In his interview on BBC’s World Book Club last month, Chinese author Chan Koonchung spoke about “the importance of the year ending with a 9”.
“Next year (2019) is an important year because 1949 was the beginning of the People’s Republic so it’s the 70th anniversary and we have other years ending with a 9 of significance,” said the author of “The Fat Years”, a dystopian novel of China where a period of Chinese history went completely missing, and records expunged from the Internet, documents, books and in people’s memories.
“You can make a new past through technology, it’s becoming more and more possible,” he wrote.
We won’t go into the past here, rather the future that awaits us the next 12 months.
There’s something significant about the turning of a decade – a transition to something new yet written, a bridge to a new place yet unmapped.
Remember 1999 and the scare over the Millennium bug, and how the whole world got spooked over that? An accountant friend recalled having to back up and store the company’s accounts, fearing the “bogeyman” would come in as the clock struck twelve and steal all the files.
It didn’t happen, yet it made us fear and respect the import of a turning of a decade.
In 2018, the word of the year was AI and machine learning and it is clear the continued progress of this technology will unleash something new.
Baidu’s chief executive Robin Li Yanhong in his letter to staff on the first working day of 2019 said the “historical transformation of AI is penetrating various industries, unleashing enormous growth potential and room for upgrade”.
Warning that “winter is coming”, he said, “Only when the year grows cold do we see the qualities of the pine and the cypress. It’s high time that Baidu stepped forward as a platform company.”
(Image credit: LeManna/Getty Images)
This is the year when faced with an economic slowdown, the potential fallout of trade wars, that companies will have to take a hard look at themselves and take a stance for the future.
For Apple, winter is already here – the company said it expected revenues of about $84b for the last three months of 2018, down from a forecast of at least $89b.
CEO Tim Cook blames a slowdown in China sales for falling revenues, primarily in the Greater China region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan and accounts for almost 20% of its revenues.
There’s something else going on though. In the cinema the other day watching “Mary Poppins Returns”, I saw a commercial by Huawei, promoting the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. The next day, I see my friend using it and it was enough to make me think maybe it’s time for me to change worlds.
Chinese companies like Huawei and Xiaomi are putting out devices faster and often better than anyone else, and they are meeting the demands of consumers in Asia who are more mobile, social and open to new stuff than anywhere else.
A new report today suggests the Huawei Mate 30 Pro could have five cameras on its back. Why stop at three?
In their new book “At Home around the World”, Agoda’s Robert Rosenstein and Peter L. Allen addresses the growing trend of short-term rentals globally.
Agoda’s Robert Rosenstein’s new book
There are lots of facts contained in the “handbook for guests, hosts, neighbours and governments” but one stands out – that Asia-Pacific consumers are the most willing to use the sharing economy in the world.
This is significant because “the sharing economy is transforming not only basic business actions like buying and selling, but also the way in which humans interact; the strength of these new approaches may be tied to a more fundamental cultural shift”, wrote the two co-authors.
So beyond an economic shift, the world is also undergoing a social and cultural shift.
Remember, as one pendulum shifts, so will another, and another, and it stands to reason that companies that are based in Asia, who live and breathe Asia, will have a far better chance of winning hearts and minds of consumers in the region than those who try and tap it by remote control.
Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of of Banyan Tree Holdings, speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum late last year, spoke about this very shift.
“Co-equal civilisations mean that the institutions and norms of Wall Street capitalism or Western liberal democracy may no longer be the yardsticks by which Asian societies measure themselves.
“The communitarian traditions of East Asia will be increasingly reflected in uniquely Asian forms of capitalism and governance. One ramification of the decline in Western liberal democracies is growing confidence by Asian societies to craft and practise their own responses to future challenges.”
Welcome 2019, the bridge to a braver newer world.
• Featured image credit: thanasus/Getty Images
