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Geopolitics

Risk Lessons, From A Grounded Ship In Suez To A Global Pandemic

A pandemic and a maritime accident teach us the same lessons: humility, fragility and ultimately human ingenuity. Risk is impossible to predict, except that we know it always exists.

The Ever Given, currently stuck in the Suez Canal
The Ever Given, currently stuck in the Suez Canal
Jean-Marc Vittori

-OpEd-

A monster made out of steel can also fear the elusive Aeolus. This is the case for the Ever Given. A gust of wind was enough to make this enormous container ship — longer than the Eiffel Tower and twenty times heavier — run aground in the Suez Canal.

This incident has nothing to do with the pandemic that has devastated the planet for a year ... except that these stories teach us the same lessons. First, it teaches us to be humble. Humans know how to design an artificial heart, but they are still unable to control a virus that has already killed nearly three million women and men. We also know how to build a giant ship capable of weathering storms while carrying 20,000 metal containers, a system that has revolutionized freight transport. And yet, we can't prevent this ship from blocking a vital artery of global trade.

Rescue experts are now hoping that Mother Nature will free what she has blocked and that a tide will be enough to counteract the effect of the winds on Ever Given.

Hundreds of ships are waiting at the entrance of the Suez Canal — Photo: Ahmed Gomaa/Xinhua via ZUMA Press

It's also a lesson about our own fragility. A virus invisible to the naked eye was enough to cause an unprecedented drop in global activity last year that is being counted in the trillions of dollars. A gust of wind was enough to block a channel through which more than 10% of global trade and two million barrels of oil pass every day. Hundreds of ships are already waiting at the entrance to the waterway, and may eventually have to resort to going around Africa to reach their destination. In this case too, the costs would be high. Trade journal Lloyd's List talks about a figure close to $10 billion per day.

For the virus as for the Suez Canal, the solution comes or will come from the ingenuity of a few individuals.

For companies, this is one more reason to work on risk mapping, keeping in mind that nothing is "ever a given" (as the name of the ship suggests): health, access to markets, the possibility of manufacturing here or passing through there, an offer from a supplier or funding from a investor. The most unlikely chains of events are not necessarily the most improbable. We are not done talking about agility, resilience and creativity.

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Economy

How A Xi Jinping Dinner In San Francisco May Have Sealed Mastercard's Arrival In China

The credit giant becomes only the second player after American Express to be allowed to set up a bank card-clearing RMB operation in mainland China.

Photo of a hand holding a phone displaying an Union Pay logo, with a Mastercard VISA logo in the background of the photo.

Mastercard has just been granted a bank card clearing license in China.

Liu Qianshan

-Analysis-

It appears that one of the biggest beneficiaries from Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to San Francisco was Mastercard.

The U.S. credit card giant has since secured eagerly anticipated approval to expand in China's massive financial sector, having finally obtained long sought approval from China's central bank and financial regulatory authorities to initiate a bank card business in China through its joint venture with its new Chinese partner.

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Through a joint venture in China between Mastercard and China's NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, dubbed Mastercard NUCC, it has officially entered mainland China as an RMB currency clearing organization. It's only the second foreign business of its kind to do so following American Express in 2020.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the development is linked to Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting on Nov. 15 with U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco, part of a two-day visit that also included dinner that Xi had with U.S. business executives.

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