■"Cancer Therapy Dropped In U.S. Is Revived in China," by Andrew Pollack, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. C4.
■"Soggy Steps Toward Space Walks," photo caption, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A14.
■"India's Cabinet Lifts Restraint On Land Investing," by Jay Solomon and Eric Bellman, Wall Street Journal, 25 February 2005, p. A16.
■"India's First Airline Offering Is Scooped Up in Minutes: Investors were willing to buy far more shares than were available," by Saritha Rai, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. C5.
The New Core will be that part of the Core most willing to take risks in coming years. They have the biggest problems, the tallest tasks, and the most incentive to keep pressing on. We'll see these states push the envelope all the time, and one place they'll do it in medical science.
In the first story, a Chinese biotech firm picks up a technology abandoned by an American company years ago as too dangerous: a specific sort of gene therapy for cancer treatment. And this company (Shanghai Sunway Biotech) isn't just looking to use this therapy in China, it wants to get approval to use it in the U.S. as well, something the company does by gaining a license agreement from the original American developer, Onyx Pharmaceuticals.
Try this one on for size: "The first and only approval of a gene therapy by any regulatory agency in the world happened in China in 2003." Within years, it could be coming to an American hospital near you.
New Core, new rules.
Meanwhile, the Old Core is getting so tentative about things. America can barely explore space any more becauseóGod forbidósomeone might die in space! Japan's on the same wavelength, but for them it's their military forces in Iraq. Afraid they might lose their first soldier in combat since WWII, the Japanese peacekeepers in Iraq are guarded by other coalition troops.
Meanwhile, China pushes ahead with an iffy cancer treatment. Why the hell not? If you've ever been to China, you know how many people smoke there. That's where all the U.S. cigarette companies fled when we started outlawing smoking here in the States.
With China pushing such experimentation, India feels the need to remain as bold as possible in its own economic development. China's airline industry remains dominated by its state fleets, but India's got its low-cost, private-sector airlines up and running, and they're redefining the nature of air travel there. Yesterday, Jet Airways held an Initial Public Offering and received 13 times as many bids as it had stock available, sending its value soaring. Between it and Air Deccan, India's future as a market for air travel looks awfully bright all of a sudden. Meanwhile, stodgy Air India, owned by the state, gets left in the dust as the cheaper airlines race ahead. 15 million travelers now, but 50 million by 2010. That's why the industry and India in general is pulling in foreign direct investment at unprecedented levels. Not China levels, mind you, but approaching the same zip code.
And this flow is a virtuous one, generating more and more attempts by India to find new targets for this outside money, hence the recent cabinet decision to allow for foreign ownership of real-estate projects up to 100%:
"It is expected that allowed investment . . . in the construction-and-development sector would have a multiplier effect on the economy by boosting construction activities of all types," said Kamal Rath, India's minister of commerce and industry.
It's not a matter of being dominated by foreign companies, but letting in that competition to spur local efforts at development. Connectivity trumps disconnectedness. Creativity unleashed (and plenty of stealing/copying of foreign technologies), and the new rules ensue.