Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

An e-commerce firm can become successful in a few different ways.   Having a great selection of high-quality products at bargain prices certainly help.   So is having convenient payment methods and great customer service when things go awry.   But no part of e-commerce operations leaves a greater impression on potential customers than being able to deliver purchased products quickly, safely, and at exact times designated by the customers.   A previous article on Tech in Asia already made clear the importance of product delivery in overall customer satisfaction.   Similarly, several academic studies have shown the importance of logistics management and capacity to customer satisfaction and firm performance. Furthermore, a survey in the American and European markets showed that 38% of online shoppers will never shop with the e-commerce provider again after suffering a negative delivery experience.

Reading through some of the Master's theses produced by University of Tokyo students, I am struck by just how abstract some of them sound to the layman.  Referring to one obscure study after another, their authors simply assume that whoever that is reading their outputs would simply know by heart all the supposedly groundbreaking studies by famous scholars.  Such careless assumption goes back my previous argument that academics and non-academics simply do not communicate on the same page, leading to academic works not being taken seriously outside the tiny professional academic research community. 

Economic inequality is not new.  It is a phenomenon that has haunted human civilization ever since agricultural production became systematic and people saw the benefits of accumulating wealth in one place.  A ruling elite with the power to organize the institutions and structures of society came to tower over others, giving them the ability to reshape how society operates to benefit themselves.  The result is the rise of an elite that is both politically and economically powerful, often in a hereditary manner.  For too long, the general populace was OK with such an elite, notably because there was a belief that anyone can become equally as powerful and rich through individual efforts.

The Japanese are, by now, famous in the developed world for the hostility of the general public toward the prospect of mass migration.  Even as the government mulls policies that increase the number of foreign workers in the country, the media, both mainstream and otherwise, debate whether the shift to the extreme right under in way in Europe is a result of uncoordinated, unstructured, and unprepared nature by which millions of Africans and Middle Easterners streamed in.  What is implied, of course, is that the Japanese do not repeat the mistake of mass migration that the Europeans brought upon themselves.

It is certainly difficult being an Uyghur these days. Not only is an Uyghur person constantly subject to racial profiling and intense surveillance by the state in China , but the Chinese government's downright inhumane policy of disrupting Uyghur self-expression has also found support outside China, as Central Asian states bow to Chinese demand for suppressing their own Uyghur diaspora and Islamophobic Westerners express tacit approval of overt attempts to secularize the Uyghurs.  For some, the threat of Islamic terror has made the Chinese government's heavyhandedness platable, if not outright admirable.

Newsstands at Japanese train stations are usually fronted by racks full of front-page news from the country's vibrant tabloid newspapers.  On a recent day, half a dozen tabloids lined up on the racks spoke a uniform voice against Huawei, the Chinese smartphone-cum-telecom equipment manufacturer that is currently under massive scrutiny across much of the developed world.  "Huawei Smartphones: the Spying Devices that are Just around Us," one tabloid declared.  Others concurred and added in extra details about the aftermath of the ongoing saga over Huawei CFO's arrest in Canada.