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Southern Indian state of Madras in 1952 and the administration of Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) in 1952 following elections. Madras state at the time consisted of most of what is now southern India, as the Madras Presidency of the British Empire. The first governor general of India Rajaji was brought in to run the state after the Nehru Congress party failed to win an outright majority and the Communist Party and opposition made major gains. Rajaji's administration led to the successful administration of Congress leader Kamaraj still known for its school lunch programs and advancement of education and healthcare in Tamilnadu. Today Tamilnadu faces anew challenge as the upset win by the TVK party under Vijay seeks to take the state in a new direction after mismanagement of the economy  and lack of state-federal coordination under the previous administration of the DMK party. The messy period in India from the 1950's is similar to the messy period in China in the 1950's to the 1970's with the upheavals under Mao. Still China found its way by 1990 as India does today with a commitment to rapid industrialization and modernization,  federal-state coordination on industrial and infrastructure projects at scale and speed. ...

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Where do you place a winner of the Democratic primary in Maine, Graham Plattner, an oyster farmer who dropped out of college at George Washington University, served briefly in the Middle East wars of Bush and Obama, and had PTSD. Is he working class, middle working class or is he from a downwardly mobile professional class considering he has parents who are well educated and father a prominent lawyer in Maine? Plattner easily defeated a 3 term governor of Maine with his average working class demeanor and language. He is for universal health care, (Medicare for All) universal child care, affordable housing, affordable college. Politics in the US has been moving away from the simple divisions before 1950 created by the Industrial Revolution- the workers in factories and the owners of capital allied with the professional middle class. The few owners of capital mostly college educated allied with people from the non college educated workers in factories who are conservative in their values and beliefs and on the other side the college educated professional middle class now downwardly mobile because of the many recessions and high unemployment from frequent financial crises, with college costing $80,000 a year putting them in deep debt. There is today in the WSJ a story of a professional worker who at $194,000 a year salary is not able to payoff $15000 debt which owners of capital have set at 26% interest and is in downward spiral. Some of this comes from large college and other debt. There is says WSJ Analysis $1.25 trillion in credit card debt alone with highest delinquency rates in decades in 2026. Cost of living has only made things worse and some of this happened as Biden poured money into the economy to help people hurt by the pandemic, yet with some short run consequences with demand strong businesses including hotels, restaurants and grocery stores, auto dealers, jacking up their prices by over 20% in 1 year and Biden failing to respond, getting overwhelmed by open borders migrants under Mayorkas and Harris (also hit by a sudden Venezuelan migrant influx). This is the America one has today- a confusing mix. This in reality means Democrats may take issue with Democrats, Republicans take issue with Republicans, and Democrats join with Republicans on issue by issue basis. It might actually be rational than irrational. On cultural issues if the country has gone over its head and moved too fast on some issues that are not for the general public good, people of different backgrounds can come together to get the best path. On economic issues things are never so straightforward, there are unpredictable consequences and the rules of economics are really not so straightforward either.  Providing relief can mean the government shouldering the burden as during the pandemic which it should, yet with caution as businesses can use the excess demand to raise prices and one is back to square one with everybody worse off as happened with Biden. Migrant flows and fears of insecurity in public spaces can lead to a severe public "discomfort that can waylay the best intentions of a Harris or Biden, leading to public "backlash." In fact the title of a recent book is "Whiplash." Current books include Floridan Marco Rubio's "Decade's of Decadence- How our Spoiled Elites Blew America's Inheritance of Liberty, Security and Prosperity." Rubio means it. Its authentic because as Rubio says repeatedly, his parents could make a living in the 1960's working in a factory with decent wages, low cost of living and low cost of college, the arithmetic between salaries and what you needed for decent home in suburbs and sending children to good public schools, then to college, all adding up. The result is that Rubio could go to college and serve in the Florida legislature. Rubio says in 2026, after the elites under Bush and Obama and faulty economic theory shipped all of our factories to China, that the story of his parents and his education would simply be impossible. This is what he told people in India on his first visit last week. His parents were Cuban immigrants, yet he identifies with Spain and with western civilization, a devout Roman Catholic. Rubio is a Republican, and is in large contrast with Alejandro Mayorkas, also from Cuba, and Biden's Head of Homeland Security. This is the mix of people and representatives in Congress,  business people, small business owners, professionals, that we have today in 2026 in the US. Plattner and Rubio, one a Democrat and one a Republican- both have something in common. Plattner also has general disdain for "the corporate interests, the billionaires, the Washington DC elites, and the establishment politicians."  The winds are blowing in the direction of getting things right- remembering that Eisenhower continued the work of the Kennedy and LBJ administrations (Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System for instance, and LBJ gave America Social Security and Medicare). Before that Franklin Roosevelt a Democrat built on the work of his uncle Republican Theodore Roosevelt (TR gave America the idea of good governance and built the US Navy, FDR fought the Depression and stabilized a faltering economy after mistakes made by Republican Herbert Hoover could have happened even if Hoover was a Democrat. FDR was himself from a wealthy New York family and when he first met fellow New Yorker Frances Perkins before his struggle with polio, a haughty New York gentleman. That was before Frances Perkins as FDR's Labor Secretary joined forces with Roosevelt to give New York a modernized administration governance structure by 1940 that was applied to all 51 states after 1950. It allied labor with capital with fairness for all, and was the first such modern structure of this size the world had ever seen, which was the fundamental strength of the United States of America. It was imitated in Asia, first in the Shanghai region then China, and first in the Ahmedabad region and now India. The US is faced with the challenge of recreating and rebuilding this today, as first China, then India remind America of its roots which they have followed in their own style and culture.  First good governance, then good institutional structures, alligning labor and capital with fairness for all, strong affordable + accessible educational and healthcare systems, and investments of capital and labor for infrastructure + industrial development. ...

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The British Council in Colombo, Ceylon, as far back as the 1960's, has shaped the founder of Lyrarc.com's knowledge of Britain in shaping the ideas of the Modern World we know today, knowledge of its parliament and democracy, that are vital in shaping society in China, India, and other nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa to this day. For this reason the closing of the British Council facilities around the world to pay a loan it had taken years ago under the Conservatives during Covid, is to be seen as a major blow. This report in The Guardian is about fears the world's leading soft power agency, which is more than that a transmitter of ideas that shape the Modern World and all our democracies in Europe and America, Asia, other parts of the world, will disappear in a decade. The Madrid building which houses the British Council in Madrid at 13 Paseo del Martinez Campos in Madrid's Chamberi district, has been put up for sale to pay Covid era debt. About 5000 Spanish students attend classes in English and prepare for exams in 35 classrooms. Over the years hundreds of thousands of Spanish people passed through this building. 320 jobs will be lost, employees with passionate dedication who it will be difficult to replace. Another center in Barcelona also is expected to close. This comes at the wrong time when Britain needs to make its voice heard in the world, when a mediocre level of British parliamentarians and leaders since Blair and David Cameron have allowed this to happen. English language classes in Italy at the British Council are also being shut down. Paris building may also be sold, and shrinking operations in the Baltic Republics, Croatia and Austria. This will be a major blow to helping spread knowledge of British parliamentary traditions, its history and participation in shaping the Modern World we know today.  It is now hoped and this is a message to Labour's Andy Burnham who studied English at Cambridge, to restore Britain's image and the value of its parliamentary and other lasting contributions to the Modern World, to the benefit of all nations, to cancel this debt and give the British Council new leadership for the next 2 decades. Neil Kinnock, a Labour leader, and a chair of the British Council says- “The British Council does not want to make these cuts. They are being forced into it by the conditions required by the Treasury." “I sympathise very much with the staff, so does the leadership,” he said. The British Council had “camped out” in the Foreign Office for last three or four years and put up a “hell of a fight”. Kinnock said: “What the government should do is either find a way of cancelling the debt, or even rescheduling the debt. Because it’s to absolutely nobody’s advantage to lose the British Council.” A desperate effort to pay an outstanding £197m debt from a Covid-era Conservative government emergency loan on commercial terms, with interest to be repaid by September, is what is causing this massive destruction of a century old institution that belongs to Europeans, to Asians, and to the world at large for better societies through knowledge. Who runs Treasury in Britain? Rachel Reeves, who has no concept of the role constructive Britons have played for two hundred years from the time the British agent at Rajkot encouraged Mohandas Gandhi (Gandhiji) to study in London in 1888, a role that the British Council has played since its founding. His name Sir Frederick Souter, who wrote the letter of recommendation for Gandhi to enter the University College, London. Sir Dingle Foot, Solicitor General of the UK, another Labour leader, played that role for a youngster of 22 years at the University of Baroda in India, for Law School at the University of London in 1969, after years of educational experience at the British Council in Colombo, Ceylon. Now the founder of Lyrarc.com. We call upon Andy Burnham to make this one of is first priorities to put Britain First, and India, other European nations, the US, to assist in this effort, to preserve one of Britain's brightest contributions in throwing light on the brave scientific, educational and industrial endeavors that built the Modern World. ...

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Share of US Counties where 95% of Kindergarteners are vaccinated against Measles drops to 28% from 50% in Washington Post Investigation of 44 states December 2025. 95% vaccination rate is what experts say is needed for "herd immunity" or overall protection in a class. Washington Post examination of data shows marked deterioration from 2018-2019 school year to 2024-2025 school year data and public records. That is 5.3 million children are exposed from lack of herd immunity from measles now compared to 3.5 million children earlier increase of 1.8 million children. This Wash. Post investigation shows 19,000 schools are exposed and one can go to this article to find on a map how your school district and country are doing in the 44 states. A big problem is emerging from public skepticism and politics in vaccination. For generations schools required vaccination proof- by 1980 all 50 states had laws covering students first entering school. And caught in vaccine politics legislatures are creating religious and other exemptions that have weakened laws. Wash. Post says it's examination shows not a single County in Idaho, Louisiana, Oregon Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin meet the 50% vaccinated requirement for measles required for herd immunity. This could mean more of these diseases will be brought back home including whooping cough to affect elderly and infants. Democratic districts such as in St Louis and Chicago also see drop in measles vaccination rates. In the sense that newly decolonized countries since 1950 such as China and India have emerged with good health systems and mandated vaccination , other public health action, there is a great need for the US to focus on bringing back the public awareness that existed after the 1940's in the US that resulted in significant advances in public health in the US in the FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ and Reagan administrations. It shows there is no victory in public health. A lot of work needs to be done, as much of the gains can get undone by events and public awareness is necessary. As pharmaceuticals, chemicals and plastics and bad nutritional habits took over American lives there is an effort under Kennedy at HHS to tackle that health crisis, but it brings with it challenges that date from the pandemic and different responses in different parts of the US to mandatory vaccination which also have to be met through education not social media. ...

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Phillipe Pons in Le Monde on social media and disinformation popular with young people who have fewer employment prospects in the middle of sluggish economic growth.  Japan's Ministry of Education erasing Japan's wartime atrocities in school books in the years LDP in power since 1950's. Sanae Takaichi's comment about Japan willing to intervene if China attacks Taiwan was popular in Japan. Among young people 18 to 39 surveyed by Yomiuri 64% support Takaichi. Broadly speaking straight talk and nationalism iis becoming popular in Japan. The LDP has lost its majority in the lower and upper house in parliament and the Sanseito party with 15 seats and other smaller nationalist parties are increasing in popularity. The Ministry of Education has for many decades kept the Japanese wartime atrocities such as at Nanjing in China of the 1930's, the harsh Japanese occupation in China and Korea, out of the textbooks. The result is that Japanese young people do not have the same level of grasp of what happened in the twentieth century. ...

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Kevin Warsh is a former governor of the Federal Reserve 2006-2011, becoming governor at age 35. He is a partner at the family office of investor Stanley Druckenmiller. Scott Bessent also had connections with the office of Druckenmiller. He is also a lecturer at Stanford Business School and a scholar at the Hoover Institution. He is married to Estee Lauder heiress Jane Lauder, and has spent the years since 2011 at the Stanford School.  Current Fed chairman was appointed by DJT in 2017 and retires in May 2026. If Powell continues as a Fed governor Warsh would take the seat vacated by Stephen Miran when he retires as Fed governor this week. Meantime the Fed under Powell faces an investigation by the Justice Department regarding renovation of its buildings and Senator Thomas Tillis on the Banking Committee says he will not support Warsh until that issue is resolved in favor of Fed retaining its independence. What is unique about Warsh and his selection by DJT? He is a Republican of long standing and his current views are that interest rates can be lower if the Fed reduces its holdings of Treasury securities and mortgage securities it holds. DJT's frustration is that Powell raised interest rates to fight inflation and after DJT became president was slow in cutting rates to boost the economy. DJT's resort to tariffs as a tool in world trade to ensure a level playing field with China when all other tools had failed means more uncertainty in the economy and DJT wanted the Fed to support his policies by lowering rates. ...

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Only the week before Tuesday April 7 Pakistan Foreign Minister Dhar failed to convince China to get involved. April 7th Tuesday in the US 1.30 pm US time, 8 pm Islamabad Pakistan time, China finally decided to jump in to convince Iran to accept peace talks in Islamabad. It is quite possible that behind the scenes the US was talking with China which has a 25 Year Comprehensive Agreement with Iran signed in 2021 that is the main support for the Iranian economy. China acted to reassure Iran that talks in Islamabad would proceed smoothly, and persuade Iran to accept ceasefire and talks. Why? Knowing that brinksmanship by US and Iran would lead to unforeseen consequences and hurt China's economy with oil price volatility as well as  hurt the US economy, and hurt the prospects for the planned May14-15 visit by DJT to Beijing to improve economic and political ties, both China and the US wanted to do everything to prevent this from happening. The result a hastily arranged peace talks in Islamabad so that by 4 am Islamabad time on Wednesday or 6.30 pm US time on Tuesday evening the ceasefire had already been agree to by US and Iran, according to this report in The Guardian from Pakistan. The crux of the matter was that it would affect US and China's economy with oil volatility, and US-China relations by jeopardizing May 14-15 revised date for DJT visit to Beijing. This good sense prevailed over all the war rhetoric and the media information and disinformation. It is confusing because of all the misinformation, but becomes clear when one understands this in the context provided in this report from Pakistan by the Guardian. Why Pakistan? For Pakistan the missile attack the day before of a Saudi petrochemical complex by Iran was drawing Saudis into the war and Pakistan has signed a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia that requires Pakistan to support Saudi Arabia if it gets into a war. For Pakistan it was a fragile situation that would be a catastrophe with unforeseen consequences on its economy. Already schools are closed for 1 month in Pakistan and oil is in short supply, paying for it at $115 or $125 a barrel would put severe strain on Pakistan. Who wins, who loses is being told in the media- much less on the good sense that prevailed  the efforts and the predicament of the large powers China, India, the US, and Germany, European Union, the poorer countries, all hurt economically, caught in a war they do not want, do not need. ...

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Compared to 1971 Bangladesh has come a long, long way, on its 50th anniversary. From 80% of the population struggling with extreme poverty in 1971, Bangladesh now produces enough food for its 167 million population. The economy is only 13% agriculture with most of GDP coming from industrial production and services. Girls education is remarkable. 98% of children have attended primary school and there are more girls in secondary schools than boys. Norwegians and other European observers who visited Bangladesh in 1970's compare the situation with today and are astonished says this report in DW.com. By 2030 the GDP of $409 billion is expected to double, bringing the country close to 1 trillion dollar economy. The garment industry is the second largest after China, with $35 billion a year in exports. It has changed life of women in Bangladesh, employing 4 million people. Remittances from overseas bring in $24.7 billion for 2021. Overall target for exports is $51 billion for 2022. Problems include the rural urban divide with development concentrated in Dhaka and Chittagong, and increased urban poverty. And despite rise in number of children and girls in school the quality of education for a skilled workforce remains poor, says this report in DW.com ...

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Grades 1 through 9 in China are not for profit and China's education system is highly important and sensitive for Beijing. Particularly at this time with different ideas in Hong Kong compared to adjoining Shenzen. Uptil now private compnies were allowed to effectively control some schools with contractual agreements and funnel out money through service fees. This practice is now halted by tighter restrictions. Draft legislation is prepared and expected to be finalized this year. 

Earlier 25 companies in the education sector brought $3.8 billion of private capital through IPO's in Hong Kong and the U.S., according to Dealogic. These education companies are seeing shares drop by a half in 2018-2019, as China moves to protect its basic education from what may be seen as wayward ideas and thinking. More so today after the events at Hong Kong schools and universities.

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Of 190 billion pounds of companies and other assets in Britain that are controlled by China, 51 billion pounds are owned by the Chinese government, says The Times of London. This includes power plants and schools. This includes Hinkley C nuclear power station 13.2 billion pounds, Heathrow airport $2 billion 9% stake, university accomodation holdings 40% stake in UPP at 1.6 billion pounds, Thames Water 9% stake at 1.8 billion pounds. The new Chinese embassy is being built on the Royal Mint this 5 acre site in London being worth 255 million pounds.

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Artificial intelligence in schools in China keeps track of how much attention students are paying to class teaching. AI lets students and teachers know when students are not paying attention at short intervals. This is useful say teachers but also worrisome for parents, says this video report in the WSJ.

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Compare AI models for versions v2 v3 by DeepSeek that cost $5.6 million with Anthropic AI model that cost $100 million+, and one gets the order of magnitude in cost for the new DeepSeek China model vs its US counterparts.  The hundreds of billions of dollars that OpenAI and big spenders such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft would have to drain capital markets would be a disaster for workers and families in the US and the standard of living, the infrastructure improvements that don't get done, and the investments in transportation and other vital needs such as schools, education and healthcare that directly impact the cost of living and the standard of quality of life in America and other countries. This is where competing models from China, from India, and from European countries can get us back to where we want to be to continue improving the cost of living and standard of living, quality of life in America for workers and families. This is the choice workers and families made in 2020 and in 2025, rejecting the wasted resources in wars that serve no purpose, and rebuilding the Nation's infrastructure, its water, schools, transportation, healthcare, childcare.  ...

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The U.S. Education Department in its report on American universities says foreign funds were often not disclosed, comes with strings attached, and the contacts without transparency or oversight by the U.S. In one instance Cornell University initially failed to report to U.S. authorites more than $1.2 billion it received, says this WSJ report. The U.S. government is concerned that this kind of foreign money gives improper access to U.S. technology to foreign governments, including China. "The U.S. universities are a technological treasure trove in leading internationally competitive fields. For too long these institutions have provided an unprecedented level of access to foreign governments and their instrumentalities in an environment lacking transparency and oversight," says the Education Department report. The report went on to say that "institutional decision making is generally divorced from any sense of obligation to American national interests, security or values." In one instance it cited work that the WSJ says is identifiable as Georgetown University work with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China deriving $2 million from the arrangement. WSJ says one institution identifiable as Cornell failed to document its institution in Qatar. Multiple schools received millions of dollars from Huawei whose equipment has become a security concern for the U.S. government. Schools being investigated include Harvard, Cornell, Georgetown, Texas A&M, MIT. After the Education Department crackdown U.S. Universities self-reported about $6.6 billion and an additional $1.05 billion recent period, from Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia, and U.A.E., says WSJ.  In other situations the Education Department report says China sought to "leverage its relationships with American universities to dominate a global market- in artificial intelligence." ...

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The Afghan School in Kabul run by former Taliban officials for girls and boys is one of the best schools in Kabul. Boys and girls attend chemistry classes together. Taliban officials see the schools as a bridge between madrassas and modern schools, and now accept the idea that as long as Islamic ideals are respected girls should go to school like boys. A former Taliban foreign minister- of the government the U.S. ousted under president Bush- now helps his daughter with homework. The changes in neighboring Pakistan where the government of Nawaz Sharif is pushing modern ideas and technological development are likely to push progress in Afghanistan as well- this happens as the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan. The U.S. leaves a region hungry for progress as new governments pushing technological development supported by business emerge in Pakistan and India in 2013-2014. Unfulfilled promises of economic development are at the forefront of people's minds. A transformation as large as the shift from communism in China to state run market economy and the technological and economic transformation that followed is now at its early beginnings in the region. This shift would be from religious strife and socialist structures to a market economy....

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When Manmohan Singh and Wen of India and China said in Beijing that the people of both countries were united in their aspirations for the future this was very real and sincerely stated. Geopolitics is somebody's game who does not know his own country, people and history in these long neglected parts of Asia. Here in India or China in different ways its these aspirations that matter. India is desperately trying now to improve schooling after years of neglect for the country's rural poor, where the quality of government schools is startlingly poor. The figures are dismal. In general only 1 in 10 college age Indians go to college. But its worst at the lower poorer parts of society. Among the poorest 20% of Indian men half are illiterate and only about 2% graduate from high school. For the top 20% of Indian people only 2% are illiterate and 50% are high school graduates. The problems even as the government pans to triple spending in the next 5 years run deep. There is no motivation among school teachers because for years the schools have been neglected and there is no education culture in poor villages, teachers are poorly trained if at all, they are late or absent and there islittle discipline and education ethic. Parents are very poor and do not understand the value of education and want to pull children out of school to earn wages for the family as migrant labor. The parents are illiterate or poorly educated so there is very little help at home. And there is corruption as some of the money to be invested in school buildings, equipment, lunches, teachers, etc is stolen or goes to bribes. There are some dedicated people but they get washed out in the midst of so much apathy, lack of conviction, corruption and lack of motivation among teachers parents and village officials....

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Jeremy Carl is the nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (including UN) in Feb. 2026. He is a research fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His BA is from Yale where he was president of the student union, and his Masters is from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  From 2004-2005 he was a visiting fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India.This article says he has been critical of Jewish attitudes yet he comes from a Jewish family and is now a member of the Presbyterian church. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the first term of DJT. His recent book is on the theme of how the culture and attitude of America was culture an attitude of vast majority of the population from 1600 till 1965 for about 400 years. The Immigration laws of 1965 under JFK/Johnson, he says were not intended to change this, yet a change and relaxation of tight immigration policy has led to the situation similar to what Eisenhower faced in 1954 that led to Operation Wetback- as Mexican immigration surged in the war years by the early 1950's. For 150 years before 1965 the US only opened up for Europeans immigrating to the US. The changes since 1965 coincided with deindustrializationn of the US and the failure of the governing class to do anything about the steady shipping out the nation's manufacturing sector to China. Which is why there is so much anxiety about America's position in the world and a sense of a culture that is being lost- of Robert Frost's poetry set in New Hampshire, of Shakespeare's plays and morals for Western civilization, of the values of Emerson and Thoreau that guided Gandhiji and other Asian leaders. ...

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With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...

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This 40 minute IMF Video looks indepth into how far the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of 2015 has moved the world to address 1.5 degree change in climate? What is the situation in 2023 as we move towards 2030? NIcholas Stern of LSE says the peak of emissions will be reached by 2024 however the curve will not be pretty as the drop in the curve will be a small dip in emissions not steep drop that we need. Action is needed to accelerate.. Pilita Clark of the Financial Times conducts a discussion with Nicholas Stern of the Grantham Institute at London School of Economics, Bo Li Deputy Managing Director of IMF, and Zhou Xiaochuan who heads China's Boao Forum and formerly was Governor of the Bank of China.

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Strikers at a Honda transmission factory in Hoshan, 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong are asking for raises of $117 or 800 renminbi in cash above the $132 a month or 900 renminbi that they are now paid. About 950 of 1900 workers at the plant are trainees, young people from vocational schools or high schools earn $132 a month. Older employees earn upto 1500 renminbi or $220 a month. The significance of this strike is that the Chinese government is tacitly encouraging the strike as it begins making moves to increase domestic consumption and make the economy less dependent on exports. This requires consumer's having larger purchasing power and higher wages. It also means that China will not remain the low cost manufacturer for manufacture goods makers around the world for very long. Consider the size of the increase and the policy change of the government and this implies a significant shift by China.

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Health officials around the world, companies, governments, and schools are creating health policy on the fly, and prefer to err on the side of caution in setting policy. The American government said that it would deny entry to foreign citizens who traveled to China in past 14 days, and American citizens returning from Hubei province, china, will be quarantined for 14 days. Major airlines have stopped flights to China. Nothing like this has happened before. A major public health experiment in setting policy is underway, mostly preferring lockdown or quarantine as preferred method. 

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CLT Classical Learning Test has a bright future. Its message is summed up in CLT Test 8 on the website- where Gustav Mahler is cited with the text- "Tradition is not about the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." 183,000 high school seniors have taken the CLT Classic Learning Test in the US in 2025 compared to 2 million for SAT and 1.4 million for ACT, yet the new test is considered to be more rigorous and includes the western intellectual tradition in ways that the ACT and SAT do not. A CLT Test 3 we looked at on the CLT site included for reading a poem by Amy Lovell 1916, Mark Twain writings, passages on Greek Zeno and Renaissance painter Raphael, EB White and others. CLT Test 4 has poetry of Robert Louis Stevenson 1885, and remarkably it has a passage on the Pack Horse Book Project of FDR's New Deal Initiative in 1935 on women librarians on horseback or with mules going into remote mountainous areas of the US including Kentucky, to teach rural people to read and write. This alone suggests it should appeal to Republican and Democratic states alike. It could include Charles Dickens and Shakespeare or Robert Frost's poetry. In that sense it is far more rigorous than short bland passages in SAT or ACT of little significance or educational value. It is designed to give students an exposure in classrooms to the western intellectual tradition that the elites in America have themselves grown up learning but who now have a haughty attitude to their own intellectual traditions. In CLT Test 6 we found a poem on Nature by Gerard Manley Hopkins 1877 and Dickens famous iconic passage that begins the Tale of Two Cities written about the French Revolutionary period which is clearly not what we find in SAT or ACT, and far better in conveying a feel of what America is about and where it came from. The founder of CLT Mr. Tate believes it will be the test most taken by high school seniors by 2040. Classic Learning Test now competes with SAT and ACT in North Carolina, Indiana and other American states. Arkansas passed legislation favoring CLT, and Ohio is doing it this year. Louisiana, Oklahoma and Wyoming are accepting CLT. This Test is gaining popularity among conservatives in red and purple states  and is getting the support of the US government in 2026. The Maryland Company behind this test is Maryland Learning Initiatives. Indiana passed legislation in March requiring its state universities to accept CLT scores. And North Carolina university system now accepts the CLT. Both CLT and SAT, ACT have Math and Reading Verbal tests, the CLT adds foundational texts from Western science, government, history and literature in ways not found in SAT, ACT. Students can take the CLT at home or at a testing site. More than 350 universities and colleges accept CLT says this report in Washington Post. The SAT and ACT use shorter passages and the reading material is bland and does not have the value that it could have from the western intellectual tradition. The passages in the CLT are more rigorous and include western religious tradition and thinkers but also poets, writers, scientists from the whole gamut of the experience of Europe and the United States of America. And also explore other countries and continents including China and India, from Aristotle to Gandhiji. ...

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The new approach to tackle the coronavirus is to quarantine areas where it starts. The approach is being adopted in China, Italy, the U.S., Japan and other countries. Another part of this is closing of schools as in Japan and Hong Kong. Experts support this approach even though it was used in the 14th century.