Thursday, November 30, 2017

The (Belt and) Road to a Golden Bangladesh

By Rabi Sankar Bosu
0 Comment(s)Print E-mailChina.org.cn, November 17, 2017
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Bangladesh [File photo]


In addressing the recent 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), General Secretary Xi Jinping said that the country's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will actively promote international cooperation, increase assistance to other developing countries, and help reduce the development gap between the Global South and North. The BRI is being sold as the answer to a variety of crises across the world, ranging from infrastructure bottlenecks and funding shortages to protectionism and unilateralism.
Since the launch of the BRI in 2013, China has been actively seeking to change the meaning of "globalization," a term which has recently encountered opposition in the West. The project is advertised as a means to facilitate economic development and "win-win" cooperation with neighboring countries and beyond.
One of the most important components of the BRI is the proposed Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Corridor (BCIM), which is aimed at increasing trade and investment between the four countries. India, however, has become skeptical of the BCIM due to its concerns about another flagship project of the Belt and Road, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC cuts through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, a territory claimed by India. From its geopolitical perspective, India cannot allow further expansion of the initiative into South Asia.
While India views President Xi's signature project as an affront to its sovereignty, as well as a challenge to its own economic aspirations, the initiative presents India's ally and fraternal neighbor Bangladesh with a significant opportunity.
During the World Economic Forum in New Delhi on Oct. 5, Bangladesh's Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque explained the need to balance sovereignty issues with economic integration when considering the BRI. Haque said that Bangladesh can't remain isolated in the name of sovereignty, and that the issue of sovereignty sometimes needs to take a "backseat to the economic benefits to your people.”
Bangladesh officially joined the BRI after a historic visit by President Xi in October 2016. During his trip, the two countries signed deals totaling over $38 billion, the most credit ever pledged to Dhaka by a foreign nation. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina offered her country’s support to China's $4 trillion initiative, believing that it will offer increased opportunities for regional connectivity and cooperation.
Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang commented that the lagging infrastructure and rich labor resources in Bangladesh make it an ideal partner for Chinese enterprises to invest in. With a population of more than 160 million, there is indeed great demand in Bangladesh for upgrades to its power supply and telecommunications infrastructure. "I believe Bangladesh has a promising future and China can play an important role in its development," Ma said.
China has already engaged as a major development partner for Bangladesh. Chinese companies and individuals are now offering assistance in developing the information and communication technology industry, river management, industrial zones, land reclamation and maritime cooperation in Bangladesh. Chinese diplomats are encouraging Chinese companies to further invest in Bangladesh’s infrastructure and labor-intensive sectors.
China has overtaken India to become Bangladesh's biggest partner on energy. Within the Belt and Road areas, Chinese enterprises such as the Shandong Electric Power Construction Corporation and China Huadian Corporation are primarily engaged in the electricity sector of Bangladesh. China has invested in two large power plants thus far: one located in the southern district of Patuakhali, and another near the bustling port of Chittagong, Bangladesh’s second largest city.
China has also become Bangladesh's largest trading partner, accounting for 26.3 percent of its total imports. However, Bangladesh only exported $860 million to China in 2016, with the large majority of the figure coming from ready-made garments. Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest textile exporter after China, making up 6.2 percent of world’s clothing exports. Under the renewed partnership of the BRI, the time has come for Bangladesh to be reevaluated by Chinese companies and individuals for additional opportunities and advantages it has to offer.
The Chinese dream of achieving a "great rejuvenation" of its nation mirrors Bangladesh's dream of a "Sonar Bangla," or "Golden Bangladesh." Now that China is diversifying its investment into emerging markets, Bangladesh would be well-advised to take full advantage of the shared prosperity and development offered by the BRI.
Rabi Sankar Bosu, Secretary of New Horizon Radio Listeners' Club, West Bengal, India
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Dear Nicolas and Roberto
if i am addressing wrong part of the bank, is there someone else who would want to know about this?

WISE: last week out of  qatar education laureate summit inaugurated 2011 around sir fazle abed by Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser

2000 learning delegates summit at education above all and  WISE : Her Highness,  UN head antonio guterres, sir fazle abed and about 5 eminent UN people announced that UNga new york sept 2018 will feature mother of all summits on refugee learning


a first case will be the royinga



as pope francis current visit brings to world attention over start american holidays: the sdg partnership open space of sir fazle life commitment to educational networks have been grounded in- also when jim kim used to work with paul framer sir fazle was his first great hero along with george soros as funder of partners in health across the world; all of bracs girl empowerment culture is actually based on brazilian and franciscan paulo freire as sir fazle has repeatedly briefed friends of father at The Economist's norman macrae

as announced at aiib june summit guested by president moon jae-in out of jeju s.korea, the same un eminent group of 15 is being interviewed by the top economist consultant of asian infrastructure investment bank as part of a belt road debriefing to be made argentina g20 july and probably aiib mumbai june-

2018 world series of summits valuing youth
 the opportunity to involve 4 or more 2018 summits in this living case study includes world bank start of years in the asean country indonesia which features the aiib's biggest people-centric economic project end slums in indonesia -wise prelaunches in ghana may 2018 with 2 more eminent leaders but focus celebrating 2017 laureate more on 10 african leadership universities for the disadvantaged and sports for all

happy thanksgiving chris macrae  Bethesda 240 316 8157 
==========================
PREVIOUSLY

On Thursday, 31 August 2017, 16:25:31 GMT-4, Nicolas Viggiolo wrote:


Dear Mr Macrae:

I’m writing to you in response to your letter to Mr. Daniel Pierini, Executive Director for Argentina at the World Bank. My name is Nicolas Viggiolo, Senior Adviser for Argentina.
Regarding your request, we are more than welcome to meet with you at our office in Washington DC but we want to let you know that all the issues related to the G20 are followed by our Sherpa, Mr. Pedro Villagra Delgado, and the Chief of Staff of our Minister of Treasury, Mr. Ariel Sigal, in Buenos Aires.  
Please let us know if you still want to meet with us.

Regards, Nicolas
=============================
  footnote - education core of belt road and people-centric economics networks celebrating youth co-creativity as sustainability generation
  =============== please tell www.aieib.org if you have a post that can
help put education as core of belt road infrastructure investment banking
route 1 2 CGTN Bangladesh  B  ; Myanmar  B ;    Nepal  B ;  India  B ;  China   Butan - related new money  new retail   Hujiang
 Pope Myanmar
Breaking news nov 2017
week 4: China discusses BCIM corridor and refugee crisis in bangladesh
week 3 Qatar's wise and UN guterres announce refugee learning summit sept 2018 wise@UNGA  -overlaps between -summit discusses will biggest application of artificial intelligence be robot teaching assistants - not a joke already compters bid data analysis marks mooc projects better than humans do (making 1 million person classes possible)
eminent people concerned with education and concerned with asian infrastructure investment bank
week 2 asean win-win economics belt takes world stage immediately after trump state plus visit to china and epicentre of belt road and ecoligical civilsaition bencmarking
week 1 jack ma announces 15 billion dollar investment in damo academy of tech research (ai, bid data, cloud blockchains, internet of services and learning as well as things
cor3.jpg 
 learn about (and use tech to co-create) sustainability gen's greatest new world trade corridors:
 1 china express - from china to spain and everywhere that wants to be small enterprise trading friendly in between
eg 2 dubai-qatar-oman-gwadar-stans-china
eg 3 india-china-bangladesh-myanmar-asean 


Wednesday, October 18, 2017

back in 2007 we helped thousands of students study muhammad yunus  (yunus book, yunus journal) new models on social business - we are working on updating www.yunusasia.ning.com to understand possible contibutions to:
bangladesh china india myanmar corridor
other ways bangaldesh china and india could most help each others devlopemnt goals as well as be a global 2.0 benchmar on innovation gearered to the most extreme challenges facing girls and nature's needs

in more conversational detail

jinping priority relationship with india may extend to the belt road corridor - bangladesh china india myanmar- this update yunus 2007 idea to devlop cox's bazar as superport


however china doesnt make big invetsment in coorodor rojects unless countries demonstrate willingness to innovate border chalenges- eg myanmar-bangladesh would need to show transparency at their borders

notheless india can be expecetd to ask chian to focus on
1 this corridor
2 tech solutions for the pooest which all 4 countries can make different contributions to - especially bangladesh's girl empowerment solutions; many leapfroging indea - eg mobile for poor and microsolar began in 1996 in banglades but are reaching tipping points that are dependnt on mp level of infrastructure - this is evident in fintech but may soon speread to edutech and so every practicetech eg healthtech , agritech




Friday, October 6, 2017

in 1996 bangladesh became the world's lab for text-mobile leapfroging models- this was made all the more exciting because the lead lab assistants were the world's poorest village women

today the world has 2 leapfroging roads  -

 -the highroad connected by all those who celebrate china's global 2.0 around such world record job creators as E1 Xi Jinping (Rejuvenation global2.0; world's most transparent maps on win-win trade for all)  E3 Jack Ma leapfrog tech (big data small), ecommerce curriculum as one of china's 4 greatest inventions 1 -IR4  can develop 10 times bigger people-centred economics)  E98 Gandhi & Montessori & Mandela,

the low cost road gravitated aound sir fazle abed
E2 Sir Fazle Abed (world's favorite educator eg empowered girls to resolve poverty's greatest chalnges, BRAC & Bkash) 

sir fazle abed graduated as a shipbuilding architect- this means he likes to map blueprints by hand; he wasnt the first to value mobile phones in the vilages- this idea came from the quadir brothers whihc they brought as a partbnership deal to muhamad yunus in 1996 with the mobile logistics operator telenor, their own coding wizardry, some donations from George Soros and other seed capital

Bangladesh had never instaleld fixed telephone lines acriss the nation - so mobile was a leapfrog model and putting poorest vilage mothers in the middle of assessing its innovations doubly so. In addition bringing mobiles to vilages without electricity caused yunus to consult the oracle on micro solar nevile wilaims- so banglades became the fiirst lab for scaling microsolar.  However Yunus loves innovating concepts not so much sustaining hi-tech wizards livelihoods. Moreover BRAC had far deeper and more diverse grassroots networks to connect. So quite soon the quadirs and yunus quarelled, and sir fazle became the trusted epictre for sustainable leapfroging models around text mobile - the most integrated of which can now be seen as www.bkash.com

Thursday, August 10, 2017

EconomistBangla.com
To James Wilson who died of Lack of Oral Rehydration Calcutta 1860 on Queen Victoria's first attempt at Commonwealth, and his brainchild 175 years youngDRAFT ALL ERRORS chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

Over a generation BRAC demonstrated where and when bottom up aid sustains order of magnitude more economic development of poorest women and girls than top down aid. Overall this is seen in how women developed the nation that was born in 1971 as both the very poorest and 8th largest in the world. The village economy compounded organic intergenerational growth never previously seen anywhere

How?
When you live with poorest. there is no cost  identifying them nor tracking exponential impacts of everything that's put on them.

BRAC reinvented charity –wherever it was possible to scale a social solution franchise round the poorest with positive cash flow it did so. Wherever it sought an opportunity it timed the most critical and most economical first. Oral rehydration saving quarter of all infants lives. Rice crop science as essential to end oriental famine as it pioneered with China.

 Over the years BRAC designed many hundred microfranchises and fitted these together so as to take over leadership purpose of whole market’s value chain integrated around the poorest. BRAC published every trial and error since trust in development marketing actively needs more iterative concept development and open sourcing of knowhow than any other kind of marketing.

Where eg children positive cashflow model wasn’t possible it innovated direct cash transfer.

It has been said that Steve Jobs was a genius as he converged 7 markets; that’s far more important in interfacing the 7 integral markets of development clarified on brac’s 80th birthday celebration of Sir Fazle

Disaster relief- resilience, communal courage
Health and safety
Nutrition – food security
Education
Finance
Technology
Water waste and energy

THE WHOLLY BOTTOM-UP & MOST COLLABORATIVE NGO BECAME THE BEST FOR THE WORLDWIDE
BRAC.net and BASH.COM are now world favorite partners especially wherever leapfrog opportunity arise- ie poverty trap caused by not having access to a grid infrastructure resolved by leading new infrastructure eg microsolar for those off electricity grids, mobile for those never accessed to landline telecoms, the world's largest cashless banking bkash.com designed round universal access to text mobile..

Every employee of BRAC sees themselves as educator and servant leader.  In this way, BRAC grassroots networking transforms whole education systems around learning for a living ; it redesigns lifelong learning seizing action learning apprenticeships at any age relevant.  Today, wherever an education system exists that is not wholly designed around youth livelihoods as the right stuff -what Jack Ma calls LQ : the quotient of Love - search out how to learn from BRAC. It will cost you nothing to check out where the joy of learning begins. 

None of the 17 sustainability goals can be most effectively and most efficiently addressed without making sure relevant BRAC knowhow is linked in. Otherwise accidentally by not being connected to bottom, development will spiral new underclasses and will fails to resolve whatever deepest cultural conflicts had been structured in to intergenerational poverty or which today's acceleartaion of unprecedented innovation will cause next.