Parents can call the nearest city, for example, to find out what has happened to the remittance from their son working on a construction site in the Gulf.

ECONOMIST: The digital revolution is helping the poor, too

At a time when most Asian investors were focusing on high-growth markets close to home, he was nurturing contacts and making introductions between Chinese construction and engineering companies and Gulf contractors and officials.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Families are close, but there's little work, so many people spend as long as two years away from home in the sweatshops of big Asian cities or in the construction sites of the Persian Gulf.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Also, giving the go-ahead for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast should have been mentioned.

FORBES: Critiquing Ted Cruz's Economic Plan, "The Next Great Conservative Hope"

Known as the Garden City of the Gulf, it is a welcome contrast to the concrete jungle of construction and development so often seen in cities in this part of the world.

BBC: Al Ain: The desert��s oasis

But that may only be because windows have yet to be installed in the dozens of skyscrapers sprouting in the Arab Gulf, home to 22 of the world's 50 tallest buildings under construction, 16 of those in Dubai alone.

ECONOMIST: Shares take a tumble in the Gulf

In a speech in Victoria, he came out against the construction of a marine terminal in Kitimat, raising the spectre of a Gulf of Mexico-style disaster off the British Columbia coast.

FORBES: Canadian Pipeline Wars

As a former boss of Hyundai Construction, he has first-hand experience both of vying for contracts in the Gulf and of building nuclear plants.

ECONOMIST: Korean reactors trump Western ones

Among other issues, more economists now believe the Obama administration should approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. The percentage supporting such a plan grew to 78 percent in the latest poll, up from 69 percent previously.

NPR: Economists Were Opposed To Automatic Spending Cuts