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FT, Economist, and me
- Very nice brief review of my
Postcards book today, by Rahul Jacob
in the FT. I am grateful for his seeing just the points I was trying to make.
- From the Economist's online site, a
thought-experiment designed to show the ultimate folly of protectionism. This item has also been
picked up by the Atlantic's own Andrew Sullivan.
This isn't the place for a full discussion of the differences between the world as laid out in a first-semester ec course and the world as it actually operates. My unified field theory on the topic is in this Atlantic story, "
How the World Works," from 1993.
But this is the place to point out the basic logic error in the "thought experiment." Here's what the Economist's site said:
"But the idiocy of the whole idea [of tariffs and protectionism] can be understood with a simple thought experiment, which I haven't seen used elsewhere.
"If
tariffs are such a good economic idea, then why stop at national
boundaries? If they make everyone richer, why not have customs posts
between New York and New Jersey? Cars entering and leaving the Lincoln
tunnel would have to pay, on top of the toll, a surcharge on all the
goods they contain. Why not, indeed, make New York and New Jersey
self-sufficient in all their needs, making all their own cars, growing
all their own food etc?"
Here's the difference between commerce involving New York and New Jersey, and commerce involving, say, the U.S. and China. New York and New Jersey are
in the same country. Why does this matter? Let's try a little thought experiment.
Suppose you grow up in New Jersey. By the time you're looking for a job, the flow of capital, ideas, and innovation may mean that the best opportunities are in New York. Or Idaho, Or California. Sentimentally, perhaps you'd rather not move away from home. But in a pure economic sense, it doesn't matter in where the action is.
You're free to move there. Within the national borders of the United States, there are only trivial, incidental impediments to citizens moving wherever they want. All "factors of production" -- money, material, people -- can flow freely throughout the country, for maximum efficiency. That's what the ec textbooks call for, and that's how it can work
within a given country, or a free-movement zone like in Europe.
But it's not the same between countries. If you grow up in New Jersey and the real opportunities are in Shanghai, you can't necessarily move there. You may not be able to move there even if you grow up in Qinghai province, China. People do move across national borders, legally and illegally. Immigration is America's distinctive strength, so I'm glad as many move here as do. But in general, people's economic well-being depends very heavily on the industries and opportunities in the country where they are born.
Pointing this out doesn't prove protectionism right -- or wrong, as a strategy for developing a national economy. I'm on record
as arguing that open Chinese-US trade has been good for both sides. But it does mean that the "thought experiment" makes no sense. There's a first-order difference between the flow of factors within a country and the flow between countries. I suspect this is the reason we haven't seen this powerful analogy "used elsewhere."
Local press: interview in The Beijinger
For the record, transcript
here of long interview conducted by recent Harvard graduate Jennifer Ying Lan, for
The Beijinger. Questions terse and clearly phrased! Answers, as transcribed verbatim... not so much. Includes only extant snapshot of my bus ride through Xinjiang with 50 retirees from Nanjing Steel plus my wife. Those were the days.
For the record: three book reviews
I am grateful for, and note for the record, three recent and positive reviews of my
Postcards from Tomorrow Square.
Here, by Sam Oglesby, in the Philadelphia Bulletin (newspaper from the city of my birth);
Here, by John Pomfret, in the Washington Post (newspaper from the city where I usually live);
Here, by John Guise, in the China Economic Review (magazine from the country where I'm living now).
So where's the Redlands Daily Facts? Newspaper from the city of my childhood. But I digress.
The nature of the book-writing life is often to grind your teeth about the insights and sublime subtleties of your argument that brutish (or biased!) reviewers have somehow missed. In these cases I feel fortunate in reviewers who saw and explained exactly the points I was trying to make. Also, these writers are Genuine China Hands -- including Pomfret, whose
Chinese Lessons is a genuinely important book. Now, back to work.
For the record, a review I'm very grateful for
In
Blogcritics, by Xujun Eberlein, about
Postcards from Tomorrow Square, a review whose first two or three paragraphs capture what I've been trying to do. I know it's not seemly to point out one's own good reviews, but this one meant a lot to me and I note it for the record. (Reprinted in China Beat
here.) In the same vein, gratitude to Fareed Zakaria for a generous mention of the book on
yesterday's GPS show.
And while I'm at it, I'll be doing appearances for the book at the
Shanghai Literary Festival on March 7 and 8 and the
Beijing Literary Festival on March 19.
Ok, I've got this out of my system now. Back to the F-22 etc.
Edging back into connectivity: Kennedy Library Forum
Ten days ago, in what seems a different lifetime, I was at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston for one of its "
Kennedy Library Forum" presentations. Dr. Lincoln Chen, founder of Harvard's Global Equity Initiative, led an
hour-long discussion about China and America (just before he went to the airport for a trip to China himself), followed by half an hour of Q-and-A from the audience.
I enjoyed his questions a lot, plus the general direction the discussion took. Minnesota Public Radio has a webcast of the program
here. I believe that Boston's own WBUR will eventually do so
here as well. FWIW.
'On Point' interview with Tom Ashbrook
Twenty-plus years ago, Tom Ashbrook and I were both in Japan, reporting on its ups and eventual downs. He did so for the Boston Globe, I for an outstanding literary-political monthly founded in 1857. He has since been a high-tech entrepreneur, author of
a book (which I really liked) about that high-tech adventure, and now a successful WBUR/NPR
radio host. I was on his On Point program today, talking about, in part, a compare-and-contrast between Japan and China plus other topics. Webcast
here.
I fear that the Tom Waits-like effects on my voice of 30+ months of breathing l'air Chinois are becoming more evident each time I open my mouth. Oh well. Finally I have an excuse to start smoking.*
____
* Just a little joke. The one thing my parents said they absolutely, completely, unconditionally would not allow would be for their kids to smoke. My dad brought up this point one evening after he had, by chance, spent the entire day at the office telling one patient after another that the cough they'd been having or that tickle in their throat was actually lung- or throat-cancer. And he was a normal internist, not an oncologist! It impressed me.
JFK Library event, Boston, January 25
On Sunday, January 25 (tomorrow as I write), I will be at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston for a Kennedy Library Forum presentation moderated by Dr. Lincoln Chen, at 2pm. Discussion about China, my recent
book, Presidential speeches, and so on. Information
here. See you there.
Fresh Air update, concluding family comments
Webcast of yesterday's interview on Fresh Air available online
here.
After we'd discussed the People's Bank of China, RMB/$ exchange rates, the "financial balance of terror" between China and the US, and similar worthy topics, Terry Gross asked me in the closing moments about the deaths of my parents. Specifically, why I'd
written on this site about my father's death two months ago today. (My mother died unexpectedly, and relatively young, in her sleep nearly five years ago.)
I didn't know she would ask this but in retrospect am glad that she did. As I fumbled to explain in real time, part of my instinct in making a private matter public was the sense that people with the virtues of my parents -- talented, loving, curious, hopeful people who poured their heart and effort into the betterment of their small community and the well-being of their family -- deserve more celebration than they typically get, precisely because they have chosen not to operate on a broad public stage. My parents were very well known in our home town but unknown outside of it. It gave me heart to think that people who had never encountered them might hear something about the lives they led.
As my siblings have taken turns cleaning out our dad's house, they have come across hundreds of pictures that none of us had ever seen before. Parents are always old to their children. When parents have lived to an objectively advanced age and then physically run down, as my dad did, it is startling to be reminded how vigorous and, yes, beautiful they had once been. My mom and dad's youth is what we are discovering after their deaths.
Thus, and as the real end to this commemorative series, three pictures I had never seen while my parents were living, part of a huge collection that my brother-in-law Bryan Neider is digitizing from old, brittle prints. The first are of my parents in the late 1940s, around the time of their wedding when she was 20 and he was 23. (His wedding ring is visible in the second shot.) Then, one of the rare pictures of my dad in which he's not smiling. Here he is wearing his game face, as the four-quarters, every-play offensive and defensive lineman known as Tiger Jim. These are people we never knew and are meeting now.
Brief media notes
For the record:
Interview about Chinese economy and my new
Postcards book, Saturday All Things Considered,
here.
Excerpt from the book in the indispensable
Danwei.org,
here.
Fresh Air interview, recorded in the
unconscious 3am zone in Beijing, scheduled for broadcast today, link as available.
Previously: Q-and-A with Kate Merkel-Hess of
The China Beat,
here.
Selamat Tahun Baru!
Or Happy New Year, as they put it in the Indonesian language I have been hearing around me for
the past week. That week has coincided with enforced separation from the mighty Internet -- not a bad way to spend time with one's family! -- which in turn leaves me behind on various year-end updates still to come.
But I can't let this day pass, nor this moment of online connection, without mentioning that my new book
Postcards from Tomorrow Square goes on sale today, with official pub date early next month. Random House's catalog listings
here. Random House's e-book format is
here, and Amazon's Kindle format is
here. A very nice set of quotes, for which I'm grateful,
here.
I won't make a habit of book promo, but I include this link to an
email Q-and-A that Kate Merkel-Hess, of the influential blog
The China Beat, conducted with me about the book and the general process of writing about China. She evoked from me an admission I'd long managed to avoid:
Ahah! You have cruelly revealed the trademarked secret of everything I've ever written for the magazine!
Further details and secrets at the China Beat site. Further promised year-end updates on software, hardware, the press, and China in this space very soon. New Year's greetings for now.
Advance review from Publisher's Weekly
I won't do this systematically, because that would mean I'd have to include bad reviews too!, but for the record here is
an early, nice PW note on my forthcoming collection of China writings,
Postcards from Tomorrow Square. It's a "starred" review about halfway down the page that this link brings up. Actual text of the review after the jump. The book is a Vintage paperback original (bargain!) and has a pub date of January. (Links through
Amazon,
B&N,
Powell's.)
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Continue reading "Advance review from Publisher's Weekly" »
