Managing Director, FDI, Cross-Cultural Issues, Healthcare, (all things Southeast Asia, Bourbon, English Literature), Native Ohioan.

Southeast Asia
James Raussen retweeted
残念ながら納得。私はシンガポールで親しくなったフランス人の友人4人いるが、全員フランスに戻りたがらない。ひとりは結婚して日本在住、ひとりは上海に転勤した。ひとりはシンガポールで永住権取ったし、ひとりは一旦帰国したが、海外勤務を探している。私は旅行で何度もフランスを訪れ、機会あれば数年住みたいと考えフランス語学校にまで通ったが、全員に辞めとけと言われた。旅行するのは勝手だが、あの国の一部にはなるな、と。これ読んでようやく納得できた。🥺
我以前在法国最好的大学巴黎政治学院学经济学。以我在法国生活和读书的亲身经历来看,法国今天变成这个样子,我一点都不意外。法国最大的问题就是,所有人都在想着怎么分过去留下来的蛋糕,而不是怎么把未来的蛋糕做大。我在巴黎政治学院读书的时候,最让我震惊的就是,我们经济学课上读的东西,居然大部分不是亚当·斯密,而是马克思! 马克思的理论说白了,就是人类历史是由富人和穷人之间的阶级斗争推动的。富人叫资产阶级Bourgeoisie,穷人叫无产阶级Proletariat。因为资产阶级掌握着生产资料,无产阶级没有,所以只能靠给资本家打工赚钱。这两个阶级的利益天生就是对立的。 但这套理论最大的问题,就是它假设生产资料是固定的,新的生产资料不能被创造出来。很多法国人被这套思想洗脑了,觉得如果自己是穷人,想过上好日子,唯一的办法就是把富人干掉。当年法国国王路易十六就是这么被送上断头台的,今天法国发生的事情,本质上也差不多。你看这个视频,一群野蛮人直接冲进一个年轻女孩开的店,把店砸了,再把里面的商品全部抢走。 马克思错就错在,在资本主义社会里,只要你愿意承担风险,就有机会创造出原本根本不存在的财富。而且你创造财富的同时,整个社会的生活水平也可以跟着提高。但要做到这一点,大家就得想着怎么去创造未来,而不是整天争抢过去的东西。 法国其实跟印度一样,有很多非常聪明、非常努力的人。问题是,这些聪明又肯干的法国年轻人,根本看不到自己国家有什么未来,所以最后一个个都跑去美国了。我认识的大部分法国朋友,宁愿死都不想回法国,因为那个地方真的太让人压抑了。 你随便哪天去巴黎街上走一圈,就能看到一群法国年轻人站在路边,一只手拿着烟,另一只手端着红酒。这些人对自己的人生根本没什么追求,也不想着去创造什么价值,每天就是混日子,慢慢烂下去。法国这种根深蒂固的问题,我觉得至少还得花一百年才能解决。
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James Raussen retweeted
#AmazingChina. Made in Chyna🤪👇
The Chinese stated-owned Huawei Zunjie V800, an ultra-luxury, flagship multi-purpose vehicle, is facing intense safety scrutiny following a triple safety test failure. In emergency braking tests, the vehicle's structural brake pedal brackets physically ...
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James Raussen retweeted
One of the most toxic fallouts from the Trump years is this reflexive need a lot of people have to automatically side with anyone going up against him. Mark Carney is banking on that and exploiting it hard. He knows the press will paint Trump as the irresponsible, blustery provocateur in the collapsing Canada-US trade talks, so by going all-out against Trump he scores easy political points.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The truth of the matter is that the playing field has been uneven and unfair between Canada and the US for decades. Canada imposes lofty tariffs - sometimes nearly 300% - on American cheese and milk once a tiny quota is filled, and they even give the Europeans better access than they give the Americans. Provinces yanked American wine and spirits off the shelves in government liquor stores. They hit US cars with extra tariffs and quotas. Softwood lumber has been a long-running game too. But the biggest problem is the Chinese back-door scam: steel, auto parts, and EVs from China get lightly processed or just relabeled in Canada, then shipped into America under USMCA rules so they dodge the tariffs Trump put on Beijing. That lets China keep flooding the North American market, undercutting American (and Canadian) workers, and basically laundering its way around the sanctions and trade barriers meant to stop its cheating. The Trump admin wants to end the free ride and make Canada shut down the transshipment loophole that China is exploiting. Carney walking away from a near-done deal and playing the victim just keeps Canada in bed with Beijing while American (and Canadian) workers pay the price.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ And he’s hoping you don’t look beyond the headlines and find out the truth
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Does anyone have any idea whatever happened to the author? It’s almost as if he vanished.
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James Raussen retweeted
Several people have asked my why I no longer post about and discuss China's monthly economic data releases. The answer is because there are only a limited number of ways I can make the same set of comments: a) industrial production grew, but less than expected, b) retail sales grew by even less, thus worsening the domestic imbalances further, c) it is increasingly hard to find investment opportunities, even as Beijing cannot allow investment growth to decelerate, d) in order to prevent GDP growth from slowing to politically unacceptable levels, debt continues to grow at the fastest pace of any country in history, and e) the trade surplus was unexpectedly large this month. reuters.com/world/china/chin…
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James Raussen retweeted
Thailand has subsidised Chinese EVs with taxpayers’ money for years, dating back to the Prayut dictatorship. And what has Thailand got in return? A costly bill, while Thailand risks becoming a dumping ground for cheap EVs. Even automotive giant Toyota is now having to seriously reconsider whether to move its major production base in Thailand to Indonesia or elsewhere. Those who want to buy EVs should be free to do so. But stop using taxpayers’ money to subsidise an industry in which Thailand risks becoming merely a “screw-tightening” and “glue-applying” production base, while the technology, value creation and key decisions remain elsewhere. Enough with this costly mistake. #Thailand #China #ThaiChina #EV #Toyota #ไทยจีน #จีน #อีวี #โตโยต้า
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Beautiful new airport in Phnom Penh, but much bigger than necessary, and not even 50% utilized. Not only that, but every business owner, physician, and restauranteur I met has told me that economic activity and tourism feels like it’s cut in half from last year. Amazing the impact of scam centres.
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James Raussen retweeted
A year on from when we told Laos officials about illegal wildlife shops in Laos catering exclusively to Chinese nationals on package tours, we found these shops have expanded. Ivory, rhino horn & pangolin sales cont. to grow in Vientiane and Luang Prabang news.mongabay.com/2026/07/la…
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Apple is Apple for a reason…
Apple just sued OpenAI, and the wildest part is how they got caught: one candidate screenshotted confidential Apple files on his Apple work laptop hours before his OpenAI interview. Apple reads its own server logs. The recruiting pipeline generated its own evidence trail. The complaint says OpenAI's hardware chief Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran, directed candidates still employed at Apple to bring "actual parts" (batteries, logic boards) to interviews for show and tell sessions. One candidate was surprised, saying he didn't even know you could take those out of the office. Apple also alleges Tan circulated an internal Apple offboarding document to coach new hires on dodging exit security checks, and that a departing engineer kept his Apple laptop, found a bug that still gave him access to Apple's cloud storage, and downloaded dozens of confidential hardware files after joining OpenAI. Then the supplier: OpenAI allegedly got one of Apple's manufacturing partners to demonstrate a proprietary metal finishing technique by letting the partner believe Apple had approved it. Over 400 former Apple employees now work at OpenAI. Apple says it flagged all of this to OpenAI in February and never got a response. Five months later, it filed. The ask reveals the strategy. Apple wants an injunction barring OpenAI from using the secrets, the return of every file, and full discovery into io, right as OpenAI preps its first device launch and an IPO. If a judge grants it, OpenAI may have to prove the device was built clean, component by component, before it ships. The device was supposed to run on the world's best hardware talent. Now its bill of materials is evidence.
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James Raussen retweeted
America innovates China replicates Europe regulates
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James Raussen retweeted
After American forces in the Philippines surrendered to Japan in April 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army ordered Toyota to reverse-engineer an American Bantam GP (precursor to the Willys Jeep), resulting in a prototype called the AK10 in 1942. This initial reverse-engineered AK10 would later be the foundation for the 1951 Toyota Land Cruiser. Toyota re-engineered the vehicle to be more reliable, fuel-efficient, and easier to work on. This model is credited with significantly eroding Land Rover's market share in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. As of 2026, Toyota has sold over 10 million Land Cruisers compared to 5 million Jeep Wranglers. Land Rover sales in the last 60 years are roughly 5 million as well. It's not about who made it first; it's about who can make it best.
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Fantastic assessment makes one think
Alex Karp just described how America identifies its most valuable minds and systematically filters them out. The system isn’t broken. It’s performing exactly as designed. Built to produce compliant industrial labor for an economy that no longer exists. The factories closed. The compliance engine never did. Karp: “All of our tests are built around things that were valuable in the Industrial Revolution.” Every test. Every metric. Every benchmark. Calibrated to measure one thing. Obedience. Not cognition. Not creativity. Not the ability to build something from nothing. The ability to sit still and repeat what you’re told. The minds the system punishes hardest are the ones the future needs most. Karp: “Everybody who can’t sit or needs to build or wants to build have to go into a separate slot.” The neurodivergent. The dyslexic. The kid who can’t stop moving but can reverse-engineer anything they touch. The system doesn’t overlook them. It identifies them, labels them defective, and routes them out. That’s not a failure of detection. That’s the detection working perfectly. The system locates its biggest threats and neutralizes them before they ever reach a launchpad. Karp: “Vocational training in Germany is very technical. The people building the cars at BMW or even in the French version Airbus, very complicated jobs, they didn’t go to college. They went to a very, very high-end high school. And they come out without any debt.” Germany routes elite technical talent straight into building jet engines and precision machinery. No university. No debt. Immediate sovereign output. America runs that same talent through four years of institutional processing and hands them a credential, six figures of debt, and a skill set an LLM absorbs before the decade ends. One system builds. The other processes. And processing is not building. Karp: “We should have gotten you before you got turned down at Goldman and said this is a waste of your time. You could be building something important.” Instead of handing builders something real, the system funnels them toward desk jobs they’ll be rejected from anyway. Then asks why nothing gets built. The AI race won’t be decided by credentials on a wall. It’ll be decided by one question. Which nation found its builders before the system finished converting them into something replaceable? Because the system doesn’t miss them by accident. It finds them first. Then it eliminates them. That’s not a flaw in the design. That is the design. But here’s what it never accounted for. The builders it discards are the only ones who can build what replaces it.
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I understand Vietnam better than most Asian countries. Given the recent increase in law enforcement activity, this is an unfavorable environment for certain subversive or illegal activities, and those involved should carefully reassess their options. The current executive leadership includes many former security officials and law enforcement leaders. As a result, the government’s immediate priority appears to be enforcement and maintaining public order, even if that comes at the expense of short-term economic growth.
83 Chinese Scam Workers Crossed From Cambodia and Set Up Inside a Ho Chi Minh City Hotel Eighty-three Chinese nationals had booked out every room of the Emerald Gold, a hotel in Ho Chi Minh City's Binh Duong ward, and filled it with hundreds of computers and phones. Police say the whole setup was assembled and installed but had not gone live yet when officers came through the door on June 8. Most of the group crossed into Vietnam illegally from Cambodia, according to the city police, and were building what they intended as a base to defraud victims back in China. The raid was part of a 45-day enforcement drive under which 22 task forces checked 420 sites across the city. Alongside the hotel group, officers flagged nearly 300 other foreigners for illegal entry, unlicensed work, gambling, and online fraud, and found 84 properties that had failed to register foreign guests at all. Police warned that landlords who knowingly house undocumented foreigners can be charged under Article 348 of the penal code, which carries up to 15 years.
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James Raussen retweeted
Thai Troops Reinforce Tak Border After Myanmar Fighting Spills Into Thailand Thai troops reinforced the border in Mae Sot, Tak, after bullets from fighting in Myanmar hit three homes and a mortar round landed on another property in Thailand. The clashes involved Myanmar government troops and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), backed by allied People’s Defence Forces (PDF), near Min La Pan village in Myawaddy, opposite Huai Maha Wong village. Residents sheltered overnight as fighting continued. No casualties were reported in the Thai village. The Naresuan Task Force deployed additional troops and armed Humvees and said Thai forces were prepared to respond with warning fire and escalate if further rounds entered Thai territory. #Thailand #Myanmar
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The story and summary is not new, but it’s new for this generation and for Europeans. Originally in Spanish, I consider this thoughtful progress.
El milagro chino no fue un milagro. Fue lo qu pasa cuando un gobierno deja de impedir que la gente cree riqueza. Deng Xiaoping no construyó Shenzhen. Simplemente dejó de bloquearla. Durante casi tres décadas China vivió bajo planificación central total. El resultado fue el Gran Salto Adelante y una hambruna que mató a decenas de millones de personas. El mismo país y la misma gente que años después harían temblar a la economía mundial, y ahí, miseria absoluta. En diciembre de 1978, en ekl Tercer Pleno del Partido, Deng admitió lo qu e ningún marxista quiere admitir. Que el plan no funcionaba. Y entonces hizo algo que se parece bastante a un experimento de laboratorio. En 1980 el gobierno cercó cuatro pedazos de costa y los llamó zonas económicas especiales. Shenzhen, Zhuhai y Shantou en agosto, Xiamen en octubre. Adentro de esas zonas se permitió lo que afuera seguía prohibido. Propiedad privada, inversión extranjera, precios que se movían solos y ganancias que uno se podía quedar. Afuera, nada de eso cambió. La misma gente que un kilómetro más allá seguía siendo pobre. La misma cultura y la misma tierra. La única variable que se modificó fue el grado de libertad de mercado. Y ahí apareció la riqueza. Exactamente ahí. Shenzhen en 1980 era un puñado de aldeas fronterizas con 332.900 habitantes. Su PBI era de 2.700 millones de yuanes, apenas un 0,2% del de Hong Kong. Cuatro décadas después tiene casi 18 millones de habitantes y un PBI de más de 3,4 billones de yuanes. En 2018 superó a Hong Kong, la ciudad de la que había copiado todo. Entre 1980 y 1984 creció a un ritmo cercano al 58% anual. Ninguna política redistributiva produce números así, porque redistribuir no crea nada, solo mueve lo que ya existe. Lo de Shenzhen no fue una inyección mágica de capital del Estado. Fue la confirmación de algo que Mises había demostrado en 1920, sentado en un escritorio de Viena, sin ver jamás a China. Sin propiedad privada sobre los medios de producción no hay precios reales. Sin precios reales no hay forma de calcular qué es rentable y qué es puro desperdicio. Y sin ese cálculo la economía entera se maneja a ciegas. Eso fue la China de Mao. Producía y producía sin saber si estaba creando o destruyendo, porque le faltaba la brújula. La brújula son los precios. La zona económica especial es, en el fondo, un cerco donde el Estado aceptó dejar de calcular con criterio político y dejó que la gente calculara con criterio económico. Apenas volvieron los precios, volvió la coordinación. Y con la coordinación, la abundancia. Ahora seamos precisos, porque acá es donde muchos se entusiasman de más. China nunca se volvió libre. Sigue siendo un régimen autoritario con un aparato estatal descomunal. Pero eso no debilita el argumento, lo vuelve más filoso. China no prosperó parejo en todo su territorio. Prosperó exactamente en la medida y en el lugar donde aflojó el socialismo. Más mercado, más riqueza. Menos mercado, la vieja miseria de siempre. Y si querés el grupo de control del experimento, mirá del otro lado de la frontera coreana. El mismo pueblo, partido en dos en 1945. El sur abrió mercados y hoy es una potencia industrial. El norte mantuvo la planificación entera y todavía produce hambrunas con los mismos recursos y la misma sangre. No hay excusa cultural, geográfica ni racial que explique el abismo. Cambia una sola cosa, y esa cosa lo cambia todo. Deng lo resumió con una frase de campo que vale más que veinte tratados. No importa si el gato es blanco o negro mientras cace ratones. El mercado cazó los ratones que la planificación había dejado morir de hambre. China no descubrió una tercera vía ni un socialismo con características especiales. Descubrió que el mercado que había prohibido era lo único que alguna vez generó riqueza. Creció exactamente hasta donde dejó de obedecer a Marx. Hoy muchos usan el caso chino al revés. Te lo venden como prueba de que un Estado fuerte planifica la prosperidad. Es al revés. China creció cuando el Estado se corrió, y se frena ahora que el Estado vuelve. Bajo Xi el péndulo se dio vuelta. Volvieron a asignar el capital con criterio político y no con precios. El resultado es sobrecapacidad, bancos prestando a pérdida y una burbuja inmobiliaria que estalló con Evergrande. Eso no es prosperidad planificada, solo es un consumo de capital con contabilidad de propaganda como hacen siempre. La misma ley que hizo rica a Shenzhen está corriendo en reversa.
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James Raussen retweeted
There are many Chinese books talking about the downfall, decline or collapse of America, so someone in China used Chinese AI "豆包" to find the info of those authors. The results are embarrassing: two were died, one went Mexico, all others immigrated to USA.
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James Raussen retweeted
A European tourist’s post showing a 700-baht breakfast in Koh #Samui has gone viral, sparking debate over food prices in southern Thailand’s tourist areas.
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James Raussen retweeted
Chinese people are trolling Europeans by posting videos on social media showing that even their pigs have air conditioning, while many Europeans can’t because of government rules.
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