Word: li
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...Amidst this frivolity was a piece by one “Lian Ji,” which was titled, “Princeton University is racist against me, I mean, non-whites.” The reference was clearly to Jian Li, the now-Yale freshman who prattishly filed a lawsuit against Princeton last year for having the gall not to admit him, allegedly because of the admission committee’s prejudice against Asian Americans. The article, co-written with Asian students on the Daily Princetonian’s staff, went on to complain—in broken English?...
Ever since the British founded the city in 1841, its harbor has made Hong Kong a major stop on trade routes, its dockside warehouses stuffed with silks and other valuable wares of Asia. Hong Kong prospered as China's entrept, and traders like Li & Fung had tight links to the Chinese market. But when the Communist Party took power in China in 1949, exports from the mainland slowed to a trickle. Hong Kong then became a formidable manufacturing hub in its own right, until the colony's growing wealth (per capita income is second only to Japan...
...next step came as the spread of communications technologies, improved transportation networks and freer international trade enabled trading companies to begin sourcing supplies and products from Korea, Indonesia, India--wherever they could get the best price and quality. Victor Fung, Li & Fung's group chairman, says his firm had hit on the "idea that you can take work apart and allocate it to other parts of the world. We took the whole thing and disaggregated...
Think of Hong Kong's traders as the world's matchmakers. "We're the search engines to find the best place in the world" to buy a product, says Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung's sourcing business. With 72 sourcing offices in 41 countries, Li & Fung can tap into more than 8,000 factories making anything from carpets to dog brushes. In 2006 alone, the company was involved in the production and shipment of some 2.4 billion shirts, toys and other consumer goods--an amount that has quintupled since 1999. "We're creating a world that is flat," says...
Nimble isn't cheap. Firms such as Li & Fung and Noble have invested millions in computer systems that make it possible to micromanage logistics as never before. Noble has a ship-management division that oversees the operations of 150 vessels from the comfort of a Hong Kong office. Software tracks the fleet on an onscreen map, with the position of each vessel marked by an icon. Click on one, and the computer calls up every scrap of data you can imagine--the ship's current route and historic movements, its cargo, entire crew roster and maintenance schedule. One ship...