Global village

Caribbean connection

WiFi infrastructure and web-based video are among the areas flush with business opportunities for those seeking to capitalize on China's booming economy. This was among the advice Jamaican-born venture capitalist Lloyd A Carney gave members and friends of the Caribbean Association in China (CAC) during a recent presentation.

Before he founded the US-based Carney Global Ventures, Carney was chairman and CEO of Micromuse, an IT and telecom infrastructure management tools provider, before IBM bought it for $800 million in 2006.

He is convinced that Shanghai is the perfect location from which to take advantage of the opportunities that spring up as China steadily increases its wealth and global reach.

The CAC was started this year by a group of 11 regional nationals living in China who felt the time had come to establish a Caribbean network and to build an awareness of the region in China.

Good hearts

Dr Bob Detrano is a professor at the University of California, and the founder of The China California Heart Watch, an NGO whose mission is to research the extent of heart disease in the Chinese countryside near Kunming, Yunnan Province, one of the poorest areas of China. Detrano comes to The Bookworm in Beijing tonight to describe his upcoming expedition to Yunnan to help raise awareness for cardiac diseases, to provide training for Chinese and American students and medical trainees, and to provide free cardiac and preventive care to impoverished farmers.

Special Olympics

Michael Simms has played bocce for 20 years. He hasn't let the fact that he doesn't have full use of his left arm stop him. And his disability didn't stop him from deftly using chopsticks at lunch hours before the 2007 Special Olympics Games officially got underway in Shanghai.

Simms from Llandilo Phase One, in Savanna La Mar, is just one of the 69 members of the Jamaican team that made the journey to China to represent their country. The athletes, their coaches and the large number of local volunteers were in high spirits when Jamaica's Ambassador to China, Wayne McCook, and a delegation from the Caribbean Association in China (CAC), caught up with them. The games finished yesterday.

AND ANOTHER THING...

The world's media arrived in Beijing this week to attend the 2008 Olympic Games press conference and were gobsmacked by the sheer size of the capital. The visitors toured all the Games venues and were treated to a spectacular banquet at the Summer Palace last night.

Two Australian editors, Ben English from Sydney's Daily Telegraph and Ondrej Foltin from Melbourne's Herald Sun, had a very memorable experience walking around Tian'anmen Square and were looking forward to covering the world's biggest sporting event.

"How good is this city?" the awestruck journalists exclaimed.

(China Daily 10/12/2007 page20)