Geopolitics and China

Hillary Clinton is in Honolulu – again.

What brings the head of the State Department to the islands since she was here last January? Moreover, why Obama administration hastily chose Honolulu to host the next APEC?

Indifferent to geopolitics and veiled interests, a friend of mine, an experienced local real estate agent, may have the answers. He told me recently: “I sold cash four houses last week. This has never happened before. Plus, the investors paid 15% more than the market price. If you skim the last name of owners of Waikiki condos, you will be surprise to see that almost half of them are Chinese.”

In this context of increasing investments coming from the Middle Kingdom, what is the responsibility of public administrators? Learn Mandarin? Study Confucianism principles? Or advocate for policies and business models that further attract and diversify long-term foreign direct investments (FDI)?

Orville Schell, the director of the Center on US-China relations at the Asia Society, answers the last question by stating that planners and public authorities must take action now to avoid Chinese FDI ending up somewhere else than within US borders.

Perhaps this partially explains why Hillary is back – apart from the breeze, of course.

http://www.eastwestcenter.org/

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/oschell21/English