Final reflections on an extraordinary travel. Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   25/11/2025 Koh Samui Our journey home took us from Koh Samui to Singapore, then Zurich, and finally to Brussels. The airport on Koh Samui features a simple single landing strip, with its terminal bu ...

Thailand – Koh Samui Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 18/11/2025 Shanghai – Bangkok – Koh Samui After all our travels in China, this is the last part of our long journey through Asia. We have moved from the bustling, modern metropolis of Shanghai, via the lively centre of Bangkok, to th ...

Shanghai (again)   Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   11/11/2025 After our Nanjing and Taiwan trip, we returned to Shanghai. Chinese coffee brands are brewing a revolutionary new chapter China, the ancient homeland of tea, is in the midst of a profound beverage revol ...

Nanjing Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波   28/10/2025 Our journey from Shanghai to Nanjing aboard a Chinese high speed train highlighted China’s remarkable efficiency. This busy connection features four separate tracks in parallel, with trains departing on average every ten minutes. The ...

Shanghai Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 14/10/2025 ALDI in China The German ALDI supermarket giant opened its first stores in China in June 2019. Today in October 2025, there are some 80 ALDI stores, most in Shanghai. Only since April they started to expand to Suzhou and Wuxi. ALDI has built a ...

Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波 07/10/2025 Westerners in China Walking along the streets of Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong and Shanghai, compared to 10 years ago, it is remarkable how few young Europeans or Americans are left in China. These days, there are many Russia ...

The ideologies we embraced don’t even begin to make sense in light of real-world evidence. Alex Krainer 15/07/2025 This article is re-published with the approval of Alex Krainer, the author of “TrendCompass” For generations now, western economic thought e ...

From confrontation to cooperation Jan Oberg  08.07.2025 This is an article, re-published with the approval of the authors of “If You Want To Understand China” – Foreword, Intro and Content of a TFF anthology. In July 2020, former US Secretary of Sta ...

How Confucian culture first delayed and then accelerated China’s innovation.      Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  04.07.2025 Smashing the European myth For centuries, Western narratives have portrayed science and technology as exclusively Western achievements, ...

The immense cultural differences between China and the West make the discussion about the technology competition pointless. Peter Peverelli • 15 july 2025 Chinese vs American application of AI; cartoon RedNote (disclaimer) Culture What most Westerners fail to understand is that the ...

China’s long term strategy paid off. The West never saw it coming    Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  08.07.2025 Since the turn of the 21st century, China has not merely participated in global systems shaped by Western powers; it has decisively reconfigured them. From trade gove ...

The devastating influence of having no future.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  01.07.2025 Losing faith in the future In many western societies, the erosion of faith in the future has become one of the defining psychological and political crises of the 21st century. E ...

Short-term politics, media puppets, and the death of innovation.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  07.06.2025 The short term vision Western political and economic systems are collapsing under the weight of short-termism, media dependency, and the marginalisation of eng ...

It was high time to cut the cord and to end a toxic dependency.     Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  02.06.2025 Chinese brands, media, financial institutions and apps The Western grip: an uneasy dependence For more than two decades, I have been acutely aware of the growing ...

Quantitative rigor vs. ideological echo chambers in higher education   Frans Vandenbosch 方腾波  14.05.2025 STEM versus sociology To render the discussion more transparent, it is first necessary to define the concept of sociology and to delineate the precise scope of the STE ...