“Look at us — we’re Moroccans selling Japanese sushi to the French,” Mr. Benamer, now married with a child, said on a recent weekend, sitting in his Champs-Élysées restaurant beneath a wall covered with Warhol-style images of a geisha. “If we had allowed ourselves to be stigmatized, France would lose out — on good sushi, yes, but also on the hundreds of jobs we are creating.”

Mourad Benamer founded Eat Sushi, a chain of sushi restaurants. (Bruno Levy)

Recalling his visit to India over two decade and half decades ago, he said, "What I saw and felt during that trip, visiting Taj Mahal and prestigious Indian universities, research institutes and warmth and hospitality of Indian people, left a lasting impact on me".

"In a few days time I will make India the first stop of first overseas visit as a premier of China. I have made this decision not just because India is an important neighbour and one of the populous countries of the world but also because of the seeds of friendship sown during my own youth", he said.

China's Premier Li Keqiang speaks to members of an Indian youth delegation during a meeting at the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing on May 15, 2013. (AFP photo)

Oil from the Middle East and Africa that travels through the Straits of Malacca makes up 75% of oil (paywall) consumed by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and 37% of China’s demand. [...]

The straits, a 1.5 nautical-mile wide sea lane near Singapore, are considered the second largest “global choke point” after the Straits of Hormuz in the Middle East.

Global choke points: Narrow waterways that are highly vulnerable to piracy, robbery, and competition between nations. Medill National Security Journalism Initiative

The first wave of Africans arrived in the late 1990s, shuttling shipments between Guangzhou and African hubs like Lagos, Abidjan and Accra, forming the backbone of the kind of informal trade that has helped make China Africa’s biggest trading partner.

Members of the Sacred Heart Cathedral congregation donate groceries in Guangzhou. There are a growing number of interracial families in the city, according to Elochukwu Chikwendu, who was one of the first Nigerian traders to marry into a Chinese family.”We’re working to keep families together despite the cultural differences,” he said. Yepoka Yeebo

“Dos ciudades, pero una región — we are two cities, but one region,” he said, using the phrase popular among those who want more collaboration in the area. San Diego would put in a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, he said, but only to host jointly with Tijuana.

Three-hour waits are not unusual at the San Diego border. (Monica Almeida/The New York Times)

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is viewed not only with resentment but with a mixture of apprehension, envy and admiration, informed by a belief that the Germans have cracked the code of how to compete in the globalized world, coupled with an uncertainty about whether their efficient, export-driven economic model can be replicated.

Much the same is true currently with soccer. After Bayern trounced Barcelona for the second time in a row last week, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote that “the lesson of order and talent goes beyond soccer.” In Britain, the cover of the New Statesman magazine this week shows photographs of Angela Merkel and the German soccer star Bastian Schweinsteiger with the question, “Why can’t we be more like Germany?”

Soccer fans in Dortmund, Germany, on Saturday. Before the final game, Germany has secured the European championship. (Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

Volker Perthes is Chairman and Director of Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin.

Illustration by Dean Rohrer, from NewsArt.com via Project-Syndicate.org

Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, already plays host to tourists from the Arab world, not least Iraqi Arabs, who come north to escape the heat, and the violence, elsewhere in the country.

The citadel at Erbil, Iraq. The city has been chosen to be the Arab Capital of Tourism for 2014.
(Harvey Morris, from NYTimes.com)

Ghemawat backs up his contrarian view, that the world is actually only about 10 to 25 percent globalized, with a fascinating set of statistics. The expanded version of his DHL Global Connectedness Index (PDF), released in November 2012, measures the depth and breadth of 10 types of international flows—and finds them lacking. For example, who knew that cross-country-border telephone calls represent at most 7 percent of all voice calling? Or that first-generation immigrants account for only about 3 percent of the world’s population? Or, more significantly, that foreign direct investment typically accounts for less than 10 percent of all investment in a given year?