject made urgent in the wake of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. Trump’s disdain for the environment and dismissal of the scientific evidence pointing to global warming is a subject unto itself but the broader question speaks to the political vacuum left in its wake. Given that the U.S. has absented itself, which nation will assume the required leadership role to get us out of the global environmental mess that we humans have created? All eyes are now on China.

There's no disputing the science of environmental change. We can already see how the world has been and will continue to be altered because of it. Like it or not, climate change will affect us all. Economies undermined, businesses demolished, communities under water, and lives lost. We brought this on ourselves.

The question now is what can be done, and who’s going to do it. China has both the political will and the economic capacity to make a difference. But only if it acts in a decisive and thoughtful fashion. As we’ve heard in our discussion with Mark, decisive has its dark side in China. Mark Clifford is uniquely positioned to give perspective and context on this issue as it has played out in the past, and also to speculate about the direction in which things might be headed.

In the environment, China faces its greatest challenge yet. As the world’s biggest polluter, it has something to prove, to itself and to the world.

Adam Schwarz Part II: The State of Democracy in Asia

Whether we like it or not, democracy is in decline. Like climate change, the erosion of democratic institutions is something that creeps up on us. It’s what happens when you take countless insidious little short-cuts over time, end-rounding one law or the other,  creating exceptions for some at the expense of others.

Do this long enough and the foundations of democracy begin to crumble. 1995 was the high point of democracy, but the times have been changing.  My guest again this episode is noted author and Asia insider Adam Schwarz, founder and CEO of Asia Group Advisors. Last episode, my discussion with Adam focused on Indonesia and its somewhat uneven embrace of democratic ideals and systems. This week Adam and I broaden our conversation and discuss some of what is behind what seems to be a general move away from democracy in many parts of Asia.

As Adam points out, one of the key reasons for this shift is that democracy is messy and difficult. It requires institutions and the rule of law. All of that takes time, and time is often in short supply in these contexts. Situations in which things needs to be done quickly and with little discussion make for circumstances under which it becomes easier for democratically elected leaders to bend others to their will, circumventing the democratic institutions that might be in place.

During the 1990s and before, there was the US at least, a symbol of the possibility of democracy. But even that has crumbled. With the Trump administration’s “America First” platform, human rights and support for burgeoning democracies around the world have been replaced with threats of trade retaliation, sanctions, and even military invasion. American diplomatic benevolence is in retreat and, as Adam observes, for governments in Asia teetering between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism, the latter is looking a lot more likely.

 

Adam Schwarz Part I: Indonesia's Experiment in Democracy

My guest this episode is Adam Schwarz, founder and CEO of Asia Group Advisors. He’s a former journalist, a strategy consultant and he now runs his own firm. I sat down with him at the Conrad Hotel in Singapore, which looks out on the new stadium and the Suntec area. We were—well, he was— drinking a bloody Mary.

Adam started things off by telling me about his early days at the Jakarta Post in the late eighties where he learned firsthand just how political “facts: can be, and candidly reflects on how this realization caused him to rethink his understanding of media and journalism.

We then move on to discuss his time at FEER, as it was known at the time, the Far East Economic Review. FEER has since disappeared but it was once THE place to go for an authoritative view of what was happening on the ground in Asia. There wasn’t anything like it before and there hasn’t been since.

Adam concludes by focusing on Indonesia and its experiment with democracy and how it connects to other democratic movements across Asia Pacific. As you can tell there’s more to say—yes, this is just Part I of my discussion with Adam. Next episode he returns to where he left off and speculates about the impact the Trump Administration may be having on the evolution or devolution of democracy in the region. It’s a fascinating discussion.

Thomas Morgan Part II: The Business of Film Festivals, Film in Asia, and Making Soufra

This is Part II of my conversation with documentary filmmaker Thomas Morgan. Once again, we’re in the Screening Room with a rooftop view of Singapore’s restaurant and club district.

If you haven’t listened to the first of this two-part episode with Thomas, don’t miss it. In our initial discussion we talk about Morgan’s early days and the events that conspired in mid-life to lead him to documentary film-making. The essential thing for Morgan is seeing his subjects—and filming them—in a way that results in change. That’s not just film-making, that’s “film-anthropy”. A sublime blend of visual art and action—oriented philanthropy. Thomas Morgan is more than a film-maker. He’s an astute observer of the human condition with a visionary drive to tell the stories of others and make the world a better place.

In this second episode, our focus is on the film industry writ large and on Soufra, his latest project. The title means “feast” in Arabic and it’s been selected for screening later this year at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.

In Singapore, we get a sneak peek at none other than the Screening Room. At a time when the world is increasingly set on defining the Muslim world based on its proximity to terrorism, Soufra offers up a very different view. It chronicles the powerful story of Mariam Shaar, a Refugee and Social Entrepreneur in Beirut, who launches a successful catering company with a group of diverse and equally driven women.

Through the lens of Morgan’s camera, the lives of others become a kind of distant country, which we as the audience can briefly inhabit. In this age of instant downloadable visibility, we’re too often presented with a window to the world that feels hazy and ambiguous. Morgan’s work has the opposite effect. It brings life into sharp focus. He unpacks human stories of suffering and triumph, and even improbable friendship.