Pratica di Shadowing: Trade, tech and geopolitics: what you need to understand about China today - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Welcome to Radio Davos and I'm Ravi Vallour with the Straits Times and this is the Straits Times Asian Insider podcast.

It's great to be co-presenting with you Ravi.

We've talked about this literally for years.

Absolutely.

So finally we get to do it.

Yeah so Radio Davos for your listeners is the weekly podcast from the World Economic Forum

which looks up lots of big issues in the world with the emphasis on potential solutions, ways of dealing with those problems.

What's your podcast about?

Well, it's about Asia generally, and it's a weekly podcast, and it rotates between four of us, and I do it on the second Friday of every month.

Great.

Well, and audiences will get the best of both worlds.

We have a fantastic guest with us to talk about China and China in the world.

She's the founder and chief executive officer of Wusawa Advisory.

It's Tian Liu.

Correct.

Very.

Did I get the name of your advisory company as well?

Absolutely, yes.

Thank you.

Tell us what that is.

Wusawa is a name that I created.

It takes after the Swahili name of Wusawa.

So it takes the W outside the equation.

So it's U-S-A-W-A, which means balance and equity.

So I got the inspiration from Masamara when I was there and I realized, look at nature.

You know, nature has this magical way of balancing different species.

And how is it in the current geopolitical world that we have is so disrupted and uneven.

So I felt that, you know, the company that we have, the mission is really to provide that understanding

and bridges to help the business to navigate through this very uncertain and uneven geopolitical world, especially in the age of China rising.

And Swahili is great because that's where humans originated from.

So that's how we got the name.

The purpose is to help business to navigate through this uncertain and uneven political world.

You're the perfect guest for this episode.

Yes, absolutely, Robin.

She's absolutely perfect.

And what a name that you're giving your company.

Thank you.

If you don't mind me telling you a little bit of a story about the African dung beetle,

Would you like to know that the African dung beetle navigates at night using the Milky Way as its guide point?

That's beautiful.

That shows how related man and not just man, but beast and even the smallest insect is with the universe.

Yeah.

Wow.

We've started very poetic.

But it's great to be talking about the environment because I've not been hearing enough about that.

Absolutely.

you know, our relationship with nature.

It's that ecosystem, really.

Great.

Well, hopefully we'll get onto that a little bit.

But first, you mentioned the period of China rising.

We're speaking, by the way, here at the World Economic Forums, some of Davos in China, in Dalian.

And yeah, it's China rising.

But there are challenges to the Chinese economy, aren't there?

If I came to you and said, can you explain to me, we know China's had an economic miracle, but where are things right now?

What are the challenges?

What would you tell me?

Yeah.

So I'd like to start by saying that there are both challenges and great opportunities at the Chinese economy.

But when we look at the challenges, let me frame it when we look at sort of the typical way of looking at any economy, which is the three key pillars,

the export and the import sector, the private consumption part, and then there is the investment part.

So when it comes to export, actually, it's very important to know that as much as the world is talking about China,

you know, overcapacity, sort of the rising trade surplus, like last year, China's trade surplus grew by 20% compared to the year before, right?

So this is causing a lot of discussions in the world.

But the truth is export does not matter to China as much as before.

At the peak of time, about 20 years ago, 2007, export was 35% of China's GDP.

And right now is about only half of that.

Last year was 19, 18% of it.

And as much as we talk about tariffs with the US, for instance, the trade to US is only a tiny part of that.

In fact, last year, China's export to the US was less than 10%.

And so that is less than 10% of less than 50% of that peak.

So when you do the math, even if the entire China's export to the U.S were to collapse, that is only about 2% of China's GDP.

So export as important and much discussed is not the most important part of the Chinese economy.

But there are, of course, challenges.

For instance, terrorist war with the U.S., but I'm a lot more worried about the upcoming trade war potentially. with Europe.

So that's one side.

And then the largest part of the Chinese economy is private consumption.

And that's worrying because that's almost 40% of the GDP.

So how this performed is fundamental to Chinese economy.

But there is a level of lack of confidence.

To start with, the annual disposable growth rate is much slower compared to before.

So last year was 5%, the same level of GDP, not like 8% or double-digit growth.

And on top of that, the unemployment rate is quite high, and the youth unemployment is especially high depending on different surveys,

whether it is official or some professors.

The highest number I've seen for youth unemployment was 46% a couple of years ago, and this is enormous.

So imagine you're one of the consumers.

46% is a lot.

Yes, for youth, right?

So kids graduate from college, they don't have a job, right?

So put yourself into their shoes, then your annual income is not really growing as much as before.

On top of that, you have a much higher chance of getting unemployed.

Of course, you don't have the confidence to spend.

And there's another side of that, which is the wealth impact.

So property market is very important to China.

and according to some different surveys, the absolute majority of Chinese households own a house of some sort.

So more than 90% of Chinese households own a house and 20% of them own at least two houses or even more.

Now, when the property prices start to drop, that means all of a sudden I don't feel as rich as before.

But when the price was going up before every day, even if I weren't doing anything, I was becoming richer.

Of course, I had the confidence to spend, but now I don't.

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So when you put all these three together, I'm not earning as much or rapidly growth as before.

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I have a higher risk of getting unemployed.

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And then I'm not as rich as before.

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Obviously, the confidence to spend is much lower than before.

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So that is really the biggest challenge for the private consumption part.

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And then finally is the investment side, whether it's infrastructure or property market or just sort of overall investment,

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physical investment, you know, all the companies investment.

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We're also seeing that a level of uncertainty, whether it's caused by the external world or the lack of confidence,

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that is all feeding into that sentiment.

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And then on top of that, interestingly, there are times I compare China with Silicon Valley in the sense that Silicon Valley is,

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you know, the place that we have venture capitals that we try a lot of different projects, right?

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And in China, it's the same.

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Different provinces compete.

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Different cities compete.

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So it's like a giant venture capital.

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But the beauty of venture capital is that you have so many pipeline projects at the same time.

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And also, the spirit is you fail fast and then you pivot fast.

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And that was, in an essence, how China was.

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People were encouraged to try different things.

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It's fine if you make mistakes, but then you try something else.

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But right now, the overall sentiment is not to make any mistakes.

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And what is if you change that success or pivot fast, if you change the KPI from that to make fewer mistakes,

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then what is the safe bet?

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The safe bet is not to do anything.

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And that to me is something that is a big challenge, that sentiment change in China.

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So, yeah, that's where China is.

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Chin, you know, in April 2020, I wrote a column in the Straits Times, and it's called The Risks of Putting All Your Eggs in the China Basket.

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And one of the points I picked up in that column was the massive debt pile of China Evergrande.

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And I said, look, this doesn't look sustainable.

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And it reminds me of the early days of the Asian financial crisis and, you know, what happened to real estate.

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But I've heard lately that a lot of that poison has left the system.

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Is there hope for a turnaround in Chinese property in the near future?

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Is there something that you see?

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I wouldn't put my money to bed on a high return of Chinese property market in the longer term.

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There are certain positive factors that will continue to drive the Chinese property market,

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whether it's urbanization rate, where is the growth in people's incomes, but there are also big factors to drag this down.

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For instance, whether the current stocks in certain regions are much higher compared to the actual demand,

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or we look at the major demographic shifts as such.

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So property market would not be the fast-growing engine for Chinese economy going forward.

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Maybe pockets of it, because I was talking to a major Australian property developer,

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and they were talking about going into the elder care segment as a possible growth opportunity in China, building for the elderly.

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Robin?

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Just for anyone who's not following Asia quite as closely as both of you,

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the Evergrande affair was this Chinese property development company that got into a lot of trouble because of debt.

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There's so much in your initial answer.

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I don't know what to come about.

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The first follow-up question I thought of, you said the impending trade war with Europe.

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I'm often curious to what is a trade war because is there a trade war with the US at the moment?

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There certainly have been trade battles, maybe, I don't know.

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But why do you think there's apparently an inevitable trade war with Europe?

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I hope I'm wrong.

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But perhaps instead of saying inevitable,

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I would say the very likely upcoming trade war with Europe initiated by Europe.

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I just came back from Europe and I'm more convinced and worried than ever about that.

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So the trade, we'll call it trade war, trade frictions with the United States.

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you know between these two countries you're still seeing the the bands of rare rare earth

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or high-end chips and all of that

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and you still see quite a level of tariffs on many products

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so i would still call that a trade war even

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if it's no longer 145 right but with europe is is different

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u.s and especially the trump administration is very quote quote practical about this so to President Trump is more a negotiation,

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is his art of the deal.

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So everything is about to come up with a number that he would be very happy about.

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And he can change it from the morning to the evening, but not so much about Europe.

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The way I see it is that Europe is slowly cooking that negative sentiment about trade with China, about trade deficit with China,

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and that it takes quite some time for Europe to decide the actions.

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But once they do, it will stick.

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And when they do that, China will also retaliate.

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And China cares more about the United States than any other countries, unfortunately, in this case.

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And so China would retaliate.

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And then chances are Europe would add on top of that.

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And the narratives are just changing.

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Before it was just about trade and now it's changing into people are getting unemployed because of China.

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There's part of me almost hating to repeat this at the podcast because it only reinforces that.

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So there are two me at the moment.

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There's the me that is the economist me advising the world the risks are coming.

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There's the other me as a human, and we know that psychologically the more we repeat something, the chances are it will happen, or the more you're scared about something,

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chances are it will happen.

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And this is where I'm worried about.

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So I had a line at The Economist about how China looked at the Europe.

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People both love it and hate it.

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People love it because they believe it's so true.

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They hate it because it's so brutal.

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And I used to study and live in Europe.

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So there's part of me almost don't want to say it.

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But the line was that Europe is being seen as an aging concubine

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that has not accepted the fact that it's been ditched by the American emperor.

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So as someone who studied and lived there, Europe is like my second home.

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It pains me to say that.

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Um, and I certainly do not hope that we will see that, uh, trade war between Europe and China.

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Is it, is it, so like, like any war, like a hot war,

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you can see a buildup of arms and then someone goes over the top and the war actually starts.

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Do you know when it's going to happen?

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And do you know what will be the first battle?

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Is it going to be about a certain product or product lines?

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And is this going to happen in the next six months, in the next two years?

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technically it already happened i mean europe imposed certain terrorists

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and barriers on for instance chinese ev cars

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and china's retaliation also took on certain things such as agriculture

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and also um cognac for instance and it was

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when you look at this is so interesting

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because ev is less than one percent of the trade between europe

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and china less than one percent

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but it's becoming the dominant talk about the chinese trade with europe right

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so china's retaliation is almost like so perfectly engineered to go against

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that versus one of that was cognac

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because cognac it has to be cognac from the region of cognac in france

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which is so typically european

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and is also less than one percent of the total trade between europe

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and europe and china so china has engineered this beautifully

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so technically it's already happened but more are being discussed as we speak

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so later this year i think there's a very high likelihood that we're going to see more actions from Brussels.

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Right.

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I know the Chinese too love their cognac, but have they tried almond yak as a substitute?

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I'm not an expert on alcohol, so I can't comment on that.

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It's pretty much the same, different region.

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Maybe the almond yak.

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I like bubble tea better.

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Maybe the almond yak producers should be lobbying Beijing for the cognac.

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Right.

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Can I just ask

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you a question because you talked about trade

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and how Chinese trade as a factor of the Chinese GDP has actually come down significantly.

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But you know, we in Southeast Asia, we are very sensitive to China, China's economy.

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We want the Chinese economy to do well because it helps us as well.

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But one of the issues we're having is that, look, you did mention that trade as a percentage of GDP has come down,

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but we're talking about a much bigger...

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Export as a percentage, yeah.

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As a percentage of GDP has come down, but we're talking about a much bigger Chinese economy.

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Now, this morning, Premier Li Chang said, please don't talk about the second China shock.

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I think he said that in his speech.

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But the fact is that China has got so good at manufacturing,

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and maybe you don't have much of an option because, as you said, investment is slowing,

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consumption is, you know, for whatever reason is taking a breather.

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But the Chinese export push, especially after the US markets became a little constrained,

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into Southeast Asia is causing a lot of grief in Southeast Asia.

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In Indonesia, we have had significant losses in the textile industry and the Chinese are actually selling buttock shirts to Indonesia.

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In Malaysia, the furniture industry is in crisis because the Chinese exports are so good, furniture exports.

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Thai auto industry is in trouble. Is there something?

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Because we remember China, when we signed the ASEAN China FTA, China gave us an early harvest and which helped all the ASEAN economies.

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But today, because of your own domestic constraints, are you compelled to keep pushing the exports out into the world,

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including in Europe, you know, to come back to where you started?

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Is that a factor that, you know, I mean, you do need to find jobs for the people.

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45% youth unemployment is a frightening number.

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You know, the last I heard that number was in the Indian context.

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I thought China was much lower than that, 28%.

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But what you said certainly surprised me.

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What do you think?

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What do you think China can do so that it doesn't kill the goose,

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you know, of consumption in the surrounding economies that are so critical to it?

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Yeah, that's a really good question.

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And there are a few foes that we can look at this.

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And to start with, when I say, you know, export doesn't matter to China that much, I meant from the Chinese economy perspective, is the question went.

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But I certainly understand the level of sort of concern the rest of the world would have.

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And even say that 5% of GDP growth that China enjoys every year,

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that is every year China produces a new country that is the size of Switzerland or Saudi Arabia.

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So that is enormous.

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And last year trade surplus was 1.2 trillion that is absolutely enormous.

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So I understand this, but perhaps let me try to reframe it and also how,

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in a way, China looks at this and then we can talk about how China decide to make this more sustainable.

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I have an analogy that when we think about Chinese manufacturing,

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we think about China is a shop that sells ice creams.

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Imagine vanilla ice creams.

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And as you said, China feels like it's

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so good let me try to do the president trump way is

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so good and so cheap and that you buy

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so much out of china and you get fat

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and then you complain it to china and you say it's china's fault

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that you're becoming so fat

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and china's like wait a second you have every right not to buy us you buy it not

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because we force it on you, but because we're so good and so cheap.

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So who is the one to blame here?

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So when we talk about trade surpluses, deficits, there's part of China feels a bit vulnerable in the sense that we would love to buy more from you,

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but what do you have to sell it to us?

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I'm looking at certain interviewees about your...

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But we're back with trade wars that governments could say, okay, It is great goods from China, but we're getting fat to use your analogy.

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We'll put up trade barriers.

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Isn't that the inevitable conclusion?

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And some people might say that, look, we need to get more time to be as fit as you are.

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That would be a healthier way.

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So protections are for the weak.

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Rather than say, I'm going to not buy your ice creams,

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you can also say, I'm going to produce better ice creams that are tastier. and cheaper.

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So that would be the other way around.

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As always, as trained economists, as sensible as we are, we know that tariffs are bad, protections are further weak.

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So that's something I want to argue.

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But then to go back to your question about how sustainable this is, in fact, China itself realizes that this is not sustainable.

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And they're different China.

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So when we talk about you, China, what is that you?

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Is it the government?

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Is it the business?

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Is it the Chinese people?

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The answers are completely different on this.

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For all of this, all of the above, whether the government or the business or the Chinese people, we know that it's not sustainable.

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For instance, when you look at the much younger people, there's this phenomenon called lying flat.

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Tangping.

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They, Tangping, that the young generation believe that it's much more important to be happy rather than work hard and make money.

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But I'm from the generation where when I grew up, we had very little food.

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I couldn't have like meat in my dumplings only at Chinese New Year.

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Right.

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So it's a completely different kind of mentality.

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So when you are a lot more well off, then you don't bother to work as hard anymore.

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That is part of the reason why this is not going to be sustainable because the younger generation would be different.

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And then on top of it is that the business realized that this is not sustainable.

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when we visit some of the Chinese companies in different cities and regions, we see that right after COVID, they were extra working hard,

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even if they were losing money.

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And I asked them, why is that?

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Because there are two different concepts of cost.

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There is the average and fixed cost.

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There is the marginal cost.

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So if they have invested all this machinery and everything, Even if the marginal cost, so long the money they make is higher than the marginal cost,

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they are happy to continue to do that.

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The simple answer they said to me is, I know I'm losing money, but if I don't, I would lose out even more money.

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So that's why they were doing it.

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But already, especially since last year, we're seeing that this so-called involution,

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the extra competitiveness among Chinese companies themselves are starting to change.

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So the business realized themselves that this is not sustainable.

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So they're changing that organically without the interference with the government or with people or from the rest of the world.

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And Chinese government also realizes this.

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I mean, that's why, as you said, you know, the prime minister mentioned that, that, uh, the China shock is the wrong way to put it, that the China opportunity is really the right way to put it.

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The government has all this pressure from Europe, from, you know, uh, Latin America, et cetera.

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They want China to buy more to reduce that trade deficit.

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And China will look to do that.

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And for instance, one of that would be service account, right?

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Because typically when we talk about trade surplus, we just think about goods per se.

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But depending how you want to play around the numbers for the argument, if anything, the service account, trade deficit that China runs,

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it almost increased by seven times in the last five years' time.

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So it depends how we frame this.

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I just wanted to mention the Strait of Hormuz effect on China.

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I'd be interested to hear Ravi as well, the impact that's had in Southeast Asia where you're based.

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What impact has it had on China?

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Because I've spoken to several Chinese people who've said, actually, we've been pretty insulated from it because of electrification of our cars

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and the fact we're producing so much renewable energy here.

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How do you see it?

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And do you think there's a game changer?

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or will it change anything in terms of the bigger picture on anything in China?

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Economically, it hasn't impacted China that much.

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It's more on the political and geopolitical front.

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Less than 50% of China's import of oil go through the strait, whether it's import from Iran,

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Iraq, Saudi, etc. So that is quite a bit of share.

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But on the other hand, oil is only about 6% or 7% of total China energy use.

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So the impact that has brought directly on China is much less compared to, for instance, Europe.

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And then on top of that, China has an oil storage about seven months or so.

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So this is really like if you ask citizens on the street, ask a random person, they feel a bit not so much.

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But more importantly is the idea that this is changing

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and giving the world a different perspective of the current Trump administration

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and how it's really disrupting and shaking people's faith in the U.S leadership of the world.

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And that China is watching it more enthusiastically.

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Since you spoke about U.S leadership, how much of a watershed has this year,

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2026, been in global affairs?

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You saw a very, I don't want to say timid,

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but a very respectful, polite Donald Trump show up in Beijing.

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How much has the world changed for China in this year?

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So from the US geopolitical perspective, yes, so much has changed.

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I mean, you know, we start the year by seeing US taking President Maduro from Venezuela.

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And then, you know, President Trump keep on insisting and be even more assertive on Greenland, for instance.

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Right.

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And then we had Iran.

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That's right.

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And then we had President Trump visiting China.

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So to China, somewhat this year was more about watching U.S destroying itself and its allies globally.

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You're absolutely right that President Trump visited China and he called President Xi a great leader,

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incredible China and all of that.

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But China is not naive in the sense that it believes this will be how the bilateral relationship going forward.

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the very reason why president trump turned his stand

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and style with china is because china showed the rare earth card

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and president trump is someone that believes in the games of power

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and china showed his hand and that was very critical so the fact that the two countries are

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smiling at each other and shaking hands certainly do not mean that this will be the great relationship,

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romantic honeymoon going forward.

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But at least before the midterm, the bilateral relationship would be very stable.

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And depending on how the midterm goes, President Trump may adopt a different strategy on China, or maybe not.

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So for instance, Russia and Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Iran, all of these is distracting the US from its priority on China.

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It's just got its hands so full at the moment.

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It's got no attention or ability, really, in a way, at least trade-wise, to take on China.

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But that is just trade, for instance.

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The bilateral relationship goes so much more beyond just trade.

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There's technology rivalry, there's military security rivalry, and there's financial rivalry.

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So I believe the ongoing frictions between U.S and China will be one of the key defining themes in the world.

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So it's not ended.

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That story is not ended.

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Oh, no. This is just the beginning of the beginning.

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It's just the beginning.

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And do you think in about five years from now, when the Americans fix their vulnerability on rare earths,

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that fear of China will suddenly go away.

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To start with, there is no way

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that U.S would be able to catch up with China's level of dominance on rare earth.

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Is that so?

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In five years, in five years, because you talk about five years.

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When we talk about the dominance in rare earth, there is the access to the resources itself, and there is also the capacity to produce and process them.

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So China has the absolute dominant power on both sides.

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So, US would not be able to replace China for at least another 10 years or so.

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And Europe everywhere, yeah.

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So that's why people are concerned about interdependence of supply chains and all of that.

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But on rare earth, can I just say, it's actually very important to know that China didn't want to play the rare earth card.

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So Europe is quite concerned about China continue to use this.

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Let me emphasize again that China did not want to play the rare earth card.

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If it wanted to, it would have played this long time ago.

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In fact, it's almost a public knowledge.

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Everybody knows about it.

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So the question should really be, people know that China has access and dominance of this.

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Why did they not think China can do?

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Because China never played this car.

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Chairman Deng Xiaoping said decades ago that the Middle East has oil and China has rare earth.

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This is no secret.

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China could have played this.

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China could have played this 40 years ago.

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China could have played this in the first Trump administration.

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It did not.

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China could have played immediately on Liberation Day.

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China did not.

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China played the rare earth card when the back and forth of the tariffs, war negotiations between the two countries,

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which is dragging on and on and back and forth and almost with higher than expected or would like kind of risks.

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That was when China decided enough is enough, like no is no. That is when China played the card.

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China never wanted to because look at this.

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One of the consequences, Europe and many other regions got scared and say, we're worried that China might want to play it.

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China does not.

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If anything, China is still, as Prime Minister Li Qiang called this morning, China still wants a very stable global economy,

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and China is still very committed and wants a good globalization and economic globalization because China benefits from that.

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So China doesn't want any trade wars whatsoever.

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Right.

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Do you think China has a similar dominance in active pharmaceutical ingredients, APIs, as they have in railroads?

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I'm not an expert on that specific industries, but my limited knowledge is that it's not,

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but it's certainly getting more power than before.

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I mean, one of my favorite examples is that there's this Chinese company who the founder was,

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I forgot, Harvard or MIT educated.

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So she set up the company in Boston, a brilliant hub for biomedicine related, but especially during COVID times.

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So she came back and over time she took the team back with her.

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So now their headquarters in China with all the R&D centers in China

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and only the sales and marketing teams in the U.S because they know the language, they know how to sell.

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And this is a great example of telling us because when people think about Chinese manufacturers, a few years ago, it was about EV.

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And then it was AI, DeepSeek.

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And now we're looking at robotics.

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The next is very likely to be biotech.

434

I did want to ask you about the gender gap.

435

The World Economic Forum produces every year the Global Gender Gap Report.

436

I know it's something you've taken a great interest in.

437

You mentioned your book on the subject has become so successful.

438

What's happened to it?

439

Yes.

440

So I wrote a book on gender economics in Mandarin at the moment.

441

It got so popular that there are pirated copies now.

442

Right.

443

People are clamoring for it.

444

Because the rise of female power is, you know, I talk about the rise of China is one of the key defining themes of the century.

445

And the rise of female powers is another one.

446

How do you tell companies or governments that it's in their interest to address the gender gap?

447

Well, because it's good for the women and the men and the children and the economy.

448

So let me take one example.

449

So there are studies looking at the world in the past 46 years.

450

And basically, if you put a dollar on investment on the U.S bonds and stock market, your annual return was 2.4%.

451

But if you invest that in people's education, every additional year of education, the average return is about 8.8%.

452

That means investing into human capital gives you a lot higher yield than financial capital.

453

And within this 8.8%, the returns to women education is 10%, which means that it's guaranteed that when you invest more in women, the women make more.

454

On top of that, there's a study in the U.S showing that when the wife's education grows by an additional year,

455

the husband makes an additional somewhere between 18% to 23%.

456

So that's great for the men as well.

457

And on top of that, we see that when the women are better educated, the kids are taller, they're healthier, they have better performance at school.

458

So that's good for the next generation as well.

459

And then on top of that, it's actually very good for the economic growth.

460

So, for instance, according to UN Women, they have a finding suggesting that when we invest more in women,

461

that can significantly increase the global GDP by about $4 trillion by 2030

462

and that is more than 3% of the current GDP that we have.

463

So that's why I say educating the women is great for everybody, for women, for the men, for the kids, and for the society and the economy.

464

Right.

465

But Chen, you were born in Shantung, right?

466

Yes.

467

And that is known to be a fairly traditional Chinese society in Shantung, if I'm not mistaken.

468

Did you get lucky?

469

Where did you get your fantastic education in Europe?

470

How did you manage to do it? your parents uh farsighted

471

or uh they just wanted you to have the best um yes

472

so i was born in ting dao in shandong where confucius came from it's very traditional

473

so even nowadays in certain part of shandong um women are

474

not allowed to dine at the same table with men and

475

that whenever we go out you're supposed to give men the

476

face let them talk more let them take the lead you know you smile and claps when they do the talk.

477

So that was one side of me.

478

And then I had the opportunity to study in Sweden, one of the most gender equal country in the world, and also at UC Berkeley,

479

the most sort of progressive university.

480

So I got very lucky in that I saw that gender equality can be very different and that they are possible.

481

So one of my PhD thesis, well, the majority of them were about labor economics,

482

even though later I dived into macroeconomics, geopolitical economics, da-da-da-da.

483

But one of my PhD thesis was about labor economics, human capital, da-da-da.

484

And one of that was to study, is it true that when women are better educated, we have a lower marriage rate?

485

Because back then, there was a saying in China that there are three kinds of people in the world.

486

a man and a woman and a woman who has a PhD.

487

And I was getting my PhD.

488

And there were another saying that there are four kinds of people in the world, a man, a woman, a woman who has a PhD,

489

and a man who dares to marry the third type.

490

So I wanted to prove them wrong.

491

So that's how like gradually over time, apart from my day to day work on geopolitics,

492

advising the world on China and Chinese companies going overseas.

493

I've spent the past more than a decade riding along the topic of gender economics.

494

And I'm very lucky because my parents believe in the power of education and they let me took my PhD.

495

Do you think there might be a future book from you called A Man's Place is in the Home?

496

I like the idea, but I want to rephrase it to a man's place is wherever he wishes.

497

Because when we talk about gender equality,

498

the idea is not to sort of let women become the more senior species in gender than men.

499

We want equality.

500

And the idea of equality is not that women should work and men should stay home.

501

But women can work if she chooses so and men can stay at home if he chooses so.

502

So ultimately, I believe the definition of gender equality is not about the same results,

503

but that we have the same access and same opportunity.

504

So men can cry, men can wear pink.

505

However, you can play Barbie dolls we can also become supermans as well.

506

I'm wearing pink.

507

Did you see that?

508

I'm still blue.

509

I can't change the pink one of these days.

510

And it's lovely.

511

Thank you very much.

512

And I did not mean as objectifying you.

513

At least I've not cried during this interview.

514

We have to bring it to a close there.

515

That's all we've got time for.

516

Ravi, it's been great to co-host this with you.

517

If your listeners, if your audience want to follow Radio Davos, they can find us on any podcast app.

518

They can also go to wef.ch podcast where you'll find we have three weekly podcasts.

519

This one, Radio Davos, Meet the Leader and Agenda Dialogues.

520

Ravi, where can we find you?

521

Robin, that's been a fantastic conversation.

522

And thank you, Chin, for a brilliant presentation.

523

We didn't talk enough of concubines yet, but maybe we'll keep that for the next session.

524

This is Ravi Velour for the Straits Times Asian Insider Podcast.

525

I had a great pleasure.

526

Thank you for having me today.

527

Thank you.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Pratica di Shadowing: Trade, tech and geopolitics: what you need to understand about China today - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

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Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?