Ivan's Blog

I just came back from Gouangzhou (better known as “Canton” for Westerners), China. Quite amazing. A city of around 10 million people (so the locals said) and “only” the 5-6th city in the country (though, again, according to the locals it is the third most important city in the IT area after Beijing and Shanghai). The whole city feels as if it was built in the last 5 years (and it probably was, actually), booming, developing. It will be interesting to see when China will come out of the status of the “manufacture of the World”, and appear as a prime developer, innovator, scientific centre? (Although that might still take several years.) Nevertheless, it is clear that the bipolar World of the US and the European Union is soon over…

A lesson to be learned closer to home, by the way: I am a bit tired of the discussion around the referenda on the European Union in, say, France or the Netherlands. When will people realize that the only way for European peoples to stay around is via a united Europe? Otherwise, Europe is heading to become really the “museum of the World”, as one top man of Philips said not a long time ago…