Thomas Friedman: A Columnist to Follow By Alyson Lardizabal

Thomas Friedman was born on July 20, 1953 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He grew up being in middle­class of St. Louis Park. Margaret Friedman, Friedman’s mother has served in the U.S. Navy in World War II. Friedman’s father, Harold Friedman was vice president of United Bearing, a ball bearing company. As a kid Friedman’s father would take Friedman out to the golf course to play golf. It was Friedman’s dream to become a professional golf player until high school came along. During high school was when Friedman got interested in journalism and the middle east. Friedman’s high school journalism teacher had inspired him to love reports and newspaper when he was only in the 10th grade in 1969. When his journalism teacher passed away on January 9, 2001, he wrote a column about her stating how tough and hardworking she was. After high school, Friedman went to University of Minnesota and Brandeis University, graduating from both schools with a degree of Mediterranean studies.

In 1978 Friedman joined the London Bureau of United Press International, working as a general assignment reporter. In London, he got married to Ann Bucksbaum and stayed in London for almost year editing and reporting. He had to write about most regional stories like the Civil War. Friedman got offered a job at the New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal in May 1981. He again worked as a general assignment reporter and specialized in OPEC and news about oil. Friedman got into Beirut Bureau Chief for The New York Times on April 1982. He had worked really hard doing reports on refugee camps in Shatila, suicide bombings in the U.S., a massacre in Syria, and etc. After doing so much work on these stories he had won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1983. Friedman got transferred to Jerusalem and worked at Time’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He got devoted into his work reporting about volcanoes and won a second Pulitzer Prize. He then got the opportunity to write a book about the middle east called From Beirut to Jerusalem and was New York Times best seller book. Friedman always wanted to write columns as a job and in January 1995 was when he wrote his first column on the New York Times Affair column. In 2002 he won another Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. Friedman was in a documentary series called Years of Living Dangerously in 2013­2014. The documentary was about climate changing around the world and it won an Emmy Award in 2014 for outstanding documentary series. Friedman and his wife now live in Bethesda, Maryland. He now is a member of Brandeis University Board of Trustees. His wife is a first grade school teacher. One of his daughters is still finishing college and the other teaching grade school too. "Thomas L. Friedman Official Biography." About the Author. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Out of Africa

Thomas L. Friedman April 13, 2016

Agadez, NIGER — It’s Monday and that means it’s moving day in Agadez, the northernNiger desert crossroad that is the main launching pad for migrants out of West Africa. Fleeing devastated agriculture, overpopulation and unemployment, migrants from a dozen countries gather here in caravans every Monday night and make amad dash through the Sahara to Libya, hoping to eventually hop across the Mediterranean to Europe. 1

This caravan’s assembly is quite a scene to witness. Although it is evening, it’s still 105 degrees, and there is little more than a crescent moon to illuminate the night. Then, all of a sudden, the desert comes alive.

Using the WhatsApp messaging service on their cellphones, the local smugglers, who are tied in with networks of traffickers extending across West Africa, start coordinating the surreptitious loading of migrants from safe houses and basements across the city. They’ve been gathering all week from Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Chad, Guinea, Cameroon, Mali and other towns in Niger.

With 15 to 20 men — no women — crammed together into the back of each Toyota pickup, their arms and legs spilling over the sides, the vehicles pop out of alleyways and follow scout cars that have zoomed ahead tomake sure there are no pesky police officers or border guards lurking who have not been paid off.

It’s like watching a symphony, but you have no idea where the conductor is. Eventually, they all converge at a gathering point north of the city, forming a giant caravan of 100 to 200 vehicles — the strength in numbers needed to ward off deserts bandits.

Poor Niger. Agadez, with its warrens of ornate mud­walled buildings, is a remarkableUnesco World Heritage site, but the city has been abandoned by tourists after attacks nearby by Boko Haram and other jihadists. So, as one smuggler explains to me, the cars and buses of the tourist industry have now been repurposed into amigration industry. There are nowwildcat recruiters, linked to smugglers, all acrossWest Africa who appeal to themothers of boys to put up the $400 to $500 to send them to seek out jobs in Libya or Europe. Few make it, but others keep coming.

I am standing at the Agadez highway control station watching this parade. As the Toyotas whisk by me, kicking up dust, they paint the desert road with stunning moonlit silhouettes of young men, silently standing in the back of each vehicle. The thought that their Promised Land is

1 Rhetorical device: polysundeton

war­ravaged Libya tells you how desperate are the conditions they’re leaving. Between 9,000 and 10,000 men make this journey every month.

A few agree to talk — nervously. One group of very young men from elsewhere in Niger tell me they’re actually joining the rush to pan for gold in Djado in the far north of Niger. More typical are five young men who, in Senegalese­accented French, tell a familiar tale: no work in the village, went to the town, no work in the town, heading north.

What’s crazy is that as you go north of here, closer to the Libya border, to Dirkou, you run into streams of migrants coming back from Libya, which they found ungoverned, abusive and lacking in any kind of decent work. One of them, Mati Almaniq, fromNiger, tells me he had left his three wives and 17 children back in his village to search for work in Libya or Europe and returned deeply disillusioned. In Libya, say migrants, you can get beaten at any moment — or arbitrarily arrested and have the police use your cellphone to call your family in Niger and demand a ransom for your release. 2

Just as Syria’s revolution was set off in part by the worst four­year drought in the country’s modern history — plus overpopulation, climate stresses and the Internet — the same is true of this African migration wave. That’s why I’m here filming an episode for the “Years of Living 3

Dangerously” series on climate change across the planet, which will appear on National Geographic Channel next fall. I’m traveling with Monique Barbut, who heads the 4

U.N.Convention to Combat Desertification, and Adamou Chaifou, Niger’s minister of environment.

Chaifou explains that West Africa has experienced two decades of on­again­off­again drought. The dry periods prompt desperate people to deforest hillsides for wood for cooking or to sell, but they are now followed by increasingly violent rains, which then easily wash away the topsoil barren of trees. Meanwhile, the population explodes —mothers in Niger average seven children — as parents continue to have lots of kids for social security, and each year more fertile land gets eaten by desertification. “We now lose 100,000 hectares of arable land every year to desertification,” says Chaifou. “And we lose between 60,000 and 80,000 hectares of forest every year.”

As long as anyone could remember, he says, the rainy season “started in June and lasted until October. Now we get more big rains in April, and you need to plant right after it rains.” But then it becomes dry again for a month or two, and then the rains come back, muchmore intense than before, and cause floods that wash away the crops, “and that is a consequence of climate change” — caused, he adds, primarily by emissions from the industrial North, not from Niger or its neighbors.

2 Pathos 3 Central argument: Migration of Africans and climate change. 4 Source: Documentary, Years of Living Dangerously

Says the U.N.’s Barbut, “Desertification acts as the trigger, and climate change acts as an amplifier of the political challenges we are witnessing today: economic migrants, interethnic conflicts and extremism.” She shows me three maps of Africa with an oblong outline around a bunch of dots clustered in themiddle of the continent. Map No. 1: the most vulnerable regions of desertification in Africa in 2008. Map No. 2: conflicts and food riots in Africa 2007­2008. Map No. 3: terrorist attacks in Africa in 2012.

All three outlines cover the same territory.

TheEuropean Union recently struck a deal with Turkey to vastly increase E.U. aid to Ankara for dealing with refugees and migrants who have reached Turkey, in return for Turkey restricting their flow into Europe. 5

“If we would invest a fraction of that amount helping African nations combat deforestation, improve health and education and sustain small­scale farming, which is the livelihood of 80 percent of the people in Africa, so people here could stay on the land,” says Barbut, “it would be so much better for them and for the planet.”

Everyone wants to build walls these days, she notes, but the wall we needmost is a “green wall” of reforestation that would hold back the desert and stretch fromMali in the west to Ethiopia in the east. “It’s an idea that the Africans themselves have come up with,” she adds. It makes enormous sense.

Because, in the end, no wall will hold back this surging migrant tide. Everything you see here screams that unless a way can be found to stabilize Africa’s small­scale agriculture, one way or another they will try to get to Europe. Some who can’t will surely gravitate toward any extremist group that pays them. Toomany are now aware throughmass media of the better life in Europe, and too many see their governments as too frail to help them advance themselves.

I interviewed 20 men from at least 10 African countries at the International Organization for Migration aid center in Agadez — all had gone to Libya, tried and failed to get to Europe, and returned, but were penniless and unable to get back to their home villages. I asked them, “How many of you and your friends would leave Africa and go to Europe if you could get in legally?”

“Tout le monde,” they practically shouted, while they all raised their hands.

I don’t know much French, but I think that means “everybody.” 6

5 Rhetorical device: Repetition of refugees and migrants/immigrants. 6 West Africa needs help.

Is Vacation Over?

Thomas L. Friedman DEC. 23, 2014

More than we may realize, the world has been riding a lucky streak since the global financial meltdown in 2008. How so? The years between 2008 and late 2013 were — relatively speaking — a rather benign period of big power politics and geopolitics. This allowed themajor economic powers — the United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, Brazil and Japan — to focus almost exclusively on economic rehabilitation. But now there are strong indications that our vacation from geo­instability is over.

The last time the world witnessed such a steep and sustained drop in oil prices — from 1986 to 7

1999 — it had some profound political consequences for oil­dependent states and those who depended on their largess. The Soviet empire collapsed; Iran elected a reformist president; Iraq invaded Kuwait; and Yasir Arafat, having lost his Soviet backer and Arab bankers, recognized Israel — to name but a few. Admittedly, other factors were involved in all these events. But, in each case, steep drops in direct or indirect oil revenues played a big role.

If today’s falloff in oil prices is sustained, we’ll also be in for a lot of surprises. Some will have happy endings. Cuba’s decision to bury the hatchet with America had to have been spurred in part by Havana’s fears of losing some or all of the 100,000 barrels of subsidized oil a day it gets from the now cash­strapped Venezuela. Others could be very destabilizing. Today’s world is 8

much more tightly interconnected and interdependent than in the last oil price drop­off, which was before the spread of the Internet. And today’s world has so many more actors — 9

superpowers and superempowered individuals and hackers who can destabilize companies and countries with cyberweapons. See dictionary for “Sony” and “North Korea.”

When I hear President Vladimir Putin of Russia bragging that lower oil revenues won’t affect the Russian people because they are stoic — look what they tolerated inWorldWar II —my reaction is: “Mr. Putin, that was before there was a significant urban middle class in Russia, one you helped to build with trickle­down oil and gas revenues.” A lot more Russians today have gotten used to traveling abroad, owning a car (note Moscow’s traffic jams), consuming Western goods and seeing how the rest of the world lives. Let’s see how stoic they are today. Russia’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was quoted by The Financial Times on Monday as saying, “There will be a fall in living standards. It will be painful. Protest activity will increase.”

The Western sanctions on Putin’s banks, combined with the sudden sharp drop in oil prices and capital flight also triggered by the sanctions, mean that Russia has a dangerous gap between the funds flowing into its economy and what it needs to send out to pay its debts and finance its

7 Central Argumment: Oil drops 8 Rhetorical Device: Loose sentence 9 Logos

imports. Putin can’t relieve the pressure without a lifting of Western sanctions. That would require him to reverse his seizure of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine.

If Putin admits his Ukraine adventure was amistake, he will look incredibly foolish and the long knives will be out for him in the Kremlin. If he doesn’t back down, Russians will pay a huge 10

price. Either way, that system will be stressed with unpredictable spillovers on the global economy. Remember: Russia’s 1998 economic collapse — also triggered by low oil prices and the moratorium it declared on payments to foreign debtors — helped to sink the giant American hedge fund Long­Term Capital Management, sparking a near meltdown on Wall Street.

A prolonged drop in oil prices will impact Algeria, Iran and Arab Gulf states, where aging regimes have used high oil prices to increase government salaries to buy quiet from their people during the Arab Spring. Also, in an age whenmachines and software are ensuring that average is over for workers in developed countries, and everyone needs to be upgrading their skills, what happens to the developing Arab states and Iran, who have used oil money tomask their deficits in knowledge, education and women’s empowerment? Egypt’s military­led government is highly in need of Arab oil money to get through its crisis. A bit of good news: The Islamic State, which depends on oil smuggling, will fail at governing even faster than it already has.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s increasingly tyrannical president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been arresting domestic opponents, is looking like “Vladimir Putin Jr.” Erdogan is a tragic figure because he didmuch to build Turkey’s economy into a powerhouse. But, today,according to The Financial Times, Turkey now “needs more than $200 billion of foreign financing a year, more than a quarter of gross domestic product, to maintain its current level of growth.” There will be less Arab and Russian oil money for that and, last week, with Erdogan being criticized by the European Union (a big source of investment income) for arresting his opponents, the Turkish lira hit a low against the dollar. Watch that space.

High oil prices coveredmany sins and fosteredmany sins. If they stay low again for long, a lot of leaders will have to pay retail for their crazy politics, not wholesale. The political and geopolitical fallouts will be varied — good and bad — but fallout aplenty there will be. 11

10 Long knives? 11 We need to be more cautious of how much oil we are using.

Learning to Keep Learning

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: December 13, 2006

I recently attended an Asia Society education seminar in Beijing, during which we heard Chinese

educators talk about their “new national strategy.” It’s to make China an “innovation country” —

with enough indigenous output to advance China “into the rank of innovation­oriented countries

by 2020,” as Shang Yong, China’s vice minister of science and technology, put it. 12

I listened to this with mixed emotions. Part of me said: “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a

government that was so focused on innovation — instead of one that is basically anti­science.”

My other emotion was skepticism. Oh, you know the line: Great Britain dominated the 19th

century, America dominated the 20th and now China is going to dominate the 21st. It’s game

over.

Sorry, but I am not ready to cede the 21st century to China yet.

No question, China has been able to command an impressive effort to end illiteracy, greatly

increasing its number of high school grads and new universities. But I still believe it is very hard

to produce a culture of innovation in a country that censors Google —which for me is a proxy for

curtailing people’s ability to imagine and try anything they want. You can command K­12

education. But you can’t command innovation. Rigor and competence, without freedom, will 13

take China only so far. China will have to find a way to loosen up, without losing control, if it

wants to be a truly innovative nation.

But while China can’t thrive without changing a lot more, neither can we. Ask yourself this: If

the Iraq war had not dominated our politics, what would our last election have been about? It

would have been about this question: Why should any employer anywhere in the world pay

12 Central Argument: innovation country 13 Rhetorical Device: Loose sentence and logos

Americans to do highly skilled work— if other people, just as well educated, are available in less

developed countries for half our wages? 14

If we can’t answer this question, in an age when more and more routine work can be digitized,

automated or offshored, including white­collar work, “it is hard to see how, over time, we are

going to be able to maintain our standard of living,” says Marc Tucker, who heads the National

Center on Education and the Economy.

There is only one right answer to that question: In a globally integrated economy, our workers

will get paid a premium only if they or their firms offer a uniquely innovative product or service,

which demands a skilled and creative labor force to conceive, design, market andmanufacture —

and a labor force that is constantly able to keep learning. We can’t go on lagging other major

economies in every math/science/reading test and every ranking of Internet penetration and

think that we’re going to field a work force able to command premiumwages. Freedom, without

rigor and competence, will take us only so far.

Tomorrow, Mr. Tucker’s organization is coming out with a report titled “Tough Choices or

Tough Times,” which proposes a radical overhaul of the U.S. education system, with one goal in

mind: producing more workers — from the U.P.S. driver to the software engineer — who can

think creatively. 15

“One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered

two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other,” said

Mr. Tucker. Thus, his report focuses on “how to make that kind of thinking integral to every

level of education.”

That means, he adds, revamping an education system designed in the 1900s for people to do

“routine work,” and refocusing it on producing people who can imagine things that have never

been available before, who can create ingenious marketing and sales campaigns, write books,

14 Rhetorical Device: Rhetorical question 15 Source: Mr. Tucker’s organization

build furniture, make movies and design software “that will capture people’s imaginations and

become indispensable for millions.”

That can’t be done without higher levels of reading, writing, speaking, math, science, literature

and the arts. We have no choice, argues Mr. Tucker, because we have entered an era in which

“comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job, in which creativity and

innovation are the key to the good life” and in which the constant ability to learn how to learn

will be the only security you have.

Economics is not like war. It can be win­win. We, China, India and Europe can all flourish. But

the ones who flourish most will be those who develop the best broad­based education system, to

have the most people doing and designing the most things we can’t even imagine today. China

still has to make some very big changes to get there — but so do we. 16

16 Country’s education systems based on innovation countries

Social Media: Destroyer or Creator?

Thomas L. Friedman FEB. 3, 2016

Over the last few years we’ve been treated to a number of “Facebook revolutions,” from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to the squares of Istanbul, Kiev and Hong Kong, all fueled by social media. But once the smoke cleared, most of these revolutions failed to build any sustainable new political order, in part because as so many voices got amplified, consensus­building became impossible.

Question: Does it turn out that social media is better at breaking things than at making things? 17

Recently, an important voice answered this question with a big “ yes.” That voice was Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google employee whose anonymous Facebook page helped to launch the Tahrir Square revolution in early 2011 that toppled PresidentHosni Mubarak — but then failed to give birth to a true democratic alternative.

In December, Ghonim, who has since moved to Silicon Valley, posted a TED talk about what went wrong. It is worth watching and begins like this: “I once said, ‘If you want to liberate a 18

society, all you need is the Internet.’ I was wrong. I said those words back in 2011, when a Facebook page I anonymously created helped spark the Egyptian revolution. The Arab Spring revealed social media’s greatest potential, but it also exposed its greatest shortcomings. The same tool that united us to topple dictators eventually tore us apart.”

In the early 2000s, Arabs were flocking to the web, Ghonim explained: “Thirsty for knowledge, for opportunities, for connecting with the rest of the people around the globe, we escaped our frustrating political realities and lived a virtual, alternative life.”

And then in June 2010, he noted, the “Internet changed my life forever. While browsing Facebook, I saw a photo … of a tortured, dead body of a young Egyptian guy. His name was Khaled Said. Khaled was a 29­year­old Alexandrian who was killed by police. I sawmyself in his picture. … I anonymously created a Facebook page and called it ‘We Are All Khaled Said.’ In just three days, the page had over 100,000 people, fellow Egyptians who shared the same concern.” 19

Soon Ghonim and his friends used Facebook to crowd­source ideas, and “the page became the most followed page in the Arab world. … Social media was crucial for this campaign. It helped a

17 Central Argument: Social media breaking things 18 Source: Ted Talks 19 Pathos

decentralized movement arise. It made people realize that they were not alone. And it made it impossible for the regime to stop it.”

Ghonim was eventually tracked down in Cairo by Egyptian security services, beaten and then held incommunicado for 11 days. But three days after he was freed, the millions of protesters his Facebook posts helped to galvanize brought down Mubarak’s regime.

Alas, the euphoria soon faded, said Ghonim, because “we failed to build consensus, and the political struggle led to intense polarization.” Social media, he noted, “only amplified” the polarization “by facilitating the spread of misinformation, rumors, echo chambers and hate speech. The environment was purely toxic. My online world became a battleground filled with trolls, lies, hate speech.”

Supporters of the army and the Islamists used social media to smear each other, while the democratic center, which Ghonim and so many others occupied, was marginalized. Their revolution was stolen by theMuslim Brotherhood and, when it failed, by the army, which then arrested many of the secular youths who first powered the revolution. The army has its own Facebook page to defend itself.

“It was a moment of defeat,” said Ghonim. “I stayed silent for more than two years, and I used the time to reflect on everything that happened.”

Here is what he concluded about social media today: “First, we don’t know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now believed and spread among millions of people.” Second, “We tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we canmute, un­follow and block everybody else. Third, online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs. … It’s as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars.

“And fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet.”

Fifth, and most crucial, he said, “today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. … It’s as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.”

Ghonim has not given up. He and a few friends recently started a website,Parlio.com, to host intelligent, civil conversations about controversial and often heated issues, with the aim of narrowing gaps, not widening them. (I participated in a debate on Parlio and found it engaging and substantive.)

“Five years ago,” concluded Ghonim, “I said, ‘If you want to liberate society, all you need is the Internet.’ Today I believe if we want to liberate society, we first need to liberate the Internet.” 20

20 Society and Internet

Opposing Source Comparison Analysis

Innovation Sputters as a Chinese Engine

Some incubators and shared­office spaces go empty and are at

risk of closing

By LI YUAN March 24 2016

Yang Binglong’s attempt to start a technology incubator in a Shenzhen basement offers a worrying signal for China’s effort to turn to innovation to rekindle its economy.

Last August, when Mr. Yang launched D­Lab, a nearly 11,000­square­foot shared­office space designed to cultivate startups, he told a technology blog that he wanted to provide a place where entrepreneurs and investors could mingle easily and open up to each other. The 26­year­old worked long hours trying to find and woo startups and hosted networking events with wine and Chinese hot­pot meals, according to his social­media posts.

Five months later, D­Lab remained largely empty while the slowing economy weighed on startup funding and an increasing number of competitors came to the market. In January, he announced on social media that D­Lab had burned through one million yuan ($150,000) and was subletting its lease. Mr. Yang says he now works for a small investment bank in Shenzhen. He confirmed the subletting but declined to comment further.

There aren’t comprehensive statistics on the number of incubators and shared­office spaces like D­Lab, but industry executives estimate thousands of them have sprouted across China since early last year, after Chinese PremierLi Keqiangvisited some of them in Shenzhen and Beijing and touted innovation and startups as the new engine of China’s economic growth. Many are imitating U.S. startup WeWork Cos., which this month raised about $430 million in a funding round led by Chinese investors and is itself entering the China market.

In his annual government work report this month, Premier Li used the word “chuangxin,” or “innovate,” 65 times, up from 38 times last year, and “chuangye,” or “start businesses,” 22 times, up from 13 times last year. “Innovation is the primary driving force for development and must occupy a central place in China’s development

strategy,” Mr. Li’s report said, adding that, “We should make consistent efforts to encourage the public to start businesses and innovate.”

It is an understandable long­term goal, but the government also seems to be promoting startups and innovation as a short­term fix to slowing growth as traditional manufacturing and export sectors slump. Governments, central and local, are offering subsidies, tax breaks and other favorable policies to encourage the development of what officials call “innovative hubs.” Beijing offers asmuch as fivemillion yuan ($770,300) in subsidies a year to each qualified startup and incubator. Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest provinces, offers to cover full rent for incubators and startups that move to its high­tech zone in their first year, 70% in their second year and 30% in their third.

Tianjin, east of Beijing, aims to build 100 innovative hubs by the end of this year while Suzhou, near Shanghai, plans to build over 300 incubator­style entities by 2020, according to the local governments’ websites. By comparison, only 44 co­working spaces in San Francisco are listed on the CoWorking Wiki, where many operators list information.

It isn’t always clear what the government means in touting the desire for innovative hubs. The business model for incubators, which offer mentorship, administrative services and sometimes funding in addition to office space, is quite different from that of shared­space operations, where individuals and companies pay membership fees or rent.

Some experienced incubator executives, venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs worry that those jumping into these businesses don’t fully understand them either. They fear the rapid growth risks causing overcapacity of startup­friendly space—much like the ghost cities and now­deserted steel mills that were built with the government stimulus funds after the 2008 financial crisis. “So many incubators, so few startups,” is a common refrain among veteran incubator and startup founders.

Zhang Yonghong, founder of incubator Yuanquanhui in Shenzhen, says some smaller incubators and shared­office spaces probably will have to close eventually becausemany are empty and will remain so. Kai­Fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft Corp. executive who in 2009 founded one of China’s earliest incubators, China’s Innovation Works, says only about 5% of incubators in China have the capacity to provide funding and high­quality services that can help startups to grow.He says the business isn’t often

a good fit for government. “There are very few successful examples of government­run incubators around the world,” he says.

“Behind the prosperity of innovative hubs lies risks and dangers,” the China Association for Promoting Democracy, an official group that plays a consultative role to the ruling Communist Party, warned in a policy proposal at thismonth’s annual legislative session. The proposal urges governments at all levels to more accurately evaluate the development of these spaces and let the market mechanism dictate the growth. The association says it didn’t get any response during the parliamentary sessions.

The majority of the shared­office spaces won’t be able to make a profit from simply renting out desks, says Mao Daqing, founder and chief executive of UrWork, a WeWork­type business in China. Mr. Mao, a former top executive at one of China’s biggest property developers, foundedUrWork last April. It has expanded to 36 locations in 16 cities across China, with 20,000 desks for rent. “It’s great that the government advocates for startups, but nobody has figured out how these spaces can makemoney,” he says, though he adds that UrWork does, by providing services including financial advice, brokering funding and organizing product demonstrations.

Friedman’s article above, Learning to Keep Learning, explains how China is not innovating. Although, China is having their education systems more advanced and how children are advanced in classes Friedman went straight into why China can’t be an “innovation country”. Friedman comments that “You can command K­12 education. But you can’t command innovation.” He then states how they are not ready,and that the government is too controlling which leads to not that much freedom for the people. If China wants to be an innovated country the government needs to “loosen up” without “losing any power.” China, trying to be more innovative “... can’t thrive without changing a lot more.” Even more, the country will go through a lot of changes if trying to innovate. Those changes can affect the people and how they live which will make it hard for everyone. Friedman’s argument is that China will not be an innovative country without making changes throughout the country. After reading Li Yuan’s article, it shows the many differences Friedman and Yuan has on the argument and how Friedman missed many important details because of how he was stating his opinion. Many people has made a lot of money with the “innovations” growing in China. As shown in the article, “... this month raised $430 million in a funding round led by Chinese investors and is itself entering the Chinese market.” Innovation being the “driving force for development” makes China want it to be their “development strategy.” The Chinese government is also “promoting innovation” and making “innovative hubs” to persuade people to be

innovative. As shown here Yuan’s argument is that China is innovating slowly, but it will become an innovative country.

Final Remarks

From the first column I have chose from my columnist, I have learned that you

can learn a lot from travelling to different places. Like when Friedman had travelled to Africa it is much different from where I live currently. I have also learned that I am lucky to be where I am at right now because of how hard it is to get a job there and how men have to leave their families to go out and find jobs, but end up coming back looking beat up with no job. Every month men have to go out and do this, and it’s hard to think about how their families are thinking when they go out looking for jobs in Europe, but end up coming back with nothing.

In the second column, I learned how our renewable resources are slowly

dropping. I have never thought about not having oils and not being able to have gas for our automobiles, cook food, have electronics, etc. We have to be more careful on how much oil we are using because one day it will all be gone and no one will know what to do afterwards. I have also learned to not take granted for things because one day it won’t be there anymore.

In the third column, I have learned that we are advancing in technology fast and

China is trying to be an innovated country. Many new inventions are coming out and some we don’t even know about yet. Lots of people in China are becoming more advanced in school leading to the making of many cool new inventions.

In the fourth column, I learned that there are positives and negatives to social

media. As shown in the column, there was an anonymous facebook page created and was the most followed Arab page. It made people know what was happening and got to interact with each other. I also learned that social media can be a big help and to contact friends/ family who don’t live close by. Although, it can take over everything and technology can be the only thing people rely on.

I feel like my columnist is a very serious person when working. I also think he

may like to travel because of the many places he went to to write about. In my opinion, the columns I chose weren’t the topics I was interested in, but as I was looking for columns and there wasn’t much that I like, so I feel like he may be boring.

To be honest about this project as a whole, I didn’t really like it. All the tasks we

had to do I always did them last minute because I either forgot or had other things to do. Also, it was pretty boring because I had no interest in any columnist’s or the columns

that they had wrote. I feel like if we did this project on something else I would’ve been more interested and actually had fun doing it. Although this project was boring, I learned many things and thought about stuff I would have never had thought about.