Beyond Chile's Single Story » politics

The Chinese Revolution in Latin American Commerce: exports rise 12x + imports 8x in the past decade

Leslie — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:13:53 +0000

Today the Economía y Negocios section of El Mercurio has a special report on China-Latin America business. It’s by the Grupo de Diarios de América, and the whole text is here, via Mexican site El Universal.

Source: El Universal http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/graficos/pdf11/china.pdf

Here is my translation of the beginning of the report (emphasis mine):

Latin America exports cheap raw materials, energy and food to China, and China exports technology products, finished goods, textiles and cooperation projects to Latin America. In the past decade, exports from the subcontinent (LatAm) to the economic giant (China) have increased 12 times, while imports have grown 8 times, according to the American Economic System (SELA).The trade exchange exceeds that with the US and neighboring countries.

Economic observers see this relationship progressing in a way that can be compared with relations with Japan between 1960 and 1990. Then, Japan’s technological development fueled economic growth and per capita income increased from 15% to 70% of the US per capita income.

“China has become a strategic partner for Latin America and the Caribbean, there are many opportunities to reach agreement on export and investment in mining, engineering, agriculture, infrastructure, science and technology,” said Alicia Barcena, Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The country has already displaced the U.S. as the main trading partner for Brazil and Chile. In Venezuela, China outpaced Colombia and Brazil to become the top trading partner. Mexico’s case is special because although its products compete with Chinese exports to the United States and Canada, bilateral trade grew 2000% between 1990 and 2010. In other countries, progress is evident: Uruguay’s trade increased 40% between 2010 and so far this year, and Ecuador will sell 54% of its oil to the Asian giant.

The importance of China to the region is concentrated in high demand for primary products. To maintain its 8% annual growth rate, China’s demand for food, energy and materials will continue to rise. And Latin America provides these.

The caption translates to: Clothing Industry. Generates 310,000 jobs in 8900 companies, although since the opening of the market to China, 400,000 jobs have been lost, and as a result of the triangulation have lost a lot of market share. Beginning on December 12, the big importers will be able to buy from China. For example, they will be able to buy sports outfits for $0.20 for 2 million units. Click here to see the rest of the graphic.

Source: El Universal http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/graficos/pdf11/china.pdf

If you’re at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend that you read the whole report!

How might shifts in China’s economy affect commodity prices in Latin America?

Leslie — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:07:35 +0000

This Wall Street Journal article , As China Goes, So Go Commodities, is the clearest explanation I’ve read about how trends in China’s economy might affect commodity prices.

You want to know where the global commodities markets are heading in the coming years? Then it’s probably best that you remember a single word: China.

Liam Pleven outlines three possible scenarios for China’s economic future and describes how these would affect the worldwide market for commodities like oil, copper, and soybeans. These three scenarios have huge implications for China-Latin America trade because Latin America is a major supplier to China, and this trade is a major component of Latin American economies. For example, Chile currently supplies 29% of China’s copper and this constitutes a very large percentage of Chile’s exports. When copper prices fluctuate, so does the dollar-peso exchange rate.

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Here are the three forecast scenarios :

Full Speed Ahead

If China’s consumption of commodities continues to grow at the rate it has over the past 10 years, this is what the world would have to do to meet that demand in 2020, assuming that the rest of the world’s collective appetite doesn’t change at all:

[this would mean, among other things]

• Extract nearly three times as much new copper as the current annual production from Chile, which mines about four times as much as any other nation.

The Hard Landing

A growth rate of 4% to 6% would be a big leap forward for the U.S. economy and plenty of others. But not for China….

Demand for steel, copper and other industrial metals could drop significantly if China does stall, because those materials are heavily used in construction—which would be at risk from weakness in the Chinese real-estate market—and because China often accounts for some 40% of global demand for those materials. Coal demand could also tumble, she says, because the fuel is heavily used in China to generate power.

Slower but Steady

For many China watchers, including Barclays, the most probable scenario is an economy that keeps expanding strongly but at a less blistering pace, with annual GDP growth rates in the high single digits. That would mean continued upward pressure on most commodities prices, with some possibly rising substantially, but in most cases not the soaring prices that a red-hot economy would produce.

I took this photo at a wedding I attended in Beijing in 2009. I think it's an appropriate way to illustrate this rather technical post about Chinese economic trends because this is the real face of oil/gas/copper/soybean consumption. This wedding had mass amounts of meat (lamb but no pork since the bride's family is Huimin, part of a Muslim minority.) As China grows more prosperous, more people will be eating more meat and hosting ever-more-elaborate weddings.

Note: I’m curious to hear your feedback on this post because I am thinking about starting a whole new blog about China-Latin America relations, in both English and Spanish, perhaps in partnership with the small number of other people who blog about this emerging topic. Gracias!!

How to Use Google Alerts and Gmail’s Google Translate Plugin to Turbo-Charge Your Multilingual Research

Leslie — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:48:15 +0000

Over time I’ve learned several super-convenient Internet tricks. This is the first post in an occasional series.

A quick overview of this long, detailed (and useful, I hope) post:

Use Google Alerts to monitor your favorite topics.
If your topic is international in scope, set up Alerts in multiple languages.
Add the Google Translate plugin to your Gmail for easy skimming.
Set up automatic message filtering, to keep your Inbox relatively clear.

I think Google Alerts are absolutely the most useful Internet research tool. Here’s how they work, straight from the Goog le Alerts homepage:

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results you’ll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

monitoring a developing news story

keeping current on a competitor or industry

getting the latest on a celebrity or event

keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

I wrote a detailed post about How I Use Google Alerts to Follow Niche News in China. My friend Jaclyn Schiff wrote this useful post with tricks for finding niche news from big news sites: How to Get the News You Really Want Delivered to Your Inbox.

Now I use Google Alerts to follow the latest developments in renewable energy in Chile.

My initial Alerts sent me articles in English. These were useful, but they didn’t seem to tell the whole story. I needed to set Alerts in Spanish. But how?

Felipe to the rescue! He suggested that I use http://www.google.cl/alerts to set localized alerts on the same terms. Thank you Felipe!

Now I subscribe to Google Alerts and Alertas de Google for my keywords.

HidroAysén is a controversial system of mega-dams planned for a picturesque area in Patagonia, southern Chile.

Google Alerts sends me updates like this one:

I clicked through and found Hydroelectric Dams Proposed in Patagonia Meet Fierce Resistance, a crowdfunding pitch from a young American travel writer named Susan Munroe, who is researching the HidroAysén debate. When I saw that Susan was researching the same topic as me, and she looked like a nice and adventurous person, I emailed her. We met up and talked about HidroAysén, then she baked a delicious apple cobbler for our Thanksgiving celebration. Apple cobbler: unexpected perk of Google Alerts!

Alertas de Google sends me different coverage of this same topic:

A tribunal has accused HidroAysén Executive Vice President Daniel Fernández of going against the principles of a political party. A TV program about another controversial energy project in the south of Chile, Isla Riesco, drove the local Twittersphere wild. The Presidential Energy Commission says that conclusions are being made based on biased information.

These news stories are far more specific and more up-to-the minute than the information I can gather from Google Alerts in English.

I bet the same trick would work in French, German, and other languages. Let me know if you try using it for other languages.

In the Alerta de Google screenshot, did you see the Spanish > English translation button?

It’s a new and glorious addition to my Gmail account. (I can read Spanish, but I read faster in English, and since this post is about turbo-charged research tools I think you should know about it!) I followed this instructions in this Mashable post to install it. Here’s how the Official Google Blog described the feature when it was added to Gmail labs in 2009.

Simply enable “Message Translation” from the Labs tab under Settings, and when you receive an email in a language other than your own, Gmail will help you translate it into a language you can understand. In one click.

If all parties are using Gmail, you can have entire conversations in multiple languages with each participant reading the messages in whatever language is most comfortable for them. It’s not quite the universal translators we’re so fond of from science fiction, but thanks to Google Translate, it’s an exciting step in the right direction. I use this feature everyday to help me work with teammates around the globe (they think my Japanese is much better than it really is…shhhh!).

If you use Google Alerts as much as I do, your Inbox will be packed with automated messages. But this is easy to solve!

Create an automatic filtering system. Here’s how mine works.

When you receive an email from Google Alerts, first click the Labels drop-down menu and make one called Google Alerts. click the More tab. Scroll down to filter messages like these.

At this point, you will see a window that lets you define the types of messages to filter. For automated messages like Google Alerts, I find that it works best to use the From address as the main filter: googlealerts-noreply@google.com

Then click Next and in the following screen choose these options: Skip the Inbox + Apply the Label “Google Alerts.”

Repeat the filtering steps for each language of Google Alerts. You may want to do it for blogs, mailing lists, and clients too!

These tools have helped me efficiently filter through an enormous amount of information. I hope they’re helpful!

If you have anything to add, please do so in the comments below.

Happy researching!

Why is Piñera so unpopular?

Leslie — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:33:01 +0000

image via Forbes.com

This Financial Times piece, “The limits of a Superman,” gives the best explanation I’ve seen so far. Emphasis mine.

Mr Piñera is highly intelligent – he holds a Harvard PhD. He speaks several languages. He is energetic, technically competent, socially enlightened and fantastically wealthy - the former businessman has a fortune estimated in 2010 by Forbes at $2.2bn. When he’s not busy running a country or making a fortune, he sets aside large amounts of money for conversation. For Godsakes, he can even fly: this Master of the Universe has a helicopter pilot’s licence (and is a certified deep sea diver too).

Yet almost everyone in Chile, and even some allies, agrees Mr Piñera is doing a lousy job. Yes, the Chilean economy is growing great guns. Unemployment is near record lows. Mr Pinera is also well on his way to eliminating poverty in Chile . Everyone should love him. But they don’t. His approval poll rating, at 26 per cent, is the lowest for any Chilean president, ever (and, while the figures are a bit fuzzy, that includes the dictator Augusto Pinochet). Low poll ratings are not only galling; they compromise Mr Piñera’s ability to govern and do the the things his brilliant mind wants to do.

So what is going on? The answer – outlined in a fascinating new book called Why don’t they love me? by the Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi – is precisely that Mr Piñera runs Chile like a corporation and not a state. [more]

One Chilean friend told me that it seems like Piñera ran for President to achieve the next personal benchmark. He’d already become a CEO and billionaire, so President would be the next step up.

Also, Piñera brought the credit card to Chile. The vast indebtedness of Chile’s population is one of the main sources of the anger that has propelled the student protests.

A few weeks back I spotted this article in El Mercurio and started to translate it.

This is how far I got before the newspaper disappeared into the recycling bin. (And Chilean newspapers don’t make it that easy to look things up.)

From Saving to Debt: the paradigm shift in Chilean society

Honoring a personal debt has always been valued here in Chile, but it is more uncertain when it refers to promises assumed with public and private institutions. Living in a consumerist society changes habits and values. We consult sociologists and historians about the topic.

Basically, the main idea behind this article is that people think banks, stores (like the notorious department store La Polar) and universities are putting them in endless, usurious debt, in an unjust and unfair way.

It kind of reminds me of this article I wrote a few years ago about anger against microfinance in Nicaragua.

I know there are people reading this who know a lot more about Piñera and debt in Chile than I do. I look forward to hearing what you think!

On Solyndra, Failure and Energy Innovation

Leslie — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:07:21 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about failure, and how it could be one of the keys to success. This connects to the recent controversy over Solyndra’s failure, as well as to energy and innovation in general.

Solyndra headquarters. photo via totalsolarenergy.co.uk

I found this brilliant paragraph by Matthew Nordan, whose bio reads “I’m a venture capital investor at Venrock focused on energy and environmental technologies. Earlier, I co-founded and led Lux Research and forecasted technology futures at Forrester. I really do live and breathe this stuff.”

Failure is a fact of life in venture investing – and energy innovation. VCs provide capital to high-risk businesses that can’t be funded any other way. Most venture investments either fail completely or deliver mediocre returns. Cases like Solyndra come with the territory, and they say no more about all the other VC-backed energy start-ups than Webvan said about Amazon: The whole point is to risk failure, because you have to take on many (informed, balanced, and uncorrelated!) bets for a shot at a big outcome. Those outcomes, in turn, pay for the failures many times over – while improving lives and creating jobs. There’s a legitimate argument about whether taxpayer money should be deployed in this pursuit, but to treat even a very costly cratering like this one as anything other than de rigeur seems silly. [more]

Below are some several excerpts from reports about Solyndra’s failure.

First, the company’s original announcement. Emphasis mine. Solyndra Suspends Operations to Evaluate Reorganization Options

August 31, 2011 – Solyndra LLC, the American manufacturer of innovative cylindrical solar systems for commercial rooftops today announced that global economic and solar industry market conditions have forced the Company to suspend its manufacturing operations. Solyndra intends to file a petition for relief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code while it evaluates options, including a sale of the business and licensing of its advanced CIGS technology and manufacturing expertise. As a result of the suspension of operations approximately 1,100 full-time and temporary employees are being laid off effective immediately.

I think it’s interesting that the press release emphasizes the macroeconomic nature of the problem, as well as the specific shutdown of manufacturing operations, since other operations could continue.

But this won’t be easy. This Greentech Media post distills Solyndra’s situation into a clever subhead: For sale: factory. In Fremont. Little used. IP portfolio as well. Serious inquiries only. Here are my favorite lines:

Any potential acquirer would also inherit a titanic-sized bookkeeping and public relations headache. Solyndra has received more than $1 billion from VC partners and over $535 million in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy. Congressional opponents of green policies like Michigan Congressional Representative Fred Upton regularly hold up Solyndra as an example of why the U.S. shouldn’t support green energy policies.

The only green jobs that have been created, one wag told me today, have been ones for accountants and bankruptcy attorneys. [more]

Well, Obama and other politicians do always tout “green jobs,” and accountants and bankruptcy attorneys need work, right?

Solyndra’s failure has become a political football, which is a valid debate but not without some misconceptions. In a Washington Post piece, “Five myths about the Solyndra collapse,” Brad Plumer writes:

the fact that China hurls money at solar isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since cheaper solar prices can benefit the United States too. The Energy Department seems to have recognized that going toe-to-toe with China on direct subsidies may be futile and is instead trying to focus on complementary efforts to bolster innovation, through programs like its Sunshot Initiative. Also, for all China’s subsidy frenzy, the United States still exported$1.9 billion of solar products last year and actually has a trade surplus in solar with China. [more]

Also, a lot of the controversy has focused on the loan guarantees that the Obama Administration gave to Solyndra. Bryan Walsh, writing for TIME’s Ecocentric blog, says the Solyndra “Scandal” is Washington Business as Usual.

My response: meh. TIME’s Michael Grunwald has covered this from the start, and while he’s unhappy—to say the least—with executives at Solyndra for misleading the government on its financial health, the solar industry more broadly is doing well, thanks in part to the money the Obama Administration has channeled towards more successful companies. And it’s worth noting that in addition to government loan guarantees, Solyndra also scored over $1 billion in private capital—including from GOP-friendly investors like the Walton family of Wal-Mart. Solyndra turned out to be a bad investment—the company failed in part because it made the wrong bet on solar technology, failing to foresee that silicon prices would drop drastically. Bad investments are a part of business, especially a cutting-edge industry like renewable energy, and failure is a necessary ingredient for innovation. (Just ask the famously fired Steve Jobs.) The idea that the collapse of one solar company discredits the entire solar industry is absurd. [more]

What do you think? What does Solyndra’s failure mean for the future of solar energy in America and beyond?

Ten Years Ago Today

Leslie — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 10:49:58 +0000

Ten years ago today, my mom woke me up early for school. She knocked on my door and told me the news.

We turned on the radio and listened. A day or two before, concerned that my brother was watching too much TV, my parents had unplugged the TV and hid the cables.

At school we listened to the radio too. (Those TVs didn’t work either.) I had just started my senior year of high school and that day showed us new sides of our new teachers.

That afternoon, I called my Uncle Rich with a trite but still time-sensitive question:

“Did the lobsters arrive?”

Yes, they’d landed that morning, before the airspace closed, an overnight delivery from Legal Sea Foods.

My dad is from Boston and Legal Sea Foods lobster-and-clam-chowder dinners have always been a special gift in my family. This meal consisted of four lobsters crawling around in an insulated box, along with four bibs and four cups of clam chowder.

Just a few months before, this nuclear family had tragically shrunken from four eaters to three, and my cousin Scott invited me to share this special meal with him and Uncle Rich and Aunt Jackie.

We carefully boiled the lobsters and heated the chowder, all glued to the TV (which worked properly, unlike the TVs at my house and school.)

We watched George W. Bush solemnly honor the victims and announce the creation of a new government unit, the Department of Homeland Security.

Fast forward ten years.

Now Scott is a lawyer with the Department of Homeland Security. His job description includes protecting the United States of America from very bad people.

I now live in Chile, a country where “September 11″ brings up an entirely different set of memories.

But for me, I’ll think of dysfunctional TVs, live lobster for four, and Alan Jackson’s Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning? which is playing on repeat as I type this post.

Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?
Were you in the yard with your wife and children
Or working on some stage in L.A.?
Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke
Risin’ against that blue sky?
Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry?

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don’t know?
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below?
Did you burst out in pride for the red, white and blue
And the heroes who died just doin’ what they do?
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself and what really matters?

So, where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?

Notes on the photos: lobster and chowder photo is from LegalSeaFoods.com (not an affiliate link) and photo of Scott is from of my dad’s digital photo archive, posted with Scott’s permission.

Joe Biden stares down Speedo-clad wrestler and names a horse in Mongolia! A quick look at Mongolia’s democracy, urbanization, and political risk.

Leslie — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:15:58 +0000

From Google Analytics I’ve learned that lots of readers come to leslieforman.com to learn about Mongolian politics, especially the nature of its democracy, freedom of speech, and relations with the United States. So far, the lone post I have to answer these fascinating questions is this one, about George W. Bush’s visit to Mongolia in 2005.

When I found out that Joe Biden was going to visit Mongolia, as part of an Asian tour featuring far more local color than most diplomatic visits, I immediately set Google Alerts on “Joe Biden Mongolia” to make sure I got a detailed picture of his visit, as well as its broader implications for Mongolia’s position in the world.

I visited Mongolia last September, and my travels really inspired me to write about The Mongolian Ger as a Yanic Symbol and the infamous camel-licking game.

This post is long but hopefully informative.

So, without further due, let me present Vice President of the United States of America, Joseph R. Biden:

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (C) reacts with a wrestler before a Mongolian wrestling performance during his meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold (R) in Ulan Bator August 22, 2011. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden lauded land-locked Mongolia's efforts at democratization on Monday, offering support to a country that is strategically located between China and Russia and sits on vast quantities of untapped mineral wealth. (Source: REUTERS / Zeev Rozenberg Date:08/23/2011)

This is just one of a dozen or so photos of Joe Biden’s trip to Asia that have been dubbed: “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Biden… It’s the greatest collection of photographs…maybe ever.”

Here’s a video report on his visit:

Mongolia presented Joe Biden with a horse, a symbolic gift in this nation of horsemen. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos reports:

And arriving Monday in Mongolia—where he was the first U.S. Vice-President to visit since Henry Wallace in 1944—Biden received an official gift-horse, a handsome colt. Heeding metaphor, he immediately placed a blue ribbon around its neck and named the beast “Celtic,” after his Irish origins.

As dictated by Mongolian tradition, Biden then entrusted it to the care of a local herder. (Sorry, no pool photos of him wrestling it into the overhead on Air Force Two). One of Biden’s aides solemnly informed reporters that in Mongolia “a horse is one of the most meaningful gifts that can be given.”

Well, I once had the same impression. Mongolians, after all, say they have about four hundred words to describe a horse; thirty-six just for galloping. But when I was in Mongolia a few years ago, I decided to find out what happened to a horse that been given to Donald Rumsfeld in 2005. (Rummy named his coffee-colored mount “Montana,” after his wife’s home state.)

Mongolia is land-locked and still sorting out its lonely role as a democracy on the high plains of Asia, so it spends a lot of its time juggling the relationship with three heavy-breathing allies: the U.S., China, and Russia. It has abundant experience with the rise and fall of great powers. When I asked around about Rumsfeld’s horse, I discovered that Mongolia doled out steeds with alacrity depending on the political winds. Some gray beards at the Foreign Ministry remembered giving horses to the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

It turned out that horses had been given to a few lesser V.I.P.s, as well. In 2004, a horse was given to Billy Downs, a businessman from Ferndale, Michigan, who was proprietor of BD’s Mongolian Barbeque. Mongolia, like George W. Bush, is also quick to give out nicknames: it graciously calls America its “third neighbor.” It affords the same nickname to Japan and Europe.

But these days, things are even more complicated for Mongolia: an increasingly confident and prosperous China just pulled off a remarkable bit of not-too-soft power, by getting UNESCO to agree to list Mongolian throat singing as a product of China’s heritage rather than Mongolia’s.

So it was hardly a love of archery that drove Biden to make the trip: among other things, his presence was a reminder to undemocratic neighbors that America would frown on any interference with Mongolian democracy.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/08/equine-diplomacy-biden-in-mongolia.html#ixzz1WwwZndkN

Though Mongolia is the region’s lone democracy, that does not mean that it is free of risk for investors.

Following Biden’s visit, Reuters’ David Stanway wrote this succinct summary of the top risks for investors in Mongolia: fallout from the initial public offering of Tavan Tolgoi (the world’s larges untapped coal deposit), populism, and dependence. It’s a must-read if you want to learn about the basic dynamics of Mongolian politics, beyond the photogenic charade of entertaining a high-profile guest.

And how has Mongolia’s rapid urbanization affected the masses? Global Atlanta’s Trevor Williams reports: Nomads No More: Mongolia’s New Urbanites Hunt for Homes

When Enkhtuya‘s family moved from frigid northwestern Mongolia to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar six years ago, it was more than a seasonal migration.

It was a permanent escape, a leap of faith away from a cold, hard life into what the family hoped would be a new era of opportunity.

The decision to pack up everything and drive three days across mountains and steppe wasn’t made lightly.

The family’s job prospects were bleak, and a round Mongolian felt tent, called a ger, would be the only thing keeping them from homelessness.

The wheels of their vehicle barely touched paved roads as they crossed a bare landscape that has changed little since Genghis Khan roamed it more than eight centuries ago.

Sitting in her new brick home on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar with a stove radiating heat to keep out the February cold, Ms. Enkhtuya remembered one of the main reasons she left the west.

“You couldn’t spit because it would be ice falling on the ground,” she told GlobalAtlanta through an interpreter. The housewife had just come in from doing chores as the sun dipped behind mountains. The temperature had dropped to about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. She wore a tanktop.

A Habitat for Humanity home has been a dream come true for this family of four. From left to right: Bat-Amgalan, his 13-year-old son Barkhas, 5-year-old daughter Uurtsaikh and wife Enkhtuya. (photo by Trevor Williams, Global Atlanta)

Read the rest of Nomads No More: Mongolia’s New Urbanites Hunt for Homes here on Global Atlanta as well as the other stories on this surprisingly Mongolia-news-rich site:

I think the only way to conclude this post is with another colorful Joe Biden photo:

Photo credit: Andy Wong / AP

China’s Influence in Chile: Drums, Taxis, and a Must-Read Article

Leslie — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:41:41 +0000

This past Monday afternoon, T and I attended a Chinese culture show at the Plaza de Armas here in Santiago. A big crowd watched this group dance and drum with the dragon. Little children jumped up and down, and older men screamed “otra! otra!” and just about everyone had their cell phone out to take photos or videos. I’ve never seen this kind of enthusiasm for this kind of show!

The dancers, both Chinese and Chilean, included employees of the Chinese Embassy here in Chile, and other members of the Chile-China business community.

“Venimos por una causa, la causa de la amistad entre China y Chile!”
said one of the speakers.

Next to the Plaza de Armas stood several shops filled with fake Louis Vuitton and Prada purses, which would have been right at home in the basement at Yashow in Beijing.

In other news on the China-Chile front, I spotted a BYD Taxi in the city center. BYD (which stands for Build Your Dream) is a Chinese car brand, famous worldwide because Warren Buffett has backed its efforts to build hybrids. This morning we did a non-scientific survey and noticed that the majority of the taxis are Nissans, with a handful of Toyotas, Hyundais, and Chevrolets. What does this say about Chile’s position in the world economy? Not sure.

If you’re at all interested in the emerging field of China – Latin America trade, I highly recommend this article from Business Insider, which is based on an interview with Eric Bethel, of Sino-Latin Capital:

… unsurprisingly, he’s got fascinating stories.

Such as how foreign businesses get into trouble in Ecuador because they often don’t realize they need to check to make sure their purchased mine isn’t in a drug-trafficking corridor (drug lords are known to hire protestors to picket sites). Or how most Peruvians have no idea that their traditional Peruvian corner restaurants, named chifas, are actually descendants of Chinese restaurants (chifa is from “chi fan”). Or how California-based environmental groups have become very effective at shutting down Chinese projects in places like Brazil. And so on. Eric has become the guy every Chinese company wants on their team when heading to Latin America.

Click here to read the rest.

Tear Gas and #TED: My take on the Student Protests in Chile

Leslie — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 18:04:49 +0000

I decided to delete this post. It’s not really my story to tell. I haphazardly cobbled together photos and ideas from other places, and for that I am very sorry.

Here is a pretty amazing New York Times slideshow showing photos of the protests.

More soon. Happy Monday to you!

Leslie

In the news! My speech about Silicon Valley, innovation, and China.

Leslie — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:10:33 +0000

Last week I gave a speech at la USACH (Universidad de Santiago de Chile), and the university newspaper covered it!

Click the image twice to see it at full size (all in Spanish.)

Here are the slides from my speech. They’re in Spanish, but I think the pictures make them fairly self-explanatory. I spoke about Silicon Valley, how the spirit of Silicon Valley has shaped me and my family, my experiences in China and Chile, Start-Up Chile, and Go To Market.

Leslie Forman’s speech at USACH July 25, 2011

View more presentations from Leslie Forman.

Special thanks to my dad for the photo on slide #3. I must have been 4 or 5 years old, and absolutely delighted to be using our Apple 2!

The overall goal of my speech was to encourage Chilean researchers to apply to Go To Market, a program sponsored by CORFO (Chile’s economic development agency) and SRI (the non-profit technology research institution formerly known as Stanford Research Institute). Go To Market is an opportunity for Chilean researchers to apply to win a 6-week fellowship to visit SRI in Menlo Park, California, and work with world-renowned experts to commercialize their technologies. Everyone who applies will get feedback on their invention and ideas about how to commercialize it. At USACH I met researchers who held patents for technologies to ensure the quality of meat and increase the output of rice.

The professor who invited me asked me to emphasize that Silicon Valley is a place that approaches failure as a necessary part of the innovation process. In Chile, most people are terrified of failure. It is not seen well in this society. People build close, life-long, family-focused networks, and these are the base of most professional opportunities. Also I have heard that bankruptcy laws here serve as a big deterrent against taking risks in business. But this is changing, and several Chilean friends have told me that Start-Up Chile hs helped to catalyze a gradual change in this part of the culture.

This was my first time giving a speech in Spanish, and my first time serving as a representative of Silicon Valley. The 20 or so professors, researchers, and students at the table asked some excellent questions about innovation, China, and more. I look forward to my next opportunity to share my stories (and, ahem, childhood photos) with this type of group.