Asia’s Rise In The War For Talent with Dr. Parag Khanna

Excited to share with you this week’s show – we are talking about the future of Asia with our guest who has a lot of resources and amazing insights. Dr. Parag Khanna is based in Singapore and I have read his articles. I learned a few things and got re-inspired. Let’s tune in.

√ Dr. Parag Khanna’s VIP Page
√ Dr. Khanna’s website
√ FutureMap
√ Dr. Khanna’s Interview in Nikkei Asia
√ Upcoming book – MOVE: The Forces That Are Uprooting Us and Will Shape Humanity’s Destiny
√ Visit our GFA partner – Mercury – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss

This has definitely been insightful, thank you Parag! I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing with us. Hopefully today’s show inspired everybody.

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[00:00:00] Episode 342 of Global from Asia and the URL globalfromasia.com/asia-future. Let’s do this talking about the future of Asia. Is it a place to be, or not? Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down, into straight up actionable advice.

[00:00:26] And now your host, Michael Michelini. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for choosing to download and listen and watch or whatever you do. You know, maybe reading the transcript of globalfromasia.com/asia-future. 342 shows every other week. I kind of feel a little bit reinspired, you know. This whole lockdown is driving me crazy.

[00:00:51] We can’t even get things delivered here from other cities within China. Like my wife loves buying on these Taobao sites and everything, but delivery, People don’t even come here. So it’s, it’s really not. So like we have to find local delivery now they. At least I’m not doing a COVID tests.

[00:01:13] At least let’s keep hoping and you know, just excited to share with you this week’s show. We have a great guest. I, I read his articles. He’s got books, he’s got lots of resources. He is based in Singapore. Parag Khanna and he had some really amazing insights. It gets me reinspired too about being in Asia, being based, doing business cross border trade, you know, is this the right place to be in this conversation?

[00:01:40] So, so was obviously a little bit biased, but we talk about, he talks about reasons why the war for talent, you know, the up to rising of, of developing countries in Asia and things like that. It’s pretty cool. I learned a few things and it got me reinspired so definitely check out the show. We will go through this.

[00:02:01] This is in a great way also, this was done in audio only. So we will just have the image here, but, you know, hopefully you can enjoy that. If you’re watching this on YouTube, we’ll still put it up there, I think. And let’s, and after the show, I’ll talk a little bit about the mastermind we did this past week, and then we will talk about some of my plans in Asia for the next few years, once we, if we ever get out of this lockdown.

[00:02:28] So without further ado, let’s tune into the show. Are you building an Amazon business or a B2B trade business. People registering in us right now and they’re not there. They’re not there. They’re not Americans. They’re not, but they’re doing it because it’s a, it’s, it’s easy and there’s different options.

[00:02:46] And they’re getting their Amazon accounts, but they’re having trouble with banking. We have a really high ranking blog post about getting banks for non-US citizens. And we’re really happy to be partnered with mercury.com. They will be on our next podcast as well, where you can talk about with one of the team members there with me, but we also give you a cash bonus on certain conditions, as well as we get a little bit of benefit too, at globalfromasia.com/mercury or our full review with a video tutorial that I made at globalfromasia.com/reviews/mercury.

[00:03:18] Thanks again, mercury. And if you join the show and want to support, sign up with that link and I thank you in advance. See you soon. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is Mike Michelini here at the Global from Asia podcast and the topic today and a guest today is, is very suitable. Actually, it was recommended by a listener Parag Khanna.

[00:03:39] Parag is the leading global strategy advisor, world traveler and best-selling author. He’s the founder and managing partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario-based strategic advisory firm. He’s also just released one of his newer books, The Future Is Asian: Commerce, Conflict and Culture, in the 21st century.

[00:03:58] And he’s also an author of many other books, very relevant to, you know, what’s happening in the world and contributed great articles. And it’s really a pleasure to have Parag with us on the show today. Thanks for being here. Great to speak with you, Mike. Yeah, I, you know, I’m really happy. I mean, our show’s name is Global From Asia.

[00:04:17] We started this in 2013, actually, as an audio podcast, you know, about Hong Kong originally was purely more around Hong Kong business structure. And then we’ve grown, we’ve grown into the cross-border trade and, and e-commerce from Asia. So I think what you have to show, you know, what we’ll discuss today is very relevant to our audience of business owners doing cross border

[00:04:40] Trade. So, you know, I think like, you know, the theme of what you’ve talked about in your, a lot of your articles and your books is the future is, future is Asia, right? I mean, I think that’s, that’s what we’re about here. And that’s what we see. And especially has accelerated, I think the last one or two years, I think, I think a lot was with the trade war and like immigration.

[00:05:03] Right? I think a lot when you’re talking about Is is America was built on immigrants, right? I mean, even I’m, I’m an American born, Italian-American, you know, Italian and French, Russian and Canadian, if you believe it. So we’re all, most Americans are immigrants, but nowadays it seems like walls or walls are going up.

[00:05:23] Right. I mean, that’s, that’s basically the theme of what’s happening. Well, that’s part of it. I mean, in terms of just demographics, leaving aside immigration as such, obviously the present Asian, not just the future, because half the world population lives in Asia. And that’s the gap between Asia and the rest of the world, will only grow because Asia’s population continues to grow while you have demographic stagnation in the West and you actually have a pretty steep drop-off in fertility in the Arab world as well.

[00:05:51] And much of the Arab world by the way, is in geographic Asia. We can. Come back to that later, when it comes to immigration. Most Asians travel and do business and are tourists and migrate within Asia. But of course, Western societies have benefited massively from Asian immigration. After the, you take the United States, if you take Great Britain, of course has a sizeable South Asian population that really ramped up after the independence of Indian Pakistan in late 1940s in the United States. It was the, it was the, the Immigration Act of 1965 that opened the door to waves of Chinese and Indian migrants.

[00:06:28] My family moved to America in 1983 when I was a kid. So I’m myself, an immigrant to the United States. And over the last, you know, 35 years, I’ve watched, you know, the, the South Asian population of the United States absolutely balloon. You have roughly 3 million Chinese Americans today, 3 million Indian Americans and obviously many, many other.

[00:06:51] Asian populations. Of course, all the headline stats about the percentage of Silicon Valley that is, you know, run by, founding, startup founders who are, who are Asian, of course the medical profession, you know, pharmaceutical, you name it, so many business sectors really depend on those immigrants.

[00:07:11] So the question that I’ve been raising or that I raised in that book, but it’s much more a theme of my future work is the kind of war for talent, because we actually have a finite human population and, you know, finite number of livable, desirable places, both politically and economically, socially, environmentally.

[00:07:30] And I have a question I’ve been raising lately is, well, where are those people going to go? Are they going still from East to West. And what I found, and this is the term that I used in, in the Asia book, I called it American Asian. So I grew up as an Asian American and the term American Asian doesn’t exist.

[00:07:49] I, I coined it and I coined it because I’m an American moved back to Asia and I was like, wait, I’m not an Asian-American anymore. I’m an American Asian and what I’ve found here in Singapore and Hong Kong and all across the region, even Indonesia, Vietnam, is throngs of Asian Americans who have never lived in Asia.

[00:08:07] They were really born and raised in the US like, like you and they’ve moved. They moved here for the first time because it’s become the land of opportunities because of China’s growth, because of innovation across the region, fast-growing markets, all of these reasons of quality of life, adventure. You know, high salaries, whatever the case may be to have lured so many, you know, created a whole new cast of American Asians here in the region.

[00:08:33] That’s something that I do, I do deal with in the book. Okay. I like that American Asian, I think that’s me and you. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, my quick story, you know, I think listeners know, I, I, I moved here in 2007 to China because of the sourcing from factories in e-commerce and yeah. Didn’t think I would still be here, but married with kids now with Chinese wife and five-year-old,seven-year-old and still here, but yeah, it’s just, there’s more and more of us for sure.

[00:09:04] I mean, just like with this, with this show and with what you’re doing it’s and like you said, the opportunity, so, you know, I did want to touch a little bit the old way. At least I considered it, like you said, the 1940s and UK in 1965 and in the US it’s interesting to have those dates. I didn’t know half the days before, but yeah, like you said, that used to be East going to West, right?

[00:09:29] Like Asia moving to America or the UK or the Western world. But I think that they are starting to want to stop that. Right. I mean, I talked a lot of, even overseas students, you know, overseas, you know, like we mentioned Silicon Valley, but the policies and, you know, the walls are going up. So I don’t know if you want to touch on a little bit of, those are pretty big headlines, like you mentioned too, but I don’t know if you want to give us some insights.

[00:09:58] I would say the keywords there around walls, going up, populism, protectionism, that kind of thing. You know, we, we, in the Anglo-American media, we talk about those things as if they’re a universal phenomenon. You know, Trump and Brexit are occurring in the same year. And, you know, again, if they are a global tidal waves, but the fact is, again, the majority of the human population, most countries of the world, most people in the world

[00:10:22] Live in societies that do not look like America in the US neither in trade policy or in politics. And yes, you have nationalism, but you have also a lot of pragmatism. You have long-term vision that governments are trying to implement. You have more technocratic governance, which is a thing. Team, I developed in the book quite a bit when describing Asian political systems, because they may be democratic or they may be authoritarian.

[00:10:49] In fact, more people in Asia live in democratic countries and authoritarian ones. And I think that’s very important, obviously for people in the West to understand that when you look at Asia, you shouldn’t just see China. There are 1.4 billion people who live under a Chinese authoritarian system. And there was a couple of other authoritarian countries in the region, but the majority.

[00:11:09] Of Asians live in democratic countries, whether it’s India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and so on and so forth. So let’s remember that while there was great diversity of politics in Asia, majority is democratic and people prefer democracy, but they also want to see, again, strong farsighted utilitarian kinds of leaders that are sort of technocratic, as I say, with real competence and experience in governance.

[00:11:34] And if they don’t see those kinds of leaders and they’ll throw them out and that’s very important as well. And I think there’s a lot, obviously to be learned from the technocratic idea from the West. It is of course, a Western concept entirely, whether you’re talking about Plato’s notion of the guardians or the constitution of the French political system in the late 19th century, technocracy is basically a Western idea.

[00:12:00] You could, you could say, obviously it’s a Chinese idea as well. If you think about the ancient Confucian Mandarin system for public officials. So, I mean, it’s, it’s actually kind of a sensible global framework and it should look at things, but just getting back to your point around politics. So, you know, when we, when we say walls are going up and protectionism and borders and so forth, well, obviously that’s not true of the largest region of the entire world because here they just ratify the regional comprehensive economic partnership, which is the largest trade zone on the planet.

[00:12:30] So again, you know, we have to remember that we don’t live in one world. It by which, you know, kind of American and British politics dictate the system to the rest. It’s, it’s really being flipped on its head. And I started making that case, you know, about 15 years ago in my, in my very first book. But this book is kind of the time, the kind of the, the sort of pulling all of those threads together.

[00:12:56] Exciting times. Yeah. So let’s, let’s, let’s focus on like the future. I mean, that’s what, you know, you’re working on now and you’re talking about the future is Asia. I mean, I’ll be honest. I literally just had a phone call with a friend yesterday to saying, I should go back to the U S you know, it, you know, things are getting a little bit crazy here, you know, it’s safer there.

[00:13:15] I, I don’t know. A lot of my friends seem to think that, but I’ll stick. I don’t wanna get too personal, but I mean, I’ll just say Asian, I won’t say maybe mainland China or not, but I might have more outside of a China plans, but you know, I plan to stay in Asia. You know, that’s why the show is called the Global From Asia.

[00:13:31] I mean, I, I think you and I are a similar wavelength with the opportunities here. So, you know, I like the point you just brought up about a lot of people and, you know, I kind of joke about myself being kind of like One is typical American before I came here, I thought everything was China. You know, I didn’t really understand the differences, you know, even of course the new India was different, but you know, I think a lot of times Americans don’t realize like you just pointed out that Asia is.

[00:13:59] It’s much more than, than China. And there’s a lot of democracies there that have different systems. So you, you know, any, and I like that point, you just brought up about the opening up and the largest trade zones. So you, so you’re thinking a lot of people from the U S or the Western world will move here too, or you’re just, is the theory more that Asia will just continue to develop independently.

[00:14:24] Organically, you know, as I said, there was not only the sort of American Asians, there’s Europeans, there’s Africans, you know, I mean, you know, Arabs, there is a gravitational pull and again, one of the big things is just the circulation of people. I mean, just during this pandemic, No, it’s both quality and quantity

[00:14:42] during this pandemic, I’ve witnessed now nearly a dozen high net worth, you know, tech sector, Americans move here with their assets, their families, and so forth straight into Singapore. So, you know, those are high quality people. And again, it goes back to this war for talent is, you know, China has not only lured back hundreds of thousands of so-called sea turtles.

[00:15:06] India had been doing this same and is trying to continue to do that. You know, the sort of city States like Singapore, as I just described Japan is becoming, you know, a popular place for expats. There’s never been 3 million non-Japanese people living in Japan, but that’s exactly the case today. And many of, you know, they come from all over the world.

[00:15:25] So I do think that Asia is a talent magnet. You know, again, many countries offer superior quality of life. And, you know, it’s a really a place to start new things. And obviously the markets are enormous and growing, and I think there’s just many, many factors. So there’s a traditional model where expats are sent here and they stay for a couple of years and they’re pulled back.

[00:15:46] What I see today is very different. It’s individuals voluntarily coming here as entrepreneurs, not being sent here by multinational employers in the West. And that’s a very, very different model. And they’re here for the long haul. They’re taking permanent residency. They’re settling down, they’re investing, they’re raising their families here, and that’s a far larger number of Westerners doing that today than in the seventies and eighties.

[00:16:13] I would agree. I mean, I’m one of them, so I did talk to quite a few people. Yeah. Well, I think one of the hurdles, I’m not sure if you have any insights for, for parents, but you, you mentioned also families. I think that is one of the bigger challenges. A lot of times, the traditional expat would leave or the, well, they would have the big packages.

[00:16:33] So their big corporate companies would pay for their kid’s school, you know, but I think school is one of the bigger challenges I think, for, for foreigners in any country. I would imagine going either East to West or West to East, but I hope there’s more programs for, for immigrants, you know, to Asia for, for education, you know, that’s been one of the bigger challenges.

[00:16:52] That myself and others I I’ve talked to. It’s been interesting shift actually, because now you do have those Western campuses that have opened up here. You know, so Yale in US is one example, but there’s many, many others affiliated campuses of Western universities, even just Asian universities that are growing in stature.

[00:17:12] I get emails from people in Europe, you know, young students in New York saying I really want to get my master’s degree yet XYZ Institute and their in asia you know, can you help me with that. One of the first times I started kind of tracking this theme was when I went to lecture at Singh law in Beijing, in their master’s program of international relations.

[00:17:33] And I was expecting to see an audience of all Chinese students, but they had just launched their English language master’s degree. So it was a very kind of, you know, diverse audience in the, in the auditorium. And I was like, wow, you know, these are American or European kids who could have done their master’s degree at SIPA, Columbia or Georgetown and the MSFS or Johns Hopkins, or the Harvard Kennedy school or Princeton Woodrow Wilson school.

[00:18:00] But instead they came to do their masters in Beijing. And that was really a kind of eyeopening thing. And that was again about 14 years ago. Right now, obviously when it comes to China, there’s been a lot of volatility in the foreign student population because of COVID and, you know, political sense, its ease and so on.

[00:18:17] But I’ll actually, you know, as a reminder, this is a there’s someone I quoted a, actually a sort of a university official in China, who I spoke to recently. He said that, you know, the numbers of Americans or of course doubt. Right recently, you know, other than, you know, perhaps elite programs like Schwarzman scholars or whatever, but he said, but the number of students from British countries is way up.

[00:18:44] Right. And as you, and I know that stands for belt and road initiative. Talking about, you know, dozens and dozens of countries across maybe mostly the rest of Asia, the developing world, but the number of overall foreign students in China is strong because they’re coming from the rest of the world. Not it’s.

[00:18:59] So the fate of Asian or Chinese higher education does not depend on whether they have gotten curious, you know, backpacking Americans or even young American scholars. It is about training the next generation of leaders, wherever they may come from around the world and the countries with which Asian nations have strong or, or growing relationships.

[00:19:20] Agreed. Yeah. I mean it, as an American in China, I get these warnings from the embassy like weekly nowadays. It is pretty nerve-wracking. We even, I joined a webinar with the U S embassy about Americans in China. I think it was around Christmas. It was a Christmas party, but yeah, I mean, it’s definitely unstable times for sure.

[00:19:42] These last couple of years, and we’ll see what the new policies in the West in America do for the future. But yeah, I would agree. It’s definitely more like, you know, like Bri belt road initiative or non U S people are moving to, to Asia or China. I, it’s pretty fascinating though. The all English language.

[00:20:02] A master’s program in Beijing, and I’ve seen others go there for, for Chinese language or an immersion program. But that’s pretty insightful. I wasn’t aware of that, but, but yeah, I mean, I do think that it’s, there’s been this shift of people, Asia countries learning that Westerners or foreigners wants to live in their country longterm.

[00:20:23] I think, you know, Thailand’s another hotspot. You know, digital nomads or, you know, entrepreneurs that want to spend time there. And I think they’re working on longer term visa programs for these kinds of digital entrepreneurs. What, what kind of immigration tips or insights or, or, you know, you know, is information, would you like to share with us, you know, for people looking to make this move and follow this new trend?

[00:20:51] Well, a couple of things. I mean, I think this is pre COVID. The pre COVID period featured, you know, governments being more confident in wanting to attract foreign investors. Right? So as their passports became more globally viable as their expat communities grew, as they search for entrepreneurs and talent and investors, many countries, again, Thailand, Indonesia, many, many, it was streamlined in immigration.

[00:21:16] Right, but not only the harmonized regulations amongst themselves, because that’s been called for in the Asian integration process, but also obviously again, to recruit, to recruit global talent. So Singapore, everyone, Japan has made it easier to buy property. All of these things have been underway then with COVID obviously you now have this kind of a bump, if you will.

[00:21:37] You know, you you’ve been reading about this and the news headlines every day, you know, another country announces some kind of a Global nomad visa, you know, come, Nope, stay as long as you like, you know, entrepreneur, visa tech pass in Singapore. Those are two examples. So these things are flourishing and obviously people should just pick their country, look, look up the program and apply online or, you know, arbitrage among them and see who gives you the best deal.

[00:22:03] You know, it’s going to be low tax. It’s going to be, you know, again, affordable living. It’s going to be high quality of life. It’s going to be sort of come and go as you please, you know, no fixed commitment. They’re probably reducing the amount of capital upfront that you have to invest if any, you know, for an initial one or two year period, because again, This is a broader kind of macro economic or public policy point.

[00:22:25] But, but one that I’ve kind of been, been, not preaching, but observing for a long time, which is that smart countries don’t really chase tax revenue. They chase investment, right? Investment tax revenue is fleeting. You know, it comes in, goes out, but investment, you know, people planting their roots in our country and investing in property, putting their kids in schools, eating and restaurants, that kind of thing.

[00:22:50] Is more important, you know, obviously in having companies, no, no doubt. Relocate their headquarters, moved their manpower, build factories. Yeah. And labs. That’s what smart countries do. Right. They’re going after investment. And that’s what you see happening across Asia, because, you know, only the wealthiest Asian countries have very high tax rates over by which, I mean, you know, sort of Japan and Korea.

[00:23:13] But obviously smaller Asian countries have far lower tax rates, even wealthy ones like Singapore, Malaysia is relatively modest as well. So at this point, there’s, there’s, there’s just, you know, the Pandora’s box is open in terms of the various schemes, by which one can move to some Asian country or the other.

[00:23:32] And I’ve been watching again, I’ve been watching this now for a decade and I see people going to many different countries for many different reasons. Right. You could be going to Australia if you are. Trying to, you know, hide your money from China or from the Korean Japanese tax authorities. Right. You could be choosing Bali, right.

[00:23:54] As you know, Bali and Phuket are growing as long-term residential enclaves and hubs. But again, even before COVID because the cost of living in those places is much lower than Singapore, Hong Kong. I’ve known executives to relocate, you know, dozens and dozens of workers to those places. And what young software programmer or e-commerce.

[00:24:15] You know, manager is going to complain about being forcefully, moved to Bali, to do their work remotely. I know. Right? So this has been going on for a while. You know, you and I are both parents. So we also look at the international schools. Yeah. You know, places that never had international schools now have full fledged international schools.

[00:24:32] Well, you know, it’s not for the locals, right. It’s for the growing number of expats. So again, take your pick of country of city of province. You know, if you prefer city or beach or whatever, and you know, you can probably pretty much go and move there. Yeah, I would agree. I mean, one thing we’re thinking about doing is it’s so early, I don’t think.

[00:24:54] Maybe this is the first time we even have to say it on our show is we’re thinking about having a little bit of like a community somewhere or a physical community where we invite people in our community to live in that neighborhood. And we can hope, hopefully support each other. I mean, I think after all this COVID lockdown, I think a lot of us want to live in vicinity so that we could, uh, see other people in our kind of like our tribes.

[00:25:17] You know, it’s like these village kind of thoughts as others I’ve talked to too, they want to kind of have these hubs of people. Really close to each other, just for the social and the human part of, of living, you know? So we’re, we’re looking at putting something like that together. Maybe probably be over a year or so away and, you know, step-by-step, but that’s one thing we’re, we’re, we’re playing with as a community.

[00:25:42] So, so yeah, let’s, let’s talk about your books, you know, you, yeah. You’ve, you’ve you have quite a few and we, I mentioned one in your bio and you have things you’re working on. Do you want to just share a little bit about, about, about, about those? Well, it’s sort of past present or future, I think, maybe the current book is the future is Asian, you know, the commerce conflict in culture and the 21st century.

[00:26:08] You know, that one came out last year, but you know, again, some of the central arguments around Asia is economic recovery leading the world after COVID are now baked into. Kind of how we think about where the world economy is going. So, you know, it’s as relevant as ever the Asian sort of technocracy model, obviously as well, looking at which governments perform the best in coping with.

[00:26:31] COVID obviously that that thesis is, is validated, you know? And so I’ve been kind of, you know, advocating. Not that, you know, as I said before, yes, the rest of the world can learn. It’s not that one model is better than another, you know, the central thesis is very much that Asia is a new layer of paint on a canvas.

[00:26:52] And that canvas already has European and American layers on it. And when you paint another layer on a, on a, on a canvas, you don’t wipe out the previous colors, right? The colors blend together. And that’s really what’s happening in the world today. And obviously it’s not a short term argument, so COVID only accelerates and strengthens the argument, but we’re talking about a decades long process, you know, every region of the world as it rises.

[00:27:18] Has it sort of moment in the sun where the stars aligned, where you have young populations, you have industrialization and public investment, you have innovation and, you know, education strengthening and political stability and geopolitical stability. All these stars have been aligning. For the past, say, you know, 40 plus years in, in Asia and they’re going to continue to, it’s not going to stop tomorrow, right?

[00:27:41] It’s obviously not going to stop because of COVID. It is quite frankly, and this is where the book is very geopolitical. It’s not going to stop, even if there’s a war, right? You could have war over Taiwan war in North Korea. You could have a war in the South China, sea war between India and China, every major world war three scenario.

[00:28:00] In in the world is in Asia, right? So I’m hardly in denial about it. I spend a lot of my time micro, you know, sort of studying each of those scenarios and, and worrying about them. However, Asia is not Europe, right? It’s not like Europe in 1914, where you have a conflict in one place and there’s chain reactions and escalation.

[00:28:19] And the whole continent is engulfed in war. Asia is a hell of a lot bigger than Europe. And it’s much more diverse and there, these conflicts are somewhat dissociated from each other. They’re they’re bilateral and they’re localized. So. If, and when you have such a, you know, sort of escalation or, or something, you know, sort of, sort of blows over, eventually you have, you may have a conflict and you’ll have a winner and you’ll have a loser, you’ll have a settlement and, you know, things will move on.

[00:28:46] Right. And that’s kind of how history works. So there are a lot of people who say, look, you know, yeah. The Asian story seems great, but what happens when you have a war? And my answer is so what, right. I don’t literally mean to be flippant, but I mean, you tell me if you believed that the entire Asian story of 5 billion people and infrastructure, investment, and trade and urbanization and technology and empowerment, are you telling me that North, South Korean conflict derails the story of every other society in Asia, because you have to make that case, right?

[00:29:18] I don’t have to make that case. You need to prove that you think. That there is a particular scenario, even Taiwan, you know, I mean, go again, God forbid in each of these scenarios, but tell me how it destroys all of Asia. It doesn’t. And the sad, the sad truth of, of kind of global history is that, you know, you wouldn’t have the European union today.

[00:29:40] If you hadn’t had the horrors of world war one and world war II. Right. But, you know, unfortunately in Europe’s case you had to have the devastating conflicts and destruction and, you know, loss of population and life in order to eventually have an evolution towards the European union. Now in Asia, there, isn’t going to be an Asian union.

[00:30:00] But you can, you know, hopefully find ways. And this is what I call technocratic peace theory instead of democratic peace theory, which is kind of an Axiom of Western political science, you know, in technocratic theory, the Asian leaders know exactly where to draw the lines on the map in order to solve conflicts.

[00:30:19] Right. They just can’t do so publicly. In a time when their grip on power may be considered fragile or they may be considered to be weak or appeasing if they make concessions that are above and beyond what the other side makes. So my, my approach is that there should be a technocratic piece in which you have basically secret deliberations among countries with independent, uh, panels, with participation of rep represented or, or kind of stakeholder countries.

[00:30:51] And they come to these agreements, you know, quiet quietly without. The results of the agreements, you know, sort of feeding back to the head of state, such that they are, the ones held responsible for the outcomes. So you could, for example, have a five-year process that a leader initiated saying over the next five years, we’re going to settle this conflict and diplomatically.

[00:31:14] I may not be the one in charge of this country. Five years from now, but I’m initiating the process. Five years later, the person who is the leader, when those processes are complete, is not going to be the one held responsible for the outcome, but you will have a politically, a peaceful settlement of disputes.

[00:31:31] So this, this is the kind of approach that I would take it. It may seem like it’s just some kind of academic game, but actually this is how a number of conflicts. So in Island disputes and so forth have been settled in the past. And I definitely think it’s much more appropriate for the Asian context. Wow.

[00:31:47] This has really been insightful. Thank you. Thank you for these insights. And then you have a book coming, right? You want to share about what’s what’s coming. We’ll have people could find out more. Yeah, brief teaser, it’s called move. And it’s about the future of human geography. So I’m really looking at the species level, you know, reorganization of human civilization in light of a climate change in light of, you know, political disruptions, economic crises, technological automation.

[00:32:18] And focused in particular on the next 30 years, which means I’m looking at young people because young people, those under the age of 40 represent about 55 to 60% of the human population. Now old people tend to not move as much as young people. And so we want to understand the future demographics and population distribution of the world.

[00:32:41] You obviously need to focus on what young people are doing. People like you, me, what we do with our children, what our children do and so on. So I decided to look kind of from a bottom up view at where young people are moving and why they’re moving and what motivates them and what countries are doing the best jobs of absorbing youth.

[00:32:59] And this is a fundamentally economic and therefore also geopolitical align of research because it’s not really just about, you know, demographics and preferences in psychology. Fundamentally a strong country is one that’s absorbing people, right? No one thinks of Russia as a super power, precisely because its demographics have collapsed.

[00:33:22] So, you know, Canada, meanwhile. Is actively planning to triple its population to reach 75 or a hundred million people in the coming decades. So the geopolitics of 50 years from now looks very different in light of climate change and migration. So I decided to take this bottom up, you know, kind of human centric view.

[00:33:43] And let that story unfold to make some scenarios and forecasts around what the future economic and geopolitical landscape looks like on the basis of the necessity of mass migrations in light of all of the disturbances and disruptions today. So that’s a, that book move and it’s coming out in September of this year.

[00:34:04] Well, exciting, exciting, and then the best place, you know, I think we’re people can find you as your, your personal site Parag Khanna, which we’ll link.com, which we’ll share in the show notes and link to the various things you’ve mentioned. And then FutureMap is your, your agency FutureMap to IO. The future map is my, I met my consulting firm, my advisory firm.

[00:34:26] So we were about eight partners. When we do a lot of work with governments and companies on their either building scenarios or doing kind of global strategies for them. Amazing. Okay. Well, I think that, I know you’re so busy. I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us today. And it’s exciting times, I think for yeah.

[00:34:44] You’re positioned and where we are in the community here and listeners. So if you’re listening to this, I hope, I hope you got some insights and took some action. And, uh, it seems like, I think at least. I believe, and, and Parag is saying is Asia seems like the future. I mean, that’s where the talent people are coming here.

[00:35:01] People there’s huge populations. Trend is trend is still here. And if it seems like it’s accelerated even more post COVID for sure. Right. No question. I mean, you know, I was gonna, Oh, the book as a joke, I say the book could have been called the present is Asian because if the president already is Asian, but yeah, I think, you know, again for better or worse  thesis certainly feels like it’s being validated.

[00:35:28] And I, it’s interesting to hear you saying that, you know, irrespective of what’s happening in Hong Kong and you know, you certainly plan to stay in the region. I think that’s also a proofs of the argument. Yeah. Yeah. Although Southeast Asia looks a little bit is pulling me a little bit more than welcome down here.

[00:35:45] Yeah. Coming soon, coming soon. All right. Thanks again, frog. And let’s stay in touch. Thanks again for sharing with it. Thanks Mike. Pleasure to speak with you. That was cool. Thank you so much. Pirog I really appreciate him coming on and sharing with us and inspiring us, you know, I think. I think Asia is still the place to be.

[00:36:04] You know, I remember when I was evacuating Philippines to China and I got us embassy emailing me that if I don’t go back to the U S or I was reading some kind of tweets from the state department, state.gov, something in the U S and if they said, dear U S citizens, if you don’t return to America soon, it might not be an opportunity to come back for an extent, I don’t know for Zack we’re extended amount of time.

[00:36:26] And I’m like, well, this is my home. My wife is here. My kids are here. You know, my, my work is here, you know, buying from Thailand factory partner with Thailand factory selling on Amazon new brand. You know, here in China just had a, an amazing consultation session with Chungdo Amazon company selling company.

[00:36:48] And, but this is where I plan to be. I that’s why I named show global from Asia. Obviously I luckily didn’t call it global from China, although I keep coming back to China, but a little bit about my plans, like I said, in the intro. Still trying to get back to Thailand. You know, I know some people tempt me about Vietnam or tempt me about, you know, Malaysia, but my wife bought a car.

[00:37:12] Okay. So we got a car stuck there and we can’t even sell the car if you don’t have a long-term visa. And even then if you have it, it’s hard to do it if you’re not there. So I don’t wanna say, cause we have a car we’re going back, but partnering with a factory to do a new Amazon brand selling factory direct on Amazon at FBA moving forward.

[00:37:31] We’ll talk about that in next show. The banking solution that we use mercury and the experiences there, but, you know, I just always liked the energy here. And I have an amazing team, mostly in the Philippines. They’re helping make these amazing shows and we are doing, you know, doing a lot of hard work here to build a long-term future.

[00:37:52] My kids are learning Chinese and English, or at least I’m their English teacher, but that’s the, long-term, the long-term plan. So. And I’m enjoying these masterminds. We have the masterminds for Global from Asia, VIP members. And I want to show a little bit. Little clip of that we’ll add that into the, of this video.

[00:38:14] We also have independent parts of that, but I want to show some highlights of what we learned and what we did in the last mastermind, which is members only. And I hope you are interested to join us for future ones. So I think that’s it for this week’s show, I will see you in the next one. We already recorded it.

[00:38:31] It’s going to be in two weeks time with our online banking US without having to go there without having to have a U S citizenship. So, and some strategies, insights, and other other options for you. So I’m really excited to do that one with you next week until next time. Thank you so much. If you’re in our membership, see you at the mastermind.

[00:38:51] If not see you on the podcast in two weeks now, let’s do a recap of last. This past week’s mastermind session, take care. All right, so just, just wrapped up one hour session here. January, 19,20 20, we have nice group. We put together the FBA and dropshippers into one table today. And what we discussed with some inventory financing, some options for people based in Asia, not in the US.

[00:39:19] Companies that I know and others have used or talked about. And then we kind of went into some ways to start. We were talking about different ways of choosing a product and how many products to launch with how to test, how much money it invests in which product I will get some tips from others. And then we wrapped it up where each person said where they’re going to work on until the next

[00:39:40] Two weeks from now. So we’ve got some people kind of trying different markets, trying new products, trying some new tactics and in two weeks, we’ll see how they’ve grown. This is what it’s all about. It’s what we’re trying to do here. The GFAVIP mastermind or membership Global From Asia, great to see some people in, in here.

[00:39:59] Join us. So globalfromasia.com/apply. Application only. Let us know what you’re interested in and hope to see you on the next one. Take care.

[00:40:14] To get more involved in running an international business. Please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.