Strategic Analysis and Research by the CENTER foR STRATEgy, ENTERPRISE & INTEllIgENCE
how ruthless and reckless he is. And it also tells us a lot about how insecure he is … ~ U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s purge and execution of his uncle Jan Song Thaek
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It will always remain the army of Kim Jong Un, defending him unto death and upholding his leadership only.
POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue
~ Choe Ryong Have, the North Korean leader’s reputed top adviser, addressing soldiers days after Jan Song Thaek’s execution
December 18, 2013
POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue
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EDUCATION Educating One ASEAN Philippine colleges and universities ponder the demands of ASEAN economic integration
MANAGEMENT Motherhood vs. Career balance both
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WORLD Lines in the Sky and Sea zone ratchets Asia’s geopolitical game up a notch
The High-Tech City As urbanization spreads, cities harness other challenges Two new cities built from the ground up
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You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide The problem with some problems is that they eventually catch up with you. Sure, you can pretend they’re not there, like the silent swelling of cities from hundreds or thousands of new settlers arriving from the countryside left behind by the metropolitan rush for higher incomes, higher education, and higher class. Eventually, the city limits push outward, the fumes and trash.
family counselor portrays this challenge as a painful but unavoidable choice between children and career. But is it really?
On the international stage, geopolitical realities quietly building for decades assert themselves and intrude on national market integration had been delayed several times over the past decade, with the 2015 start somewhat watered down. But the imperative toward more open markets and tougher global competition cannot be held back forever. If ASEAN doesn’t do it, other markets that do will zoom past it in the race for trade and investment.
From the new video section at Digg comes one awesome, point-of-view video of a guy in a wingsuit navigating his way through a narrow gap between a couple of hills. But even if we know how it ends – spoiler alert:
take our word for it. Watch it for yourself.
And then there’s China. That it is a global economic power has been acknowledged worldwide. However, the hope in some quarters was that the nation of 1.3 billion people would be content to make money, not war. Fat chance, seasoned historians would say. With wealth comes power, and even if resurgent China does not make Saddam Hussein’s mistake Digg
all, every emerging big power did so in centuries past, including the United States of 1823, less than half a century since Independence, telling European empire builders to keep off the Western Hemisphere. In sum, even as problems and challenges can be conveniently ignored or wished away for a time, they eventually must be faced. In this instalment of The CenSEI Report, the above-mentioned issues of the bursting metropolis, motherhood vs. they’re here and won’t go away. So take a deep breath and leap. Have a big splash this holiday season!
Business Insider, in a Nov. 12 blog post by Gus Lubin, presents 21 telling charts that show, in one way or another, how the rich have cleaned up in the United States and left everyone else scrounging for
scraps not just last year or this year, but over the past couple of decades.
land of opportunity. Put another way, it might still be the land of the free,
Not one big, neat, catchy infographic, not a dramatic video, but still a must-see for anyone who still thinks the United States is the
the very rich surrounded by a whole other country of those who are steadily losing ground. Read them and weep.
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HELPING WORKING WOMEN COPE WITH MOTHERHOOD POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue
Helping Working Women Cope with Motherhood As more women go to work, their having to choose between careers and motherhood will affect the workplace By Marishka Noelle M. Cabrera
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recent article from Britain’s The Telegraph suggests that as employed parents struggle to balance their
parenting program that teaches how to be a better parent. This proposal, the Nov. 3 article suggests, can increase commitment and build practical skills that “make employees more productive and reduce the
In South Korea, “gender discrimination is still very ingrained in mainstream business,” according to “A more diverse workplace: Increasing women’s power in Korea,” a 2013 report from global executive
related issues at home.”
The impact of motherhood on the careers of women can be brutal. In Japan, the biggest reason why Japanese women quit their jobs after childbirth is that “working hours make child care unfeasible,” according to government statistics cited in a BBC report in March. Roughly 70% of Japanese child. This is despite the fact that that the number of employed women has risen steadily for the past decade, and that Japanese women are more likely to have a university degree than men. factors such as the high cost of both private and state nurseries, along with Japanese fathers making a relatively limited contribution to child care, hinder the presence of Japanese women in the workplace. “If you want to keep working you have to forget about your children, you have to just devote yourself to the
STRATEGY POINTS Parenting programs in the workplace can help employed parents increase their commitment and productivity, a Telegraph article suggests
As a result, working women in Japan refuse to settle down and have children, according to an october article in The Guardian, citing the example of
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Heidrick & Struggles. In the report, Dr. yang Hee Kim, former senior researcher at Seoul’s explains: “While many women often cite the reason for leaving their jobs as needing to provide childcare at home, it is usually a combination of this plus the pressure to provide children with the best education
women to quit their careers.” A demanding work environment and the strong Korean work ethic have prevented many Korean women from going back to work after their maternity leave. The report notes: “Women seem pressed to meet the opposing demands of career and family, while the men are often free to network after work, without the stress of children’s homework and household chores.”
English and has experience in international contract law, is quoted as saying in the report. She no longer three small children.
unmanageable
In the Guardian report, Tomata says she avoids romantic relationships so she can focus on work. According to her, a woman’s chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries, primarily because when a woman becomes pregnant, the long,
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According to a June 2012 McKinsey & Company report, “Women Matter: An Asian Perspective, Harnessing female talent to raise corporate performance,” 40% of business leaders surveyed ranked the “double burden” of women in Asia— holding a job while looking after their families—as the major barrier preventing women from moving
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into senior roles in the corporate world. Moreover, 30% of business leaders said many or most women family commitments. However, in Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, family duties
labor force tend to be generally lower in Asia than participation rates in the world with 35%,
cultural views, often held by women as well as men.” participation rates under 50%, as shown in the following chart.
about their careers.
The McKinsey report suggests that “If the goal is to feed the corporate pipeline with more potential female leaders, the double burden will have to be
January article in Slate discussing how google became such a great place to work. Its People operations department examined the problem of many women leaving the company and found out that women who had recently given birth were leaving at twice google’s departure rate.
“A corporate culture in which a manager’s commitment is gauged by whether he or she is standard maternity leave plan, which was 12 weeks for women who want to balance work with family responsibilities to succeed,” the report continues. In the end, a failure to retain and recruit able women can only worsen the acute talent shortage that many
1
companies operating in Asia face, it warns.
69% 68%
74%
52% 62%
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55%
76%
35% This has resulted in an increase in the number of women at junior levels.
47%
66%
Companies as well as governments around the world have sought to address the issue of greater female representation in the workplace through various interventions. The South Korean government, for instance, provides loans or subsidies to businesses in order to build
47%
60%
70% 53%
Also cited in the report is the case of Taiwan, where Taiwanese women are entitled to six months of paid maternity leave at 60% of their salary on top of eight weeks on full pay. Since its introduction in 2009, about 65,000 employees have applied for the allowance. This level of maternity provision, the report emphasizes, is rare in Asia.
1 The proportion of female population aged 15-64 that engages actively in the labor market, either by working or looking for work
Female labor participation rates in Asia tend to be lower than in the West
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In the United States, technology giant google, for its part, has “lavish maternity and paternity leaves,” according to a
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google introduced a new plan: New mothers would and were allowed to split up that time however they wished.
dropped down to the average rate for the rest of the
cost google any more money, the article says. This is probably one of the reasons why google was named the best company to work for in 2013 by Fortune. In the West, the concept of bringing babies to work is gaining popularity. In her March piece in The Atlantic, Workplace springing up across the world, allowing employees life while doing their jobs.” Companies such as Babies in Business Solutions (BIBS) provide consulting services to businesses programs. BIBS founder and CEo Carla Moquin notes in the article that 185 organizations have allowed more than 2,100 babies to be brought to work with their parents in 43 states in the U.S., as
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well as in Canada, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, and
consulting companies, credit unions, law
failing to recognize the needs of mothers in the workplace will force these women to give up their jobs, causing the company to lose out on valuable female talent. Conversely, as more and more women in Asia become empowered to move up the corporate ladder, plans of having a family have taken a back seat—a move which does not bode well for aging societies such as Japan.
Workplace programs for employed parents are rarely a
explains, often initiate a conversation with employers about bringing the baby to work. Managers, in turn, set up a program that indicates who is eligible, for how long, and how to handle liability concerns and problems that could arise. The program
program and sometimes productivity gains—not only by motivated parents bringing babies to work but presence,” she continues.
Workplace programs for employed parents are rarely nature of the business, the culture of the society they are operating in, what their employees are looking leaves, parenting workshops – and how to increase workers’ productivity at work while trying to meet responsibilities at home.
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A recent Forbes blog post by contributor Gary Drevitch of discusses the contention of neurologist David Perlmutter that the modern diet of Americans – 60% carbohydrates, 20% fat, 20% protein – is a big contributor to what might be tagged as “brain diseases,” i.e., dementia, chronic headaches, depression, and epilepsy.
A Booz & Company report on “Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in 2012” posits nearly 1 billion women around the world will enter the global economy in the coming decade. Evidence discussed in the report suggests women can be powerful drivers of economic growth. And yet, this sector has not received enough attention from business leaders, governments, or key decision makers in many countries. Moreover, the report posits that greater women involvement can, indeed, have a profound impact. for instance, the report says women are more likely than men to invest a large proportion of their household income in the education of their children. As such, those children’s improved status becomes a positive social and economic factor in their society. “Thus, even small increases in the opportunities available to women, and some release of the cultural and political constraints that hold them back, can lead
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heart rate and other physiological measures associated with
According to the report, that conclusion was based on a June study published in the journal Frontiers in Autonomic Neuroscience, that found that heart rate, respiration, skin blood
other than one of the lead researchers: “While watching
brain disease involves shifting from the modern diet to a diet closer to that
other physiological effects, nothing can replace the health
5% carbohydrates, and 20% protein. “Progress toward higher female representation in senior management,” the McKinsey report notes, “is likely to require action by governments, the wider business community, and individual companies.”
An Agence France-Presse story published on the local GMA News Network
as saying. Besides, you might want to check your couch carefully
That contention, almost needless to say, is already controversial just on its own merits, as Drevitch also contention fear that it might lead people to load up on meat and dairy products, which have their own risks for cardiovascular health.
The BBC, in a Nov. 20 dispatch, tells of
considering are a couple of studies that Drevitch discusses in the Forbes post and separately. As discussed in the Forbes post, a recent Mayo Clinic study links a high-carbohydrate diet to a higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, while his separate post, from October 2012, discusses a 2008 study most common form of dementia, might be a specialized form of diabetes, a progression from Type 2 diabetes to an
that he rejected conventional surgical solutions and came up with a surgical solution of his own that doctors agreed to try out. Marfan syndrome which, in his case, translated into a weakened aorta. Rather than consent to conventional pre-emptive surgery to repair his aorta, he developed a procedure of his own that he convinced his surgeons to try. The procedure involved repairing the aorta not with a metal sleeve inserted inside the aorta but with a medical-grade-mesh sleeve surrounding the aorta, akin
the brain.
complications that come with conventional surgery.
But whether time and further study prove or disprove those controversial claims, Drevitch, in that related post, reminds us
increased in size since his solution was implemented nine years ago, and that the surgeons who worked on him have offered his custom-tailored solution to more than 40 patients in hospitals in London and Belgium since then. The procedure is not without for him and the majority of the other patients, with only one dying from complications during the operation. The report indicates that Golesworthy has put out a call in the European Heart Journal for researchers to test his device more thoroughly and compare it with conventional surgical procedures.
best for the rest of us to keep running.”
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was quoted as saying in the Guardian dispatch.
there has been a mass withdrawal from a COP …
to keep global temerature from rising no more than 2°C current country pledges and commitments are met.
doing now, at least as far as former and current UNFCCC chairpersons are concerned, according to the Nov. 4 Bloomberg Businessweek piece alluded to in that Guardian dispatch.
Same time next year? ,” an World Wide Fund for Nature spokesman was quoted as saying, also in the Guardian dispatch.
wrought by Typhoon Haiyan/ Yolanda would have shocked the world into action against global warming, hitting the central .” and 8, just ahead of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change Conference of meetings in Warsaw that began Nov. 11. impassioned plea to drive the point home at the opening session by Philippine climate-change negotiator Naderev Sano would strike a responsive chord at the meetings.
Perhaps it was the combination with his similar impassioned plea 18 meetings in Doha in December last year, as major typhoon Bopha/Pablo was still hanging around the southern Philippines, would have driven the point home about curbing global greenhouse gas emissions.
“... Haiyan left
separate devastating typhoons that struck the Philippines about enough to spur government delegates to act decisively. As it turned out, for their part, an estimated 800 civil-society observers would wind up walking out of the proceedings
in The Guardian. “The Polish government has done its best to turn these talks into a showcase for the coal industry. Along with backsliding by Japan, Australia and Canada, and the lack of meaningful leadership from other countries,
, affecting 2/3 of the Philippines, with about half a million people now rendered homeless, and with scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of a tsunami,
,” Kumi Naidoo, director of Greenpeace International,
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mention some skepticism the real need for some sort of agreement to move the process
Yvo de Boer,
come up with something, even if
Businessweek piece.
conference kept governments “on a track toward a universal climate agreement in 2015” by asking countries to submit by the
And then again, whether or not global warming can be held to a
transparent plans” for emissions reduction, well in advance of the COP 21 meetings in Paris later that year. All well and good, it would seem, the daunting task of achieving by 2020, according to another Guardian dispatch, this one on the release of a United Nations report on the emissions gap, or the difference between the ideal emissions levels in 2020 needed
Jeffrey Ball, scholar-in-residence SteyerTaylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, provides an interesting analysis of how things have changed since the Kyoto Protocol which obligated its developedcountry signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a collective 5% by 2012 while emissions alone. According to Ball,
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citing the International Energy World Energy Outlook report. And yet, all might not be lost, as Ball maintains that emission reductions in developed countries have actually come from both relative economic maturity and technological improvements motivated more by economic self-interest than any concern or new resolve about global climate, and argues that developing countries will follow the same path, citing and Brazil.
Ball says in concluding his analysis.
far the world will have gotten – or maybe more to the point, not gotten -- by the time COP 20 in Peru rolls around
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CITIES USE TECHNOLOGY TO GET SMART POINT & CLICK Access online research via your Internet connection by clicking pictures, graphics, and words in blue
Some existing cities are getting smarter from the bottom up, led by Amsterdam, according to a November 2012 feature in The Economist. The city put together a “ ” that brings institutions and infrastructure together to help businesses and citizens develop and test green projects such as installing smart meters that connect ships to the electricity grid so that they no longer have to use diesel generators when berthed in the city’s port. other initiatives include “Climate Street,” which aims to reduce the energy use of an entire shopping street and a ReloadIT smart grid for electric vehicles.
Cities Use Technology to Get Smart Finding solutions for problems from
Amsterdam’s open Data Program for transport and mobility won a City Award at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, National geographic reported in November 2012. Under the program, the city has developed smartphone applications such as Parkshark and Bike like a
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STRATEGY POINTS By 2050, nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, a United Nations study predicts
data publicly available.
Meanwhile, Singapore, congestion, is planning to advance its automated determine the position of a vehicle, according to the aforementioned Economist feature. The feature cited Carlo Ratti, head of the Massachusettes Institute of Technology’s SENSEable City lab and head of the lab’s branch in Singapore, in reporting time control system” that uses big data to optimize city operations, including, for example, combining weather and transport data to better match the demand and supply of taxis when it rains.
ur future, it appears, is in cities. The United Nations’ Economic & Social
World Urbanization Prospects, expects the number of people living in cities to reach 6.3 billion by 2050, a 70% increase from 3.6 billion in 2011, while the percentage of urban population will increase from 51.4% to 67.7%.
Cities are using smart technologies to help address growing urban challenges, and crisis management
As growing urbanization presents challenges such as
Data analytics will help cities optimize operations but will pose privacy concerns
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transport and travel information for travelers. The
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cities around the globe are trying to get smarter by harnessing technologies to improve city life.
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This YouTube video promoting the Amsterdam Smart City project discusses the four major project areas (from right to left, top to bottom): sustainable living, sustainable working, sustainable mobility, and sustainable public space.
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Electronic Road Pricing System, the city’s intelligent transport systems incorporate a range of smart transportation technologies,
“It’s like our Big Brother, not in a private sense but in a sense where we can watch everything that is going on, that’s happening in the city,” Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes told CNN.
information delivered
The article notes that Brazil’s growing economy and the fact that it will play host to
enabled taxis, and a highly integrated transportation system, allowing the city to enjoy low congestion rates.
In South America, Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro houses a control room that watches over the city, CNN reported in August. The operations Center has
identify and help prevent problems in the city from
forecasting system and a smart map which analyzes
the World Cup next year and the olympic and Paralympic games in 2016 pushed the city to focus on sustainable initiatives. Software giant IBM helped the city set up the command center in 2010, CNN following a storm that killed 68 people. Michael Dixon, head of Smarter Cities for IBM globally said, “We integrated more than 20 city agencies into one central command center, decreasing emergency response times by 30%.” Ricky Burdett, professor of Urban Studies at the london School of Economics thinks data services can have
around the city.
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Some smart cities – those that use information technology and digital data to make their operations more
Songdo has been underway since August September BBC feature, Songdo has been designed with sensors to monitor bus schedules and local authorities about problems. Songdo also has sustainable innovations such as charging stations for electric cars and a water-recycling where household waste is sucked directly from individual kitchens through a vast underground network of tunnels, to waste-processing centers, where the waste is automatically sorted, deodorized, and treated. For all that technology, the feature reports that Songdo is less than half-full, with less than 20% of Built from 1,500 acres of reclaimed land off Incheon, Songdo is said to be the largest private real-estate development in history, and is scheduled for completion sometime in 2015. Masdar in Abu Dhabi, a smart-city project being built in scratch, per a November 2012 article in The Economist. The city built for 40,000 people will rest on a huge podium with smart infrastructure, including water pipes with sensors and an undergrown network of magnetic paths for self-driving pod cars. The city is intended to serve as a showcase for all kinds of green technology,
Moreover, Masdar will be raised meters above
South Korea’s new smart city Songdo has an underground waste system that sucks rubbish directly from kitchens to a processing center BBC
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according to a January report in The Guardian. The city, mostly solar-powered, will use low-energy appliances and insulation to cut energy consumption to only a quarter of the equivalent of its size. The report also noted that project completion has being pushed back from 2016 to 2025, lack of businesses and people who want to move to the city.
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The obvious risk of throwing a camera in the air big as electricity’s impact in the last one, as cited in a September article in The Economist. Big data cities more liveable, sustainable, perhaps more democratic, the article posits before wondering whether smart cities would just turn into “electronic panopticons in which everybody is constantly
lends itself to being launched, so to speak. city technology, he suggests, should be coupled with a range of other “instruments, policies and practices that are sensitive to the diverse ways in which cities are structured and function.”
According to a report (link to summary) from Navigant Research, with rapid urbanization, the world
being watched.”
will see big investments in urban infrastructure in the coming years, presenting an immense opportunity for new transport management systems, smart grids, water monitoring systems, and
Meanwhile, Renee Boucher ferguson, in an oct. 29 blog post on the MIT Sloan Management Review site, cites some concerns about managing smart cities, as brought up in a June paper, “ Time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism,” by Rob Kitchin, research director at National University of Ireland, Maynooth. According to ferguson, Kitchin is worried control centers integrate and bind data streams together, will create a system controlled by a single, panoptic vantage point, raising “the specter of a Big Brother society based on a combination of surveillance and ‘dataveillance.’”
A CNET Nov. 12 dispatch reports that Panono, a Berlin-based startup, is launching an Indiegogo crowdfunding effort and full-scale production of a spherical, that operate simultaneously to capture
When thrown in the air, the camera will automatically take 36 shots at its peak height, and provide an immediate, lowresolution preview viewable through a smartphone app, with the full-resolution couple of minutes. According to the report, the camera is made of durable polycarbonate
camera can also be used more conventionally, but
The dispatch also mentions that another crowdfunding effort is afoot on behalf of another spherical camera, the Bublcam by Toronto-based Bubl Technology launching to operate but which does offer video and Wi-Fi capability for live-streaming across different platforms.
technology markets predicts
A review of both crowdfunding efforts shows that Panono is still about 60% short of its ambitious
Moreover, the report suggests that “information and communication technologies will be deeply embedded in the fabric of both old and new cities and will change the way we think of city operations and how we live and work in these environments.”
Bublcam has overshot its original $100,000 target by over 2½ times with 24 days to go, which has allowed it to enhance the
imaging for photos.
However, funding remains the critical issue for press release related to the
and associated technology are promoted by software and hardware companies, Kitchin says these projects can create the following concerns: “that public
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thing in consumer digital photography: when we were getting used to awesome, single-point-of-view video
models that allow cities to invest in innovation will be crucial to the next phase of this market. for this reason, interest in devising appropriate new service models is increasing.”
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WHAT ASEAN INTEGRATION IN 2015 MEANS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES
What ASEAN integration in 2015 means for higher education in the Philippines
In
aiming for regional economic integration in 2015, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) seeks to promote
and capital among ASEAN members. The key characteristics of the AEC include:
more collaborative activities in research and curricula, competition for jobs, higher employer standards, and the pressure to do well in international rankings of universities.
In terms of research output, Dr. Pascual presented a graph showing how Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia have overtaken the Philippines, based on data from the 1980s up to 2011.
He cited QS Quacquarelli Symonds’ 2013 ranking of Asian universities, where U.P. was the only Philippine university in the top 100, ranked 67th on the list. According to the QS list of the top 300 Asian universities, aside from U.P., 11 other ASEAN universities were in
In the 2015
from Singapore, three from Thailand, and one
Ateneo de Manila University President Jose Ramon T. Villarin, S.J., meanwhile, lamented that apart from producing fewer research papers, these works are rarely being cited. He stressed the need for Philippine institutions to “produce new knowledge” and to be able to “contribute to the global conversation.” He noted that while the Philippines produces around 600 papers, one university
Cultural Community is human development through
from Indonesia.
in Singapore alone produces thousands.
learning, human resource training and capacity building,” among others. The strategic objectives include ensuring the integration of education priorities into ASEAN’s development agenda and
At a Nov. 19 forum on “Higher education competitiveness in an ASEAN integrated era,” key thoughts on implications for higher education in the Philippines as it moves toward greater integration with fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
STRATEGY POINTS Higher education in the Philippines faces a host of challenges as ASEAN integration in 2015 approaches The impact on institutions of higher education will be in human-resources development and capacity-building, as well as in mutual
The challenges of ASEAN integration can pave the way for rethinking existing models in the higher-education sector, increasing government support, and examining quality assurance methods
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They discussed issues such as the impact of internationalization on the country’s education sector, the dearth of research output from Philippine universities, and the challenge of harmonizing the
In his presentation, University of the Philippines President Alfredo E. Pascual discussed challenges for the greater demand for quality programs,
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In addition, fr. Villarin encouraged collaboration and strategic alliances among local institutions. As the sector becomes more globalized, he says, the more competitive institutions will lead, while the others will be left behind.
It will bode well
The questions to be asked are: resources be competitive?
in the right kinds of people in order to optimize the value of the organization
In his presentation, Representative Roman T. Romulo, chair of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education
for Higher and Technical Education (UnifAST). The UnifAST Act at rationalizing the allocation and utilization of all public resources to “promote and maintain harmonized and coherent national and regional human capital development programs.” Moreover, the act seeks to promote academic excellence among
take leadership positions in ASEAN companies?
A 2011 Asian Development Bank (ADB) report on higher education in Asia posits that investing in higher education will help drive social and economic development among developing countries. “As the developing member countries of ADB increasingly strive to become knowledge economies, labor economic integration among countries makes borders less meaningful, a strong higher education system is increasingly a necessity,” it says. In the report, the ADB reminds readers that modern economies cannot be managed by primary and secondary graduates alone. Citing the organisation (oECD) experience, for instance, “every dollar
of economic class.
in getting even more money back through economic growth.” “This investment,” the ADB report notes,
other measures noted by the speakers include strengthening the foundation of basic education to
educational opportunities.” As competition for skilled labor becomes keener, the prospect of ASEAN integration in 2015 should serve as an opportunity for government, business, and education leaders to rethink existing models in the
universities around Asia. for businesses, Merlito S. Salazar, Jr., President of the Management Association of the Philippines, says
assurance methods to ensure that local academic institutions are able to prepare graduates for a larger, regional environment.
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A Nov. 12 post on the Christian Broadcasting Network churches” are springing up in cities across the United States, i.e., in Los Angeles and San Diego, California, in Nashville, Tennessee, and in New York City. British comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans are embarking on an international tour of 22 locations around the world to establish atheist fellowships along the lines of their “Sunday Assembly” launched in Canonbury, north of London, in January, as reported on the Crossmap site. According to the CBN report, the mega-churches hold services that resemble “typical Sunday morning worship services, complete with music, hand clapping, and inspiration,” any “God” to speak of. An Associated Press photo tag published on the Yahoo!News portal says, without any apparent affect: “The movement fueled by social media and spearheaded by the two prominent British comedians is no joke.” The fuss over atheist megachurches begat this Nov. 15 blog post on the Raw Story site, courtesy of Sadhbh Walshe and The Guardian, which provided this observation: “... if faithlessness ends up becoming a quasi-religion with its very own church, where are the true atheists – the ones who
The Enpundit blog site, in a recent post, calls our attention to the work of Nashville, Tennesseegraphic designer Clif Dickens, who, on his Honest Slogans blog site, provides recreations of the logos of popular products but with slogans/tags/mottos that claim think,” referring to the product manufacturers. The Enpundit post provides a sample of its favorite re-imagined logos, but you can choose your own directly from the Honest Slogans site, which has a gallery dating back to December 2011.
worthy – supposed to call home?” Also, the God-less assemblies project might have picked a better time to stir up the dust, given that the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, is the top-mentioned name on the Internet in 2013, per this report.
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Here We Go Again The military musing is no surprise, especially with of three nations, surveillance drones, and two United States bombers getting into the picture, along with China’s newly refurbished aircraft carrier Liaoning sent to the South China Sea. Plus: South Korea
By Ricardo Saludo
announced an expansion of its ADIZ southward to overlap with those of China and Japan. Still, all sides in the brewing tension, while outwardly asserting their positions, seem keen to keep the temperature well away from boiling point — so far.
LINES ALL OVER THE PLACE
Chinese carrier sent to South China Sea
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China’s new air defense zone, all sides want to keep tensions below boiling point To secure its sea lanes, Beijing will keep expanding its naval reach and clout, which the U.S. will aim to counter As China wooes ASEAN with aid, the U.S. and Japan must show the Philippines it pays to side with them
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Al-Jazeera
China’s Foreign Ministry declares ADIZ
PressTV
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fast these days, some amusing, others intriguing, and all spurred by renewed frictions in the East China Sea over Beijing’s November 23 declaration of an Air Defense , overlapping with Japan’s own ADIZ and encompassing the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyutai islands cover all manner of battles. Among them: BBC News’ “ East China Sea,” Popular Mechanics’ “Here’s What a Shooting War in the East China Sea Might look like,” The Malay Mail’s “The coming Red Tide,” and warisboring.com’s “If China’s Airspace grab Turns Violent.” Also topping online searches for The Diplomat website, “ War,” posted in September last year.
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applied only to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. To
That’s exactly the sector worrying the Xi regime: the
In his 1990s memoirs, former PlA Navy chief liu
control of the islands.
ousted in April, 2012, from the ruling Communist Party Politburo amid rumors of an aborted power grab by his supporters.
leader Deng Xiaoping in a 1979 meeting with naval brass (cited in page 116 of “The Evolution of China’s Naval Strategy and Capabilities,” originally published in 2009 in Asian Security 5 journal).
In Beijing’s eyes, moreover, the South China Sea training voyage of the Liaoning, a refurbished Ukrainian aircraft carrier, asserts China’s claimed sovereignty over nearly the entire body of water under its “
This past September, the former Commerce Minister and Chongqing party boss was jailed for life on charges of corruption and abuse of power, and his appeal
announced by the Nationalist regime back in 1947. It helps Beijing’s assertion that only the Philippine criticized the Liaoning’s sailing, and President Benigno Aquino III himself saw no threat in the carrier.
was rejected a month later. By confronting foreign powers through the ADIZ and the Liaoning voyage, Xi wraps himself
planes will now patrol the skies above the disputed Biden, visiting Tokyo and Beijing, called for calm. He told a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo December 3: “This action has raised regional tensions and increased the risk of accidents and miscalculation. This underscores the need for crisis management mechanisms and and Japan to reduce the risk of escalation.” While Japan and South Korea told their airlines to disregard Beijing’s instructions to aircraft, the U.S. government instructed American carriers to comply, evidently to avoid any disruption or danger from aggressive action, prompting even state media to urge more visible enforcement of the zone so China would not look weak. But make no mistake about it: Despite the prudent wish to avoid war, China is security position far beyond its coastline, and both the ADIZ and the Liaoning deployment are part of that plan. And that unrelenting push will almost surely escalate tensions and confrontation in the region, especially for the U.S. and its allies nearest China, i.e., Japan and the Philippines.
territory. If it doesn’t stop them now for fear of
A second factor cited by analysts for the ADIZ move is the need for the new administration of President Xi and Prime Minister li Keqiang to consolidate power and push sweeping economic reforms, which will inevitably generate opposition from vested interests in the bureaucracy, local governments, and business groups. As with any external challenge, harnessing the armed forces to assert territorial claims against foreign nations lines up both people and army behind the government. “President Xi Jinping faces the politically risky task
So what were Chinese President Xi Jinping and his fellow leaders thinking when they marked out consternation of the neighbors and superpower America? The experts see three things. first, China is adding Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands, which Beijing declared in April as a “core interest” — a phrase previously
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opposition while the economy slows,” explains fung global Institute and Harvard University Asia Center senior fellow William overholt in his Project Syndicate essay. “By emphasizing Party control – through a crackdown on [state enterprises], government opponents, and critics in the media and academia – Xi seeks to maximize his ability to impose economic reforms while minimizing the risk of a challenge from conservative forces.”
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With potentially hostile forces all around those Seventh fleet, interdicting ships going to or from China is easy, says former Philippine National Security Adviser and
hoping to win over patriotic factions — including Bo’s.
Yazhou Zhoukan, the former sister magazine of defunct Asiaweek, cited the third reason for China’s latest
term legislator Roilo golez, whose West Philippine Sea Coalition Telegraph video has organized protests by filipinos across the globe against Chinese incursions in islands and waters claimed by Manila. China’s
Seas” strategy. Under this defense plan, the People’s liberation Army (PlA) missile, air force and navy seek dominance in the East and South China Seas, plus adjacent waters, which are marked out by the
Hence, the PlA must then build up its rocket, naval and aviation capabilities to challenge and eventually dominate potential adversaries within the first Island Chain. The ADIZ and Liaoning deployments,
islands, past Taiwan, to the Philippines and Borneo (see map, page 25).
installations in the South China Sea, advance this strategy to secure China’s sea lanes.
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China looks set to continue its maritime security initiatives for the foreseeable future, not only to secure its trading routes, but also to match the U.S. Pivot to Asia strategy expanding American military presence and building alliances. Already,
Beijing’s ambassador in Manila, Ma Keqing, asserted amid the ADIZ tensions that “where
With security tensions roiling the region’s sky and seas, the Commemorative Summit marking 40 years
zone is within the decision of the Chinese government [depending on the] actual needs and ability of China.”
The joint communique issued at meeting’s end included among top regional issues “Maritime Security and Cooperation,” and “free and safe maritime paragraphs, respectively. In a passage likely to get Beijing’s attention, in view of its ADIZ declaration, Paragraph 5 said: “We also agreed to enhance cooperation in ensuring the accordance with the universally recognised principles of international law, including the 1982 UNCloS, and the relevant standards and recommended practices by the International Civil Aviation organisation (ICAo).”
spoke of “regional architecture,” the term used by the United States for its vision of mechanisms and institutions to address security, economic,
State Hillary Clinton spelled out the concept in her
“Remarks on Regional Architecture in Asia: Principles and Priorities” highlighted America’s defense alliances with Japan, Korea, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines (in that order), and its strategic partnerships with India and China. Clinton also spoke of advancing “clear and increasingly shared objectives,” of which the last may not be
China’s ‘Near Seas’ in First Island Chain and ‘Far Seas’ in Second Island Chain
and stability, expanding economic opportunity and growth, and fostering democracy and human rights.” focused on delivering results.”
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The communique makes no mention of China and merely reiterates regional concerns, most of which Beijing shares as well. freedom of navigation, while usually seen in light of Chinese incursions in disputed islets, reefs and waters, can also apply to China’s crucial need to secure sealanes, as noted by for its commerce, including 80% of its imported oil passing through the South China Sea. However, the commemorative summit in Tokyo also signals to Beijing that ASEAN can lean toward or That would be a major strategic and geopolitical setback for Beijing, which has in fact been on a charm for that reason, Southeast Asia research associate Phuong Nguyen of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues in his Dec. 14 CSIS article: “Beijing is unlikely to announce an ADIZ in the South China Sea in the immediate future.” Rather, the Chinese will seek to allay ASEAN fears and push its program to boost economic ties, Economic Cooperation summit in Bali in october. With American President Barack obama unable to attend due to the U.S. government shutdown, Xi and Premier li Keqiang had ASEAN’s full attention when they launched its biggest drive for closer ties with the grouping, ushering in “a new strategic era in Southeast Asia,” says Phuong Nguyen, as America and Japan compete with China in wooing ASEAN. In Bali, Xi and li unveiled plans to boost trade with the grouping promised that Beijing would do its part to complete negotiations for ASEAN’s proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership by 2015.
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RCEP aims to liberalize trade among Having taken Southeast Washington’s Asia, China, side after its Japan, territorial South Korea, spats with India, Beijing since Australia 2011, Manila Malaysian PM Najib Razak and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe at and New can expect ASEAN-Japan summit: Keeping equidistant from big powers NHK Zealand, little from building on the Chinese, free trade agreements within ASEAN and between as shown by their limited disaster assistance during the Association and neighboring economies.
unveiled in his address to Indonesia’s Parliament days before the APEC summit, for an Asian infrastructure bank and technological resources to upgrade and expand facilities in the region. The scheme would address Asia’s immense need for public works, estimated
facilities between 2010 and 2020 (see page 4 in the ADB report Infrastructure for a Seamless Asia). No wonder Tokyo presented its own package
heels of Premier li’s push during his october visit to Hanoi
At this rate, most of ASEAN looks set to gain from the strategic competition between the Chinese on one side, and the Americans and the Japanese on the other. Except perhaps the Philippines.
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From the memolition blog comes a post about this recent chart, courtesy of Reddit and PolicyMic, showing how 10 supercorporations own or are otherwise connected to just about anything we buy in a
the recent Typhoon Haiyan calamity (yolanda in the Philippines). U.S. and Japanese aid was many times greater, with American immediate relief estimated by the White House and troops of both countries mobilized. Many reports
the most popular brands, which comes pretty free markets and competition.
for a greater military presence in the archipelago. Having envisioned the Philippines as a major platform in their security strategy, America and Japan must show that it pays to be on their side. Raising U.S. military aid Japanese loans for yolanda recovery. Plus visiting Secretary of State John Kerry’s for coastal
And when the next island confrontation with China occurs, it would shore up filipinos’ faith in America if, in contrast with its inaction during the Scarborough Shoal incident, the U.S. would rattle its saber in defense of the Philippines, as it did for Japan standing ally in Asia may start wondering if it’s not getting a fair shake for taking America’s side against
Slate magazine, in this recent post, provides an interactive demographic breakdown of the of wealth, age, location, industry, religious background, and education. The graphic consists of 50 bubbles, representing each billionaire, basic information on whom is provided by moving the cursor over. From there, one clicks on any of the selectable categories across the top to see how the distribution of the 50 richest people shakes out into each category.
tag provides a breakdown of who inherited their
behemoth in decades to come.
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