The Hindu Business Line : Teach your children Chinese

Just as the nineteenth century belonged to England and the twentieth century to the US, so the twenty-first century will be China’s turn to set the agenda and rule the roost, writes Jim Rogers in ‘A Bull in China’ ( www.landmarkonthenet.com ).

“Teach your children or your grandchildren Chinese. It is going to be the most important language of their lifetimes,” he urges, dedicating the December 2007-published book to his Chinese-speaking daughter, Happy – ‘my very best investment ever.’

The future AT&Ts, Microsofts, and General Motors are waiting to be discovered, says Rogers, spotting ‘a whole lot of room for upward growth in Chinese industry, including power and energy, tourism and media, agriculture, infrastructure, high-tech.’

He looks beyond ‘sleek office towers and assembly lines rising from rice paddies’ to discover China’s immeasurable advances in civil conduct, internationalised awareness, and opportunities for advancement. “In urban areas, the traditional greeting ‘Have you eaten today?’ has been replaced by ‘Have you surfed the Net today?’ Chinese executives, engineers, artists, athletes, and designers are already leading the world into ‘the Chinese century’.”

Now is the time to engage China and all things Chinese, the author exhorts. “Go there if you can, or if you’ve already climbed the Great Wall, go back again to see the great changes… Read some of the many good books about life in contemporary China. See their movies.” You need to develop a clear sense of how Chinese people view the world and lead their lives, reasons Rogers. “Try to figure out how China’s consumers will spend their hard-earned cash and where they might put it to make it grow.”

Having gone biking across China more than once, Rogers declares that the world has moved quicker than any Harley-Davidson. “Communist slogans are as old hat as Mao caps. Even in Vietnam, booms have replaced battles… In less than half my lifetime, three billion Asians have become part of the world economy.”

More importantly, he observes a dramatic shift at the core of finance. “In 2002, twenty-three of the world’s 25 largest IPOs were on Wall Street. In 2006, it was down to just one.”

Urgent read.

Getting rich is an inside job

Trying to live a rich life when you have a poor relationship with money is like trying to drive a car with one foot on the accelerator and the other one on the brakes, writes Paul McKenna in ‘I Can Make You Rich’ ( www.rbooks.co.uk ). “You may occasionally make some progress, but in the end no matter how hard you try you never seem to really get anywhere.” Whatever meaning you are attaching to money is either drawing it closer or pushing it away, McKenna declares, in the recently published book.

Through a simple quiz he lets you determine whether ‘your beliefs and associations with money’ are those of ‘someone who is programmed for poverty or for riches’. Your mind is like a computer, but it’s only as useful as the programmes it’s running, reminds McKenna, to emphasise the silent self-sabotage that unconscious thought patterns may be causing.

Getting rich is an inside job, the author says. “Being rich is living your life on your own terms – according to your possibilities, not your limitations.” Rich thinkers, according to him, are those who will be rich regardless of the current size of their bank balance. “If they are temporarily low on cash, they won’t be for long, and they somehow always seem to find a way to do what they really want to do in their lives.”

To them, ‘making money is neither a mysterious process nor a cosmic reward – it is just a skill, like learning to juggle or riding a bike.’ Sadly, the opposite is true of poor thinkers; they may have ‘big houses and wear fancy clothes, but their heads are filled with fears about the future and mistrust of those around them.’

Another difference between the two groups is with spending, as a quote of Jim Rohn reveals: “Poor people spend their money and then save what’s left; rich people save their money and spend what’s left.” Making money is only half the equation, explains McKenna.

“Accumulating a surplus of that money is an important part of nearly every rich thinker’s plan for a lifetime of riches.”

Ask yourself, therefore, he urges, whether you get more pleasure from spending money or accumulating it. If shopping is dangerously turning into an addiction, this insight from Michael Neill may help: “Shoppers go into a store to buy something; shopaholics go into a store to see if there is anything to buy.”

Or, try this discovery of Tavis Smiley: “When people use credit cards, they are often spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need to impress people they don’t even like.” Portentous, because Aleksandra Todorova talks of ‘the coming credit-card crunch’ in a story dated January 4.

“The subprime-mortgage crisis has cost millions of homeowners their homes. Now it threatens to put the squeeze on even more consumers by spilling into the credit-card market,” she writes in www.smartmoney.com. As of the third quarter of 2007, credit-card balances increased by 7 per cent on an annualised basis, compared to the average annual increases of 2 per cent over the previous six years, Todorova informs.

To the budget badgered and the spending sufferers, ‘one last technique’ from McKenna is a three-step exercise: one, for the next 30 days, put your credit cards away somewhere safe, and spend on ‘cash-only’ basis; two, before buying anything, ask yourself whether it is A (essential), B (important, but not essential), or C (everything else); and three, immediately after buying something, take out your notebook and write down exactly what you spent.

And he assures you of results: “On average, following these three steps will add less than a minute to your purchase time, but I have seen it cut down the amount people spend by as much as 50 per cent!”

Compulsory education.

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