The recent meteor blast over the skies of Russia served a reminder that humanity lives in a constant state of mortal peril. Surely, we can be serious, even as we make fatuous references to movies like “Airplane” along the way.
Despite our solar system’s occasional warnings of potential doom, humans continue to pose the most lethal threat to themselves. We continue all manners of mayhem against one another on scales large and small, justifying the large-scale stuff by waving our national flags and elevating them to near-divine status.
I’m reminded of all this on a grim, grey early-spring Sunday in northern Illinois, as I read of President Obama’s and Secretary of State John Kerry’s visits to the Middle East, of the intriguing death of a Russian oligarch, of a coup in Central Africa, and of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Africa.
Xi’s visit was covered today by an excellent Reuters story, and is the only one mentioned above that’s not directly related to violence. But the sub-text of Xi’s visit is China’s increasing influence in all regions of the world, and its intentions.
China seems perilously close to war with Japan, the Philippines, and Malaysia in disputes over a few resource-rich islands, it remains in an unresolved political standoff with Taiwan, and its friend North Korea seems ready to go off the deep end any day. Do China’s leaders wish to build good long-term relations in Africa, or is the country intend to impose Colonialism 2.0?
Now, To Our Research
We’ve been conducting research about national ICT commitments over the past two years, and have found China to be lagging. This may sound surprising given the rate of China’s economic growth, and numerous stories (many of which I’ve written) about its investments in cloud computing.
But relatively speaking, China has not been as aggressive with ICT as many of its Asian neighbors. It badly trails South Korea, for example, but also trails Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines, among others. Our research takes into account income disparity and cost-of-living, areas in our rankings that penalize a Chinese economy that is seeing increased disparity and higher overall costs. China today seems more focused on ensuring its future through acquisition of natural resources than through technology.
We’ve found some promise in the Middle East, although this region trails Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and both Northern and Eastern Africa in the way we rank ICT commitments and potential. The region will surely improve if peaceful solutions are ever brought to bear to its numerous conflicts.
But the Middle East does lead the so-called BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in both commitments and potential. Again, this may sound surprising, but the reality is the BRICs were chosen for their sheer size more than anything. Each of them has an individual, complex story, but it seems that none of them are focusing enough on ICT.
Our rankings now cover 102 countries, and it should be no surprise that most of the world’s leaders are peaceful, from the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, to Canada, to New Zealand and South Korea. (The latter does have a potentially hair-trigger border, but does not routinely embroil itself in other disputes, as does its U.S. ally and as do so many other Asian nations.)
So we carry on with our research, just as diplomats carry on with their ostensible efforts to bring peace to the world. We believe that technology can be a great playing-field leveler, for developing nations as a whole and for individuals everywhere. We will continue to push and expand our research, advocate for peace, and hope that a fireball – natural or man-made – doesn’t consume us all.