Smart Trade Networks

Chairperson

QUT (Queensland University of Technology)

Adjunct Professor

Multipolar Peace

Multipolar Peace is a social media alliance focused on educating the global community about (1) multipolarity - and why it’s the basis of peace; (2) neutrality - why it’s an important part of how nations should conduct statecraft; (3) sustainable development - how and why it can lay the foundations of positive peace; and (4) No Global NATO expansion

Curator & Alliance Member

Negawatts.io

Advisor

BeefLedger Global

BeefLedger Global: A blockchain enabled integrated provenance and payments platform development and implementation in the beef supply chain.

The China Collective

Founding Member

She Ji - The Journal of Design, Economics and Innovation

She Ji is a new journal published by Elsevier in cooperation with Tonji University. Elsevier is one of the world's oldest and most distinguished academic publishing firms. Tongji University is one of China's leading universities, home to the College of Design and Innovation and a node in the Global Design Factory Network.

Member - Peer Review Collegium

Taihe Institute

Policy and issues research and analysis, focusing on the intersection of modern technology, digitalisation, international political economy and civilisational sovereignty. Exploring strategies for national economic development and empowerment through multipolar collaboration.

Senior Fellow

Digital Record

Strategic & Technical Design Advisor

The 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing, Internet of Things and Computer Applications

I was the Conference General Chair, responsible for the Conference Committee and the Technical Committee’s review of papers and organising the event.

Conference General Chair

Specialties: 📀 Economic digitalisation & 4th Industrial Revolution 🚀 Decentralised or distributed ledger technologies, blockchain, digital assets design and implementation. 👌 Blockchain-enabled supply chain integration. Internet of Things. Big Data. 🌏 China and international political economy. 👍🏽 Social impact analysis. 💹 Industry and community development innovation and finance. Regional Development. Public policy impact analysis. 🌐 International affairs, trade and political economy. ✅ Proficient in English and Chinese (spoken and written).

Remember when US President Trump claimed he’s brought about reductions in drug prices of over 100%?

There’s a couple of interesting reports on declining numeracy standards in the U.S.:

1️⃣ here’s one from the National Association of Scholars https://lnkd.in/gsBd9YgN

2️⃣ And here’s one in The Atlantic called “A Recipe for Idiocy” - https://lnkd.in/gPfUSuq3

#idiocy #numeracy #USA

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Chairman at Smart Trade Networks | Author of China, Trust & Digital Supply Chains | Research Leader in Value Flows, Distributed Networks & Supply Chain Integrity | International Political Economy | Impact Analyst Expert

When a Toy Factory Left China but Couldn’t Take “China” Out of the Production System (Bloomberg)

My comments: The relocation of an American toy factory out of China revealed a deeper truth about contemporary economic systems: once capital “hits reality,” it discovers that the world is neither infinitely malleable nor frictionless. 

What appeared, in abstract financial models, to be a simple geographic substitution - move the plant, replicate the processes, hire new people, restore margin - became an encounter with the dense, historically sedimented materiality of global production.

You can relocate the legal entity, the machines, even some of the workers; but you cannot relocate the ecosystem that enabled the factory to function in the first place.

Toy production is deceptively complex. Each low-margin unit depends on a finely tuned, high-density supply web: mould-making specialists, fabric printers, pigment producers, plastics modifiers, die-casters, micro-motor manufacturers, packaging printers, quality-certification labs, and small-batch component suppliers that operate within a 30–50 km radius in southern China. 

Many of these firms are tacit-knowledge businesses: their capabilities are embedded in people, routines, micro-engineering tricks, and a culture of rapid problem-solving. They exist because forty years of co-location, demand density, and continuous upgrading created a system where intermediate input costs are low, turnaround times are short, and coordination is easy.

When the American toy manufacturer moved operations to another developing country, the “factory” as a physical plant was fully replicable; but the productive capacity was not. In the new location:

1️⃣ Moulds could not be repaired locally; they had to be shipped back to China.

2️⃣ Small components weren’t available; they had to be imported.

3️⃣ Packaging printers produced inconsistent quality; print plates had to be remade in China.

4️⃣ Local subcontractors were fewer, slower, and lacked the accumulated tacit know-how.

5️⃣ Lead times increased; working capital requirements rose; defect rates jumped.

The factory had “left China,” but China hadn’t left the factory.

It’s better to understand economic systems as dense, embedded supply chain networks. 

👉🏼 (paywalled): https://lnkd.in/g2Y6AMyt

A healthy scepticism towards the aspirations and business model of outfits like Palantir is doubtless warranted, when its CEO is now using the bogeyman of “China” to rationalise and justify his company becoming the all seeing leviathan. 

For every accusation the western elite make about some other country they don’t like (because in large part they refuse to yield to western diktat), what we really have is a confession. 

The privacy horse bolted long ago; but popular culture in the west pretended otherwise. Reality bats last, however.

https://lnkd.in/etXEgubx

It was a pleasure to join the community of professionals at the PROI APAC Summit in Cebu last week.

The discussions were engaging and challenging. The professionals from across the Asia region are attuned to the realities of a changing world; and are open to adapting to fluid circumstances.

I hope my talks contributed to the energy and thinking that is clearly taking place as “communications” as a profession seeks to navigate through some choppy waters.

A quick word for our hosts, Doy Roque  and his team at M2 who not only pulled off a great few days but did it under trying conditions. Cebu had just been hit with a typhoon and as the forum wrapped up, the Philippines was bracing for a super-typhoon.

I trust that everyone has been able to remain safe as nature unleashes its fury.

There’s a fair bit of chatter in the alternative media sphere that BRICS has launched a Yuan / RMB payments system.

No, BRICS hasn’t. 

The CIPS RMB payments system was launched by the PRC over a decade ago. What seems to have triggered this recent spate of misinformed chatter is the recent comment by People’s Bank of China deputy governor that CIPS is now connected to 189 countries.

https://lnkd.in/gVEQvNfQ

This isn’t a China shock; saying so is a nice “get out of jail” for German policy makers and corporate elite who’ve singularly failed to adjust fiscal policy (running austere macro environments for the past decade), failed miserably on energy policy; demonstrated ineptitude and corporate hubris in terms of technical and product innovation; and fumbled key supply chain and ecosystem development imperatives, including attracting Chinese capital to augment a wilting productive capacity. Call it Rentiers Revenge if you want, but please spare us the responsibility shifting.

German deindustrialisation is at the hands of Germany’s policy makers and corporate elite aided and abetted by institutional morbidity from Brussels and wilting in the face of American pressure. 

Nord Stream’s sabotage was an act of terrorism, by an ally. Now, Germany pays over the odds for LNG from the U.S.
_______________

Note incidentally the many years of surplus, which on account of today’s mainstream western press is a symptom of over-capacity. Germany’s net exports made up on average 5.3% of GDP 2002-2024, peaking at 7%+ 2015-2017. Where was the opprobrium then?

Geographer interested in urban studies, geopolitics and development

Germany's 'China shock' is in full swing. This is a remarkable data point on capital goods trade between China and Germany. This shift looks irreversible.

https://lnkd.in/dWv6gRNU

Check out my new post!

When a 50 year residential mortgage is presented as a response to a crisis in housing affordability, it’s clear that there’s something missing in the politics of the post-liberal alt-right. This essay argues that as a politics of cultural grievance, the alt-right does not, and cannot, address the economic root causes of today’s western maladies.

Today’s alt-right is the mirror of the woke-left it so despises. Both sit atop a political economy that is structurally neoliberal, in which the interests and the power of finance capital, system rentiers and techno-oligarchs rule the roost.

👉🏼 link: https://lnkd.in/gTftBdQK

Periodic electoral plebiscites emerged uncontested after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the “normative system of public governance” without peer. 

Western liberal democracy in its various guises was touted as the piece de resistance of governmental systems. 

Its failing. 

Periodic electoral plebiscites as a system of public governance is failing, in the eyes of a growing proportion (in most surveyed cases, the majority) of people in nine countries surveyed. The UK, US and 7 European countries were surveyed by Ipsos.

As these systems and institutions fail, and public support for them wane, it’s time for a serious dose of introspection and reflection on just how and why the “pinnacle of democracy” is simply not delivering. 

It’s also time for the west to bring itself down from the self-appointed pinnacle of human civilisation (remember the “end of history” and all that?) and be a little more humble. 

There’s a rich tradition of critique of parliamentarianism from within the western traditions from which to draw. The experiences of others around the world should not be discounted either. 

Full report 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/ghHKTExy

“Japan's turn is also part of a global pattern in which far-right movements regain legitimacy not by winning overwhelming majorities, but by creating enough political space that their ideas can once again be articulated without shame. Fascism does not return first through tanks; it returns when public culture begins to treat it as reasonable, defensible, perhaps even inevitable.”

Full comments:

https://lnkd.in/g79hVEKs

German auto parts makers are under growing pressure from Chinese parts. Chinese-made parts are some 20-30% cheaper than those made in Germany.

Research reported in this Bloomberg article “found that nearly 70% of European parts makers now face direct competition from Chinese imports — a 12-percentage-point jump over the previous study from late March. The pressure is taking a toll, the group said, with a majority of suppliers expecting profitability to fall below the 5% minimum needed to sustain investment.”

👉🏼 (paywalled): https://lnkd.in/gmxfxkhm

Check out my new post!

There’s been a growing chorus of voices claiming that China is ‘mercantilist’ in its trade policy. It’s as if labelling something makes it a crime! In any case, these voices have been given a push along recently by an opinion piece in the Financial Times, called “China is Making Trade Impossible”. 

The narrative has often been shrill, backed by partial presentation of a limited set of numbers. These numbers principally focus on Chinese manufactures and trade dynamics, and balances in manufactured goods, while all else is largely ignored. This rather data-dense essay seeks to correct this by looking at imports, their composition (value and volume terms) as well as dissecting the dynamics of export growth in recent years. 

The long and the short of the assessment is that the charge of mercantilism misses the mark. Incidentally, blaming others is also a great way to obfuscate one’s own culpability for one’s own policy failures.

I end with a short discussion about the possible perverse effects of an RMB revaluation, long-advocated by many in the west as the cure-all.

Essay link 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/g9h4A2kK

#china #trade #supplychains #industrialstructure

What a year it’s been.

I joined WTFinance for something of a birdseye review …

BRICS, currency multipolarity, American hegemony and its limits (end), AI, the EU and a bit of an outlook too … 

https://lnkd.in/gzh__k6A

Check out my new post!

There’s always a bit of chatter about the situation with China’s real estate market. Pundits often point to its continued laggard dynamics (falling prices; low sales volume) as signs of impending crisis - either in the real economy or in the finance sector. 

This all misses the point. This essay reframes the fluctuations in China’s real estate sector through material and thermodynamic lenses, in which structural transformation is the key. What we see is that the price bubble, which peaked Q3 2021, was a direct consequence of accelerating credit expansion, which was finally pricked in 2020. The moral of the story is that the fictitious capital shell cannot escape the transformative trajectory and cadence of the real thermodynamic system forever.

China’s deleveraging of the real estate sector has been one of the most significant and largely successful policy-induced sectoral contractions in history.

Full essay link 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/gfftDnKF

There’s more than one way to skin the AI cat, so to speak. Here’s another one to watch, as Chinese firms push new boundaries to overcome or circumvent the constraints caused by American export controls.



https://lnkd.in/g2xu_YaF

It was a pleasure to join Gene Ma, Chief APAC Representative & Head of China Research at IIF (Institute of International Finance), and other panel members; Jianglei (Arthur) Zou, China CEO at First Abu Dhabi Bank; and Wang Jin, Director at the International Energy Institute, International Cooperation Center, National Development and Reform Commission; to discuss RMB internationalisation and global currency multipolarity.

The rising global use of the #RMB is reshaping trade, investment, and financial cooperation. 

We explored how RMB internationalization is creating new pathways for #TradeDiversification, #CrossBorderFinance, and #FinancialInfrastructure, strengthening China’s connectivity with global markets and supporting a more balanced and resilient international economic system.

The Event: 

#AIMCongressChinaChapter2025 | The Impact of RMB Internationalization on Global Trade

Where: Shanghai

Hiding behind the veil of a “war on drugs”, U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated his approval for military intervention in Mexico. This comes on the back of the interventions vis-a-vis Venezuela.

It’s a convenient canard. Fighting the scourge of drugs is a hard to assail high ground position, despite the realities of five decades of failed war on drugs.

Scepticism is thus warranted. Is military intervention in another country warranted by claims about drugs? If this is sufficient reason, then the floodgates open for all sorts of military actions by anyone that may harbour similar or even more grave concerns. 

Of course, the U.S. has a long history of military interventions, so much so that scholars Monica Duffy Toft and Siditha Kushi, in their book Dying by the Sword, describe the U.S. as a country “addicted to military intervention”. 

https://lnkd.in/gSwXKF8J

Check out my new post!

There’s been plenty of detailed dissection of the Trump 28 point “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine. This post does not so much as add to much of the excellent “line by line” analysis of what is in effect a “dead on arrival” document, but to provide some wider interpretive context. 

It first seeks to situate the “peace plan” within a longer frame, of a pattern of American conduct revealed by the leaked Pentagon Papers in which the defeat in Vietnam was known by those on the “inside” seven years before America’s final retreat. The challenge was how to spare the sitting president’s blushes in the face of defeat.

It then interprets Russia’s response through the lens of Chris Matthews’ book Hardball, in which one of the principal political maxims is “concede on principle and kill the deal on detail”. 

All of this is being watched closely around the world, as American security guarantees and dependability are further eroded. Meanwhile, every day military reality is avoided, hundreds die.

Make peace. Save lives. 

👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/gHYqwUG3

#usa #ukraine #russia #nato #europe #peaceplan #decentinterval #pentagonpapers

The British followed up, a half century later, with opium and gunboats. The reference to McCartney’s claims, from over 200 years ago, is an unfortunate and fatuous analogy, which speaks of a deep-seated conceit that apparently lingers.

Is the author of the article, Robin Harding, in which the quote features supposedly illustrating a claim (erroneous) that China has always been “mercantilist”, suggesting that the post-McCartney response be emulated today? 

Is this the implied “rhyme”? 

One hopes not.

Chief Executive Officer at Dunne Insights LLC

Mark Twain said: History does not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme.  

Britain's Lord George McCartney had a tough conversation in China in 1793.  Same conversation in 2025:

McCartney: “Trade is an exchange. You provide something of value to me, and in return, I must offer something of value to you. So what is the product, in the future, that China would like to buy from the rest of the world?”

China: "There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to." 

https://lnkd.in/g4sbPSCD

“This episode was not merely a diplomatic gaffe; it exposed the widening gap between Japan’s lingering Cold War reflexes and the realities of a post-American Asia. The prime minister, long associated with the neo-revisionist wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, may genuinely believe that Japan must prepare for direct involvement in any Taiwan crisis. Yet the costs of signalling such readiness far outweigh any conceivable benefit, especially for a country whose strategic and economic circumstances are uniquely precarious.”

Full op-ed 👇🏽 

https://lnkd.in/gvME9-pA

I joined Dr David Oualaalou  and Einar Tangen  earlier today to discuss Japan-China, China-US and related issues.

Always a learning opportunity to converse with these gentlemen.

https://lnkd.in/gHgZ-MVG

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