BOW WAVE 134

Dreaming of China Edition

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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(c)2002 WavyLine.com	Issue No 134 17 Jun 02
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Dreaming of China
3. New Recruit over at UIB
4. Maritime Security Article
5. Trident Maritime
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

It seems we overstepped the mark introducing Louise Barrington of Hong Kong as a new Reader. She says:

I see you've mentioned me under new readers as a "Hong Kong lawyer". The HK Law Society would NOT be pleased. I am legally qualified in Ontario, New York, England & Wales, but only registered as a Foreign Lawyer in Hong Kong. They are VERY picky at the
Law Society about who is called a "Hong Kong lawyer". Incidentally, my main interest is international trade disputes (prevention and resolution) and my company, Aculex Transnational Inc. offers mediation and
arbitration services. I act as arbitrator or mediator, and can also assist parties AND their lawyers who are new to international arbitration to "show them the ropes".

New Readers this week include:

P&I man John Murkett of Tindall Riley
P&I man Steve Roberts of A Bilbrough
Chris Jones of surveyors Vine Gordon Bridger
Marketing Man Mike Revans
Susanne Mysen, Librarian at Norwegian lawyers Wiersholm, Mellbye & Bech Hull insurance man Anders Hellman at Trygg Hansa in Sweden Lawyer Paul Barfield at the Singapore office of Thomas Cooper Stibbard Carl Gill of UK shipowners Cenargo

News of Readers

Capt. Leo N. Vincent of Matthews-Daniel International (Vietnam) is leaving Vung Tau and relocating to the company's Dubai office.

Sharon Emerson is a marine investigator for the law firm Kleburg in Corpus Christi, Texas who represent P&I Clubs. In response to our prompting she came up with this story taken from her work:

"A few years ago I was on a ship investigating a USCG claim of oil in the bilge. The ship also had a stowaway on board. While in the engine room taking photographs, the stowaway, who was incarcerated in a manner of speaking, motioned for me to come over to him. I did and he said he wanted me to take his picture. Well, heretofore, nobody could get him to tell them what his name was or what country he was from, all essential for repatriation. He convinced me to take his picture, for which he smiled very proudly, and wanted a copy right away. Presumably, he thought I was using a Poloroid camera. I told him the film had to be taken for processing and that, if he liked, I would mail a copy of the photo to him. He was very excited about that and immediately wrote down for me his name and home address!"

This issue of Bow Wave comes at the end of a busy weekend with time spent with the exam candidates of the Distance Learning Course for Ship Agents carried on under the auspices of Informa, the National Sea Training Centre and led by Capt Roger MAcDonald, where your editor helped out with some thoughts on the internet for ship agents and also covered the subject of P&I insurance for the absent Tony Baker of the North of England. They also do courses on subjects like Port Management and Marine Surveying which interested readers can check out under the maritime section of the site below:

Http://www.informadistancelearning.com

Quite a full issue all the same. Enjoy.

2. Dreaming of China

Since your editor is about to leave for Shanghai to attend the China Ports and Liners Conference at the Hilton Hotel there this week, the subject of the Quarterpoints column which appeared in Lloyd's List dwells on China and all the expectations which are invested in the country.

A recent book asks whether success in China for outside companies is a kind of recurrent dream. which bounds up and down according to the political temper of the times. The sort of aspiration cited is the foreign sewing machine manufacturer who eyes the enormous demography of China and thinks if he can only sell one machine to 2 per cent of the population of 1.2 billion people, he will keep the sewing machine factories of the industry turning for a decade or more.

There are many critics of this approach, often found within the ranks of professional sinologists. The author of The China Dream, American Joe Studwell--who also edits the China Economic Quarterly, is the latest in the ranks of the skeptics to argue for a reality check. In his book he points out that the 20 per cent per annum growth in the Chinese market for cars last year which is a statistic you often see in futurological studies, in fact produced sales numbers last year only slightly in excess of those for Australia, a country of only 19 million souls. And only an economic hermit would be unaware of the deep inter-company indebtedness which exist in China as well as the size of the national portfolio of non-performing loans. Studwell is one of those who predicts a large correction, sooner or later , on the scale of the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s but with different repercussions since capital cannot fly away from China with the same facility as it can in the rest of Asia given the still nationalised still centralised financial system of the PRC.

Yet those of us who work in the marine industries can also see in the turnovers and volumes of containers and cargoes the shape of the industry to come. China moves over 35 million TEUs in and out of the country's ports and up and down its rivers and roads using transport infrastructure which long ago would have been overloaded were it not for the ingenuity displayed in the industries of collection and delivery. Journey up the Pearl River and you will see a great variety of craft, much of it small or severely recycled all destined for ports and wharves along the estuary and all helping to prevent the grid lock which would otherwise attend these volumes carried by road or rail alone. The vibrant river trade along the Yang tse is if anything even more diverse and timeworn.

Since the second largest source of container movements is the United States, it does not take very much futurological skill to see that the maritime industries of the future, insofar as they are concerned with dry goods and manufacturing will have a very substantial foot in the Pacific Ocean and the maritime service economy will have need to show understanding, empathy and flexibility to the clients trading there. A presence somewhere in the right time zone with first class people able to serve their customers is probably already an essential part of many companies' survival.

It does seem to me to that as this decade wears on, the numbers of representative and full offices of maritime players based elsewhere must go up dramatically in port cities like Shanghai. That many more people should study the transport and manufacturing economy of East Asia is probable as is the number of people who should prepare for their lives in the industry with the study of Chinese rather than French or German. In the end it all derives from the implications of Asia becoming the workshop of the world during the 1980s and 1990s.. As the cargo must be vanned loaded and transported within the region. so it has to be tallied, surveyed, valued, insured,guaranteed and tracked within the region at competitive prices appropriate to the trades. As yet there is not that much to see in Shanghai: some far sighted shipping lawyers, insurance rep offices, and country offices for logistics and shipping companies, some survey companies. .

Milton Friedman, the Chicago based economist was once given the full tour of the Pudong area, the place where Shanghai's planners and fathers put into effect a policy which stated, "If we build it, they will come".Friedman looked around and said "this is the greatest Potemkin village ever built". Harsh but maybe true for attracting the cufflink makers who hope to sell 100 million pairs to the Chinese whose purchasing power is still little mentioned or compared. whenever China is the subject of occidental dreams.

There is a greater fear in Hong Kong these days that the city of Shanghai will steal a march upon it and replace its services industries with its own. The futurolical studies I have seen for Hong Kong rather than outright redundancy rather foretell a gradual loss of enclave status and instead see the rise of a massive urban conurbation traveling up to join the city of Guandong (Canton) to become one of the world's first mega cities with 300 million inhabitants and forming the centre for Southern China south of the divide.

3. New Recruit over at UIB

Phil Mitchel of United Insurance Brokers recently invited applications for a job in P&I broking through Bow Wave. He did not have to wait long for a response. He reports:

"Within a week of the issue I received responses from the UK, the Continent, and places as far apart as Kenya, USA and Russia.

Within 2 weeks I interviewed two candidates and within four I secured my recruit to the broking world. Abby Jeeves is presently a police woman in Ipswich. She joined the force 4 years ago from Sedgwick P&I in Norwich where she had shown genuine aptitude for the subject. What was then Sedgwick's loss is now UIB's gain. I have Bow Wave to thank. The P&I world had better brace itself for the arrival of a new personality with a refreshingly different background!"

Phil hopes that those who got in touch with him but received nothing in response will forgive him. He will do his best to contact them when time permits.

We will watch out for Ms Jeeves. The only other person we can think of with a similar background is the excellent Ian Hyslop of the TT Club who had a spell with the Kent Police before becoming the Club's guru on many subjects.

4. Maritime Security Article

Reader Alice Jackson of the Gard Club has drawn our attention to an item on the subject which sets out the expected timetable behind the forthcoming Diplomatic Conference at the end of the Year at IMO.

http://www.gard.no/

5. Trident Maritime

We had lunch the other day with Lt.Col.Tim Spicer who operates Trident Maritime--a maritime safety and security
company in this small and interconnected world. He spoke of how the modern terrorist goes in for "iconic targeting". We are sure the industry and the waterfront will be addressing the subject with increasing vigour in the months to come.

See his site at:

http://www.trident3.com

6. And Finally,

Thanks to Jeff Blum for this extensive list of well waddya knows. Your editor recalls such items regularly appeared in American local papers during his boyhood. They seem to have found new careers in circulation on the internet.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

The youngest pope was 11 years old.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:

Spades - King David,
Hearts - Charlemagne,
Clubs -Alexander, the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

Q. What occurs more often in December than any other month? A. Conception

Q. What separates "60 Minutes," on CBS from every other TV show? A. No theme song

Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what? A. Their birthplace.

Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested? A. Obsession

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"? A. One thousand

Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laserprinters all have in common? A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil? A. Honey

Q. There are more collect calls on this day than any other day of the year?A. Father's Day

Q. What trivia fact about Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic? A. He was allergic to carrots.

Q. What is an activity performed by 40% of all people at a party? A. Snoop in your medicine cabinet.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight"

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month or what we
know today as the honeymoon.

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they use the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.

In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was entitled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English vocabulary.

BOW WAVE is published each week to around 7200 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries.

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