Thailand #13, China #83

I mentioned on Wednesday that, despite the media that plays up every aspect of violence it can find anywhere in the world, the political crisis in Thailand will have little impact on business.  Turns out I was right.  More here and here too.  Unfortunately, I also said (as a comment at a different site) this political mess will most likely happen again and others, it seems, agree with that too.And even more proof that Thailand has the unique ability to destroy its government every few years and just keep on going, new rankings list Thailand as #13 on the list of countries for “ease of doing business.”  Only Singapore (1), Hong Kong (4) and Japan (12) were ahead of Thailand in Asia.  Taiwan was #61, China was #83, and Vietnam was #91 out of 181 countries.  India was #122, Cambodia #135 and Lao #165.  New Zealand was #2 and the US was #3.  The full list is here.What I’d really like to see is a list of countries ranked by how young expats die of exasperation, stress, heart attacks or other job related illnesses.  I’m guessing that China would be much higher (and Lao not even) on the list?  But I could be wrong.  This list does have a lot of other interesting sub categories, like: starting a business, employing workers, getting credit, protecting investors, cross boarder trade and enforcing contracts.  China, it should be noted, is 18th on the list of “enforcing contracts.”  This means that it will take you approximately 406 days to resolve a legal contract dispute in China.  479 in Thailand, 211 in Hong Kong and 300 in the US.I also made a comparison of Guangdong and ASAEN a couple of days ago.  Here’s some more on that.  Minimum wage in Cambodia is $50 a month with 20% inflation.  Minimum wage in Guangdong is $187 a month with about 9% inflation.  Despite the low wages, the inflation is so high that factories (garment factories, the nations major export earner and employer, in particular) are closing as the average profit margin of 2% is disappearing.