China and I

Xmas in Singapore

I was recently In Singapore @ INSEAD. Amazing to find snowman with 30 degres outside. Only in Singapore!

China vs India - Race to the Top of the World

Chinese, Indian immigrants driving education level up in US states; who thought about that?

Every year, China and India send tens of thousands of their best citizens to the US for either work or study. Some complain like Lou Dobbs (here) from CNN that there is legal or illegal immigrants coming to Freedomland and that they take the jobs of hundreds of thousands American citizens. I wouldn't like to bash Lou Dobbs but did he know that most of the Indian and Chinese citizens coming to the US have higher education than American citizens. I just found an article in the Huffington Post (one of my favorite websites actually!) tackling this issue. via Huffington Post and the Times of India.

Here is the article:

"Immigrants from Asian nations like India and China, nearly half of them holding at least a bachelor's degree, are raising average education levels in many American states, according to latest official statistics.

Although the number of immigrants in America has reached an all-time high of 37.5 million in 2006, there is significant disparity in education and income levels, the Census Bureau, which released the data, said.

Immigrants from India and China are driving the Asian percentages up in the realm of education either arriving with a bachelor's degree or getting a higher degree upon arrival, the Bureau pointed out.

Asian immigrants are raising average education levels in many states, with nearly half of them holding at least a bachelor's degree.

"There is no one-size-fits-all policy that you could apply for all immigrant groups. I think most of the attention has been on low-skilled workers coming from Mexico. But we have 10 million immigrants from Asia, a number that's growing," Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau said.

About 48 per cent of Asian immigrants held at least a bachelor's degree, compared with about 11 per cent of immigrants from Latin America. Among people born in the US, about 27 per cent were college graduates.

"Driving this are people coming from China and India," Mather said. "They are either coming with a bachelor's degree, or they are coming with visas and getting degrees once they arrive."

I don't understand Lou Dobbs in this matter, probably because I am not an American citizen and I don't fully understand American politics and culture. By training or employing higher educated people from India and China, you have many advantages for America: 1/ Highly-skilled people at lower salaries willing to work hard; 2/ trained people the American way so when they go back home, they can spread the knowledge... the American way; 3/ Lower education and working cost; these people didn't study in the US until they went to university, so they save education costs for the American governements for the first 18 years of their lifes. What do you think about it?

China urges Myanmar to pursue "democracy process": Are you kidding me?

Whose people who are following the world politics have seen that Myanmar has seen some political troubles with monks in the past weeks. Recently, Myanmar Foreign Minister visited China and had meeting with Tang Jiaxuan, Senior Chinese diplomat. The Chinese diplomat stated China urged troubled Myanmar to press forward with a "democracy process that is appropriate for the country" (here) and (here).

Ouch! What does it mean?