Years of Poems and Spirits

Read this article about IT/BPO outsourcing to China.

Some quotes, data, info:
The Xian High-Tech Industries Development Zone will eventually span 90 square kilometres at a cost of 100 billion yuan ($12 billion).
($12B! Are you sure??)

The market for BPO, …, should be worth another $24 billion by next year,

China …has just $2 billion of the outsourced-services market, What activity there is happens mostly in Dalian,

India used to be cheaper, but salaries for graduates, engineers and programmers have been climbing fast and staff turnover at IT companies can reach 30-40% a year. China, where an entry-level BPO staffer is paid around $300 a month, … chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s biggest software companies, gave warning in January that India was becoming too expensive … China’s big coastal cities are getting more expensive, but prices inland remain keen. Foreign firms are looking beyond Xian at cities such as Chengdu and Wuhan.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro (all have operations in China) … Yet China is still five to ten years behind India, say most observers.

Theoretically yes, in practice no: lack of vocational training and few links between business and academia … foreign companies in China are spending a small fortune “subsidising China’s education system”

Recent brouhaha around naming of bishops in China, see article on NYT.

Related issues:
Investiture Controversy in Christian history, China’s long tradition of power retention by direct personnel control (direct naming from the court, rules: no soldiers/generals or officials serving home town, etc.)

Conclusion: Vantican, get a life. China is not going to be another Henry IV of HRE. The state is so strong, and unless the underground Catholic community is stronger than we know today, CCP won’t even bother to be Henry Tudor.

Read the article on NYT: Asian Finance Ministers Seek Common Currency

Summary:
Finance ministers from China, Japan and South Korea announced tentative steps on Thursday to coordinate their currencies in ways that could ultimately produce a common regional currency like the euro (by “immediately launch discussions on the road map for the system to coordinate foreign exchange policy,”)

(Given how tenuous the political relations the three countries have, this move is both surprising and unconvincing)

They also pledged to enhance an existing framework to defend regional currencies against speculators and work toward the development of Asian bond markets.

The Asian Development Bank has been pushing the idea of an Asian currency unit, or A.C.U., over the past year … The Asian currency unit initiative is now backed by the so-called Asean Plus 3 grouping.
(economists do the driving, politician steering)

But senior finance officials from Japan and Germany appeared to echo the Chinese view that structural reform, rather than quick-fix currency changes.
(The Japanese should know better, of course)

Thoughts:
Can one have a unified currency without a unifying organization–central bank? There is no talk in the article about this at all, or CB by committee? CB will not function as long as it is still politically linked.