US

"My father was born in Sichuan and lived in Taiwan during his later years. He never forgot his love for his motherland. Whether he was buried in writing books about China early in life or expressing the wish for me to return home while living with me in the US in his later years, I could profoundly feel the deep emotions in his heart. Before he passed away, my father told me by his bedside that he dreamed of picking up a piece of white paper from the water, which had the words “Love for China” written on it. My father’s love for China shook me and gave me the courage and determination to choose."

"As Andy Warhol said of Coca Cola: “The great thing about Coke is that the president of the US drinks the same Coke as the bum on the street.”"

"“Immigrating is an entrepreneurial act,” Sacks explained. “You take an affirmative step to leave your country, and you frequently leave everything behind. That’s the ultimate entrepreneurial act. So it’s not surprising that when people get to the US, they continue…"

"China’s first interprovincial expressway opened in 1993, connecting Beijing with the nearby port city of Tianjin. Soon enough, highways reached everywhere. A Chinese citizen born when the country completed its first expressway would—by the time she reached the legal driving age of eighteen in 2011—be able to drive on a highway system that surpassed the length of the US interstate system. By 2020, [China had built a second batch of expressways](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor299) that again totaled the length of the US system. The first expanse of highways took eighteen years to build; the second took half that time."

"American manufacturers spent the better part of three decades unwinding its stock of process knowledge when it opened so many factories in China. Every US factory closure represents a likely permanent loss of production skill and knowledge. Line workers, machinists, and product designers are thrown out of work; then their suppliers and technical advisers struggle as well. Entire American communities of engineering practice have dissolved, leaving behind a region known as the Rust Belt. Some mayors and governors tried to stem this receding tide. But they were continuously scorned by economists and executives, who sought low-wage production in the name of globalization. Still today, many American economists doubt there is anything special about manufacturing and put their faith in the inevitable march to a service economy."

"American administrations have complained about a host of China’s trade practices: forced technology transfers; currency manipulation that keeps exports cheap; subsidies and generous credit terms for local firms, sometimes funding their expansion overseas; and, worst of all, unauthorized cyber intrusions, or the state-directed hacking to steal US trade secrets. Overall, they create an environment for foreign businesses that is often unfair and sometimes baffling."

"Our parent company would be based in Holland because of that country’s attractive tax environment. An Irish company would hold boo’s intellectual property rights, while a string of companies in France, Germany, Sweden, the US and Britain would hold our assets in each of those countries. Patrik loved this sort of work, but Kajsa"

"In contrast, McDonald's, just twelve years ago from the US across the ocean, "landed" in Japan, overthrew traditional food, and dominated the food industry. So, what does McDonald's rely on? My explanation is that the world's food industry trend is moving towards hamburgers, and I was able to accurately catch the trend and succeed. Conversely, resisting the trend would mean inevitable failure. Stay slightly ahead of the trend"

"However, things are different now. In five years, only 12% of the internet population will be Americans, whereas 50% will be Asians. The number of internet users in China has already surpassed those in the US."

"He thinks New Zealanders’ aversion to the sharemarket goes back to the 1987 crash, which was for New Zealand like the global financial crisis of 2008–09 was for the US and Europe. ‘The GFC brought America and Europe to their knees whereas in New Zealand, partly because of good economic management by the government at the time and partly because we had already made structural changes to our economy after the ’87 crash, we fared better than most.’ For New Zealanders, he thinks the psychological effect of the crash was so severe that it reminded him of people in the post-war era who were so traumatised by what they had been through that they vowed to never buy a Japanese-made camera or car. ‘I think there are people who were so badly affected by the crash that they vowed never again to invest in shares. Thirty years later the psychological effects are still there, though a new generation who did not personally suffer might now be more open to the idea.’"

"He is approached regularly by people seeking donations and while he has given generously to some, it has been on a case-by-case basis. He is a supporter of Auckland City Mission because his family are Aucklanders and he likes the mission’s work with the city’s most disadvantaged. But he accepts that his children may prefer different causes when they inherit. Heatley’s name is not associated with philanthropy and his most notable attempt at it, establishing the First Tee programme in New Zealand in 2005 to use the teaching of golf to help underprivileged children, never generated sufficient impetus to become self-sustaining. Its demise disappoints him because he says the programme, which originated in the US and is supported by the golf establishment there, uses the best attributes of golf, including honesty and perseverance, to teach life skills."

"He was not shy to recognise and copy an innovative idea, but he would always find a way to make it better and bigger – and, therefore, completely his own. This was a man who transformed, even invented, the modern hospitality industry in South Africa and went on to build the largest casino resort in the US, the most successful beach resort in the western hemisphere and the most opulent hotel in the Middle East. Sol was indeed the Sun King."

"What was real, however, was the opportunity to establish a chain of resorts of the same quality as Southern Sun somewhere else in the world. The financial performance of the company over its first five years had been outstanding, achieving well over 20% annual compound growth in profits. In the days before the digital era, this rate of growth was unheard of, and it had attracted the attention of investors both in South Africa and abroad. The time was right, it seemed to Sol and Dick Goss, to take Southern Sun abroad. Dick favoured Europe, but Sol had his eye on a bigger prize: the US."

"How was Sun City able to afford such lavish paycheques for artists and sportsmen? The answer lies in something which I had discovered in the US when negotiating payments to boxers: the US Internal Revenue Service would not recognise tax credits from Bophuthatswana. In their eyes Bop did not exist, as it was part of South Africa, so a Bop tax credit would be treated in the US as a South African tax credit and, according to a tax treaty between the US and South Africa, any tax paid in Bop could be deducted from an individual US taxpayer’s account."

"What in fact happened was a typical macroeconomic event in the form of Covid-19. The financial and economic effects for business were artificially prolonged by the zero per cent interest ‘rescue policies’ of the US and European central banks. I learned from my experience in Iceland, when I had waited too long for the tide to turn, to cut my losses and not leave any loose ends. So in Latin America I decided to make a clean break to fully focus on new markets and opportunities without any distractions from previous operations."

"Another similarity is the oligarchies that had emerged in pre-crash Russia and in Iceland. I would estimate that in 2008 about 30 people controlled Iceland’s economy, out of a total population of 300,000. That is one in 10,000: not an excessive concentration of power compared with, say, the US or the UK, but the extent of what Iceland’s political and financial oligarchs controlled was, as with their counterparts in Russia, disproportionate, which in such a small country created a huge imbalance."

"Coming from the US, where everyone greeted me sweetly and asked how I was, it was a shock to arrive in Russia. If you asked a Russian how he was, you were likely to get the answer: ‘Better today than tomorrow.’ The Russians were a pessimistic bunch, used to hearing about grand three- or five-year plans without ever seeing anything getting better. So maybe it’s harsh to say that they were pessimists; perhaps they were just well-informed optimists."