Another CEO Makes Dire Predictions About America’s Future

Scary warnings about the future of the American economy are becoming rather commonplace. Everyone from Nobel Prize-winning economists to business leaders and politicians are throwing in their two cents, and they all have pretty much the same thing to say: that the economy is bound for some unprecedented friction, due to income inequality, the expansion of technology, and automation of jobs.

The question is how to fix it. So far, there’s been a lot of lip service but not much in terms of actual progress made in addressing the predicted scenarios. And now, a prominent business leader has come into the conversation, having formulated a rather startling and worrisome hypothesis that a huge chunk of American businesses, 40%, to be exact, will go under within the next decade.

“Forty percent of businesses in this room, unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years,” said outgoing Cisco CEO John Chambers, at the company’s consumer conference, as Business Insider reported. “It will become a digital world that will change our life, our health, our education, our business models at the pace of a technology company change.”

“If I’m not making you sweat, I should be,” he added.

Chambers’ warnings come as he described to the audience how he believes that America’s businesses will, for the most part, be unsuccessful in trying to go digital. Basically, Chambers is one of many CEOs that sees the writing on the wall — with the advent of the Internet and the explosive growth of technology, the old ways of doing business, no matter what industry, are being targeted for extinction. For example, look at what Uber has done to transportation, or what the new slate of mobile payment apps are doing to banking. Industries that seemed impermeable ten years ago are in the crosshairs for a new generation of entrepreneurs, and nobody is totally safe.

What we’re really talking about here is that the economy has undergone some dramatic shifts. For a long time, there were several big corporations that effectively ruled the roost in American business, and those are being supplanted or overtaken by new ones. A few decades ago, General Electric, GM, and a small host of other companies were the defacto leaders of the economy. Today, companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple are all taking over, and using their huge stores of capital to disrupt other industries, like the automotive sector.

These big companies are warning everyone about the coming onslaught of creative destruction, which will have entrepreneurs finding ways to exploit weaknesses in any conceivable business structure that they can. Even big companies like Apple, as a recent Slate article pointed out, are merely rehashing ideas from other companies and putting their logo on it.

Since they have the resources to do that, and to successfully snuff out those other companies, a lot of small and mid-size businesses are destined to go down. Either they go down, or they get swallowed up, which is something we’re seeing in the technology sector. Companies like Google and Facebook have been gobbling up smaller companies before they can get a real foothold in the market at an extremely fast rate. That strategy serves a couple of functions — it smothers would-be competition before it has the chance to become a threat, and it folds new talent, ideas, and products into the existing amalgam.

This is exactly why Facebook went out and purchased WhatsApp, and Instagram. They expand their own capabilities, while taking out potential competition at the same time.

This is what’s at the heart of the warnings being passed down by people like Cisco’s outgoing CEO. We may not actually see business die, and jobs disappear (although that will occur to some extent, in all likelihood). We will, however, probably see a lot of business sectors become more concentrated. Just take a look at the telecom industry — there’s a new merger announced among cable, Internet, and telephone service providers seemingly every day.

Of course, whether Chambers’ predictions come to fruition is anyone’s guess. New startups and business models are being thought up every day, and any number of them can turn the business world on its head. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned, to be sure. But things rarely play out according to plan.

Follow Sam on Twitter @SliceOfGinger

Understanding Kim Jong Un

Everyone knows that North Korea’s leader is a bloodthirsty madman and buffoon—or is he really? Mark Bowden digs into the hard facts for an unusual portrait.

BY 

• MARK BOWDEN

Does anyone make an easier target than Kim Jong Un? He’s Fatboy Kim the Third, the North Korean tyrant with a Fred Flintstone haircut—the grinning, chain-smoking owner of his own small nuclear arsenal, brutal warden to about 120,000 political prisoners, and effectively one of the last pure hereditary absolute monarchs on the planet. He is the Marshal of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Great Successor, and the Sun of the 21st Century. At age 32 the Supreme Leader owns the longest list of excessive honorifics anywhere, every one of them unearned. He is the youngest head of state in the world and probably the most spoiled. On the great grade-school playground of foreign affairs, he might as well be wearing across his broad bottom a big KICK ME sign. Kim is so easy to kick that the United Nations, which famously agrees on nothing, voted overwhelmingly in November to recommend that he and the rest of North Korea’s leadership be hauled before the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, and tried for crimes against humanity. He has been in power for a little more than three years.

In the world press, Kim is a bloodthirsty madman and buffoon. He is said to be a drunk, to have become so obese gorging on Swiss cheese that he can no longer see his genitals, and to have resorted to bizarre remedies for impotence, such as a distillation from snake venom. He is said to have had his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and the entire Jang family mowed down by heavy machine guns (or possibly exterminated with mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades, or flamethrowers), or to have had them fed live to ravenous dogs. He is reported to have a yen for bondage porn and to have ordered all young men in his country to adopt his peculiar hairstyle. It is said that he has had former girlfriends executed.

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All of the above is untrue—or, perhaps safer to say, unfounded. The Jang-fed-to-dogs story was actually invented by a Chinese satirical newspaper, as a joke, before it began racing around the world as a viral version of truth. (And to be sure, he did send Uncle Jang to his death.) It says something about Kim that people will believe almost anything, the more outrageous the better. In light of this, is it worth considering that the conventional take on Kim Jong Un does not come close to providing an accurate picture?

What if, despite the well-documented horrors of the Stalinist regime he inherited in 2011, while still in his 20s, Kim has ambitions at home that one might be tempted to describe—within carefully defined limits—as well intentioned? What if, against terrific odds, he hopes to improve the lives of his subjects and alter North Korea’s relationship with the rest of the world?

There is no shortage of evidence to the contrary—evidence, namely, that Kim is little more than a bad, and erratic, approximation of his canny father. Kim has continued his father’s military-first policies: the same saber rattling and shrill denunciations come screaming out of Pyongyang, the same emphasis on building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, the same unabashed political oppression. For years, North Korea has engaged in what experts in Washington have called “a provocation cycle”—ramping up provocative behavior, such as launching missiles or conducting nuclear tests, followed by charm offensives and offers to begin a dialogue. Under Kim Jong Un, the provocation cycle continues to spin dangerously. When Sony Pictures suffered a damaging and embarrassing breach of its internal computer network weeks before the scheduled December release of the comedy The Interview, little prompting was needed before fingers started pointing at Pyongyang. In the movie, Seth Rogen and James Franco play Americans who land an interview with Kim and then are enlisted by the C.I.A. to try to assassinate him. Earlier, in June, North Korea had promised to unleash a “merciless countermeasure” should the film be shown.

Whatever his true character, Kim faces a problem peculiar to dictators. His power in North Korea is so great that not only does no one dare criticize him, no one dares advise him. If you are too closely associated with the king, your head might someday share the same chopping block. Safer to adopt a “Yes, Marshal” approach. That way, if the king stumbles, you are simply among the countless legion who were obliged to obey his orders. One way to read the confusing signals from Pyongyang in recent years is that they show Kim, isolated and inexperienced, clumsily pulling at the levers of state.

Kim is, in fact, playing a deadly game, says Andrei Lankov, a Russian expert on Korea who attended Kim Il Sung University, in Pyongyang, in 1984 and 1985, and now teaches at Kookmin University, in Seoul. “He has had a spoiled, privileged childhood, not that different than the children of some Western billionaires, for whom the worst thing that can happen is that you will be arrested while driving under the influence. For Kim, the worst that can actually happen is to be tortured to death by a lynch mob. Easily. But he doesn’t understand. His parents understood it. They knew it was a deadly game. I’m not sure whether Kim fully understands it.”

RUNNING WITH THE BULLS

We’re not even sure how old he is. Kim was born on January 8 in 1982, 1983, or 1984. To tidy up their historical narrative, Pyongyang’s propagandists have placed his birthday in 1982. The original Kim, the current leader’s grandfather and national founder, Kim Il Sung, for whom universal reverence is mandatory, was born in 1912. As the story goes, in 1942 his son and heir, Kim Jong Il, came along; for this second Kim, a slightly lesser wattage of reverence is mandatory. In truth, Kim II was born in 1941, but in North Korea myth trumps fact to an even greater extent than elsewhere, and numeric symmetry hints at destiny, like a divine wink. That is why 1982 was seen to be an auspicious year for the birth of Kim III. For reasons of their own, South Korean intelligence agencies, which have a long history of being wrong about their northern cousins, have placed his birthday in the Orwellian year 1984. Kim himself, who occasionally shows magisterial disdain for the slavish adulation of his underlings, has said that he was born in 1983—this according to the American statesman, rebounder, and cross-dresser Dennis Rodman, who had been drinking heavily when he met Kim, in 2014 (and who shortly afterward went into rehab). Whichever date is correct, the Sun of the 21st Century has walked among us for three decades.

The world isn't going to do shit! Sanctions? Limit his EBT card

Innovation in a Rapidly Changing World

The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace. There may have been times in history when the current rate of change was matched, for example the industrial revolution in the UK in the 19^th century, when the balance of society changed from agriculture to industry in the space of a couple of generations. But it could certainly be argued that we are in a phase where so many markets are changing so fast, that the companies competing in them must seriously innovate or die.

Some industries like mobile telephones change almost quarterly. The old “floor area” approach to retail is in rapid decline, as shown by the recent demise in the UK of Blockbusters and HMV, also influenced by the rise of “showrooming” as pointed out by Tom Fishburne. Of course there are some markets that experience relatively little change, even ones we will all use, like the funeral industry. But many other examples give the impression of an increasing pace of change, so it’s no wonder corporate leaders are experiencing Innovation Vertigo, as described by Paul Hobcraft.

Even the relatively slow creep of demographic change and its impact on economies can influence business in many different ways. A single statistic I read recently underlined this well – the number of adult diapers (nappies) in Japan sold in 2012 is likely to be higher than the infant version. So with the occasional rare exception, an individual company cannot change its part of the world; it must adapt in order to survive (thank you, Darwin).

There are three key principles to consider in positioning a business to be ahead of the competition in this context of rapid change. First, companies should become more agile and able to respond to external change. Second, innovation should be developed to accelerate the pace of market change to your advantage. Third, resources should be deployed where they will make the biggest difference to the new agenda.

There is a fine line to be drawn between embarking on a program of determined, sensible and rapid change; and a panic-stricken call to McKinsey. So in the context of innovation, corporate leaders should start by asking themselves some key questions as a prompt for action:

1. When did you last overhaul your development process? Stages and Gates may be fine in principle, but too many of them means too much time preparing for, and seeking approval. This is time wasted in getting to market fast. You should revisit your processes with the key objective to shorten time to market. Even if you work in a regulated area, like pharmaceuticals, where a lot of timing is out of your hands, it’s the same for everybody in the industry. The objective is to be faster. It’s also important to bear in mind that disruptive lines of business may need different evaluation criteria.

2. Do you feel fully in control of everything that happens in your company?If you do, there’s probably a stifling bureaucracy hindering agility. The feeling of control may help you sleep more easily at night, but in the process will waste inordinate amounts of time while people conform to internal needs at the expense of external opportunities. Give your people more credit to do the right thing and to try new options. Bureaucracy and over-control are the enemies of agility.

3. Are you truly passionate about your company’s products and innovation?It’s not good if all the management time is spent analyzing numbers, whether they be financial or performance-related, at the expense of the heart of the company, which is its customer offering. Steve Jobs is a good example to look at, which may seem paradoxical after question #2 above, but you should blend these two points. Don’t over-control your people, but be passionate about what they produce and drive them to achieve more.

4. Is your innovation portfolio well balanced in the context of the 3 Horizons (or similar)?It’s always easy to let the urgent outweigh the important. In order to anticipate change you need to make preparing to exploit it an important item on the C-suite agenda, then to make it urgent. Your strategic perspective should therefore include a view beyond the here and now, to incorporate technology changes and market disruption.

5. Do your senior managers have the appetite to change?Many managers have an inbuilt preference for turf protection and a fierce defence of existing practice, founded on what has worked in the past. When the world is changing rapidly, a sense of crisis is needed, as shown by Stephen Elop at Nokia. Facing up to major change requires brave leadership, and it may also require the replacement of some change-resistant managers.

6. When did you last place a “Little Bet”?Is all your innovation geared to today and focused on what you already know? How many initiatives do you have that are “different” to today’s business, and could form the foundation for entirely new lines of revenue? How many of these “little bets” have you placed? It’s probably time to move some resource to planning a different future.

7. How much do you rely on today’s customer paradigms? Don’t frame all your innovation in the context of what your customers do today. They can only feedback on what they already know; inevitably your research report is a historical document. You need the ambidextrous approach of looking after today’s business at the same time as working on disruptive opportunities for the future. So, how can you anticipate or even induce change in customer habits and needs to your advantage.

- See more at: http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2013/01/31/innovation-in-a-rapidly-changing-world/#sthash.VzqyPeA3.dpuf

Revisited

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Top 9 Ways to Avoid Looking Like a Gringo in Latin America

I realize there are numerous obvious reasons you can think of that would make someone not want to stick out as an obvious tourist in Latin America–safety (criminals are far more likely to target an obvious tourist), social acceptance, not feeling stupid, simply wanting to blend in by dressing in the local fashion, etc.–but the best reason isn’t any of those, and it’s one that requires a bit of explaining and delves right into the culture of Latin America, and it has to do with poverty…

Normal people dress more formally in Latin America than elsewhere, and the reason for this is that a much, much larger proportion of their population is relatively poor than in wealthier developed nations like the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, and consequently it isn’t, and never has been, considered fashionable to dress down or to dress like you’re poorer than you really are.

No one wants to be mistaken for the lowest lower class (Latin America is also a much more class-centered society), no one wears jeans that are intentionally torn (if your jeans are torn it must be because you’re too poor to afford new ones), no one wears clothes that are baggy and don’t fit (if they don’t fit, it must be because you can’t afford proper clothes that do fit correctly), no one dresses informally because it looks “cool” (because it doesn’t there), etc.

Latin America is an extremely class-conscious society, and the A-number-one way that people communicate to everyone else that they’re respectable, not a criminal, and not a violent delinquent is by dressing as smartly and as nicely as they can possibly afford to.

Even very poor people will still do this, they’ll own just one nice pair of dress pants that they wear every single day and wash and iron every single night if they have to, only the worst of the worst don’t–they’re not being snobs, this isn’t our culture, it’s not the same as if you were to do this here.

When you dress shabbily (shabbily by their standards, normal by ours), you’re associating yourself immediately with some very ‘undesirable’ people that no one else wants to be associated with, people will avoid being seen with you and any friends you might make will not want to be seen out with you but will be too polite to tell you that your dressing habits make you look like a desperate heroin addict.

Please, before you start ranting at me in the comments, understand that I’m not saying you can’t wear what you want, I’m not telling you how to dress, I’m just saying people are going to judge you for it and you really cannot hold that against them since they’re just being normal (you’re in their culture, right?) and you’re the one being weird, I’m just telling you what’s socially acceptable and what’s not and why.

Just as an example of how this can cause problems, having had this same exact experience related to me by several backpackers who have had this happen in several different Latin American countries: you will get turned away at the door at clubs and even bars if you’re wearing sneakers, or shorts, or a t-shirt (without a nice button-up shirt on top of it), and frequently even jeans, and god help you if you’re wearing 3 or 4 of those.

The Top 9 Gringo Giveaways

The following list contains what I’ve found are the most common and obvious things that gringos will tend to do that you would never see a native doing, thereby being the things that are most commonly known by the natives to indicate that someone isn’t from around there (and most of these tend to be associated with the stereotypical white American/Canadian/European tourist).

Follow these tips to avoid looking like a gringo in Latin America:

1. People don’t usually wear just a t-shirt when they go out.

This is something that would be worn around the house after work or perhaps while one was working out or doing some gardening or landscaping at home, though people do wear them underneath a nice button-up shirt, so that’s fine.

2. They don’t wear sneakers unless they’re going running or they’re doing (or on their way to do) some sort of physical or athletic activity that requires them.

And even then, many people would wear their normal clothes on the way over while bringing their running/sports clothes with them that they’ll change into when they get there.

Also, white socks are only worn with sneakers, never with normal dress shoes that people wear day-to-day.

3. They would never wear a tracksuit, exercise shorts, or exercise pants unless they were actually exercising.

Even going to and from the gym they’d wear something nicer and bring their workout clothes back and forth with them and change at the gym (which would almost certainly involve a shower post-workout prior to changing back into their nice clothes).

4. Fanny packs.

No. Never. Not ever. This makes you a walking target as far as muggers are concerned, and with there being plenty of other less obtrusive options such as money belts, backpacks (student-style backpack that is: students are poor, they have no money, don’t bother robbing them, you know?), briefcases/man-purses, etc. there just isn’t a good reason to have one.

5. Generally dressing like a hippy.

You already know if this applies to you: looking like you just rolled out of Woodstock is fine in most places in the U.S., and fine with me personally by the way (I have a bit of a soft spot for hippie chicks, I think they’re cute especially when they have dreadlocks), I have nothing against them, but the problem with it is that Latin Americans will perceive you as dirty, in a heroin-addict-who-might-just-stab-you sort of way.

Sorry, but you’ll get significantly better treatment and service if you take note of the fact that the locals will frequently be dressed in nice trousers/skirts and a starched button-up shirt even in sweltering heat and do what you can to blend in.

6. Very skimpy clothing.

Make no mistake, the women will certainly go to great lengths to show off their “assets” sometimes, especially if they’re going out clubbing or something, and plenty of them are frequently sporting a very respectable amount of cleavage (I’m looking at you, Medellín), but what you won’t ever see is really revealing stuff like shorts that are so short your ass is practically hanging out, a top so small that it’s essentially a bra, itty-bitty mini-skirts (again, with your ass practically hanging out), etc.

This is especially a no-no in a church, and this is one complaint I’ve heard from locals where the reaction goes from “oh that’s slutty”, which is how they would normally see it, to “that’s really f*ing offensive, someone should throw her out”. Be careful what you wear to churches, if you don’t normally bother please just this once make the effort to wear something nice, it’s really a big deal (this isn’t a religion thing–I’m agnostic–it’s a respect thing because it’s their culture you’re in).

7. Cargo pants.

Nope, they don’t do them, they never caught on down there and consequently no one wears them, it’ll immediately peg you as a gringo (whether that’s good or bad or irrelevant is entirely up to you by the way).

8. Flip-flops and sandals.

Sorry girls, outside of the beach or at the swimming pool, they’re never worn and are considered far too casual for everyday wear (kind of like walking around in bedroom slippers here). For guys, this includes sandals, with socks or without, doesn’t matter.

9. I’ve saved the worst offender for last: the men do not wear shorts. Ever.

This is the stereotypical gringo thing to do, it’s the one that everyone jokes about. Exceptions: working out, the beach, walking around the house, swimming pool.

That’s it. I honestly hopes this helps you, and please keep in mind the above list is not some strict “don’t do this unless you’re a jerk” type of thing, it’s just meant to be informative so that you can use it to help youmake a decision about what to wear and when, that’s all.

This is really meant to be only for the people who would actually be concerned about this in the first place, if you’re not really worried about blending in then don’t worry about it, I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with that and even then this should still help you so that you understand part of the culture you’ll be interacting in.

***This does not apply to Black folks.

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The 12 hottest tech products expected in 2016

We had plenty to get excited about in 2015 with the introduction of nifty new tech toys such as the Apple Watch and the Amazon Echo. 

But 2016 is shaping up to be a big year for tech launches too. Virtual reality, drone and robotic technology, and new smartphone innovations are all under development at big players like Apple and Google, as well as at smaller startup companies. 

 Here are some of the top products on our radar for next year:

Facebook's Oculus Rift will kick off the virtual reality revolution.

For gamers and sci-fi lovers, the long awaited moment will arrive in Q1 of 2016 when Facebook-owned Oculus finally ships the Rift virtual reality headset. The Rift is the product with the best chance of bringing virtual reality to the masses, which explains why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was willing to pay $2 billion to buy the company in 2014. The headset must be paired with a heavy-duty PC to work its magic, and the final price of the Rift is still unknown, but people who have tried prototypes have been blown away by the experience.

Apple could release a small iPhone for people who liked the old iPhone's size better.

Not everyone wants a giant screen. The rumored Apple iPhone 6c could offer something smaller, and cheaper. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the mini iPhone would feature a 4-inch screen and the same A9 processor that’s currently in the iPhone 6s, though it might not include support for 3D Touch. The iPhone Mini could be unveiled in March, according to many reports.

Google Project Ara would let you snap components onto your phone like Legos.

Imagine being able to snap on components to your phone as easily as playing with Lego toys. That's the promise of Google's Project Ara, which aims to let you customize your device by adding pieces like a better camera, extra memory, and even special sensors to do things like test if drinking water is clean. Making this a reality is not so simple. Google had initially promised a limited "market pilot" of the technology in 2015, but has since pushed the date back to sometime in 2016. 

The Starship Technologies robot will deliver stuff to your doorstep.

It may be some time before Amazon's delivery drones are ready to air-drop packages on your doorstep, but two of the cofounders of Skype have created ground-based robo-vehicles to deliver packages. The six-wheeled electric vehicles can carry the equivalent of two grocery bags (in a locked compartment), traveling on sidewalks to deliver cargo within a 3 mile radius. The droid uses cameras, sensors and maps to navigate autonomously 99% of the time and will launch the first "pilot" services with partners in the U.S. and U.K. in 2016.

Microsoft HoloLens will turn the world into a hallucinatory vision.

Ever since Microsoft showed off a prototype of its augmented reality HoloLens glasses earlier this year, the tech world has been abuzz. The glasses use holographic technology and Microsoft's Windows 10 software to overlay digital images onto the wearer's view of the real world. A user can stare at their living room wall and see digital objects, from video games to video conferencing. More importantly, the user can interact with the digital objects. An early version of HoloLens will be available to developers in 2016 for $3,000. Consumers may have to wait until 2017. 

Full  article > http://www.businessinsider.com/the-12-hottest-tech-products-expected-in-2016-2015-12

China’s economic turmoil sends ripples of anxiety across G20

When China presented the programme for its G20 presidency to top officials from the world’s leading economies last week, Beijing laid out four economically wholesome priorities.

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China, state councillor Yang Jiechi told the “Sherpas” gathered in Beijing, was eager for the G20 to break “a new path for growth” and pursue “more effective” global economic governance, “robust international trade” and “inclusive development”.

But Mr Yang, China’s top foreign policy official, should probably have added a fifth priority: convincing the world’s other leading economies that China’s leaders were still in control.

Tumbling markets and anxieties over the Chinese economy have given President Xi Jinping and his fellow Communist party leaders a more difficult start to Beijing’s stint as the G20’s rotating chair than it had hoped.

But the tricky start to 2016 has also left officials and analysts across the world’s other leading economies scratching their heads and pondering new concerns over the impact of China’s woes on their own economies.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, in a phone conversation with Liu He, China’s director of the office of the central leading group on economic and financial affairs, discussed the importance of China clearly communicating its policies and actions to the market — something the country has come under fire for in the wake of currency and stock market turmoil.

Mr Lew also reiterated the importance of China supporting household income and rebalancing towards consumption-led growth, including through appropriate fiscal policies, and his belief that doing so would enable it to succeed in its planned economy transition to a consumption-led model.

“We consider the Chinese economy the biggest source of uncertainty for the Korean economy this year,” says Chang Min, head of the research department at the Bank of Korea.

That anxiety is repeated across the G20 economies, with China’s economic management overtaking Federal Reserve policy as the biggest immediate concern for the global economy.

In the US, some economists have questioned whether, given the turmoil in China, the Fed acted too soon when it raised rates in December for the first time in almost a decade.

George Osborne, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer, has become markedly more pessimistic since the start of the new year, warning the British economy is at risk of being buffeted by a “dangerous cocktail of new threats”, including slower China growth and the knock-on fall in commodity prices, recession in Russia and Brazil and the decline in global stock markets.

The International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, is facing questions over whether it unwittingly contributed to pressure on China’s renminbi via its decision in November to admit the currency to the elite basket used to value the fund’s special drawing rights.

In public, G20 officials have mostly continued to express support for the Chinese leadership and its efforts to rebalance the economy away from one driven by exports to one more dependent on domestic consumption. They have also played down fears that any weakening of the renminbi should be seen as the first blast of a currency war.

In Paris last week, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, praised China for embarking on “an ambitious multiyear rebalancing of its economy, toward slower and more sustainable growth” that “in the long run, will benefit everybody”.

Asked about the swings in China and their impact on the US economy earlier this month, Jack Lew, US treasury secretary, said: “The challenge that I think we have to keep our eye on is: will China stick to the reform programmes that it has committed to? Will it continue to open up its markets?”

But behind closed doors, anxieties remain about the capacity of Chinese officials to communicate with the markets and manage the turmoil.

Full > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bf9f4a76-bcff-11e5-846f-79b0e3d20eaf.html#axzz422OCIe7j