Question
I'm an enterprising new college graduate. Should I move to China? Is that where the action is going to be in my lifetime?
Answer
According to Kaplan's "Monsoon," (excellent read; just finished), Asia as a whole has Africa (East Africa in particular) as its equivalent to the American West in the 1800s. If you want the Wild West kind of opportunity go there, not to Asia.
http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-In...
Africa is where China is rushing to secure natural resources (with India following a distant second) to fuel Asian growth in the next century.
Kaplan also thinks SE Asia is where a lot of the best opportunities will be, because China itself is too tightly orchestrated by the government. So think Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan...
Actually, hell, just do the following backpacking trip to figure everything out. For centuries people have done the equivalent of backpacking trips to figure out new worlds of opportunity. I myself did a 3-week European backpacking trip in 1998, shortly after I first got to the US, and it was what really helped me understand the West properly. Just staying in the US would not have helped me the way that broader trip did. So you should think of China the same way. Here is a decent itinerary to understand the new world of opportunities you are thinking about.
1. Start in Zanzibar
2. Go over to Tanzania on the continent
3. Work your way north via Ethiopia, Eritrea (avoid Somalia of course), Egypt and into the Middle East.
4. Sample UAE and Oman (skipping lightly over Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia... too dangerous).
5. Then make a detour to the safest 'stan of the moment (the Central Asian republics). Tajikistan is possibly the good one at the moment.
6. Fly back south to Pakistan, cross over to India, spend some time there, then Bangladesh, then hike overland over Burma if you dare, or else skip to Thailand.
7. Go down Malaysia and to Singapore. Ponder the straits of Malacca, destined to be for the 21st century what the Panama, Suez canals, and the straits of Bosphorus have been in previous centuries.
8. Go to Java, then come back to the continent. Hike over Cambodia and into Vietnam.
9. Jump to Hong Kong, go to Taiwan and then the Philippines.
10. Finally finishing up in South Korea. Done?
11. NOW head on over to Mainland China.
THIS is the trip I would to orient myself to the possibilities do if a) I were 15 years younger, b) had an American passport (having an Indian passport makes it slightly harder to do interesting things like going to Pakistan or China easily... but I've done brief trips to Thailand and Bali...).
This trip is going to be a LOT more expensive for an American in flight costs than Western Europe, but if you know what you are doing and build up a network of local friends beforehand, you can get the living costs down ridiculously low. The itinerary is about 10x vaster geographically than Western Europe though, so you'd probably need 4 months to get the level of familiarity you can get in Western Europe in 4 weeks.
http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-In...
Africa is where China is rushing to secure natural resources (with India following a distant second) to fuel Asian growth in the next century.
Kaplan also thinks SE Asia is where a lot of the best opportunities will be, because China itself is too tightly orchestrated by the government. So think Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan...
Actually, hell, just do the following backpacking trip to figure everything out. For centuries people have done the equivalent of backpacking trips to figure out new worlds of opportunity. I myself did a 3-week European backpacking trip in 1998, shortly after I first got to the US, and it was what really helped me understand the West properly. Just staying in the US would not have helped me the way that broader trip did. So you should think of China the same way. Here is a decent itinerary to understand the new world of opportunities you are thinking about.
1. Start in Zanzibar
2. Go over to Tanzania on the continent
3. Work your way north via Ethiopia, Eritrea (avoid Somalia of course), Egypt and into the Middle East.
4. Sample UAE and Oman (skipping lightly over Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia... too dangerous).
5. Then make a detour to the safest 'stan of the moment (the Central Asian republics). Tajikistan is possibly the good one at the moment.
6. Fly back south to Pakistan, cross over to India, spend some time there, then Bangladesh, then hike overland over Burma if you dare, or else skip to Thailand.
7. Go down Malaysia and to Singapore. Ponder the straits of Malacca, destined to be for the 21st century what the Panama, Suez canals, and the straits of Bosphorus have been in previous centuries.
8. Go to Java, then come back to the continent. Hike over Cambodia and into Vietnam.
9. Jump to Hong Kong, go to Taiwan and then the Philippines.
10. Finally finishing up in South Korea. Done?
11. NOW head on over to Mainland China.
THIS is the trip I would to orient myself to the possibilities do if a) I were 15 years younger, b) had an American passport (having an Indian passport makes it slightly harder to do interesting things like going to Pakistan or China easily... but I've done brief trips to Thailand and Bali...).
This trip is going to be a LOT more expensive for an American in flight costs than Western Europe, but if you know what you are doing and build up a network of local friends beforehand, you can get the living costs down ridiculously low. The itinerary is about 10x vaster geographically than Western Europe though, so you'd probably need 4 months to get the level of familiarity you can get in Western Europe in 4 weeks.