Geopolitics

Explore how the US is run by lawyers, and faces challenges in innovation compared to China’s engineering-driven governance.

American government goes everywhere exporting its brand of democracy. The Chinese government wants to do business and make money [with these autocracies] in Asia, Africa, and South America - Lee Kuan Yew In many ways, American companies take the same approach. They build one product, localize it a bit for the target countries, and try to win big there. However, Chinese companies seem to take a different approach. China utilizes lower labor costs than its American counterparts and builds targeted products for markets. And Temu is the perfect example of that. Temu’s parent company’s flagship product is Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo is designed for the Chinese market. A completely unrelated E-commerce product, Temu is designed for the American market.

The book is a memoir of John Perkins who worked as an economic hitman.

The world views of Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of the modern Singapore.

The story of the rise and fall of the biggest foreign investor in Russia.

The book is a good read on why some nations are rich today while others are poor.

The Art of War is considered one of the classic books on military strategy. Due to the recent resurgence of China as an economic superpower, the book has garnered interest from non-Chinese who are curious to know more about its strategy.

The book provides a nice summary of economic events of the recent past (~50 years) and builds upon the case for the coming 10 years.

The book presents a generalists view of post-independent India. Unlike “India Unbound”, this book focuses primarily on post-independent India and takes a more pragmatic approach towards understanding the problems of contemporary India. The best parts of the book are the interesting contradictions that the nation went through - love/hate relationship with the English language, fear of technology, and neglected urban development.