Emerging market youth embrace liberal globalism

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Vikas Pota

What do young people in developing countries think? There is of course a wealth of anecdotal knowledge. It’s commonly said that they value education more than young people in the west and are more religious and more conservative. But there is surprisingly little hard data.

We decided to ask 15- to 21-year-olds in 20 developed and developing countries across the world the same questions about their lives, religious beliefs and views on international issues*. Above all, we wanted to know whether these so-called millennium babies (often known as Generation Z) have a common vision of the world. Or do geography, culture and nation matter more?

We first asked whether young people were happy with their lives. We found that in emerging economies young people tend to be far happier than in the west: 90 per cent of Indonesians and 78 per cent of Nigerians said they were happy compared with just 57 per cent in Britain and France.

They also tend to be more optimistic. The countries with the highest proportions of young people who think the world is getting better are China, India and Nigeria; those where the highest proportion think the world is getting worse are France and Italy. The emerging economy exceptions were Argentina and Brazil, where young people are as gloomy about the future as they are in Europe.

One question the survey throws up is why happiness and optimism levels tend to be so much higher in most emerging economies than in the west. Perhaps a country’s direction of travel is more important than its current economic position. In Europe and the US, living standards are higher than in much of the developing world, but Europeans and Americans have a sense of lost glories as their lifestyles are threatened by global competition.

Young people in emerging economies are emphatic supporters of liberal values — even when those values run contrary to the laws of their country. In India and China more than half of young people think that same-sex marriage should be legal. Around three-quarters of young people in India, Brazil and China support equal rights for transgender people — more than in France and Japan.

Overwhelmingly, young people believe that men and women should be treated equally — with the greatest support for such values in the very different societies of Canada and China. Even in India, more than nine out of 10 young people support the principle that men and women should be treated equally — marginally higher even than in the UK and the US. We can no longer generalise about conservative developing countries and more liberal developed countries.

For all the concern about religious conservatism and polarisation, it is heartening that two-thirds of young people have close friends from other religions, and less than a fifth say a person’s religion is an important factor when deciding whether or not to be friends with them. Even in countries where this figure is highest — for instance India (29 per cent) and Indonesia (31 per cent) — two-thirds do not think a person’s religion is an important consideration when forming friendships.

The old complaint that countries on the rise are too preoccupied with raising living standards to worry about climate change is not backed up by the data. Emerging economies are more concerned about climate change than many western countries. Nearly three-quarters of young Indians and two-thirds of Brazilians, Argentines and Nigerians list climate change as one of the factors that makes them most fearful for the future. As China has the largest carbon emissions of any country, it could matter that its young people are alone in regarding climate change as a greater global threat than extremism.

Equally, emerging economies showed the greatest support for legal migration. Indian and Chinese young people were the most likely to say that their government should make it easier for immigrants to live and work legally in their country. (Turkey is an exception. Under huge pressure from the Syrian refugee flows, it is the most negative country on legal migration). When we asked young people whether governments were doing enough to solve the global refugee crisis, those in Brazil and Argentina were the most likely across 20 countries to say they were doing too little.

As befits this first generation of digital natives, Generation Z places huge faith in technology to solve our future problems. In China, India and Indonesia more than 90 per cent of young people named technology as the factor that made them most hopeful for the future — more than in any western country. They are also more likely than young people in the developed world to worry about the consequences of children not receiving a good education.

Members of Generation Z born in emerging economies are more likely to travel and forge friendships in other countries — on and offline — than any previous generation. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that they broadly agree with their contemporaries in the west on a host of personal and political issues, with some notable exceptions (Nigeria is a category of its own for religious conservatism) and, if anything, are greater supporters of the international order. With the growth of nativism around the world, it’s reassuring to know that the generation who will inherit the earth are, in most part, liberal globalists.

*The poll was conducted by Populus, a UK-based research and strategy consultancy, between September 19 and October 26, 2016. Populus undertook 20,088 online surveys with young people aged 15 to 21 in 20 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US.

Vikas Pota is Chief Executive of the Varkey Foundation.

This article appeared in the Financial Times Beyond Brics Blog on 8th February 2017. Further Op-Ed pieces appeared in Italy’s Corriere Della Sera; The Japan Times; and France’s Le Monde

There’s hope for India, after all the Chinese are humans

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Vikas Pota

Having just returned from the World Economic Forum in China, I’m filled with optimism and hope for India’s prospects. Let me explain:

For quite some time, there’s a line that’s been pushed through the media of the Chinese being super-human, super efficient, and all such super things. My visit last year to China confirmed this, but on reflection I feel I was awe-struck just to be visiting China – its hard not to be considering all the hype you hear about the economic juggernaut that’s going to increasingly shape all our futures.

Having taken the opportunity to scratch beneath the surface this time, I found that in many respects the Chinese are no different to my Indian brothers and sisters, it’s just that the state does a good job in presenting a different picture – one of an organised system and collective entity – which is certainly not the case.

In fact, witnessing and experiencing such difference, almost makes me like China more, it makes the place more humane, and for this reason more attractive as a place to visit and perhaps even invest in.

In India, the one thing we all know is that the government is simply incapable of trying to shape the world’s perception of India – which is no fault of their own, but simply a characteristic of the society it has become. With such rapid proliferation and scrutiny by the media and civil society groups, the government is held accountable – and perhaps does a better job at it than the Opposition parties in India.

When we look at macro trends, the economic advantages India is going to derive over the next thirty or so years from its demographic profile are absolutely gigantic. As Professor Tarun Khanna of the Harvard Business School cited at the Summit – India will have a surplus of approx. 50 million skilled workers over the next few decades, whereas the rest of the world will have exactly the opposite.

Given this is the case, does it not stand that India has a fair chance of lapping China in this race to the top?

From Russia with love

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Vikas Pota

In the past year, you’ve seen the who’s who of global politics make a bee line to New Delhi. Despite scams, corruption, failure of governance, and all such less desirable faces to India, David Cameron, Barack Obama, Nicholas Sarkozy, Wen Jiabao, and now President Medvedev seem keen to cosy up to a country, which when spoken of is often referred to as a slow elephant in comparison to the Dragon that’s come to symbolise China.

With the global economy facing severe challenges, its understandable that they seek to forge stronger partnerships with a nation that’s averaging GDP growth of 8.5% and with an increasingly young & affluent population. But is this the only reason?

Clearly, no.

The movement towards India is also, if not more so, about geo-politics. It’s about regional balance.

It was said that Cameron’s love for India is really about countering the emphasis the Blair gave to developing relations with China. America similarly after decades of a cool relationship with India warmed up by paving the way for the game-changing civil nuclear agreement, and the French have always been good friends with India, just as the Russians have.

In fact, it comes as no surprise that Medvedev is in India. There are some parallels and reasons to work together. Both have a massive need for infrastructure, which friends suggest, India is more likely to get done because it’s more open to foreign expertise and has lots of cheap labour. The significant differences are that India’s democracy is more developed and Russia has a serious demographic problem. It has some natural resources that India needs, but I’d say that Russia is definitely in a weaker economic position long term. That’s why Medvedev needs to work with India.

On a strategic plane, the India- Russia relationship goes back decades, for it was the Russians who were early to recognise India’s potential, both on the economic, and also on the geopolitical matrix as a counter to China, decades ago. Medvedev will be pushing an open door when in New Delhi.

You don’t need to be a genius to work out that India & China are key to the prosperity of nations like ours, but what’s critical is that the dance between the slow elephant and the fierce dragon doesn’t lead to an all out x-factor type contest where instead of houses being divided as to who’s the more meritorious, countries have to decide who to back for the big time. That’s why, in my opinion, Premier Wen’s sojourn to India was probably the most important visit of the lot.

It matters that China and India work towards resolution on key issues. It matters to the prosperity of future generations, in Russia, and the world over.

In China, they stand in straight lines…

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Vikas Pota

A TALE OF TWO HALVES

As written in an earlier post, I was nervous about my trip to China, which is continually portrayed as (almost) a foe to India, where my ancestors hail from.

Honestly, I really didn’t know what to expect and wanted to keep an open mind.

So, when I landed, I was pleasantly surprised. The airport wasn’t located next to a giant slum, which Mumbai’s airport is, the personnel shepherding us to our road transport were courteous and spoke excellent English, the roads weren’t full of potholes, I saw no livestock on the streets, all in all the experience was not dissimilar to most Western airports and countries.

Having settled into the conference I was attending, I realized that I could be almost anywhere in the world. Importantly, I was connected to the net via my Blackberry, had access to Facebook and Twitter – what were all these doomsayers complaining about?

Bolstered by Premier Wen’s opening speech at the Summit, I found an acceptance that China was as much a part of the world as the UK was. Contrary to public perception in our part of the world, he spoke about the challenges that China faces in an open and thoughtful manner and thus laying to rest the notion (at least in my mind) that the Chinese would never speak of their internal challenges openly as they’d be risking a loss of face. I also witnessed a major Chinese business leader – Kai-Fu Lee – trash its education system in public.

Clearly, I felt that people had been egging on this perception that China had a problem with freedom of speech. Or had they?

I was lucky that an old business acquaintance of mine had relocated to Beijing, where I met up with him. Prior to this, I was keen on doing some sightseeing so I got an English speaking guide to take me around the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen Square, the latter which I was really keen on visiting due to the massacre that took place there. Gently, I probed about the incident, and she point blank refused to talk about it, she said, “we’re not meant to talk about that”.

Was this a one-off?

The reason why, despite my best effort, I saw no slum villages, or any signs of poverty my friend told me was that the Chinese authorities controlled migration. So, you couldn’t just choose to relocate to Beijing, whereas in India, cities like Delhi and Mumbai gain millions of new people looking for jobs on a yearly basis from all over India.

I came to realize that there seemed to be a fairly extensive use of social engineering – for example, the waitresses all looked stunningly pretty, the shopping area I was in only allowed people of a certain class & look into the precinct etc. Such examples, which I cast aside earlier in the visit, all came to the fore – were they simply trying too hard to project a view of China & Chinese culture to the world. If so, they’d do well to remember that given we’re brought up in mature democracies, I’d rather see the real China – warts and all, than their take of a western consumerist society.

On a lighter note, having had an enjoyable dinner, we walked to the taxi rank so I could make my way to the airport, when unexpectedly, it started raining. Nothing strange about that at all, after all Mother Nature does what she does best. Or does she?

Trying to make a point, my friend spun me a story about the Chinese authorities fired chemical rockets (also called cloud-seeding) in the sky to make it rain and snow at their will! They even control the weather! To support his point, he sent the following link as evidence: http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/02/beijing-snow-man-made-in-china/)

Amused and amazed with the knowledge I had acquired, on my arrival at the airport, I tried articulating what I thought about China. I’d had an incredibly stimulating and thought provoking few days, but then I witnessed some form of staff team meeting taking place in a corner of the terminal, which for me summed up the enormous difficulty of arriving at a judgment about the world’s most populous country.

The striking feature of this meeting was not that it was taking place, but that the executives were stood in a formation of three even lines taking instruction from their boss. They listened attentively, acted in unison, and it seemed they had a collective sense of purpose and direction, where they understood that the sum of the parts exceeded the value of their individual contributions. This to me typifies the difference between China and the rest of the world.

Whilst, I’ve cherry picked some examples to make a point about the dominating part of her bureaucracy, I suppose whether you like China depends on how you view the role of the state. If you’re willing to cast aside her big brother tendencies, you could possibly have a great quality of life in China, like most Chinese people I saw in Beijing were enjoying.

Strategists shape the future at WEF Summer Davos in China

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Vikas Pota

Given his advocacy of a flat world, it came as no surprise when Tom Friedman was asked to moderate a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos event in China, deliberating what forces may shape our futures.

The assembled panel included Otto Scharmer who teaches at MIT, Kai-Fu Lee, a Chinese entrepreneur, and Dov Siedman, an American CEO – it needs to be said that whilst I hadn’t heard of the latter two, they stole the show as far as I was concerned.

Kai-Fu’s remarks on innovation were clever, but must have gone down like a lead balloon in China. After learning more about the guy, it comes as no surprise that he may have used the platform to score a political point with the Chinese authorities. Since the event, I learnt of his influence in China as a result of his previous roles as Microsoft and Google in China. His following on Twitter clearly shows he’s hot property.

He put forward a view that the next decade or so would be characterized by micro innovation – where entrepreneurs build on other peoples ideas, launch imperfect products, which they quickly refine and add value to. He explained that a Google or Apple come around once in a generation, and in all likelihoods regardless of the hype surrounding China’s emergence, the likelihood of successful innovative products coming from the mainland were almost non-existent.

To raised eyebrows and a growing sense of dismay, he spoke about the deficiencies of the Chinese education system, which he said didn’t allow for ‘out of the box’ thinking, thus holding back breakthroughs and progress that China so craves. Of course, he explained as a result of his own American education, he saw that America was better placed to deliver the next BIG discovery – thi in particular would have hit the nationalist nerve in China.

What he said made absolute sense, but to say it on home-turf in such an open manner must have been part of some plan in his head. Whatever game he’s playing (if any), I’m sure he’s likely to emerge victorious regardless of the type of reaction he received from the assembled Chinese media fraternity in the room that afternoon.

On the other hand, what Dov Siedman said chimed with everyone. He specializes in advising companies on ethics, and one his comments left an indelible mark on me.

He explained that in today’s world, whilst we’re able to exercise our judgment about what’s right or wrong, the clarity that a corporation needs to find should centre on how they’ll scale, not the company, but the values that we cherish the most. By doing so, the probabilities of building a sustainable and successful organization would, he suggests, increase dramatically.

By putting thought leaders like, Friedman, Kai-Fu and Siedman in the mix for a concluding session at a meeting like this, I believe that a strong signal has been transmitted by the WEF, marking a departure from one in which, not bankers, but genuine strategists were able to articulate their visions for what the future holds for us.

World Economic Forum’s Annual Summit of the New Champions

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Vikas Pota

For someone who really finds it difficult to pay attention and actively listen to people, it may come as a surprise when I say that I really found the recently concluded World Economic Forum’s ‘Summer Davos’ meeting for Global Growth Companies in Tianjin, China to be thought provoking and stimulating.

Sessions ranged from the technical subjects such as the future of solar energy solutions, to the crystal ball gazing type that the WEF team facilitates extremely well.

For me, the Mentor Sessions with Chief Executives of Anglo American, Infosys, Metro Group, and Nestle were the highlights. The CEO’s provided their views on & experiences of various aspects of the journey that leaders from emerging companies will go through – just like they once did.

It goes without saying that the WEF brought together interesting people and communities to interact, debate and learn from each other, not just as speakers, but attendees. Given that they’ve been fine-tuning their proposition for so long, you can be assured of some high quality networking, which is exactly what I found.

All in all a great few days, well organized, and importantly – an enriching experience.