If you want to understand how our planet will turn out this century, spend time in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil.
If you’re wondering how long the Chinese economic miracle will last, the answer will probably be found in the bets made on commercial and residential developments in Chinese 3rd to 6th tier cities in Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.
.. Touch ID doesn’t work at high altitude, finger prints are too dry.
.. A white male travelling alone in interesting places, will always need to disprove they are a spy. Thanks Hollywood.
.. Pretentious people are inherently less curious.
Everything is fine, until that exact moment when it’s obviously not. It is easy to massively over/under estimate risk based on current contextual conditions. Historical data provides some perspective, but it usually comes down to your ability to read undercurrents, which in turn comes down to having built a sufficiently trusted relationship with people within those currents.
.. Every time you describe someone in your own country as a terrorist, a freedom is taken away from a person in another country. Every country has its own notion of “terrorism”, and the overuse, and reaction to the term in your country helps legitimise the crack-down of restive populations in other countries.
.. China is still arguably the lowest-trust consumer society in the world. If a product can be faked it will be. Out of necessity, they also have the most savvy consumers in the world.
.. The most interesting places have map coordinates, but no names.
.. It is a matter of national pride for a Kyrgyz border guard to solicit bribes from your local travel companions out of sight of the foreigner.
.. In order to size up the tribe/sub-tribe you’re part of, any group of young males will first look at the shoes on your feet.
.. After the Urumqi riots in 2009 the Chinese government cut of internet connectivity to Xinjiang province for a full year. Today connectivity is so prevalent and integrated into every aspect of Xinjiang society, that cutting it off it would hurt the state’s ability to control the population more than hinder their opposition.
.. TV used to be the primary way for the edge-of-grid have-nots to discover what they want to have. Today it is seeing geotagged images from nearby places, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away.
.. If you want to understand where a country is heading pick a 2nd or 3rd tier city and revisit it over many years.
.. Japan remains the lead use case for a depopulating society, with 40 million less people in the next 50 years. It has the opportunity to be a world leader in figuring out how to make depopulation work at a societal level. China will lose an estimated 400 million people by 2100, from its peak of 1.4 billion in 2020.