One Lesson Taiwan Can Learn From China

choi

Ralph Jennings, One Lesson Taiwan Can Learn From China. Forbes.com, Sept 28, 2014
www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennin ... n-learn-from-china/
(ambitions)

My comment:
(a) “There are short lessons: Try adding yards, sidewalks and setbacks between flats and roads. Those measures common in China’s cities would ease urban density in Taiwan and increase breathing space (even if China’s air is filthy).”

A “short lesson” is a lesson that is short, brief. Google that term in quotation marks.
(b) “I talked this month to a 50-year-old Taiwanese computer vendor in China who was ready to pack up his Shanghai sales office after 12 years. * * * ‘I’m part of a group of people who have been eliminated [by China’s sea changes],’ says the ex-salesman, Jeff Wu. * * * ambition is pulsating in China. It will take an ethos of ambition to get ahead as people such as Jeff Pu fall behind.”

A type in the surname.
(c) “Shortly after I talked to him [Jeff WU or PU] I met a friend from Beijing on a visit to Taipei. In Beijing people are watching their backs while stabbing others to get higher salaries, bigger apartments and status-symbol cars, she griped. * * * My students from Beijing would turn up a year or two after graduation in the country’s top media jobs, watching or stabbing backs as needed to build careers.”

The last sentence talks about “watching or stabbing backs.”  Compare with the preceding sentence, and you know whose backs one watches and stabs.
(d) Mr Ralph Jennings is a journalist with Associated Press, but free lance also. He sounds as if Taiwanese now are more or less like Japanese: risk averse. I am skeptical, though admittedly I have been away for three decades.