The facts of a life are easily recorded, though its meaning takes longer to understand. That is why I had this book written. I wanted it to explore how opportunity is created, protected and institutionalized.

I first learned about opportunity as a farm boy in Nebraska. Farm life was hard, repetitive and honest, though it taught me to listen: to the weather and soil, and the community who had watched them longer than I’d been alive.

When I came to Asia in 1965, the region was still recovering from war. Factories were growing in capability, but distance, language and limited information kept them from buyers who wanted to find them. To connect them I needed to listen.

As a publisher of trade journals, I paid close attention to thousands of people across factories from Japan to Pakistan, learning what a manufacturer could make, what a buyer needed, what each side feared. It became the mission of Asian Sources, and later Global Sources, to deliver trusted information to unlock trade, which put people to work, paid for homes and sent children to school.

This book has a deeper reason: to explain why the Hinrich Foundation exists. This charitable organization is built to look after the very thing that looked after so many of us: global trade. It supports education because the next generation needs judgment. It supports research because decisions should be informed by evidence, not slogans. It encourages dialogue because no trading system can endure if people stop listening.

After all, the only trade worth defending is mutually beneficial, grounded in facts, trust and responsibility. This book offers a place to begin understanding the architecture of opportunity, because it does not sustain itself. It must be renewed by each generation and defended against cynicism and short-term thinking.

Listening took me farther than I ever imagined, across oceans, into unfamiliar cultures and finally into philanthropy. The Hinrich Foundation is the extension of that purpose, and I share its story with you.

Merle A. Hinrich

Singapore, 2026