In The News

Bull in a China Shop?

David Dapice December 1, 2003
As the election calendar heats up in the US, the Republican Bush administration and the Democrats' presidential hopefuls are all fingering China as the culprit behind America's economic woes. A rise in imports from China and a sharp decline in manufacturing jobs are the 'evidence' they point to, says economist David Dapice, but their theories simply don't hold water....

Teochews Can Take Pride in Successes

Lee Hsien Loong November 24, 2003
Since at least the 1800s, Chinese immigrants speaking the Teochew dialect have moved to many regions of Southeast Asia in search of a better life. Many of them have become the most successful groups in their adopted countries, says Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Sometimes they seem "more than proportionately represented" in top-notch positions such as the Thai...

Sleepy City Has High Hopes, Dreaming of High Tech

David Rohde November 20, 2003
The sleepy farm state capital of Chandigarh may soon become the "technology hub of northern India." In recent years, tens of thousands of jobs have flooded to India from the US and Europe as high tech companies, attracted by cheap, qualified labor, transfer their call centers en masse. India's "first tier" technology hubs, including cities like Bangalore and Bombay,...

China Wary as US Puts Lid on Textile Imports

Edward Alden November 20, 2003
The US can now import only limited quantities of brassieres, knit fabrics, and cotton dressing gowns from China – much to the relief of the US's domestic textile industry and to the ire of Chinese officials. Washington implemented the quotas in response to growing pressure from the US textile industry, which has lost 316,000 jobs in the past two years. Officials in the industry echo the...

After the Crossing, Danger to Migrants Isn't Over

Charlie LeDuff November 11, 2003
A wave of violence has hit the Southwest US that is reminiscent of the drug wars of years past. But the victims now are illegal immigrants, caught in the crossfire of competing gangs, not members of rival drug cartels. Because of increased security after September 11, the price demanded for human smuggling across the US-Mexico border has increased drastically, rendering such operations almost...

Caught in the Pull of Globalization

Aaron Davis November 10, 2003
White collar jobs are moving with increasing rapidity from US soil to India, China, and other major Asian players. Corporations can pay less than half an American employee's wage for the same work and, they argue, can free up American workers for more "interesting" jobs. Labor interests in the US fear this trend, claiming that jobs are leaving "overnight" or while...

The Future of Migration - Part Two

Lant Pritchett November 9, 2003
In Part II of a two-part series on the future of migration, economist Lant Pritchett argues that the forces building up to another wave of mass migration face opposition in the form of ideas. Simply put, he says, "the primary reason there is not more migration is that the citizens of the industrialized world don't want it." People in the industrialized world - the main...