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the agglomeration of US farms, which started out – except in the southern plantation belt – as much smaller units in the early nineteenth century when the country was opened up by immigrants, is the story of gradually rising labour costs and the consequent pressure for mechanisation over two centuries.

How Asia Works

Joe Studwell

INTERROGATOR: Two protons? They only sent two protons? That’s almost nothing. YE: (laughs) You also said “almost.” That’s the limit of Trisolaran power. They can only accelerate something as small as a proton to near the speed of light. So over a distance of four light-years, they can only send two protons. INTERROGATOR: At the macroscopic level, two protons are nothing. Even a single cilium on a bacterium would include several billion protons. What’s the point? YE: They’re a lock. INTERROGATOR: A lock? What are they locking? YE: They are sealing off the progress of human science. Because of the existence of these two protons, humanity will not be able to make any important scientific developments during the four and a half centuries until the arrival of the Trisolaran Fleet. Evans once said that the day of arrival of the two protons was also the day that human science died. INTERROGATOR: That’s … too fantastic. How can that be? YE: I don’t know. I really don’t know. In the eyes of Trisolaran civilization, we’re probably not even primitive savages. We might be mere bugs.

The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu and Ken Liu

International sales have been the feedback mechanism by which successful governments have known whether the manufacturing businesses they have nurtured are approaching global standards, and whether firms have invested the billions of dollars it takes to create, for instance, a viable steel maker or car firm efficiently. Where export discipline has not been present, development policy has become a game of charades, with local firms able to pretend that they have been achieving world-class standards without having to prove it in the global market place.

How Asia Works

Joe Studwell

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