May Day News
I wonder what’s coming up for May 5th in China. And May 35th too.
My mother and grandmother before her would always make homemade spudnuts (think slightly potato-flavored somewhat-dense but very delicious frosted donuts) and have the kids weave ribbons around the May Pole. As is usually the case, it was a horrible tradition but had great food that my siblings and cousins all still crave. So of course, I just went to Krispy Kreme.
This week was a smorgasbord of great stories about China. I think that two things have happened. First, everyone is getting tired of writing about the CV story. Sure there is much more to learn and there are many human interest stories still to be written, but we all needed a little break. Second, since many are still in lockdown and China seems to have moved on from pretending to care to taking advantage of the crisis there is a lot of indignation combined with a month or so of research time culminating in a great week of news. That or China’s just acting more shitty than usual.
Human Interest Stories
Nice story about abandoned gods in Taiwan. One collector is turning his hobby into a museum. I would love to have some of these statues. I’m going to have to look him up on my next trip to the island.
An interesting little piece on the history of wearing masks. I’m of the impression that masks won’t help you not catch anything airborne, but they are like blinkers in cars—they’re for others. They stop you from spitting/spraying/exhaling directly onto others. And they provide a bit of social comfort that you’re not an ass-hole. And in our tech-dominated world, they also give the wearer a bit of anonymity.
This is disgusting. Selling children on the (WeChat) black market. I understand that there are multiple reasons for this, poor healthcare, one-child policy, lack of oversight, etc. But despite the structural issues, it’s horrible the way that it’s being done. As both an adoptee and the father of an adopted child, I understand both sides of the issues and my heart breaks for the children and both sets of parents. I hope that the horrible processes will at least place some of these kids in better homes with loving parents.
Every time there is a disaster in China, we hear the same stories—NGO’s (which really cannot be NGO’s in China) are corrupt, inefficient, and facilitate the govt plans. The Red Cross and this bout of CV is no different.
CV
Multiple outlets claiming that leaked docs expose the coverup in China. Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail and Fox.
China is reopening but not getting back to normal. There are reports of 25% unemployment and factories running machines (to consume electricity for official statistical reports), but it’s likely that SMEs have been crushed, like in the US and elsewhere. The lack of available financing for most will likely mean lots of defaults, lots of gray-market loans (20% or more monthly interest rates) and lots of people moving back to the countryside to farm family lands.
One of the biggest problems China will face, other than the economy, is the resurgent outbreaks in other cities.
You think that China your friend? Wrong. They won’t even let WHO back into China to do an “investigation.” This just lets you know who’s in charge now. China will both pay the WHO (with the ending of US funding) and tell them what to say and where they can go. Really just a formalization of the status quo.
In absolutely no surprise to any breathing human on the planet, China censors how authorities actually dealt with the CV.
The thing about communism is that it’s valueless and implemented by personalities, so you never know if what you do today will kill you or promote you tomorrow. CCP history is littered with the bodies of yesterday’s hero’s that became today’s political fodder.
It needs to be very clear that believing that the virus came from a lab and claiming that it’s human engineered and a bio-weapon are very different things. China wants to confuse the two so that anyone claiming a lab origin is presented as someone lying that China tried to start a war. I wouldn’t put it past them, but I’m not making that claim. I’m only saying it’s not even questionable that shoddy practices at labs make the lab-origin theory more than plausible.
Global Politics
No one really knows anything about Kim Jong Un. So I’m not going to post anything about him. But this NK guy in SK is getting a lot of attention both for who he was/is and in which areas he should be considered an expert on NK and in which he is an SK politician. Personally, I realize that different interviewees have different value in different situations. To accommodate that reality, in my research I try to combined personal anecdotes (long informal unstructured interviews) with extensive participant observation and historical context and documents.
While I’d like to see Taiwan recognized by the US and other western powers, I’m not holding my breath. There are calls for it, for sure, and they are getting louder. I support this. But I don’t know what China will do—that may not be the correct position to have (being afraid of the consequences of doing the right thing), but that’s where I am. I don’t want to see the reaction be worse than the problem (again, cough cough).
Meanwhile, back in China—there is no rest for the wicked. CCP trying to take advantage of US and others’ reactions to the CV and WHO and supply chain issues.
If you still don’t believe that China’s int’l moves over the last at least 15 years, if not 40, are all calculated, then I have some bridge property to see you in Arizona. China is actively trying to remake the global order in their own image
The US is looking into ties between the UofT and the Wuhan lab at the center of the CV pandemic. China has for decades used ties, people, cash, bribes, favors, access, etc. to get return access to foreign tech and science. It’s literally been a published goal to get everything they can at any cost. Only now, decades on, is the US govt and uni’s around the country (and in other countries too) recognizing the compromised position they have placed themselves in regarding Chinese “investors.” The worst part of this, lost tech and science and nation security aside, is the “normal” people, students and professors on both sides, that are caught up in this knowingly and unknowingly.
For almost two decades on this blog I’ve written that I think that China has an insecurity complex. They don’t know how to deal with outsiders and have maintained that they were both the best there ever was and should be the top again and that they were wronged by everyone else on the planet. There is some bits of truth to each claim. But since China is ideologically driven and censors any real debate on where they actually fit in the world and how the rest of the world functions diplomatically, they are like lost teens—talented, ambitious, ignorant and clumsy. No one believes in communism anymore, so they have nationalism (I hate my enemy more than I love myself) as a state-sponsored substitute.
As corrupt as China is, they likely have nothing on the royal family in Thailand. The king is rarely in country and an increasing number of Thais don’t want him to be there anyway. And as heir to one of the wealthiest family inheritances, he’s spending the CV crisis living in luxury in Europe. With a huge haram—whoops! Sorry, that’s Kim Jong Un.
Why did we lose China? It’s really a condescending question. But that aside, here’s a quick answer: 1. My enemy’s enemy is my friend trumped all commies are bad. 2. We assumed everyone wanted to be and could be just us (neoliberal democracy) with a few quick adjustments. Oh, and money. Lots of money.
I couldn’t agree more. There needs to be a coordinated response to China, not just regarding CV. China is so big that only through coordinated actions will smaller countries survive—I’m talking about you, ASEAN and EU.
Two insights into Chinese foreign policy from different quarters. First from Oz—calling the Chinese bluff, historically trade threats don’t really amount to any financial consequences. And this really interesting analysis on China’s lack of any real history of diplomatic strategy. Yup, SunTzu is a fraud. He’s great for dealing with domestic/family issues, but not IR. Nationalism doesn’t work abroad. And here is another discussion about the effectiveness of China’s propaganda at home and internationally.
If you hated the BRI rap songs from a year ago, you’ll hate the One Sea friendship song too! Filipinos do. If songs are great, masks should be a good propaganda tool too, no?
China reads the world differently than the West does. Ditto capitalism. Ditto religion, people, HR, etc. Here is a Harvard interview about the Chinese Govt and what it expects from the world and how it sees itself in that world.
I also read a tweet that mentioned that in the last week something like governments from 6-8 countries have called the Chinese diplomats in their respective countries. And not for tea. Well, if you think about it like the PSB in China calls you in for tea, that would actually be like what is happening. China doesn’t know how to negotiate—they bribe, cajole, threaten, and pout. And if you needed more evidence as to China’s inabilities, ask the Aussies—the “gum stuck to China’s shoe” Aussies. And because of behavior like this, on the tails of the worst virus and cover-up in 100 years, people honestly ask: Does China have any friends? And the answer is a resounding no. They have no allies and no friends, only a few dependents.
China coordinates EVERYTHING it does abroad and considers it’s own citizens, especially part members, assets in its maintenance of domestic power and bid for a new world order.
Business
Like their counterparts from Japan and the US, companies from the EU are leaving China. I’m not sure how much of this is long-term movement and how much is just an immediate need to both get products now as well as find some security since the future of CV is still unknown.
Taiwan needs help. And they need to take back their tech sector while everyone is getting out of China. Anything by Evan Feigenbaum is good to read too.
Chinese investment in Africa. With the expected growth in Africa over the next few decades, this is going to be a bigger story as the numbers continue to rise. But, honestly, CHina’s investment in Africa, while likely not very fair, is really the only money going there. The EU and the US pulled back decades ago and China is filling a gap in infrastructure that they are both good at and is needed on the ground.
BRI projects continue to be questioned. Let’s be honest here. China has both the capacity and ability to do infrastructure projects that no one else can do (at the prices offered). And they offer loans without ties that the EU and US require. But the Chinese projects are crap, they likely are overpriced and the loans benefit China long-term and the ideological price is looking the other way while China bribes elites and destroys local economies. This is not to say that the US or the EU has an outstanding record in developing countries, but it is a myth that China is ideology-free and a partner and friend to the 3rd world. The old saying in China manufacturing was “Win-Win in China means that your factory wins twice.”
In addition to the NPR in the US running stories that are directly from the Chinese Global Times or People’s Daily, Canada has its own issues with Chinese content. More here. I’ve seen more than a few tweets about US news outlets running straight up copies of articles from the CCP rags in domestic publications and online services. I’m all for free speech and I think that the CCP should be able to publish in the US. But any govt run org should NOT be republishing/rebroadcasting CCP propaganda. And US outlets should identify their foreign govt sources of copied (paid for) “news.”
And in another edition of “Really? No shit? You don’t say.” We find out today that, just like the accusations against Huawei, Xiaomi devices are “collecting an insane amount of private data.”
One of the reasons that decoupling will be so difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, is that China has become not just the low-price leader but also THE global resource for high-tech manufacturing. Add onto that the fact that there are many few restrictions for R&D in China and that the Chinese govt is actively pushing the envelope for AI and other tech that is still suspect in the US and you have an environment that Tech from the West do not want to abandon. They will, in part, due to their own selfish supply-chain needs, but not because they want to.
US Commerce Dept tights rules on exports to China. About time. But without a corresponding increase in investment in both the US tech and manufacturing as well as that of our allies, we’ll just be giving China an incentive to build it’s own industries and limiting out own capacities.
Do you remember just two months ago when China said that it was allowing foreign financial products and companies into the Chinese market? Yea, well, they’ve changed their mind.
Part of my dissertation focus on the reality that Chinese who grew up in the Leninist concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics understand companies and capitalisms in different ways from their western peers. There is no doubt in my mind that they consciously know that their fiduciary responsibility is to the Chinese state, and not to foreign stock markets. They don’t comply with audits, and many are faked when they do, and they don’t consider up to 70% ownership of a “private company” by a state agency to be a conflict. US investors beware.