>>abirached: this week on world business a look back at some of the best stories of the last year including... >>: oil in troubled waters, the conflict over territory in the south china seas >>: and the benefits of feminine thinking in financial decisions. >>: one of the results of the present crisis might be to rethink the role of women in the financial world. that would be very interesting. >>: plus the gulag holiday camp experience, an extraordinary business success from the former communist bloc. >>: each person can be broken. for young people it's very educative, and also for foreigners. you are not different from soviet people.

>>abirached: hello and welcome. i'm raya abirached and this is world business, your weekly insight into the global business trends shaping our lives. this week we are looking back at some of the best stories of the past 12 months. the relationship between china and vietnam has never been cordial. but cross border business over the past 15 years has helped improve relations and boost local incomes. but both sides are still at odds over territory in the south china seas that could be rich in both oil and gas. >>reporter: vietnamese goods coming in..... chinese going out. this is the waterfront at dongxing where trade flows across the beilun river

from dawn to dusk. stevedores here have a fundamental grasp of economics - for when there's a slowdown, like now, the loads on their backs are lighter. >>guofu: due to the weakness of the vietnam currency, the rmb appreciation, the dollar's weakness, dongxing'sexports have dropped. >>reporter: he won't get much sympathy, however, from the vietnamese. for dongxing's dealers with their sacks of shoes, socks even suitcases have been ahead of the cross border game, ever since the day the frontier re-opened in 1989 after a decade of bitter hostilities. >>guoning: hundreds streamed across the river then to buy the likes of flasks, tea cups, bowls, chopsticks and plates. they bought up everything! dongxing folk realised there was money to be made ! everyone, even those who had the likes of flasks, tea cups, bowls, chopsticks and plates. they bought up everything! dongxing folk realised there was money to be made ! everyone, even those who had never done any business before, started to trade.

>>reporter: commerce got a firm footing when this bridge was built in 1994. this is now a metaphor for sino-vietnam trade: every day, around 4,000 laden chinese head that way.....while a thousand vietnamese come this way. it's easy to see who's winning. >>: in the first 10 months of 2008, the total volume of cross-border trade was 17 billion us dollars - with some three quarters made in china. vietnam is indeed a good buyer! but its investment in china, up to now at least, is very limited. >>shixing: many vietnamese companies are investigating the market and preparing to invest. but so far, ours is the only direct investor in dongxing, even in the whole of guangxi region. >>reporter: and according to analysts, vietnam is also disappointed, to say the least, with the relatively low level of direct investment from its huge neighbour - which stands, today, at around

two billion dollars. >>: but the most contentious issue for vietnam concerns territory - groups of small islands and great swathes of sea - potentially rich in natural resources. and this is a long-running dispute that involves the whole region. >>mackie: the lure of oil and gas to help fund the economies of china and south east asia has created suspicion and animosity. competing claims exist regarding sovereignty over the south china sea, with china claiming.....well, most of it - and it's been prepared to use military force to expel others with ambitions in the region. >>reporter: and vietnam has borne the brunt. as yet, there's no clear-cut solution. a combination of historical claims, the actual line of a country's continental shelf plus the right to explore and exploit territory up to 200 nautical miles from the shore has created a dilemma. >>: this is the hypothetical 200 mile limit. >>: these are vietnam

and the philippines' claims which overlap those by indonesia, brunei and malaysia as for china..... check this out... >>: an official chinese researcher explains that this huge claim is based on historical documents: maps that go back to the days of the emperors. >>xiaoying: regarding the maps, no other country objected to us in the past. of course, with the realization of oil reserves, our neighbouring countries made their own claims. beforehand, they had stayed silent. >>reporter: with oil consumption in east asia expected to rise by 4% annually on average, the region's demand could reach 25 million barrels per day - more than double current consumption levels - by 2020. >>: china consumes the most. it's prepared to assert its claim. and ms. sun explains that this revered ancient poem best sums-up the chinese stance.

>>xiaoying: if you push too hard, when we can't take anymore, we'll take action. >>reporter: certainly, beijing has warned oil giants bp and exxon not to help vietnam explore in the south chinasea - if they value doing business with china. on the other hand, it's agreed with it's neighbors including vietnam to conduct joint marine surveysin a bid to reduce tensions. >>: but as the economic exchanges reveal, the relationship is truly asymmetric and china will not concede territory. the balance of power rests firmly on this side of the beilun river. >>: the current global recession started as we know only too well, because of excessive risk taking by men in the financial sector. this has prompted some scientists to wonder whether the world could be in a much better state today if more women had been in charge. >>: recession... government

bailouts... subprime mortgages... foreclosures... as the credit crisis hits ordinary people... these financial terms have become part of our daily conversations. however, cambridge university's neuroscientist joe herbert seems to have found the culprit of the financial meltdown.... >>herbert: economists and financiers have focused almost entirely upon the financial world, the computers, the commodities, the bonds and the markets. what they forget is that these markets are operated by people. and they do not ask nearly enough questions about what goes on inside the people. >>reporter: for the last four years herbert has studied the impact of the hormone testosterone in financial decision-making. in men the level is 20 to 30 times higher than in women... and elevated testosterone increases craving for risks. >>:the research found that when traders had higher levels of the hormone in the morning they made greater profits

the rest of the day. but excessive risk-taking can lead to disaster... as we all foundout in the wake of this current crisis. >>herbert: there is a very good reason why trading floors are full of young men. because young men are built for that kind of experience, they are built to take risks; they are built to be competitive. they are built to be aggressive; they are built to try to succeed. and indeed they often fail >>reporter: it is charles darwin's theory of evolution all over again. the trading floor is an electronic jungleand only the strong and bold survive. >>: so would our financial landscape look any different today if more women instead of men were in charge? >>herbert: women are certainly more cautious than man. but there are certain situations where caution is a goodidea, of course. but you know, without risks there is no success. imagine lewis hamilton, the racing

driver, driving around the track carefully. he undoubting will finish every race, but he will win none. he's got to take a risk. >>reporter for race car drivers risk is imperative... for icelandic bankers... risk resulted in the country's bankruptcy. to restore credibility the government placed two women as chief executives of the now nationalised financial institutions. heather mcgregor, a city head hunter says more women should take senior management positions to guarantee blue skies. >>mcgregor: the bank that unarguably has come out the best out of this, which is loyd's tsb, has been the bank that most aggressively promoted women. and they also have one of the highest numbers of women on the public company board, in the ftse 100.and, maybe is coincidence, who knows but i think that it is a very interesting fact that we should probably think about when looking at the future. >>reporter: at the recent european

leadership forum however the eu commissioner was quick to point out that feminine thinking, although beneficial, is not just a female trait. >>kroes: the feminine approach, is not only familiar to quite a number of women but also to a certain amount of men we need to be aware of that we have to be quite open in how we how we want to tackle the problems of today. >>reporter: but that can swing both ways, as george cooper points out in his book the origin of the financial crisis... according to him not only men but at least one woman was responsible for the meltdown. >>cooper: one of the criticisms that is now starting to be discussed is that a contributor to this boom bust circle was the deregulation that was enacted in the eighties. and the two people who really drove that forward were ronald regan and margaret thatcher. i don't think it is a male female thing, i think it is inheritable to all people. >>reporter: in the end... greed

and irresponsibility are likely to play a bigger role than gender. but it has certainly raised the issue. >>herbert: one of the results of the present crisis might be to rethink the role of women in the financial world. that would be very interesting. just like it happened in many other worlds now we see women are doing jobs that 20-30 years ago would be unthinkable and they do it very well. >>abirached: still to come on world business... an african academy - why feyenoord football club is fostering talent in ghana >>: touching the future - the new interfaces coming soon to a screen near you. >>: and how capitalists are cashing in on nostalgia for communism. >>: missing the bad old days... and the rest in just a moment on world business

>>abirached: we are all familiar with using computers, the combination of keyboard and mouse has stood the test of time as the most user friendly way of giving the computer instructions. but could new and exotic types of user interface change the way we use and think about computers? >>reporter: a normal looking restaurant in london's soho. fusion asian menus, check, bustling and busy lunch time service, check. interactive touch screens that take a customers order-hang on a minute. >>: diners at this high tech establishment, simply select a meal from a menu which is presented to them via an interactive display

projected onto their table. a flick of the finger and food and drinks orders are relayed directly to the restaurants kitchen andbar. the table can even play games, project local area maps or order a cab. >>hunwick: well my business partner danny and i were out for dinner one day and we were trying to attract a waiter's attention to get another drink. hopeless. and we suddenly thought wouldn't it be great to reach down, tap a button and your drink arrives. >>hunwick: we spent a good couple of years working with an industrial designer and a couple of software architects to flesh out the hardware for the system and the software. so we came up with the notion of a projection system from above, and we used a series of various designers to come up with blue tooth touch pads which are embedded in the table and communicate wirelessly with a pc and projector in the ceiling. >>cieslak: tables which take your food order are certainly novel, but could this sort of technology have applications beyond the dining room of a london eatery?

well how about applying a touch interface to a desk top computer or a laptop. could this way of interacting with machines replace the keyboard and mouse? >>reporter: there has been an explosion in touch screen interfaces for small handheld devices, mobile phones andmp3 players. >>: but in the next couple of years this sort of interface could graduate to larger kit. >>: last year microsoft showcased its vision for touch computing. dubbed surface the system reacts to users fingers- opening applications and communicating wirelessly with handheld devices. so far the actual applications for this technology have been limited but computer scientists at us outfit perceptive pixel's take on touch could change that. >>man 1: of course multi touch can go way beyond that... so let's start perhaps clipping this image (laughs...) and what i can do is manipulate it like

that... (crowd applauding) >>reporter: new ultra powerful graphics processing units deal with the immense amount of computational number crunching required to perform touch operations. as these gpu's get cheaper more and more traditional computing equipment can benefit from touch displays like this one. >>: by turning their touch display into a wall mounted unit they've broadened the technologies appeal. perceptive pixel's chief scientist demonstrated software and applications developed in house, which show how touch would work for web browsing and creating simple animations. >>longworth: to a certain extent the keyboard and mouse can be a barrier for some people to access computing. butthere are groups that having a touch interface removes that barrier that kind of fear factor to getinto the technology. >>reporter: but all of the leaping around in front of a touch screen seems overly energetic. could this technology really rival the keyboard and mouse for ease of use?

>>longworth: touch isn't appropriate for everything and there are always going to be certain types of productivity applications, your emails, word processing, spreadsheets where you just want to be able to bang away with your mouse and keyboard because that really is the best way of doing it but for other sortsof applications for example if you are manipulating images, if your browsing the web or browsing images and video touch is going to be fantastic. >>reporter: how about a human machine interface that gives the user a work out for the mind, rather than the body? >>: australian/us collaboration e-motiv have developed a mind control headset. the user pops the device on their head and sixteen electrodes measure electrical activity in the brain, converting this information into data. so far the head set has been developed to work with a video game. the player can control an onscreen character and perform magic simply by concentrating on the action. e-motiv plan to launch the head set in early 2009. 33

>>: controlling computers with the power of thought might take a while to hit the mainstream. however touch is on its way, the new operating systems from microsoft and apple will include this sort of functionality. the keyboard and mouse aren't dead yet, but pretty soon we might all be getting touchy-feely with our computers. >>abirached: the soviet union may have collapsed years ago, but there is a renewed nostalgia for the iron curtainamong western tourists looking for something different. at the end of last year we travelled to lithuania, where its soviet heritage now provides an offbeat tourist attraction. >>reporter: 25 kilometres from lithuania's capital vilnius, there's a check post in the forest - an entry point to another world - a world where the soviet flag is still flying high. welcome to 1984, a reality show where participants pay 50 us dollars to experience one of the worst sides to the soviet union. >>vanagaite: we looked throughout russia, belarus, and lithuanian markets, putting ads

in newspapers. so it was really fun to get these things together to recreate the soviet union the way it was. there's nothingfalse, nothing kitsch, nothing produced, nothing sown by anybody - everything is authentic. >>reporter: we're marched to a disused nuclear bunker built during the cold war. five meters underground in the damp stale air, freedom suddenly feels far away. >>: this bunker is massive; with a maze of corridors that very quickly destroys any perception of direction. >>huijsmans: it's totally different. normally you lie down on the beach and go to a party. this is totally different. its fun to do, but you need someone to translate it for you, or you don't understand anything here. >>reporter: being force-fed communist propaganda was part

of the charm of living in the soviet union, where the leaders knew best and the rest of the world was out to spoil the revolution. while we aren't subjected to physical harm, there is no room here for independent thought. the show attempts to break our will, just as it was in the ussr. >>jankaitis: this wasn't a difficult group, but usually when there are difficult people we have some dark rooms and if someone is disobeying or provoking me, either he breaks down or he leaves the show. >>reporter: one of the most disturbing moments was interrogation by the kgb. i decided to play along, and was identified as a journalist. the interrogator then accused me of possessing drugs, and ordered me to confess my crimes. this wasn't a pleasant experience, but luckily, it wasn't real. >>singh: this is a reality show with a difference - you can really touch history. i've experienced it: i've been beaten with a belt, marched

around and made to confess to a crime i don't really know. all tourists here will take something away from this and from lithuania - understanding what the soviet union was. and believe me, it's something you will not get anywhere else, through a museum or any exhibition. >>vanagaite: each person can be broken. for young people it's very educative, and also for foreigners. you are not different from soviet people, if you are in a place from where you cannot escape, if you're shouted at, and if you don't understand, very easily you will feel that you are nobody. that's the feelingwe had. >>reporter: and for a trip down memory lane, there's the sinister lady doctor. this may be the western stereotype of life in the ussr, but all the equipment here is genuine, and was all that was available in those days. >>jankaitis: people in their 40s remember immediately what it was all about, but today we have people in their 20s and 30s - they don't remember soviet times. you may have cheap

vodka and a cheap sausage, but you can't go anywhere, you cannot read what you want, you cannot watch movies. they need to know - is itworth losing your freedom for cheap sausage? >>reporter: this experience is certainly educational and profitable - since it began last december, 5,000 peoplehave seen the show. call it 'gulag tourism' or a grim glimpse of the past; this definitely is one of europe's strangest tourist attractions. >>abirached: as many as 600 kids from africa travel to europe each year hoping to get signed on by a football club. often they are brought over by unscrupulous agents or middle men promising them riches but in reality they end up unwanted and abandoned. but one dutch club has taken a different approach. >>reporter: most ghanaians don't have drinking water or around the clock electricity,

but almost all villages and communities have a football pitch and a ball. the grounds may not look like much but football is far from just a national pastime. it can be a ticket out of poverty. in the national league players make up to 300 euros a month, roughly 10 times the minimum wage. >>: and abroad their salaries can run into the millions: everyone has in mind the country's most well known star chelsea's michael essien. >>bockman: between 400 to 500 ghanaians play professional football outside their own country. most play for european clubs. so the big challenge for recruiters and agents is finding the next wave of new stars from this country... >>reporter: one of the first european clubs to see the future in africa was the dutch club feyenoord. nearly 10 years ago it set up an academy near the capital accra, to find the best youngsters in the region help them improve their skills and get them playing professionally. >>: so far just 70 kids have gone through this academy.

most arrive at the age of 12 and spend five years here. but they also get an education as a backup if they don't make it in football. >>: today they are being taught french - while next door around a dozen computers with internet connection are available too. it's the kind of opportunity most kids in this developing country will never get. >>: but make no mistake, this is not a charity. >>brokken: it is about business yes and no. you try to form players for your own team in holland, the mother team. but if you come to ghana or africa with the idea of looking for players as quickly as possible you are never going to succeed. >>reporter: feyenoord won the uefa cup back in 2002 but since then the club has hit rock bottom. it's strugglingto avoid relegation and is putting pressure on the academy to come up with new stars to save the team back

in rotterdam. >>pluym: at the moment feyernoord is in debt period... things are not going well - the money is not there tobuy the top players but we hope in the future that we can deliver some of them to feyenoord rotterdam and the success will be there again. >>reporter: the dutch club has an annual budget of 37 million euros and spends around 800,000 euros a year on this academy. >>: the players are motivated - they know that just by being here they are being groomed for a shot at the big time. >>adam: my football ambition is to become one of the best strikers in the world and become the top scorer inthe world. >>reporter: in fact delegations from major european clubs including chelsea and liverpool have come out to this football outpost to see how it works and how to copy it.

>>: they are under pressure to avoid dodgy agents who bring kids over with false promises on a freelancebasis and who often leave them stranded on the streets of european capitals. >>: the academy system here provides a structure and an insurance policy for these kids. >>baffoe: in a lot of occasions players are being taken abroad with not even reading the contract properly. the contract is in a totally different language. a lot of people are doing tricky things with young players who are innocent. >>reporter: part of the problem is the lack of a single cross border rule on how many african players clubs can have. some like the dutch restrict it to 4 and have to pay their african players a minimum wage of 280,000 euros a year when they are 18 and double that at 21. other countries like belgium have no restrictions. the first graduates of this academy are now getting

their chance to show their skills in rotterdam and elsewhere. the coach says he believes 5 are ready for the big time. one more essien amongst this lot will make this african investment very lucrative indeed. >>abirached: that's it for this week's world business. thanks for watching. we'll see you again at the same time next week.