I noticed a US newspaper in Kansas reporting on expat observations from China - kind of like advice from the expat dim sum café to president Obama.

It was interesting to observe from the newspaper column, that the expat Americans in China see constant cultural issues. They can’t get used to the traffic, or the people spitting in the street, but once there they do finally realise that there are 1.3 billion Chinese people – all potential consumers of American products.

The negative debate over outsourcing normally focuses on the displacement of people in wealthy western nations. The issue is usually that they need to find new jobs because someone in a lower-cost economy has taken that job.

What’s worth remembering is that places like India and China are also huge potential markets. The article describes an American working for Ford's offshore team in China who comes to the realisation that Ford is not destroying jobs in the US, but is actually exploring new markets around the world.

It’s a subtle observation, but worth repeating. We don’t talk very often of the flat world these days, but as the old world looks to recover from the economic collapse of the past two years, it will look more and more to the new world for growth.