227 Photos and videos
Hoco27 retweeted
Jun 10
Why did private firms, not state-owned enterprises (SOEs), come to dominate China’s EV sector?
My new @ChinaJournal article (co-authored with Xiao Ma @maxiaoalex) challenge the "top-down industrial policy" narrative.
The real engine? Strategic alliances between local governments and private capital. 🧵
Based on 3 years of fieldwork, 60 interviews (with officials, entrepreneurs, and engineers), and rich first-hand accounts, we show how strict central regulations inadvertently drove local states to bet big on private EV players.
Here is the story: (1/15)
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Studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggest that a higher concentration of lawyers in a population correlates with slower economic growth due to increased “rent-seeking” behavior and litigation.
Jun 8
My column today: what the engineers in China and the lawyer-bureaucrats in Japan’s MITI had, other than competence, was true love of country. but the leaders we elect work for their self-interest and do not have a sense of national unity and purpose. philstar.com/business/2026/0…
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There was a slide I saw regarding a large multilateral bank rail finance budget. 50% of that went to the Philippines.
Guy who works for a Japanese train company is complaining that they cannot deliver trains for the North-South Commuter Rail and Metro Manila Subway projects because they are very, very delayed
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Hoco27 retweeted
Trees are not fungible. You cannot undo the harm of tree cutting with a simple promise to plant elsewhere. Destroying street trees is destroying value in neighborhoods, destroying health outcomes, destroying our future.
May 20
YOU CANNOT "offset" the cut trees by replanting new ones @DENROfficial Those trees took several decades to grow and have actively provided respite to counter the city pollution. You just allowed greed for profit kill what mother nature has provided for free. Incompetent fool! 😠
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Hoco27 retweeted
May 21
Paanong imi-mitigate, eh pinutol nyo nga yung mga puno? San nyo itatanim ang seedlings? Sa bundok? Binaboy nyo yang Quirino Ave.
On Wednesday, DENR-NCR clarified that tree-cutting applications are not automatically approved and must undergo environmental compliance checks, technical evaluation, coordination with local governments, and mitigation measures to address ecological impacts.
Earlier this week, residents raised an alarm over the cutting of decades-old trees along Quirino Avenue for the elevated thoroughfare. | via @andronquillo
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Hoco27 retweeted
Cities around the world are rethinking mobility, and Beijing is becoming an increasingly compelling part of that discussion.
One of the best ways to follow such developments is @Cycling_Embassy's newsletter—which shares insights, highlights and reporting: bit.ly/4nzvcWd
ALT A cycling highway through a new residential district of Tongzhou on the outskirts of Beijing is lined with trees, plants, and lighting fixtures.
ALT A cycling highway through a new residential district of Tongzhou on the outskirts of Beijing is lined with trees, plants, and lighting fixtures.
ALT A cycling highway through a new residential district of Tongzhou on the outskirts of Beijing is lined with trees, plants, and lighting fixtures.
ALT A cycling highway through a new residential district of Tongzhou on the outskirts of Beijing is lined with trees, plants, and lighting fixtures.
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Hoco27 retweeted
4Ps and conditional cash transfers have a huge body of evidence backing them. 4Ps, empircally, is one of the best uses of our tax money - unless you're against helping the poor. Which many of you are
worldbank.org/en/news/featur…
Apr 27
getting angry at 4Ps is just dumb
it’s not a “free hand-out” — there’s a reason why we call it *conditional* cash transfer
you pay the poor to send their children to school, to have medical check-ups
in the hope you’ll eventually break the cycle of poverty
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Hoco27 retweeted
Apr 26
One of my “go to” lines for years has been that the sign of success for a country isn’t that poor people drive cars, but that rich people ride the subway…
Apr 25
BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu worth $23B taking the Beijing subway to the Beijing auto show
BYD worth nearly $1 trillion
How many billionaires do you see on the subway these days 👀
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Big win for the Philippine transport reform! So proud and humbled to be part of this inspiring group of volunteers that continue to push for more humane, dignified and sustainable transportation.
#publictransport #Moveasone #Philippines
BREAKING: @MoveAsOnePH — a grassroots, youth-led movement advancing transport reform in Manila, Philippines 🇵🇭 — wins the $250k grand prize 🏆 for the 2025–2026 @WRIRossCities #PrizeforCities!
Read more ➡️ bit.ly/41JOVbQ
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Hoco27 retweeted
Apr 19
If you want to know why basic food and manufactured goods are so incredibly expensive in the Philippines compared to Thailand or Vietnam, you have to look at the Logistics Performance Index.
In Thailand, the logistical cost of moving a product (warehousing, transport, port fees) consumes roughly 14% of the product’s final retail price.
In the Philippines, that logistical friction consumes over 25%.
This is the Island Penalty. We are an archipelago suffering from chronic under-investment in deep-water ports and rail lines. Because we lack a unified, state-funded freight railway system, a single tomato grown in Mindanao must pass through a gauntlet of monopolized domestic shipping lines, expensive privately-owned tollways, and catastrophic urban gridlock.
You aren't just paying for the tomato. You are mathematically paying for the state's failure to build efficient bridges and trains. We can never beat Thailand's export economy if moving the goods costs more than making them.
👇 Let’s discuss transport economics below:
Should the government nationalize the tollways and cargo ferries?
//Behind Asia
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I have to say I didn't see that coming, but looking at data I can't say I was surprise given the changing fast changing economic and cultural realities.
The Philippines is a fantastic example of how deep and fast the drop in fertility is nearly everywhere on the planet.
Just last week, on March 30, 2026, the Philippine Statistics Authority released the 2025 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). The total fertility rate for the last three years has reached 1.7 children per woman, a dramatic fall from 4.1 in 1993, and well below the replacement rate (around 2.1 for a country like the Philippines).
Since the NDHS computes the total fertility rate over three years, and it is dropping quickly, the total fertility rate for 2025 alone should be around 1.6, the same level as in the U.S. Let me repeat this: the Philippines and the U.S. have roughly the same total fertility rate.
But U.S. income per capita is about 7.3 times the Philippine income per capita (when adjusted for purchasing power parity). Or to put it differently, Philippine income per capita today is the same as the U.S. had in 1910. In that year, the total fertility rate of the U.S. was around 3.5. At the same level of income per capita, the Philippines has a total fertility rate that is less than half.
In some more urban regions, such as Calabarzon, the total fertility rate is 1.3. Historically, the rest of the country has followed the patterns of regions like Calabarzon with some lag, so the most likely scenario is that in a few years, the Philippines will have a total fertility rate of around 1.3 as well.
Compared with the United Nations World Population Prospects (WPP), the Philippines is now at the fertility level the WPP had forecast for 2047, despite the aggressive reduction it made to the Philippines’ forecast fertility between 2022 and 2024.
The Philippines is interesting because, compared with other Asian countries, it is a relatively religious and rural country without the Confucian obsession with education found in China or South Korea.
It is also a country that many still associate with high fertility. Just yesterday, one reader left a comment on my previous post on fertility, using the Philippines as an example of high fertility, that “refuted” my claims. No, it does not.
Finally, three technical points.
First, I am reporting total fertility, not completed fertility (and yes, I am keenly aware of the difference between the two). Looking at age-specific fertility rates suggests that completed fertility for younger women will actually be below the current total fertility rate.
Second, no, emigration does not matter here. I am talking about fertility rates, not birth rates.
Third, the official release:
psa.gov.ph/content/fertility…
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Mayors that bike and take public transport to work are the best kinds.
Elect a mayor who talks about bicycles. Cities designed for the bicycle tend to serve everyone: the rich and the poor, the young and the old. In transport policy, the bicycle is perhaps the most democratic instrument ever invented🚲
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Aware of this, but struggling to find the right balance or prevent brain - rot. It's like trying to quit smoking but holding a cigarette on one hand and a lighter on the other.
Mar 28
“Perhaps consuming a few dozen book pages a day should become the new 10,000 daily steps — a basic foundation of activity to maintain cognitive fitness.”
nytimes.com/2026/03/27/opini…
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Hoco27 retweeted
Some ideas for action in the transport crisis:
1. Electric Vehicles. Government should, via a GOCC (there are many options) look into procuring every single electric bus and minibus in dealer lots and showrooms. Call up AC Mobility, Meralco and others to set up charging...
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Hoco27 retweeted
Few cities have built greenways as quickly or as comprehensively as Shenzhen. Launched as part of the broader Pearl River Delta ecological initiative in 2010, their network now stretches more than 2,300 km, organised into a hierarchy of regional, urban and neighbourhood routes.🧵
ALT A group of people in casual business attire ride green shared bicycles along dedicated cycling infrastructure through a linear park lined with trees, water, and flowers, in Shenzhen, China.
ALT A group of people in casual business attire ride green shared bicycles along dedicated cycling infrastructure through a linear park lined with trees, water, and flowers, in Shenzhen, China.
ALT A group of people in casual business attire ride green shared bicycles along dedicated cycling infrastructure through a linear park lined with trees, water, and flowers, in Shenzhen, China.
ALT A group of people in casual business attire ride green shared bicycles along dedicated cycling infrastructure through a linear park lined with trees, water, and flowers, in Shenzhen, China.
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Hoco27 retweeted
Guangzhou isn’t just building bike lanes. It's building a healthy, liveable city.
With 6,000 km. of greenways, it boasts one of the world's largest cycling networks.
What was once overlooked is now impossible to ignore: a vital link in their modern, multimodal transport system.
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Hoco27 retweeted
The actual way to have energy and transportation security against crises like this is to decarbonize your transport system - transition to electric public transport, electric work vehicles, walking and cycling.
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Hoco27 retweeted
Mar 17
Here’s why high oil prices are hitting places like the Philippines a lot harder than others (net energy importer, deregulated, very weak currency, relatively low income)
🔉on
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Hoco27 retweeted
Feb 22
"A surprisingly small drop in cars on the road—just 5-10%—can dramatically ease congestion, and public transit is one of the most effective ways to get that drop."
fastcompany.com/91493803/whe…
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