The Millenium generation and the challenge for social stability

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THINK ASIAN By ANDREW SHENG

AS we enter into autumn, 2011 is turning out to be quite a year. Who would have thought that the immolation of a jobless Tunisian graduate in December 2010 would have sparked off the Arab Spring, with uprisings in North Africa and Middle East and now a variant has appeared in Britain?

Other than the social unrest fermented by unemployed youth upset with government corruption and inability to create jobs, the common element was the use of the social media. Even the Chinese high speed train crash in Wenzhou sparked off microblogging that spread the news faster than before. Twitter, Facebook, Google and mobile phone texting have changed the nature of news transmission and the whole governance structure globally.
Image via Wikipedia

Human behaviour reacts to new information, hence our obsession with breaking news. We need information to plan, respond and act.

Traditionally, the control of news and information was confined to a relatively small number of powerful newspaper groups around the world or government media. Radio and television changed the game, but the information was essentially one way. News feed meant news was fed to the consumer. Advertising was about promoting products and services and conveying information to the user.

Society became concerned about the use and misuse of information, hence the intense debate about control of media and freedom of information.



With the arrival of the Internet and social media technology, information became two-way. Two simultaneous events happened with the arrival of social media, both of which are totally new and not fully understood.

First, information became available, faster and more comprehensive to more people than ever thought possible. Papers like the News of the World were considered successful if they sold more than one million copies daily. A successful book would sell 100,000.

However, today, there are five billion mobile phones in use, compared with just over six billion people. More and more people everywhere are connected to the Internet. Every month more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Twitter can reach millions instantaneously.

Second, because millions of people can receive news simultaneously, they can react synchronously. This is the rise of flash news and flash mobs. The news feedback mechanism has moved from months to nano-seconds.

Governments which had time to react to news, now have no time at all to understand and respond to instant public opinion or even sudden appearance of thousands on social protest.

When someone rich and famous like Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested, there was almost instant decision on the Web whether he was guilty or not.

In the past, legal justice could have the pretense that the jury should not be biased by newspaper comment. Today, there are no “clean” decisions everyone is affected by the public opinion.

There are several serious implications for the media industry and social governance.

In economic terms, the traditional print media is suffering in the advanced countries. The good news is that print media is still growing in the emerging markets, as less access to Internet and a rising young population look voraciously for news.

More and more people are turning to instant news on their mobile phone and the Web. The bad news is that with instant news are instant judgements Like or Do Not Like. The fates of major social events are no longer judged by Royal Commissions of Inquiry, but by 140 character limit of news transfer by Twitter or other micro-blogs.

The events and responses of daily life are now black and white, demanding instant solution, not complex matters of grey requiring careful analysis and cautious response.

Thus, in many ways, the world has moved into a multi-dimensional complex transformation, facing simultaneously forces of demographics (more and more younger people and at the same time ageing people), urbanisation, industrial transformation, dramatic technology advances and the visible effects of climate warming and natural disasters.

Hence, mankind is facing changes in the natural environment even as we are confronting massive social change. But the most profound change is the great divide in the inter-generational understanding of each other.

The baby boomers of my generation marched in the streets in 1968 to demand greater social equality, including gender and racial equality. We were less than 5% of our age group who went to university. We were an elite.

Today, the baby boomers (those born after World War II) are beginning to retire. They have become the establishment.

University or tertiary education has become much more broad-based. More than half the population of the world is under the age of 21. The protesters in the Arab Spring or the rioters in Britain represent a generation different from their political leaders.

The new generation has largely grown up not in an age of war, but in an age of global peace. But the biggest challenge for social stability is the challenge of jobs for Gen Y or the Millenium generation, people born around the turn of the century.

In China, there is general acceptance of the fact the post 1980 generation (after the implementation of the one-child policy) has social behaviour different from those when families were multi-children.

In the next 15 years, more than 700 million young people will enter the labour force, of whom 300 million will come from Asia.

Already, the International Labour Organisation estimates that there are roughly 100 million unemployed people in Asia, before the global financial crisis.

If we cannot create enough jobs despite massive fiscal deficits and industrial restructuring, expect more social disruption from the new generation.

Andrew Sheng is president of the Fung Global Institute.

The world is run by Tiger Wives, Tiger Moms

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The world is run by Tiger Wives

Wendi Deng is not alone in lashing out when her spouse is under fire.

Wendi Deng Murdoch, Cherie Blair and Melania Trump are formidable in defence of their husbands Photo: REX FEATURES/GETTY,By Cristina Odone

The hearings were beginning to pall. What had started as the trial of the media’s biggest mogul was settling into the siesta of the patriarch: Rupert Murdoch seemed to be talking in his sleep, while James Murdoch fanned away the MPs’ annoying questions, lest they disturb Dad.

Viewers longing for drama felt short-changed. None of the lawmakers had laid a glove on the media mogul. And then – splat! – the (slapstick) comedian Jonathan May-Bowles threw a “pie” of shaving foam at Murdoch Senior and unleashed the Tiger Wife.

In an instant, Wendi Deng, Murdoch’s Chinese-American spouse, leapt to her feet and sprang past bystanders to pummel her husband’s assailant. MPs, Murdochs and media types could only gape, electrified as proceedings fast-forwarded from Perry Mason to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

By the time Rupert Murdoch’s bodyguard had reached his master, the 42-year-old Wendi had landed a sensational right-hook on her opponent.

She then gained her husband’s side, and gently cleaned his face of foam. Within minutes, Deng was the toast of Twitter: hailed as a “smack-down sister” in her native China, and as a heroine and stunning show-stopper everywhere else.

Those who know Wendi well (and they include Tony Blair, Mark Zuckerman and Bono) won’t have batted an eyelid at her jaw-dropping performance. Rupert Murdoch’s third wife has form.

A volleyball player from southern China doesn’t climb to the top (Murdoch’s personal fortune remains a healthy $340 million) without fierce determination. Other people on Wendi’s ascent have already experienced her fury.

The first victim was Joyce Cherry, a pleasant American who, together with husband Jake, befriended Wendi during their trip to China. Impressed by the teenager’s brilliance and thirst for self-improvement, Joyce and Jake sponsored Wendi’s application for a student visa to America. Alas, 19-year-old Wendi soon bewitched Jake, who left poor old Joyce to marry their young protégée.

Victim number two was Jake himself: his usefulness came to an end a few months later when Wendi, now armed with the right papers, won a place to study business at Yale University.



Days from graduation, Wendi had a job at the Murdoch-owned Star TV, where she quickly caught the Big Boss’s eye. Hence the third corpse in the trail to marry Murdoch: Rupert’s second wife, Anna.

Within 17 days of his divorce, Wendi wed Rupert. If the Wendi house conceals a few skeletons, it also offers glimpses of her protective instincts.

Conscious of the 38-year gap between them, Wendi has placed Rupert on a tough regime of 6am weightlifting, washed down by a fruit and soy protein cocktail. She wags her finger at his workaholic schedule and has hired a personal trainer to put him through his paces (even at the price of her husband turning up on front pages in baseball cap and tracksuit).

None of this marital nurturing distracts Wendi from pursuing her own agenda: she has just released a film, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, that aims to promote a more positive image of China.

She enjoys a glittering social life, attending film premieres and art gallery openings. And she remains her husband’s chief adviser on his business in China.

Yet Wendi the film producer, like Wendi the business consultant or Wendi the mother of Rupert’s young daughters Chloe and Grace, has failed to fire our imagination. But Wendi Deng, invincible Tiger Wife, has transformed Rupert Murdoch’s image around the globe – from dodderer in the dock to prized partner in his wife’s life.

In a culture that mourns marriage as a moribund institution, one spouse leaping passionately to the other’s defence fills us with admiration. Even the most hardened cynics couldn’t help thinking, as the warrior in a pink blazer bounced into the ring: “Wow, she really believes in this union!”

Wendi Deng’s slap didn’t just scotch rumours that hers was a sham marriage: a purely trophy wife would have winked at the assailant for giving the old man a heart-stopping scare. With a quick right hook, she jumped to the head of the queue of the defenders of matrimony. It is a short but colourful roll-call that stretches from Cherie Blair, to Anne Sinclair (aka Mme Strauss Khan), Melania Trump and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

From the moment she moved into No 10, Cherie Blair was under constant attack for her (supposed) greed, stinginess, and self-importance. She let the criticisms bounce off her like spring rain. But let anyone touch her Tony, and Mrs Blair roared. She hissed at the ungrateful electorate that did not deserve a paragon of virtue like her husband; she gnashed her teeth at the sleazy media that insinuated Tony was a disappointment.

Her manner resembled the termagant’s fury rather than the bride’s solicitude, but no one could doubt Cherie’s heartfelt loyalty. It won her few fans: among the cheats and cuckolds of Westminster, the sight of a prime minister’s wife defending her husband was unusual; it also reassured voters that despite new Labour’s destruction of cherished institutions from the House of Lords to foxhunting, marriage would remain intact.

Far more testing has been Anne Sinclair’s lot. When her charismatic husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on rape charges in New York, the French TV journalist sprang to his defence: “I do not believe for a single second the accusations levelled against my husband.” She flew to stand by her man and stumped up the $1 million bail to move him from prison to his plush Manhattan apartment.

Such wifely devotion may yet save the former IMF chief’s political career: his wife’s total support, as much as the derailing of the case against him, may prove a great boost to DSK’s credibility as a presidential candidate.

Her counterpart in the French presidential contest, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, also wants to show the world that she looks out for her husband’s interests. The First Lady of France, pregnant but still displaying every sign of focus and competitiveness, has imposed a culture vulture’s menu on her philistine hubby: he is to watch films by Alfred Hitchcock, as well as Russia’s Andrei Tarkovsky; and read the French classics, from Balzac to Hugo.

Driving this self-improvement, say insiders at the Elysée Palace, is Carla’s ambition: she wants her man to be re-elected, and fears his present lowbrow image won’t do.

Nor should we forget Melania Trump, fearlessly vocal in her millionaire husband’s defence: Donald Trump is “brilliant”, everyone is envious of his success, and America should be so lucky to have him as their Republican Party candidate.

But Mrs T also gives us a revealing insight into their marriage when she confides that she has two children: “I have a big boy, Donald, and a little boy, Barron. I take care of both very well.”

Tiger Wife often needs to play Tiger Mother, it would seem.

The Tiger Wives’ Club is small but perfectly informed: these women know that their husbands need their commitment and support. In her eagerness to make her man shine, the Tiger Wife will disarm any assailant. She knows that her spouse is less than he seems; and that she, in fact, is rather more. She’s plucky; he’s lucky.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

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IMF - Lagarde’s Challenges

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Raghuram Rajan

CHICAGO – Now that the dust has settled over the selection of the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, the IMF can return to its core business of managing crises. Christine Lagarde, a competent and well-regarded technocrat, will have her hands full with three important challenges.

The first, and probably easiest, challenge is to restore the IMF’s public image. While the criminal case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual-assault charges now seems highly uncertain, the ensuing press focus on the IMF suggests an uncontrolled international bureaucracy with unlimited expense accounts, dominated by men with little sense of restraint.

Fortunately, the truth is more prosaic. Top IMF staff face strict limits on their allowable business expenses (no $3,000 per night hotel rooms, despite reports in the press), and are generally underpaid relative to private-sector executives with similar skills and experience.

The IMF, like many organizations where workers spend long trips together, has its share of intra-office romances. But the environment is professional, and not hostile to women. A previous incident in which Strauss-Kahn was let off lightly for an improper relationship with a subordinate clearly suggests that the Fund needs brighter lines for acceptable behavior and tougher punishment for transgressions. But other organizations have dealt with similar issues; the IMF needs to make the necessary changes, and, equally important, get the message out that the DSK incident was an aberration, not the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Mess in Europe

The second, and perhaps most difficult, challenge facing Lagarde, is the mess in Europe, where the IMF has become overly entangled in eurozone politics. Typically, the IMF assesses whether a country, after undertaking reasonable belt-tightening measures, can service its debt – and lends only when it is satisfied that it can. The entire objective of IMF lending is to help finance the country while it makes adjustments and regains access to private borrowing. This also means that a country with too much debt should renegotiate it down before getting help from the IMF, thereby avoiding an unsustainable repayment burden.

Perhaps swayed by promises of eurozone financial support (and Europe’s desire to prevent default-fueled financial contagion from spreading to countries like Spain and possibly Italy), the IMF took a rosier view of debt sustainability in countries like Greece than it has in emerging markets. But this has not “helped” such countries, for the availability of soft credit from the eurozone or the Fund only enables a greater accumulation of debt.



Ultimately, debt can be repaid only if a country produces more than it spends. And the higher the debt, the less likely it is that the country will be able to achieve the mix of belt-tightening and growth that would enable it to generate the necessary surpluses. Delayed restructuring eventually means more painful restructuring – after many years of lost growth.

If troubled eurozone countries, especially Spain, start growing rapidly again, there is still a “muddle-through” outcome that might work. With too-big-to-save countries like Spain in the clear, the debt of highly-indebted peripheral countries like Greece could be written down through interest waivers, maturity extensions, and debt exchanges. The eurozone – and the European Union – could survive its fiscal crisis intact.

Significant haircut

But having failed to insist on an up-front restructuring, the IMF will face problems. With private investors reluctant to lend more or even to roll over existing debt, the bulk of Greek debt at the time of any restructuring (or whatever it is euphemistically called) will be from the official sector. How the resulting losses imposed on debt holders will be divided between the various eurozone institutions and the IMF is anyone’s guess. For the first time in its history, the Fund might have to take a significant “haircut” on its loans, and it will have to prepare its non-European shareholders for it.

 Being independent

A greater dilemma will emerge if the muddle-through strategy does not seem to be working. At some point, the IMF’s strategy, which should be focused on the distressed country’s citizens and its creditors, should depart from that of the eurozone, which is more willing to sacrifice individual countries’ interests for the larger interest of the monetary union. Lagarde’s challenge will be to chart a strategy for the IMF that is independent of the eurozone’s strategy, even though she has been intimately involved in formulating the latter.

The third challenge for Lagarde concerns the circumstances of her election. It is not inconceivable that a number of emerging-market countries will get into trouble in the next few years. Will the Fund require the tough policy changes it has demanded of countries in the past, or will Lagarde’s need to show that she is not biased towards Europe mean that future IMF interventions will become more expansive and less demanding? A kinder, gentler Fund is in no one’s interest, least of all the distressed countries and the world’s taxpayers.

Finally, there is a challenge that seems to be pressing, but is not. In her campaign for the position, Lagarde emphasized the need for diversity among the IMF’s top management. But what is really needed is the selection and promotion of the best people, regardless of national origin, sex, or race.

Clearly, the IMF’s existing culture and history will bias its selection and promotion of staff towards a certain type of person (for example, holders of PhDs from US universities). That commonality in backgrounds among IMF personnel allows the Fund to move fast in country rescues, not wasting time in endless debate. In the long run, more diversity is needed. But if it is attempted too quickly, in order to paper over the fact that a European is in charge once again, the Fund risks jeopardizing its key strength.

The IMF is perhaps the central global multilateral economic institution at a time when such institutions are needed more than ever. Lagarde arrives to lead it at a difficult time. We all have a stake in her success.

Raghuram Rajan, a former IMF chief economist, is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.