Word: asia
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...high-tech defenses to keep freebooters at bay. Among the offerings are night-vision equipment, high-powered water guns, ear-splitting klaxons, and a lubricant foam that make it difficult for pirates to get their footing. For commercial shipping vessels and yachts operating in high-risk areas of Southeast Asia, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, such products can mean the difference between smooth sailing and high-seas distress...
Their most welcome suggestion is to make small- and medium-size business a priority, and they take Latin America to task for doing less than 3% of the world's R&D spending while Asia accounts for more than a third of it. If more of the region's leaders had taken counsel like this a decade ago, Hugo Chávez and the Latin left might not have such a large, impoverished crowd to play to today. Whether or not this is the century of the Americas, these books offer a guide to how Latin America can enter...
...workers their jobs. Makers of low-end goods are already suffering. The Guangdong city of Huidong was home to 3,000 shoe factories at the beginning of 2007, but as many as 500 of them have closed over the past 15 months, says Li Peng, secretary of the Asia Footwear Association in Hong Kong. One-sixth of 44,200 textile firms tracked by the China National Textile and Apparel Council lost money last year, and two-thirds are just breaking even. "Manufacturers' profits are so low that when they hit the slightest snag, they have to close," says...
...demand for cheap Chinese-made products. But this era may be ending. Most economists are forecasting a significant slowdown in worldwide GDP growth in 2008. This slowdown, predicts Lehman Brothers economist Sun Ming-chun, will prove to be the "unmasking of [manufacturing] overcapacity in China." Says Li of the Asia Footwear Association: "The cake is only so big, and when you have too many people trying to eat it, you will definitely have some go hungry...
This week's cover story was written by Bryan, our Going Green columnist and environment writer. He got a start on his beat when he was based in Hong Kong as a writer covering science for TIME Asia. After a stint as Tokyo bureau chief, he moved to the U.S. in 2007. His experience in Asia has made him particularly sensitive to the need to balance environmentalism with economic growth. Bryan's piece is our call to arms to make this challenge--perhaps the most important one facing the planet--a true national priority...