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Difficulties in taking anything but a negative view of Trump's progress in US-China trade talks
The major American importer of Chinese building materials looked furtively about before answering the question from the Shipping Gazette. He certainly did not want any fellow American hear him say a good word about President Donald Trump.
Even here at the TPM shipping conference in Shenzhen it was risky to answer the question whether he thought President Trump's complaints about Chinese trade practices had any merit.
Assured that no one could hear him during a late coffee break, he warily ventured: "Yes, there is truth in what he says..."
But just then another American delegate approached and hail and heartily called out saying: "Hey Bill, I haven't seen you in years."
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China's Pearl River Delta invites comparisons to America's Silicon Valley in economic importance
Not so long ago, what a lady bought in shops from Montreal to Melbourne, from Cape Town to Cologne likely came from the largest urbanised centre in the world, a conurbation of dozens of interlocking cities and towns from Hong Kong 70 miles to Guangzhou.
If that boast is no longer true, it is because what is mostly bought in shops touches the human body, namely clothes. While clothing was once made along the banks of the Pearl River, these factories have since moved inland in search of affordable labour or to other regions like Indo-China and Indonesia where such can still be found.
While rising standards of living along Pearl have gradually priced its inhabitants out of low-end markets, they have come to dominate a high-end mass market in the manufacture of electronics and the now globally ubiquitous smart phones.
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Factors affecting Chinese rail freight to Europe and back now and in coming years
Three key factors emerge that both help and hinder the growth of China-Europe rail freight - technical, commercial and bureaucratic.
The technical problem that robs Sino-European rail freight of its competitive transit time edge are the two railway gauge changes that must be overcome enroute.
The commercial problem is the development of Asia-Europe ocean shipping, which now deploys mega ships that can offer rates and speeds that come close enough to rail delivery as to erase what slender cost-savings and shortened transit times rail freight can deliver.
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Leadership issues in future trade relations between China and the United States
Two separate, but similarly determined leaders have emerged in China and the United States with the advent of Xi Jinping in Beijing and Donald Trump in Washington. Both are very different from those who preceded them.
To be fair, President Trump started the recent trade war, though President Xi was making what has been perceived as mini, if not micro aggressive moves before that, such as his Belt and Road scheme and the seizure and militarisation of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, contrary to the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague.
For his part, President Trump decided to act on long-standing popular trade grievances, against the advice of the Wall Street voices of globalisation that seek to preserve the soaring China trade.
But despite such blandishments, President Trump stuck to his popular China trade policy of "reciprocity or else" despite accusations of "protectionism" from the media and the establishment of his own Republican party.
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