My business partner and I are often berated for our seeming audacity in writing and opining as much as we do about China and Chinese matters, especially once it becomes known that the both of us have never set foot on the Middle Kingdom's soil (which changes as of November oh-nine). Much of the invective and trolling attacks apparently centre around the fact that our opinions -- for now -- should be roundly dismissed for being merely speculative, as such, would carry little water.

To wit, our initially strong page view numbers at our daily vidblog, Vitamin C: Your Daily Dose On China attested to our strong burst out of the starting gates, though our metrics have diminished somewhat in the interim. But while things may have slowed down over the past month -- hardly the meager trickle our would-be nemeses would wish upon us ("Dude, you are so not my nemesis, okay?") -- we expect to enjoy those brisk fan numbers once more once we touch down in the PRC and continue our antics from there.

Since we kicked off our journey, I've been stunned by how few of our Western detractors actually know about China beyond the media-fuelled sound bites and the usual slew of betes-noire wheeled out in criticism of the ne'er-do-well People's Republic. Basic stuff, actually, the sorts of things that -- given the soaring importance of China in our day-to-day affairs, come what may in that country -- would be incumbent upon each and every US citizen, for instance, to grasp.

Lest I'm focussing too much on China and you find yourself in the camp of critics claiming the entire China fetish is one massive bubble that's going to get a poppin' an inflated phenomenon that's going to go crumbling to cookie bits in the not-too-distant future, why don't I toss another term your way? BRIC. That's right, BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China (plus South Korea and Mexico), and if that ain't enough to cause you to lose sleep over, then you really need to be doing more homework. For a good primer on the influence of what this six-pack of nations are truly capable of, you can always have a good skim through of Pran Tiku's Six Sizzling Markets.

Look, I'm not talking about hardcore metrics. Things like how many tons of sugar go this a-way while this many tons of steel come back that a-way. That's for the economists to bite their nails and lose hair over. What I'm speaking about is more qualitative than that: What's China good at? What does it produce? Why is the nation's economy and society constructed this way and how does that affect (insert your nation here)? Or how about India: yes, it's slated to become the world's most colossal nation (on track to surpass China's humungous population by 2015), but how will this affect its development given the fact that infrastructure is alarmingly poor in comparison to their East Asian juggernaut neighbour's? For now, I'm going to refer to these things as the down-home basics, about as basic as a high-school level art class...

Just as there are educational advocates clamouring for the introduction of course in schools like How to Manage Money 101 or the even-more critical How to Organize Your Personal Finances 101 I'm almost positive I'm not the first one to propose the creation of a similar-sounding "BRIC 101" primer, evidenced by the almost 4.19 million Google results the Search Engine Gawds recently spit back to me when I jiggled the term (by the way, I have officially sworn off use of the term "google").

Here's what a proposed "BRIC 101" would cover during the first year it's offered to students in their final two years/forms of high school:

• A geographical component: Teach kids where these various nations are located on the atlas, what they possess, who lives in 'em, and the usual slew of Discovery Channel shiteree that would make this section not only educational but also "edutaining," as they say.


• A political-science component: Now careful here, friends. We don't want to propagandize to these young impressionable minds. We've all been down that road before, haven't we, Comrade? But it's important to understand the inter-relationships these surging economic "forces to be reckoned with" have vis-a-vis each other and what this portends for the rest of the world. Today, I'd cast my vote that not knowing this is a career-killin' faux-pas.


• A linguistic component: Were I to have the good fortune of becoming The Engineer of "BRIC 101's" Human Souls, I'd canvass strongly for the inclusion of a linguistic module. Basic Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish/Portuguese would be must-haves in this series! The all-too-common phenomenon of Non-hispanic Americans having just unilingual "English language" skills must come to a conclusive end. (Though, Dood, I'd liken what Americans speak to their own sort of wordy concoction).

"BRIC 101" must be made compulsory during the said final years of secondary school, as mandatory as basic calculus/trig/chemistry/physics, basic (insert national language) grammar, and the dreaded "phys ed." If a student fails to receive a passing grade in any of the BRIC components, they can expect to kiss their university career zai jian.

So have I missed a needed section?