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A Book with Bubble Tea (波！） - Give you a different cultural perspective in parenting, business and life
It’s clear that different cultures have distinct styles of conveying information and different perspectives on things as well. At this show, I am going to share some fantastic books from East Asia that you might not have come across in mainstream English media or on your usual bookshelves. But trust me, they're worth your time because they're fascinating and inspirational!
A Book with Bubble Tea (波！） - Give you a different cultural perspective in parenting, business and life
[East Asia This Week] EP35 - The Most Powerful Passport in the World
The Henley Passport Index : Global Passport Ranking
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Composer / Writer / Author: KROTOV VLADYSLAV, IPI: 378003660, MoodMode.
Welcome to a book with bubble tea with your host, mira Hee. Here I share takeaways from East Asian books on parenting, startups and self-growth. Seeking insights beyond the typical English shelf, want to be a better parent and achieve more in life? You are in the right place. Grab your bubble tea and let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone, welcome to the new episode of a book with bubble tea. How's everyone doing? This week has been the Lunar New Year's week and I have certainly over-eaten so much that I feel completely bloated. I hope you are enjoying a wonderful Lunar New Year so far and if you do have to go back to work, hopefully you don't feel too depressed or too dismayed about it, and I wish you a happy new year.
Speaker 1:Still nonetheless, and in today's episode we're going to discuss the latest release of the most powerful passport in the world by Hanli and partners in their 2024 index. It was big news when Singapore overtook Japan in July 2023, claiming the top spot as a country with the most powerful passport in the world, granting Singaporean citizens fees of free entry to 192 countries. Meanwhile, japan lost fees of free access to three nations and fell to rank number three. However, the sole dominance of the Singaporean passport would short-lived, because in the latest index released, five more countries have caught up and now this number one spot is shared, but of course, long-time rival Japan, as well as France, germany, italy and Spain. So now Singapore, japan, france, germany, italy and Spain these six countries are now stand at the pinnacle of global mobility, offering fees of free entry to 194 countries out of 227 travel destinations. But this top tier landscape probably won't remain static for long, because four countries are occupying the second spot, with only one fewer destination for fees of free entry. They are Finland, the Netherlands, South Korea and Sweden. So the number of visa free entry are 193. Well, you can see it's like a neck-to-neck competition here. It really won't be surprising to see, you know, there are more countries rising up to the top.
Speaker 1:And now let's look at other East Asian passports, shall we? So Hong Kong is ranked number 19 and Macau is on number 30 a third. And Taiwan is on number 34. And China is on number 64 with 86 fees of free destinations. And the bottom five positions are occupied by Afghanistan, in the last place, followed by Syria, iraq, pakistan and Yemen.
Speaker 1:When examining this passport ranking, I wonder actually about the criteria for ranking really. I mean, it's clear that it's based on the number of destinations granting visa-free entry, but my question is like why would some countries grant visa-free status to others and why some are ranked higher and some are ranked lower? It's quite obvious that countries like Japan, singapore and South Korea enjoy a high status for their passport power, being among the wealthiest in the world, with high disposable income, low risk of illegal migration and societies that enjoy low crime rates. It's also not surprising to see European countries dominating the top tier either, given that being part of the European Union and the Shenzhen area automatically opens up visa-free status to many nations. And I get that. Places like Taiwan suffer from some international diplomacy pressure, which probably made it harder for us to sign visa-free agreements with other countries.
Speaker 1:But there are some places that really puzzle me, like Argentina, brazil and Mexico. They rank at spots 17th, 18th and 23rd. That is like 10 spots, or nearly 15 spots higher than Taiwan. It is really quite interesting to find out how do these countries manage to get so many countries granting their citizens the visa-free entry status, especially if you consider their GDP per capita is not particularly high, is roughly one-third of Japan where South Korea or Taiwan's, so roughly around the 10,000 to 13,000 around that range, and I don't think anyone would say they have low crime rate. In fact, some of the cities there is ranked probably at the bottom list of the crime rate, so some of them have the highest crime rate internationally and the issue of illegal migrants is already an international known situation, especially between Mexico and US. So how do these countries rank 30 places higher than a country like Qatar, for example, I wonder, and especially if you compare with Qatar? Qatar ranked only 55th on this passport ranking, but its GDP per capita is ranked number five globally, so only behind Luxembourg, singapore, ireland and Norway, meaning, apart from Singapore, the country is wealthier than the other nine states occupying the top one and top two spots on this passport list, and a site known, japan, is only ranked number 38. And certainly you know, for Qatar there is a very low crime rate because, according to the International Ranking of Numbials crime rate ranking, qatar's capital city, doha, is the third-savest city in the world, only after UAE's Abu Dhabi and Taiwan's Taipei. And given such a wealthy country the chance for a Qatari to become an illegal migrant, I think the chance is very, very low. So you know, how did it only rank spot 55, I wonder.
Speaker 1:It is believed that the Henley passport index is a critical tool for understanding a country's position in terms of the travel freedom and offerings its citizen. However, I think that beyond a certain point of freedom quote-unquote this index kind of loses its significance. Yes, it's helpful to know countries like Yemen, afghanistan, syria, iraq, pakistan are at the bottom five, and it's interesting to know those countries occupying the top. But the exact ranking, I don't think it matters that much these days, especially if you're talking about those countries in the middle range. You know, I don't think it actually says too much about how free their citizen is. I think it shows more of the muscles of diplomacy, more than anything else really. So I wouldn't say this is the most powerful passport ranking, but you know, just more convenient passport ranking right, how convenient your passport is probably will be a more accurate description of this ranking.
Speaker 1:And another thing that I haven't found out an answer, but I thought it's quite interesting to know, is how Japan managed to rise from the fifth place in 2017 all the way to the first in 2018 and managed to stay the dominance for like five years. I don't have a definite answer to it, but I'm just thinking. Could it be because of the former Prime Minister, shinzo Abe. He was trying to push Japan's tourism, so he had this Yokoso Japan policy, which is welcome to Japan, so he tried to encourage more tourists to come to Japan to boost Japan's economy. I wonder, is it because of that? So Japan entered into more of the mutual visa-free agreement status with other countries? But anyway, I mean, I don't know, I'm just guessing. I need to do more research into this, so I don't have a definite answer, but I just thought it's very interesting. Like in one year, japan basically managed to increase how many visa-free status from 172 to 190. So we are talking about 18 over a year. So yeah, like, how did it happen? It will be interesting to find out.
Speaker 1:All right, that's it for the episode today. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you have some interesting takeaway too. And if you like more of this kind of content, if you'd like to know more about East Asia, or you want some great insights from East Asian books that you often don't have a chance to access to, please follow us. Follow us on podcasts, spotify or YouTube. I would love to connect with you and know more about you, and I hope you do enjoy the content. Let's enjoy our bubble tea and until next time I will see you, bye, bye.