Kishore Mahbubani at the Presidential Palace, Jakarta.

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On Thursday, the 31st of July 2008, Kishore Mahbubani – see the previous post- held a lecture at the presidential palace. His audience was the national ruling elite of Indonesia, the President himself, government members etc.  And, as a courteous guest, he said some flattering things about ( and to) his host. But he also had several encouraging observations on recent developments in the country as well as some advice, worth to ponder upon, on how to do better.

He compared for instance what happened in South America and China. While thirty or twenty years ago every insider would have predicted Latin America would do much better economically than the People’s Republic of China, exactly the opposite has happened. In the opinion of Mahbubani  both made  the one and only right choice regarding the economical system: free market capitalism. So that did not make the difference.

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