Has China Overplayed Its Hand?

Xi Jinping, Chairman of China's Communist Party, envisions a "China Dream", not to cool or feed the planet, but to regain China's place, center stage in world history. Kublai Khan's civilization, superior to Europe's in the 13th century, waited for Marco Polo to discover Chinese people paid for their goods with paper money and healed their wounds with a kind of vasoline. Unwilling to wait for China to be discovered in the 21st century, Chairman Xi chooses to dream of world domination by following Deng Xiaoping's 1978 advice, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." To be a rich country in the 21st century requires the technological superiority the world associates with Silicon Valley. When Chairman Xi learned, in April, 2018, a US ban on microchip exports could cause the bankruptcy of a Chinese firm, ZTE, he saw how the patent a US company held on a specific semiconductor chip established the international standard for an item essential in every device connected to a cell phone network. From that point on, his "Made in China 2025" program aimed for self reliance and acquiring standard essential patents (SEPs). Using a SEP without being licensed subjects a user to the charge of infringement. According to a German patent data source, Huawei now holds 2000 5G SEPs. Normally, a firm has to license its monopoly rights to anyone on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. The US wants to withhold licensing its SEPs to competitors because of national security concerns. To be fair, Huawei would have to be allowed to do the same. The chip situation is very complicated, because Washington has not been able to resist lobbying from US firms that want to continue selling chips to Huawei, a short term gain, since China is determined to end reliance on US supplies. Nonetheless, as of September 26, 2020, the US Commerce Department requires US suppliers to obtain hard-to-come-by licenses to export what China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), considered a supplier to the Chinese military, needs to upgrade and maintain its manufacturing and hardware equipment. Not easy to replicate or fund are the processes of: 1) designing the delicate silicon microchips created for different purposes, such as operating driverless cars, and 2) constructing the automated, super-cooled and shock resistant facilities where chips are manuractured. Ironically, Taiwan, which Beijing claims under its "one country, two systems" policy framework, currently is among the countries with facilities capable of fabricating microchips. Yet, Beijing is at odds with the democratic government Taiwan re-elected in January, 2020. Chairman Xi's detrmination to maintain stability through surveillance-guaranteed control and conformity undermines a relationship that provides Taiwan's top tier brainpower and technology. What steps is China taking to reduce external dependency, even from Taiwan, on foreign sources of semiconductor chips? - Enhanced domestic training of top quality skilled workers - Using experienced Chinese hackers to scoop up foreign researh and development progress in a wide variety of high tech industrial, medical, engineering, solar, gaming and military fields - China Talent Plan, a spy-like program for recruiting foreign individuals with access to intellectual technology property who are willing to work with Chinese partners - Huawei, a Chinese company with total annual earnings of over $100 billion annually from 170 countries, sells smartphones and cellular and internat gear that give Beijing potential access to big data from around the world. Some US professors targeted by the China Talent Plan have seemed oblivious to the way China uses them, but the FBI has been concerned for more than a decade. Yanqing Ye, for example, would see herself on an FBI wanted poster after she entered Boston University's Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering without declaring, on her visa application, her status as a Lieutenant in China's military, her membership in the Chinese Communist Party and her association with China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). The FBI found a Princeton professor working on unmanned drones and autonomous submarines with a scientist from NUDT. Although Huawei has global sales, its biggest customer is China, where a 2017 law requires any citizen or organization, including Huawei, to comply with all government requests. Therefore, the US attempts to prevent countries from making Huawei purchases, especially the countries in the "Five Eyes" spying pact that shares intelligence among Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and US. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of Huawei equipment, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. In October, 2020, Sweden also decided not to use Huawei products in its 5G network. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop 5G technology and to eliminate dependence on Huawei and other Chinese technology companies. With 6G technology already on drawing boards, an alliance of G7 countries (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents an important source of brainpower and financing to develop future networks. Such a NATO-like coalition also could more than match China's future investments in computing power to handle big data, the semiconductor industry, drones, robotics, autonomous weapons and other advanced technology. By attempting to gain world domination, China has stirred up widening opposition to its transgressions, such as internment of one million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, disregard of Hong Kong's 50-year guarantee of rights under China's takeover agreement with Britian and an expanding claim to the South China Sea. What some are calling a tech Cold War is more. Chinese Communism and the democratic ideals of human rights, the rule of law and representative government are waging a battle for history's center stage.

Make Holiday Season the Best Time of the Year

It's important to make sure everyone enjoys the holiday season, since studies show it can be a very sad time for some folks.

     Excited kids and adults who need to chill in what also can be a hectic season need to work on projects together. Making holiday cookies can be as easy as slicing and baking readymade sugar cookie dough from the grocery store or as complicated as mixing, rolling out dough, cutting shapes with cookie cutters, and frosting them.

     Making a garland paper chain to trim a tree has become easier through the years. You still cut out red and green strips of construction paper, but connecting the loops of paper together has gone from using some kind of paste that slops all over to staples to a neat little 3M dispenser that rolls out glue on two sides.

     One year my young daughter and I made scented pomanders by stuffing oranges full of whole cloves. We tried it unsuccessfully another year with limes that went bad and mushy before we finished, however.

     Then, there are the potato prints you can use to make gift tags and wrapping paper. Cut a really large baking potato in half and use a star cookie cutter to press the shape into the smooth side of each potato half. Then, carefully cut away the part outside the star shape to make the star stand out. Pour poster paint: red, green, yellow, blue, or whatever colors you want to use, on two different saucers. Dip the potato star into the paint and stamp the design on heavy card stock to make gift tags (Cut the holiday cards you receive this year into usable pieces to use for gift tags next year.) or stamp the star shape all over plain tissue to make wrapping paper.

     Germany is credited with originating the custom of having a live, decorated Christmas tree at home and in the public square. St. Francis of Assisi added the custom of including a Nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ child. St. Francis, who is associated with his love of animals, would be happy to see how sheep, cows, oxen, camels, and other animals often complete the manger scene.

     Singing carols is a tradition in homes, churches, schools, and even in concerts where the audience sings along. Entertainers make holiday records and CDs and host seasonal  music specials on TV.

     St. Nicholas and Father Christmas make sure there are gifts and gift drives that bring joy to the naughty and nice alike. Presents might be placed under trees, in shoes, in hanging stockings (thanks to a custom from Holland), and in bins for the less fortunate at community centers, churches, libraries, and stores.

     Presents come earlier in some countries and later in others. St. Nicholas can arrive December 6. Sweden celebrates St. Lucy Day on December 13. When days are about to become lighter, young daughters, dressed in white, wear a wreath of greens and lighted candles on their heads and carry trays of coffee and buns to family members. Elsewhere, shoes are filled with gifts from the Three Kings (Magi) on January 6.

     What is the holiday season's best gift? Good will toward each other, of course.   

   

   

Santa Opens Arctic Ocean for Business

Reindeer have new competition. Between now and next March, ice thickens in the Arctic Ocean, but, because of climate change, gradual melting after March opens a shipping channel in August. Ships with stronger hulls and expensive icebreaker escorts even can use the route for up to three months.

     Up until about five years ago, the dark cold South Pole was home to penguins, and the far north only housed Eskimos and Russian prisoners in Siberia. Oleg Sentson, the Ukrainian film director on a hunger strike, is still there in a penal colony serving a 20-year sentence for protesting Russia's annexation of Crimea. But Russia's President Putin also now hikes on vacations in Siberia, and Russian ships travel from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg on a Northern Sea Route Putin calls "a matter of national pride."

     Why are countries scrambling for claims to sea routes through the Arctic Ocean and not around Antarctica? Examine the North and South Poles on a globe or map. How many degrees latitude does it take from both poles before you find at least five countries? What potential problems do you see when passing between Russia and Alaska?

     Arctic shipping routes, according to a paper prepared by the engineering faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, are most dangerous in the East Siberian Sea. In the shallowest area of the Arctic Ocean, ice builds up earlier and faster after summer, and uncharted waters are more likely to cause ships to run aground. Even during summer, half of the East Siberian Sea can remain ice covered.

Go North, Young Men

     Despite the harsh environment and high insurance rates, activity is expected to increase in the far north due to a variety of factors. Arctic routes shorten navigation time, and they are free of pirates. Oil and gas reserves in the area already have attracted exploration. (See the earlier posts: "Troubled Northwest Passage Found" and "North Pole Flag.")

     Accidents, seldom now, can be expected to increase as shipping traffic increases, however. Ship captains who ply the Arctic Ocean cannot help but feel a little like captains of potential Titanics. Ice can trap ships, and they still can hit icebergs, as well as icebreaker escorts and other ships. Captains need constant weather station updates about the changing wave heights, wind speeds, and temperatures that affect icing in each section along their routes, information they also need in order to know how long crew members should stay out on deck. They want protocols about plans for emergency assistance and oil spill clean ups from members of the Arctic Council (Russia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark-Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).

Tourists Who Have Been Everywhere

     Possible perils failed to deter 900 passengers from paying anywhere from $20,000 to one million dollars per person to book passage on the Crystal Serenity's first cruise through the Arctic Ocean in 2016. The ship sailed from Seward to Nome, Alaska, where it docked to unload solar panels ordered by the city's population of 3800. In groups, cruise passengers took turns sailing to shore in transport boats to photograph wild musk oxen; eat $5 slices of blueberry pie; watch Eskimo dancers; and purchase locally made seal gloves and wallets. From Nome, a month long voyage passed by Greenland and ended in New York.

     The trip required a crew of 600, a special navigation satellite system, and chartering cargo planes to deliver perishable food for pickups at communities along northern Canada. The Crystal Serenity made another, and its final, passenger voyage in 2017.

Faster Cargo Shipments

     After the Crystal Serenity tested the Arctic route for passenger cruises, the Danish-based Maersk line, the world's largest shipping company, launched the Russian Venta Maersk's container ship north from Vladivostok, west across the Arctic Ocean, and south around Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. Carrying 3600 containers of Russian frozen fish and electronics from South Korea, the ship cut off about two weeks from the usual time it takes to use the southern route from Asia and enter Europe using the Suez Canal. While time was saved, profit was lost, because container ships are used to dropping off and picking up a thousand containers at a dozen or more ports along the way. No such transshipment points exist on the Arctic route. Following the test trip, Maersk announced no immediate plans to substitute the Northern Sea Route for its usual schedule.

     Russian cargo ships already do service domestic ports on an irregular basis. Now Moscow is building roads, a railroad, and facilities to establish regular ports of call along its Northern Sea Route. China also has made overtures to Iceland and Greenland to establish outposts on what Beijing calls its "Polar Silk Road." (See the earlier posts, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder" and "China Stakes New Claim to Arctic.")

      After China's President Xi Jinping determined to reduce pollution by switching from coal to natural gas, a serious shortage left Chinese homes without heat and shut down factories. To prevent future natural gas shortages, China's state-owned COSCO shipping company and Japan's Mitsui O.S.K. Lines formed a 50-50 partnership to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) east on the Arctic Ocean and south to Asia from Russia's Novartek producer on the Yamal Peninsula. While a tanker can make this trip in 15 days in summer, compared to 35 days by going west and south through the Suez Canal, ice is too thick in the winter. Yet, there is pressure to increase China's shipments through the most dangerous East Siberian Sea.



 
           

February's International Film Festival

One of the most pleasant ways to learn about a country is to go to a movie made in or about somewhere you don't live. When Oscar nominations for short and feature films are announced, it's time to start looking for theatres that show them, because many of these potential Academy Award winners have an international connection.

     This year, in the animated shorts category, South Africa presents Revolting Rhymes based on Ronald Dahl's dark spin on fairy tales. One French short, Negative Space, shows a sad relationship between father and son can exist in any culture, and, in another French short, two amphibians explore a deserted mansion. These shorts are shown together with two U.S. films: the Pixar short, Lou, that ran before Cars and Kobe Bryant's retirement letter, Dear Basketball.

     Since the live action shorts nominated for Oscars often portray news events, they can be a pleasant way to see both uplifting and unpleasant aspects of a country. Watu Wote (All of Us) shows how Muslims risked their lives to protect the Christians riding on a bus with them, when Islamic terrorists attacked in Kenya. The British short, The Silent Child, introduces the social worker who taught a deaf 4-year-old girl the sign language that enabled her to come out of the shadows and be included in family conversations. Two U.S. entries cover a school shooting in Atlanta titled DeKalb Elementary and My Nephew Emmett based on the 1955 racist murder of Emmett Till. Australian humor is on display in The Eleven O'Clock, a short about an appointment between a psychiatrist and patient that try to treat each other.

     Families already may have seen the animated feature, Coco, which has a Mexican theme depicting how a death in the family shouldn't end memories of a relative. Loving Vincent probably won't have wide distribution, but if young people have a chance to see this Polish-British feature, it might be their only time to see a movie where each frame about Vincent Van Gogh is made by an oil painting. Since Angelina Jolie produced The Breadwinner, this animated feature likely has wider distribution. It shows how an 11-year-old girl disguised herself as a boy to grow up with more opportunities under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

     Although too advanced to be appropriate or understood by young people, the live action foreign language films nominated for Academy Awards provide adults with points of view from Chile (A Fantastic Woman), Lebanon (The Insult), Russia (Loveless), Hungary (On Body and Soul), and Sweden (The Square).

     Oscar winners will be announced on Sunday, March 4, 2018.

     

   

Future Career Opportunities

For youngsters around the world, where they will work or launch a business seems many years away. Yet, thinking about what factors a country needs to offer employees and employers can begin at any age. Forbes magazine (December 21, 2016) helped the process of identifying "Best Countries for Business" by ranking 139 countries on a composite of factors including: taxes, innovation, technology, regulations, corruption, property rights, investor protection, per capita income, and trade balance. Other factors to consider might be: infrastructure; political stability; threat of terrorism; human rights of men, women, and children; and health conditions.

     The Forbes ranking placed Sweden first and Chad last. At forbes.com/best-countries-for-business/list/, there is a brief evaluation of the business climate in each of the 139 counties listed. You can find out why a negative trade balance, regulations, government intervention in the housing and health insurance markets, budget deficits, and modest growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) positioned the United States 23rd among countries best for business.

     Looking for future opportunities, I paid special attention to the 26 countries with economic GDP growth of 5% of more. Admittedly, countries with less developed economies may be able to show the greatest growth compared to countries with more developed economies, such as the US with 2.6% growth. Nonetheless, growth is an important factor to consider.

Best for Business                                         GDP growth
     Ranking

     4                         Ireland                             26.3%
    130                       Ethiopia                           10.2%
    106                       Cote d' Ivoire                     8.5%
     85                       India                                  7.6%
    134                      Laos                                   7.6%
      97                      Dominican Republic            7.0%
    122                      Tanzania                             7.0%
    123                      Cambodia                           7.0%
     78                       Rwanda                              6.9%
    102                      China                                 6.9%
    133                     Dem. Republic of Congo      6.9%
    117                     Bangladesh                          6.8%
     98                      Vietnam                              6.7%
    113                     Mozambique                       6.6%
     81                      Senegal                               6.5%
     30                      Malta                                  6.2%
   109                      Mali                                   6.0%
   111                      Tajikistan                            6.0%
     89                      Philippines                         5.9%
    59                       Panama                              5.8%
  128                      Cameroon                           5.8%
  105                      Kenya                                 5.6%
    63                     Namibia                               5.3%
    94                     Bhutan                                 5.2%
    44                     Malaysia                              5.0%
  100                     Benin                                   5.0%

Of these 26 countries, almost half are in Africa. Youngsters might keep their eyes on what these countries do to remedy the problems identified in their Forbes descriptions, since African countries might offer the best opportunities in the future.

Corruption Has Consequences

Countries with a reputation for being free of corruption from abuse of power, bribes and kickbacks, and secret deals are attractive tourist destinations and prospects for business investment. Unfortunately, based on a study of 168 countries by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), no country is totally free of corruption.

     In 2015, using a scale of 0-100, the OECD's corruption index showed 68% of the ranked countries scored below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem that took protesters to the streets in some countries. Even Denmark, which scored 91, has room for a bit of improvement. The United States and Austria, with scores of 76, did not make the top ten list of least corrupt countries, which included: Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and Germany. Corruption caused Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Somalia to tie for last place in both 2014 and 2015.

     Brazil, now embroiled in a corruption scandal (See the earlier post, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat."), dropped 5 points since 2014, and was in 76th place in 2015. Not a good prospect for countries sending teams to this summer's Olympics in Rio.

     The OEDC cautions that its corruption index is based on surveys of conditions institutions make within a country's borders. Countries might have a higher or lower score, if their corruption activities in foreign countries were measured. Indeed, half of OECD countries have been found to violate agreements to stop companies from paying bribes when they do business in countries outside their borders.

     The earlier post, "Cheating is Easy, but...," provides some anti-corruption strategies for doing business around the world.

   

   

Discover Africa

The African continent is three times the size of the United States and nearly three million square miles bigger than Europe, including the Asian portion of Russia. By 2100, the U.N. estimates Africa will have 3 billion more people than it has now. Future opportunities in this vast and growing continent need not be overlooked because of the world's somewhat warped historical viewpoint. A new guide, Emerging Africa, by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu dispels some of the assumptions about lack of development on the continent. And in 2015, one of the discussions in the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions program will feature "U.S. Policy Toward Africa."

    Headlines do not tell the whole story of what is happening in Africa. News reports rightly warned that the Ebola virus was out of control in West Africa. In April and May of 2014, the world heard that over 200 teenage girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. Since then, the group has taken additional girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers; young men and boys have been abducted to serve as soldiers. On January 15, 2019, al-Shabab terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda would kill at least 21 in an attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. In April, 2015, jihadis from al-Shabab killed 147 in a raid on a Kenyan university. Earlier,  terrorists attacked at a Kenyan mall.

     Europe's scramble to colonize the continent between 1876 and 1912 left independent African countries in the 1960s with an uneducated population, some leaders who exploited their people in imitation of former colonial administrators, disease, and transportation ties to Europe rather than each other. To this day, Fastjet is still having trouble launching its plan to provide affordable African flights.

     But just like Pablo Picasso in 1907, when he first saw the African artifacts that caused him to create a new form of art, young people are in a position to look at Africa in a new way. Beginning with the book Ashanti to Zulu, kids can learn the alphabet and 26 African traditions at the same time. With the help of ePals.com, classrooms can connect with African students in several languages by email, Skype, and project collaborations.

     Students need not see Africans only as impoverished children who can live on 50 cents per day donations. According to trendwatching.com, 65% of Africa's 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a mobile phone. In Gambia and Ghana, trendwatching.com reports entrepreneurs run solar-charging kiosks where the public can charge their mobile devices for a fee. In addition to social contacts, mobile devices are facilitating education and job-hunting in Africa. By 2060, trendwatching.com expects there will be 1.1 billion middle class Africans. Already, the SABMiller bottler and Coca-Cola have joined forces to profit from Africa's growing middle class.

    Africa's growth is attracting $24 billion in foreign investment this year. In fact, the Financial Times (April 4, 2014) reported that return from private equity investments in Africa is comparable to the return on investments in China and Latin America. No wonder the Rothschild Fund is looking to invest $530 million in African projects that have a long term social development aspect to them. And the Swedish risk capital firm, Swedfund, is investing in a partnership between the H&M retailer and Ethiopian textile firms that manufacture according to high social and environmental standards. (Also see the later blog post, "Never Too Young to Invest in the Future.")

    Forbes magazine listed 27 billionaires in Africa. Today's richest African is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, who makes his money from the cement used for construction throughout Africa. Recognizing the potential for African construction, Dubai has invested $300 million in Dangote Cement. Other riches have been made in areas, such as oil, sugar, flour, banking, media, telecommunications, luxury goods, diamonds, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals. Looking past the current drop in oil prices, Dangote increased his oil refinery investment from $9 billion to $11 billion in December, 2014. (Nonetheless, his estimated $21 billion fortune has taken a $5.4 billion hit due to sagging oil prices.) Stephen Saad of South Africa, founder of Aspen Pharmacare, is making his fortune by manufacturing generic drugs. Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire, a former head of Angola's state oil group, and the daughter of Angola's president, is a major player in the banking industry. She seeks to block Spain's CaixaBank's attempt to assume full control of the Portuguese bank, BPI, where she is the second largest investor. As an alternative, she has proposed a merger of BPI and Portugal's Millennium BCP bank to reinforce their presence in Africa's Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique. (As of President Joao Lourenco's election as President of Angola, Ms. dos Santos no longer heads Angola's national oil company and the former president's son has been charged with fraud for transferring $500 million out of the country.)  Bob Diamond's Atlas Mara, founded to invest in Sub-Saharan African financial institutions, continues to expand with its latest interest in a 45% stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda.

     African startups also are winning outside support. IBM's "Project Lucy" coordinates the work of local universities, development agencies, startups, and others who want to create ventures that solve key African issues. BiztechAfrica reports that, as part of its 4Afika Initiative, Microsoft has made five innovation grants to the following startups: Uganda's access.mobile, which facilitates information sharing in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, Kenya's Africa 118, a mobile directory service, and Kytabu, which rents textbooks on tablets (A US entrepreneur just found funding for a similar project on the TV show, "Shark Tank"), and Nigeria's Gamsole, which creates games for Windows, and Save & Buy, which facilitates e-commerce purchases.

     In a long entry in March, 2014, " trendwatching.com's African" described how African governments and developers are facilitating areas, like Ghana's Hope City, Nigeria's Eko Atlantic, and Kenya's Konga Techno, that invite entrepreneurs to set up shop. Better than being  unemployed, business-minded young adults are responding by using crowdfunding platforms, such as Globevestor; developing tech applications, such as Nigeria's bus travel website (bus.com.ng); entering competitions (South Africa's First National Bank holds an "Ideas Can Help" competition for inventors, Yola sponsors a build-your-own website contest, there's a Anzisha Prize and a TechCabal Battlefield prize); and formalizing Africa's informal economy of outdoor markets, street hawkers, and resellers. Kenya's e-commerce Soko platform, for example, now connects global shoppers with local jewelry artisans who use natural and upcycled materials. FirstBank Nigeria is one of the firms that facilitates secure online payments.

      Projects involving the rich history of Egypt are already a staple of school curricula. Tracing Mansa Musa's religious pilgrimage from Timbuktu, the West African city in Mali, to Mecca in 1324 introduces an African mogul who distributed gold on his journey and returned with an architect to build a great mosque and scholars who created the Sankore University. A video about Shaka Zulu can introduce students to a military genius.

     Looking back through previous blog posts, Africa is mentioned in a variety of contexts.

• There are T-shirt designs from Swaziland and a U.S. artist who studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa ("Global Drawing Power")
• Somali children were featured in Asad, the live action short nominated for a 2012 Academy Award ("See the World at the Movies")
• Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording incorporated the township rhythms of South Africa ("Music of the Sphere")
• Ghana's kente cloth was mentioned in "The World of Fashion" and Ghana's chocolates tempted taste buds in "Pizza, Plantains, and Moo Goo Guy Pan."
• In 2004 Wangari Maathai of Kenya won a Noble Prize for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees and launched the U.N. project to plant a billion trees around the world ("Hope for the Future" and "A Healthy Environment")The website, About.com African History, has a list and description of Africa's 25 Nobel Prize winners. 
• Students located the African countries that produced the products they found in their scavenger hunt bags ("Games Children Play")

Just like the missionary, David Livingston, who happened to come upon the African falls he named for Queen Victoria, Africa still is open for discovery. China has discovered Africa's many minerals, such as iron ore and copper, and is building railroads to transport them to ports for export. French-speaking Chinese students have followed Chinese companies to work for them in former French colonies. Oprah Winfrey has founded a school for girls in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set out to help eliminate malaria and HIV in Africa. George Clooney sent up a satellite to watch for atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And, like Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, there's still the possibility of finding riches by writing one of Africa's fascinating stories.

Build a Global Icon

It's one thing to collect pictures of the world's best known buildings and landmarks (See earlier blog post, "Picture the World"), but learning how they were made is something else. In a non-fiction book for children, Patrick Dillon tells The Story of Buildings From the Pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and Beyond, while Stephen Biesty's illustrations show the step-by-step details.

     Now, children also can build famous landmarks. Using 3-D world monument puzzles from National Geographic (shopng.org), children can build the Eiffel Tower in Paris, London's Big Ben clock, and Russia's St. Basil's Cathedral. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (store.metmuseum.org) and many book stores sell LEGO architecture sets, such as the ones that build London's Big Ben and the Imperial Hotel in Japan. British model builder, Warren Elsmore, who has used Denmark's LEGOs to create London's red double decker buses, the Paris Louvre and Eiffel Tower, and other famous icons, shares his creative process with words and pictures in the book, Brick City: Global Icons to Make from LEGO. In the virtual world, Minecraft builders can create the Taj Mahal and other landmarks using the Swedish video game.

     Parents and other adults who probably will need to help construct these icons won't mind the fun of sharing the experience with youngsters. Working on these forms also provides an opportunity to talk about other countries and travel. While the puzzle pieces and LEGO bricks may be too little to keep around children who still put everything in their mouths, it might be worth buying the puzzles and book now to have them on hand when children are older.

     Finally, when The Lego Movie failed to receive an Academy Award nomination in the Best Animated Feature category in 2015, one of the film's directors used LEGOs to create its own Oscar statue.

Games Children Play

Children in different countries might speak and dress differently, but they play with similar balls, cars, tops, and other toys. In A World of Children's Games, Friendship Press (friendshippress.org) has collected the rules children aged 5 to 12 need in order to play games from 60 countries. By checking the origin of their games, youngsters will find that they are putting together Ravensburger puzzles and Playmobils from Germany, building with LEGOs from Denmark, playing Nintendo games and folding origami cats (origami-instructions.com) or flowers and leaves described in "Origami Bonsai" (signals.com)  from Japan, and building virtual worlds using the Minecraft video game created in Sweden.

     International scavenger hunts help children understand other countries. In the simplest form, kids can use an atlas, almanac (including The World Almanac for Kids), or computer to find the locations of monuments, mountains, rivers, animals, and the like. In other versions, students may be asked to find the countries where people: drive on the left hand side of the road, eat with chopsticks, and bow instead of shake hands.

     Schools with a large concentration of foreign students have an opportunity to plan an advanced form of an international scavenger hunt. Parents can dress in their native clothes and set up classrooms with musical instruments, maps, dolls, crafts, foods, and other items associated with their countries. Once the classrooms are prepared students can go room to room trying to win prizes by finding the answers to a sheet of questions (possibly called a passport) based on the country displays.

     An African scavenger hunt I've played with elementary school classes involves giving each child a bag filled with African products and helping them locate on a large wall map the countries where these items are produced.
                                                     African Products

Cloves, Cocoa (chocolate candy), Coffee (coffee beans), Copper (a penny), Cotton (cotton ball), Diamonds (clear plastic bead), Gold (gold button), Peanut, Rice, Rubber (rubber band), Sisal (piece of rope), Sugar (sugar cube), Tea (tea bag), Wood (toothpick).
    
                                           Sources of African Products

Cloves: Comoros, Madagascar
Cocoa: Benin, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria,
            Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Togo
Coffee: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic
             of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia,
            Madagascar, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo,Uganda
Copper: Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia ,Uganda, Zambia
Cotton: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Mali,
             Mozambique, Niger, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe
Diamonds: Angola, Botswana, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
                  Guinea, Liberia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zimbabwe
Gold: Ghana Guinea, Rwanda, South Africa
Peanuts: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan
Rice: Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Sierra Leone
Rubber: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia
Sisal: Angola, Tanzania
Sugar: Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique,
           Republic of the Congo, Swaziland, Uganda
Tea: Burundi, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda
Wood: Cameroon, Central African republic, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabor, Ghana,
            Republic of the Congo, Swaziland, Zimbabwe

If any students are allergic to nuts, remember to leave peanuts out of the bags, because students do enjoy eating some of  these products, when the lesson is complete.

     One game that needs no setup time encourages children to learn the names of foreign cities and countries. From A to Z, players alternate using a letter to identify a place in the world and something a traveler could bring back from that location. For example, someone might say, "Going to Kuwait for kites." The next player could say, "Going to La Paz for llamas." Since almost any item can be found in any country these days, there is no need to think about the accuracy of associations. This game is equally fun and challenging en route to grandma's by car or to Australia by airplane.

     Adults can benefit by watching children play with blocks, dolls, toys, games, playground equipment, dirt, and sticks.  According to Juliet Kinchin, curator of Architecture and Design at New York's MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), seeing kids at play enables designers (and I would add, politicians and foreign policy experts) to look past the limitations of social norms, geography, politics, and culture and to make new connections that can lead to a different, ideal future. What did Walt Disney do when he created Disneyland, a composite of his boyhood's Main Street, Fantasyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and Tomorrowland or Epcot?
    

Getting to Know You

The best way to get to know about a foreign country is to talk to a foreigner in person. Using Skype Translator, it may soon be possible to have a real time conversation with someone speaking a different language. Microsoft is developing software that can translate a conversation between two people videochatting in these different languages: English, Spanish, Italian, or Mandarin. Actually, a person would say one or two sentences and then stop for a translation. The other person then would respond the same way.

      Until these real time computerized translations or face-to-face meetings can occur, the next best thing is to exchange letters or e-mails with children who live in other countries. An episode on the PBS show, "Arthur," showed how correspondence with a child in Turkey dispelled the notion that children there lived in tents and rode to school on camels. There are a variety of ways to find foreign pals, but, until a real one is located, items in a kit from littlepassports.com help children learn about one country each month, and they can pretend to write letters from foreign countries they have studied. From Russia, a young make-believe correspondent might write:

          Do you like to draw? I do. Yesterday our class visited the Hermitage Museum, where
          we saw a painting of Napoleon. He looked very heroic, but we are learning that his
          army tried unsuccessfully to defeat Russia in winter. Our winters are very cold, and we
          get a lot of snow.

If a Russian pen pal is found, it would be fun for a child to compare a real letter with this pretend one.

     Foreign students are in a good position to help children who are searching for a real pen pal. Classmates could have cousins and other relatives who would like to correspond with someone in the United States. Neighborhood families may be hosting foreign students who are eager to maintain U.S. ties after they return home. Then too, a local college or university is a good source of babysitters. Those from foreign countries may develop a lasting relationship that they want to maintain.

     Aside from relying on personal contacts to find an international pen pal, organizations often have established structures that either can or do facilitate person to person correspondence across borders. Some agencies, such as Pearl S. Buck International (psbi.org), encourage benefactors to write to the children they sponsor. Through translators, the children send return messages to those who support them. Members of international organizations, such as Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, are in a good position to ask their leaders to find counterparts in other countries. Children also should urge cities and churches with sister cities and parishes to help them contact foreign students. The Peace Corps maintains a website, peacecorps.gov/wws/educators, that enables teachers to locate members willing to correspond with their classes. And ePals.com also helps facilitate joint projects between U.S. teachers and teachers in foreign countries.

     In some areas, children may not have to go far to visit a neighborhood where foreign immigrants maintain much of their culture. A walk through Chinatown of Little Italy is an easy way to visit shops, meet people from foreign countries, and sample native foods. While traveling near and far through the United States, there are many opportunities to seek out communities that have preserved a distinctive foreign lifestyle. In Door County, Wisconsin, for example, children will find descendants of Norwegians and Swedes who settled there in the 19th century. Surrounded by brightly painted Dala horses, they can pour lingonberry syrup on their pancakes and watch goats nibble grass from the roofs of nearby log cabins.

     No doubt, these foreign contacts will lead children to want to visit foreign countries. For some ideas about foreign travel, go to the earlier blog post, "See the World." Also see the blog post, "How Do You Say?"