Category: Older News Comments

Could CCP Ban Hank Williams?

There is no civil society in mainland China, only the elite between the current emperor and the people. Now civil society – not to mention playful music – is quickly being banished from Hong Kong.

But first – the Hong Kong government has issued a “welcome back to Hong Kong” video aimed at foreigner tourists and business people. A Bloomberg story is here.

The launch video is a bit bizarre – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIS9DQkAkE.

The welcome back has a sour undertone. CCP is still unhappy. CCP always claims to speak for all 1.4 billion Chinese when their feelings are hurt. And since Hong Kong has been aggressively taken, CCP deigns to speak for those Chinese who don’t see themselves as Hong Kongers and whose feelings are hurt by insensitive foreigners.

A good example of the fragility of the feelings of the Chinese people is in the 2023 CCP banishment of the song It Might Break Your Pinky Heart by Namewee and Kimberley Chen. From the Radio Free Asia article – They sing repeated apologies to a dancing panda, who lives in a hobbit-style house and waves a flag bearing the online insult “NMSL,” frequently used by Little Pinks to wish death on the mothers of those they believe have insulted China or hurt the feelings of its people.  “Sorry that I hurt your feelings,” Namewee and Chen sing, amid the sound of breaking glass. “I hear the sound of fragile self-esteem breaking into 1,000 pieces.”

Watch It Might Break Your Pinky Heart. You might get the allusions to Xi as the dancing panda and the baskets of cotton in reference to the forced labor in Xinjiang.

So … what CCP has done is banish artists and a song that apologizes (albeit a bit over the top) to those people in Hong Kong who want to kill others for disrespecting CCP. 

All while trying to woo foreigners back – “those last four years? That’s gone. Never mind. Don’t worry. Be happy.”

Someone reading this who has more lyrical skill than I should be able to pen a followup song to be banned – a rendition of Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQmzp-NA5PM   with Xi Jinping singing to Hong Kongers –

 
I tried so hard my dear to show that you’re my every dream.
Yet you’re afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue
And so my heart is paying now for things I didn’t do
In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold cold heart
 
You’ll never know how much it hurts to see you sit and cry
You know you need and want my love yet you’re afraid to try
Why do you run and hide from life, to try it just ain’t smart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
There was a time when I believed that you belonged to me
But now I know your heart is shackled to a memory
The more I learn to care for you, the more we drift apart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
 
 
All rights reserved on the new version  😉
 

Move along. Nothing to see here. La la la

Every now and then some people in the US get excited and worried about Chinese gains in science, technology, engineering and STEM education – that China is beating the US in the critical tech race to the future. The comforting reaction is always on the order of, “Yes, but. We have freedom of thought and speech and eventually the authoritarian regime will self-destruct. And we will always lead in DEI technology.” 

Now comes The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a credible independent think-tank. One of its recent projects has been to investigate the state of research in 44 critical technologies around the world.

Results are in their Critical Technology Tracker report https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-tracker.

From an Al Jazeera news report on the ASPI study –

China leads the world in 37 out of 44 critical technologies, with Western democracies falling behind in the race for scientific and research breakthroughs, a report by an Australian think tank has found.

China is in a position to become the world’s top technology superpower, with its dominance already spanning defence, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key quantum technology, according to the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

The key areas dominated by China include drones, machine learning, electric batteries, nuclear energy, photovoltaics, quantum sensors and critical minerals extraction, according to the Critical Technology Tracker released on Thursday.

China’s dominance in some fields is so entrenched that all of the world’s top 10 leading research institutions for certain technologies are located in the country, according to ASPI.

In comparison, the United States leads in just seven critical technologies, including space launch systems and quantum computing, according to ASPI, which receives funding from the Australian, United Kingdom and US governments, as well as private sector sources including the defence and tech industries.

The UK and India are among the top five countries in 29 of the 44 technologies, with South Korea and Germany making the top five in 20 and 17 technologies, respectively, the report said.

 You can read the ASPI report yourself. Link above.

Figures below are the ASPI assessment on the 44 technologies.

 One can quibble with their assessment of dominance and future monopoly risk. But the overall assessment is pretty clear.  Apologies on the poor quality of the images.

 I have no particular expertise in commenting on any of these assessments. But no snarky comments needed. 

Brief note on end of covid testing at December 14 …

You’ve heard about the end of mandatory covid testing in China. And you’ve heard about the increase in cases, which are not being reported since the government is no longer keeping track of cases. Michael Pettis reports that several of his friends in Beijing are now positive.

Reported cases are falling dramatically. Clearly people getting sick in China are not following the news reports.

 

Just to add data – my wife’s parents (both in their 80’s) and her sister and brother-in-law, all in Jingzhou in Hubei, and her nephew (working in Guiyang in Guizhou) have tested positive in the last two days. All have fevers now, not sure about any other symptoms.

There are no medicines available, even regular cold and fever meds. All sold out days ago. There are very few covid tests, since the government has given up on that policy.  Two weeks ago, you could get a test every day if you wanted.

No one seems to know if this version of covid will be as deadly as the original. The government is banking on it being less lethal.

The phone tracking system seems to work fine, though. One of our friends spent two weeks in the hospital for a procedure unrelated to covid. He was tested every day, every day negative. His phone showed a green signal, meaning no covid.  As soon as he left the hospital, his signal changed to red – positive for covid. 

Good to know that the government is not giving up on ability to track people’s every movement, even if it is not tracking covid status. There is a silver lining to covid … for CCP. 

One speculation is that Xi Jinping is letting covid rip for a while, as a sop to the recent protests.  Soon pressure will build to reinstate testing and isolation, and Xi can claim victory over the agitators – “See? See what happens when you let the people drive policy?”

That seems a bit harsh.  Xi is in a tough spot, among many tough spots. The economy is in big trouble, foreign businesses are fleeing, even Foxconn. Why, oh why, would he want that third term?

River water flows east

James Palmer reminds us in Foreign Policy that deaths of CCP leaders are sometimes … inconvenient. Announcement of a death may be delayed by hours or days while CCP figures out what the death means. Deng Xiaoping’s death was not reported immediately. Jiang Zemin was not nearly so popular as Deng, but he was known as not-so-loyal opposition to Xi Jinping. His death amid virus-related protests including denunciations of Xi everywhere in China requires some … consideration.

On November 30 Shanghai blogger Qin Feng reported – pointedly, again, in the same words – jiang shui dong liu qu  the river water flows to the east. She had posted that on November 13 and her wechat was immediately blocked by CCP. She posted it again yesterday.

I have no information about any relationship of Qin Feng to the Jiang family. It is possible that she is the daughter of an acquaintance of the family from many years ago, or that someone in her family worked for Jiang at one time. It is possible that she is just making stuff up. There has been a Jiang death watch for years now. He was 96.

No matter. Since we are returning rapidly to an information-free China, when speculation and conspiracy theories are all we have to go on, I’m going with this. Qin had some inside information from about two weeks ago. Her post was odd – what could it mean? The Jiang could be a reference to Jiang Zemin. This odd post was then blocked by CCP.  When she regained her access to wechat – after Jiang’s death was announced – she posted it again.

There is the joke about eastern European political intrigue, when nations were competing frantically both publicly and surreptitiously. Deception was the order of the day. A meeting was scheduled between two fierce opponents, meant to clear the air at least a little. Hours before the meeting, the chief negotiator on one side died. Hearing of the death, the lead on the other side mused. “Died? I wonder what he means by that.”

Et tu, Jiang.

Why no change in Covid policies?

I thought there might be some changes in Xi’s zero-Covid policies right after the National Congress meeting in October. The deteriorating economy and uncertainties are frustrating Chinese people and foreign businesses alike. But no changes came. Right now, the protests are huge and widespread and not yet violent, but getting there. And CCP fears nothing more than it does coordinated protests across cities.

Now, via a lead to an analyst in Taiwan, a rationale for the possible delay on changes in the zero-Covid policy.  

We get so wrapped up in the CCP National Congress meeting that we sometimes ignore the
actual so-called government. The lianghui two meetings (NPC and CPPCC) come up after
the New Year, in March. Xi is not yet the new President of China. He is the
General Secretary of the Central Committee of CCP and Chairman of the Central
Military Commission and current President of guoyuan, the national government.
But in March the new government leaders will be elected, included the new
President of China (which will be Xi) and the new Premier, likely Li Qiang.
 
You know that the current premier Li Keqiang has been seriously sidelined
by Xi in the last five or six years. Li doesn’t really run the government anymore.
And the CCP infighting does put Li Keqiang on the side of one of Xi’s factional
enemies.
 
But – in one of his last acts before leaving government in March, Li issued the
twenty new covid policies, essentially letting up a bit on Xi’s zero covid policy –
shortening of quarantines and isolation periods, and curbing of the one-size-fits-all
current policies on lockdowns. This was done right after the CCP National Congress
meeting.
 
This is Li telling Xi to go pound sand – or some other more descriptive term.
 
 
So Xi will wait until he is reelected as President in March and has his own guy Li Qiang as the newly elected Premier.
 
Then some change in the zero-covid policies might happen. Don’t want any more insolence from Li Keqiang. The changes will be done after those meetings in March. 
 
This makes sense to me, but I’d still want to hedge my bets.
 
BTW, Chinese students here will not discuss anything happening now in China in their wechat texts or on the phone. Too dangerous.
 
And China is not yet capitalist. The major supplier of office supplies in China has announced it will stop selling packages of white printing paper held up by students in their covid and Xinjiang protests. (CCP can’t arrest students for holding up signs that say nothing). I thought perhaps the supplier would issue special packages of paper, labeled “Special edition. Only for use in street protests” – at a slightly higher price.  But no.
 

More on Xi and Hu

You’ve all seen the video of Hu Jintao being forcibly removed from the 20th CCP Congress just before voting on the new appointments to the Politburo Standing Committee. If you’ve not seen it, here it is, available everywhere in the world but in China – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFaG3EpFM8A

You’ll see the papers have already been  taken away from in front of Hu. You’ll see Hu is forcibly removed from his seat and he tries to see the papers in front of Xi Jinping, but Xi pulls them away.

It appears that Hu had a deal with Xi Jinping to promote his son Hu Jaifeng to the Central Committee. Hu Jiafeng is now the party leader in Lishui in Zhejiang Province. The deal was to let Xi have his way with the appointments to the PSC if Hu Jaifeng was also promoted. This did not happen.

Apparently Xi did not want Hu Jintao to see the promotion list, which was in Xi’s documents at his seat but possibly Hu had a different list. In any case, Hu was led out of the Congress.

Now all references to Hu Jintao in Qiushi (Seeking Truth) an official CCP magazine have been removed – speeches, events from when Hu was General Secretary. Go ahead and try it in the English version – http://en.qstheory.cn/search.html?searchText=hu+jintao   Hu Jintao and his son have both been disappeared online. This is like the Washington Post scrubbing all references to Obama once Trump comes into power.

I was asked how media in China will handle the ten years of Hu Jintao if he has been disappeared. There is an easy solution when history is pliable. Xi took power in 2012, Hu in 2002. Just change one number, from 1 to 0, and you have the sort of continuity that CCP wants. Xi has been the people’s leader since 2002, taking over from Jiang Zemin. Mao was the only other leader to be known as people’s leader.

Now begins a more repressive CCP internally and a more aggressive CCP internationally.

If the old promotion rules were being followed, only one of the new Standing Committee members, Ding Xuexiang (age 60) would be eligible to take over from Xi in five years. Ding has no deep party connections beyond loyalty to Xi. Loyalty to Xi is more important than experience or competence. There is no path for succession at this point.

Wang Huning, the chief CCP theorist and very close to Xi, has been assigned to head the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress) a sort of alternate legislature. I’m not sure if this is a promotion for Wang or not. He has been on the PSC since 2017. I told you about him a few months ago.  He wrote America Against America following a short stay in the US in 1988. Available at https://archive.org/details/america-against-america

When economics becomes a morality play

… just a comment from disparate readings in the past week –

Michael Pettis has written for years about the conundrum CCP created for itself in its development model.The model has been essentially supply-side stimulus for the last 40 years. Simplifying, there is only one answer to how to grow the economy – more construction. The costs of that model are in depressed wages, mediocre health care and education for a large share of the population and a significant wealth gap. We note that the “China Dream” promoted by Mr. Xi is not the American Dream. It is not a dream of individual accomplishment, but a dream of national rejuvenation. Now that economic model has taken China about as far as it can. More construction now is more wasted investment. As Pettis has been saying for a decade, there is a need to shift to a consumer-oriented model. His recent Foreign Affairs piece makes the case – How China Trapped Itself -The CCP’s economic model has left it with only bad choices. What is needed are demand-side reforms, to health care, education, pensions, banking, the hukou, and communication. The trouble for CCP is that demand-side reforms carry with them demand-side demands for change. Demand-side means that consumer expression becomes more important than plans of leaders.

This change is very hard to do and its by no means clear that CCP can do it. Too many vested interests in the current way of doing things, and too many ways in which CCP can be shown to be on a wrong path. In Xi’s terms, to be anti-CCP is to be anti-China and disloyal. In any case, economic reform is not on Xi’s agenda, as observers like Martin Wolf and Minxin Pei have noted.

Ci Jiwei is a political philosopher who wrote Moral China in the Age of Reform and the more recent Democracy in China – The Coming Crisis. He describes two forms of freedom in China – economic freedom and moral freedom. Economic freedom is the freedom to buy and sell, to profit from investment. This is not so different in China than it is in the US. Moral freedom is the freedom to think, write, worship and associate as one wishes. This is the kind of freedom we think about instinctively in the US. A modern economy needs both kinds of freedom, appropriately nurtured and constrained. One might say the more advanced, the greater need for moral freedom – the right to think as one wishes, to speculate and invent without fear, the right to be wrong without devastating consequences. The right to publicly disagree with government and the right to organize with others to craft a different idea.

China has been able to profit wonderfully in the last forty years by focusing on economic freedom – for my purposes here, interpreted as construction – public and private, apartments and airports and trains and factories. At some point, though, middle class people want more – more than just more stuff, they want personal expression, and that runs us into the realm of moral freedom, which as anyone knows from recent reading is ever more highly constrained in China now, so much so that my CCP friends characterize current times as like the era of the cultural revolution. In surveys, most Chinese remain enthusiastic supporters of CCP. But that support may not be enough if the economic model cannot adjust to new ways of earning and learning.

I came across a comment from Stephen Roach, the former chief economist for Morgan Stanley, who was a bit of a panda hugger for a while, but in the last few years has come to a different understanding. I thought his comment was short and clear in a piece by Edward White in Financial Times – Xi Jinping’s last chance to revive the Chinese economy –

Roach says the sort of individualism that a stronger consumer economy requires goes against the Chinese system under Xi. “To really unleash the ‘animal spirits’ of a consumer-led society, you must look at the characteristics of what that means in other nations: it is an aspirational mindset, upward mobility, freedom of communication, shared values that continually change and move into new areas,” he says. “To a nation focused on control, it is antithetical to them.”

Chinese certainly have the aspirational mindset and a notion of upward mobility. But the control now coming out of Beijing, and likely to remain through Xi’s third (and fourth?) terms, is not a good sign. In Marxian terms, a consumer economy in one in which the individual has a strong hand to match the strength of capital. But CCP is built on control of capital.

Among all the stories of CCP authoritarian clampdown we read about now, I came across this twitter post. Not a big item by itself, but it struck me as signaling the end of an ability to do personal expression free of state supervision, free of an ability to be anonymous even for a few minutes on a subway. This is the screen one sees when buying a subway ticket –

@GabrielCorsetti     https://twitter.com/GabrielCorsetti/status/1575321661464870912

Since I left Beijing in June, one thing has changed: you now need to provide name and ID info to buy single-use subway tickets. This was one of the few things you could still do without there being a record, but now this loophole has been fixed.

And some comments, edited here –

And of course, the ticket machines only accept Chinese ID numbers, not passport numbers. So as a foreigner you either have to use the booth with a person if that’s available, or hope that someone kind agrees to buy you the ticket. How hard can it be to add a passport option?

… As a long-term resident I have a transport card, so this doesn’t affect me. But even my old-style plastic transport card now has to be linked to my health kit app in order to work, so that travelling without a green code would be impossible.

… Even back in 2018, China was becoming impossible for anyone without a national ID card. Most hotels won’t accept foreigners, restaurants require using app which requires national ID card, etc, etc.

… To be fair, I’ve never been unable to eat in a restaurant anywhere in China. You may need to use WeChat or Alipay to pay, which if you don’t have a Chinese bank account is a problem, but being a foreign citizen in itself is not.

… The last time back in BJ I find it extremely frustrating for not having a Chinese phone number, as I need it for WeChat => pay with it for almost everything; and need it to enter my alma mater. Then my ID hasn’t expired yet so lucky me. Let’s see next time.

… Nowadays it would literally be impossible to be here without a Chinese phone number, because you would need to use the health kit mini-program on WeChat. God knows when this will change.

There is no phone call, no visit to a grocery store, no trip to see a friend or go to work, no trip to the park or the zoo that is free of state supervision.The panopticon state is pretty complete.

As much as Chinese economists and leaders talk about changing the economic model, little has changed in more than a decade. Mr. Xi shows no willingness, despite speechifying, to alter the current path. If anything, China is far less open than it was a decade ago, thanks to Mr. Xi. One wonders how a more advanced economy comes into being. Not because of subway ID requirements, but because of the fears of moral freedom that would destroy CCP.

Sowing and Reaping

The Mandate of Heaven means that Heaven shows its displeasure toward a leader via occurrence of natural disasters, disease epidemics, widespread political opposition and foreign threats. Harmony, in other words, does not obtain. It is an ancient Chinese meme, probably created in the Zhou dynasty to justify its defeat of the former Shang dynasty.

Am I too isolated, or has nobody written a short post about Mr. Xi’s third term and the apparent displeasure of Heaven? I mean, I don’t expect dire warnings about the end of the dynasty coming out of China right now, but everyone can see that Heaven is screaming Condition Red (as it were) for CCP. 

In Mr. Xi’s case, one can object – not all current misfortunes are coming directly from Heaven.There are some own goals. But reflect – the last emperor in several dynasties was a dissolute, uncaring, unreflective bum. Xi does not appear to be uncaring or dissolute (aside from his family wealth approaching a  billion dollars) but own goals seem to be characteristic near the end of several dynasties. And Heaven finds its own way to throw the bum out, as it were.

Heaven can express its displeasure through celestial signs. Remember King Di Xin at the end of the Shang whose end was foretold by movements of Jupiter. A sign from heaven signaled the end of the later Han in 213 CE.  David Pankenier in his 2013 Astrology and Cosmology in Early China, p. 194 –

An abundance of other literary and chronological evidence drawn from numerous Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE) and Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) sources suggests that these celestial events were taken from the start to signal the Supernal Lord’s recognition of the legitimacy of a new regime, first Xia in 1953 BCE, followed by Shang in 1576 BCE, then Zhou in 1059 BCE, and finally Han in 205 BCE.

To be fair, no one in CCP is viewing current difficulties as portents based on the mandate. But let’s take a short review –

– a less than entirely successful 2022 Winter Olympics in the capital, of all places. Constrained media access and boycotts stood in sharp contrast to the positive world image from the 2008 summer games in Beijing. In 2021 CCP threatened countries that carried out a boycott, and many did carry out boycotts of varying types.  

– a bromance with Putin that went south shortly after Xi publicly showed some leg by pledging “no limits” to the relationship. Now China is caught between Xi’s bromance and the Russian sanctions that threaten Chinese businesses that need foreign imports and exports. So for Xi, Should I stay or should I go?

– an unprecedented heat wave that has forced shutdown of business throughout southern China for lack of power (generated by hydropower that cannot function any more in the severely reduced river flows). See, for example, Honda’s plant remains closed. The heat wave is said to be the most severe ever recorded in the world.  From the wiki – According to weather historian Maximiliano Herrera, it is the most severe heat wave recorded anywhere: “This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time. There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China.”

– apart from the heat wave and its attendant drying of rivers, the long term effects of global warming will be felt throughout China (and south and southeast Asia). These impact will start being felt about now. Foreign Affairs, August 2022 – China’s Growing Water Crisis. Less water, less food, less energy. My own long term bet is on the River Amur in Russian Siberia – far from Moscow, close to Beijing and the water-short north of China.

– at the same time, the baby bust from the long term effects of the one child policy will force up social service spending at the same time that jobs are fewer, jobs that pay into the social welfare systems are fewer, expectations of students are higher, and the world is no longer so enamored  of more Chinese products. Each year there are about five million fewer people of working age paying into the system. China will age very rapidly in the next decades. These impacts are being felt now.

– a virus that won’t quit despite the (actually heroic) measures to stamp it out completely and resulting damage to the economy.

– an own goal in first hiding news of the coronavirus, then downplaying its impact, then refusing to take any responsibility for its origin, then blocking attempts to discover the source of the virus. CCP threatened Australia for requesting further study into the origins of the virus. Another own goal is the “zero-covid” policy, which is  Xi’s own creation and therefore cannot be altered, even though the local vaccines are not as effective as those in the US and Europe and the lockdowns are severely disruptive (not to credit the US’s own abysmal response).

– an own goal in crushing the real estate industry that accounts for 25%-30% OF GDP. Yes, it’s a Ponzi scheme, but its been a Ponzi scheme for a decade. Why crush it now? Michael Pettis has been sounding the alarm for a decade. Now, it is time.

– an own goal in shutting down after school tutoring businesses, which provided jobs for tens of thousands of young Chinese – at a time when job growth generally is minimal.

– an own goal in fostering wolf warrior diplomacy throughout the world, in which Chinese diplomats used threats, intimidation, and mockery of countries and their leaders by way of demonstrating… well, I guess Chinese “soft power.” No better way to turn the world against Chinese interests. Negative global views of China are now at historic highs.

– an own goal in stimulating a crisis in the Arunachal Pradesh border area with India.

– an own goal in moving some world opinion – including that of some businesses and governments – to prioritize human rights over economic development or company profits. Development and business profits first were always China’s trump in conflicts over human rights or local environmental or labor conditions. Less so, now.

– an own goal in the 2021 anti sanctions law  that criminalized foreign businesses in China  following  human rights sanctions emanating from their home country (meaning, mostly, US).

– an own goal in rejecting world opinion (and that of the Tribunal of the Law of the Sea Convention) that claims to the “nine-dashed line” of sovereignty over the South China Sea are without foundation and illegal internationally.

– an own goal in destroying the “one country two systems” logic that allowed Hong Kong to flourish. Hong Kong is now firmly in CCP control and the world has noticed.

– an own goal in threatening Taiwan in ever more egregious ways, thereby stimulating negative reaction through Asia and promoting US interests in Asia and the Pacific.

– an own goal in forcing Sinicization on the Uighur population in Xinjiang, with concentration camps and other elements of human rights abuse. World opinion does not support CCP claims of job training and education – in mass camps with armed guards and barbed wire fences.

– an own goal in further restricting already heavily censored information about Chinese companies, so the stock markets become even more of an insider’s game than previously.

Mr. Xi came into power with a portfolio of reigning in corruption in CCP and overeager but unproductive investment, particularly in real estate. The concept was to ensure CCP survival in the 21st century. By Chinese standards he has done a decent job in attacking corruption; less well on real estate.  But Xi can’t really get a firm hold on either one. Significant corruption, like the Chinese financial system itself (borrowers, lenders, developers, local governments) are systematically flawed. Corruption is built in to the relationship society, going back thousands of years. The financial system for real estate is a Ponzi scheme – for example, buyers take out a mortgage and begin paying monthly as soon as they sign the contract to buy, even though the unit might not be finished for a year or two or three.  Developers take the money and finish their last project or bid on the land for the next. Bailing out developers or lenders is not the solution.

Foreign businesses in 2022 have been fleeing China – a complete reversal of the environment when Xi took power in 2012. Reasons vary – trade war related crackdowns on American businesses, the Kulturkampf against western products and ideas, or all of the above creating an excuse to give up on arbitrary threatening from suppliers or bad faith business practices. The revolutionary song “The East is Red” refers now to bad debt and poor stock market or business performance (a 1963 video here).  

Heaven moves in mysterious ways. The mandate does not disappear in short order and doesn’t have a termination date. But one has to think Heaven has delivered public notice.

Watch the fires burning across the river

Autocrats make blunders. Xi has made some, and Putin … well, ok. But Xi is not the isolated single decider that Putin appears to be. And China seems well-positioned to benefit from the Ukraine fiasco, regardless of outcome, if China simply keeps its head down, as best it can.

So why the unswerving support for Putin? What can the strategy be? Is it just autocrat bromance? You and me against the world?

As is often the case, Chinese policy is to speak out of both sides of the mouth – at home, government support for Russia is solid and the US-NATO is the cause of all the pain. In the world, the Chinese government takes a more nuanced tone, only wishing to seek peace, even as it seeks to supply Russia as best it can and avoid sanctions and also avoiding taking an active role in mediation.

And if the EU buys less oil and gas from Russia, then Russia will sell it to an eager China. Whatever the Ukraine result, China learns more about how to approach taking Taiwan. China could gain international prestige by fostering a peace deal, however reluctantly and late they do it. So why antagonize the west and most of the rest of the world when the gains will come in any case without effort?

Now comes the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a well-respected think tank that provides a forum for international thought leaders to discuss how to achieve peace in the world. Carnegie has a piece seeking to make some sense of it all – China’s Ukraine Calculus is Coming into Focus.

The article by Paul Haenle and Sam Bresnick describes five conflicting goals for Xi – manage public opinion at home, provide Russia with rhetorical support, signal to Asian countries the danger of NATO-like structures in the Indo-Pacific, appear to be a responsible stakeholder in the broader international community by calling for negotiations, and limit the damage to its economic ties with the United States and Europe.

Well and good. I want to propose another element of long term thinking that might figure into Xi’s calculus, and that is to look east, young man – to Siberia and the Arctic. The United States Geological Survey estimates that 22 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas could be located beneath the Arctic. The Arctic holds large quantities of minerals, including phosphate, bauxite, iron ore, copper, nickel, gold, and diamond.

There are five countries that have legal access to Arctic resources, based on their territorial economic zones – Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, the US, and – Russia.  China desperately wants in to that group. It has argued for inclusion because it is a “near-Arctic” nation.

China tried to buy an abandoned naval base in Greenland in 2017, but that was turned down. A few years earlier, a Chinese attempt to do a large commercial real estate project – in Greenland –  was also turned down. This could only have been cover for Chinese “near Arctic” ownership claims.

Even closer to Beijing, Siberia is similarly blessed, with mineral resources and coal and iron and rivers for hydropower and lots and lots of wood.

In any case, I am completely speculating. I have no inside information on this. But I can see the natural advantage for China in Siberia and the Arctic. Russia will not have the talent or technology to exploit the huge available resources. Siberia is far, far away from Moscow and China is very close. The deals might not come this year or next, but soon enough. Its just good long term planning, which China knows how to do. So why not keep the Russia bromance alive?

There are pertinent phrases from the ancient Chinese classic Thirty-Six Stratagems that Chinese business and government people all recognize –

Wait at leisure while the enemy labors (以逸待勞, Yǐ yì dài láo)

Loot a burning house (趁火打劫, Chèn huǒ dǎ jié)

Watch the fires burning across the river (隔岸觀火, Gé àn guān huǒ)

Russia doesn’t have to be the enemy. Just the next resource-rich flailing state in need of assistance. We can switch to Latin – carpe diem.

Laser-like development focus …

Just a brief note –

Speeches and policy documents are nearly always long. It is not uncommon for a leader to talk for an hour or two on one topic, with supremely bored listeners fastened to their seats and their cell phones,  trying to pass the time. (The cell phone diversion is less common with speeches by senior CCP officials).

English translations of CCP documents and speeches are often unreadable. Not because of translation problems, but the confluence of soaring generalities being pounded into heads.

Here is a good example. This is not noteworthy for any particular reason except that I tried to read this recently and as usual, got stopped after a couple of sentences.

This is about Mr. Xi’s new Common Prosperity policy, latest of the attempts to raise household incomes for the 600 to 800 million Chinese who can still be called “low-income.” The US has its share of ill-defined programs to aid the poor, but this laundry list struck me as saying particularly nothing while it covers just about everything.

This was reported at Sinocism recently.

  1. Comments from the Zhejiang Common Prosperity front lines

Page 1 of the 2.8 Zhejiang Daily has an article on a meeting chaired by the Provincial Party Secretary Yuan Jiajun to discuss Zhejiang’s Common Prosperity pilot work.

Yuan Jiajun stressed that common prosperity is a pioneering cause and a systematic transformation and reshaping. 袁家军强调，共同富裕是开创性事业，是系统性变革重塑。

The article contains quite an ambitious list, and is a good reminder that “Common Prosperity” is not just material but also includes culture and ideology.

浙江日报 – 勇担使命 塑造变革 扎实推进共同富裕美好社会建设

It is necessary to promote the first demonstration of high-quality economic development, speed up the construction of a modern industrial system led by the digital economy, establish a global innovation mechanism to support common prosperity, build a high-quality employment and entrepreneurship system, strengthen the financing and development mechanism of small and medium-sized enterprises, and build a universal and inclusive promotion system for quality consumption. It is necessary to promote the reform of the income distribution system to demonstrate first, solidly carry out the action of expanding the middle and lowering the lower, build a big social security system, explore the financial transfer payment system and tax collection and management reform, improve the reasonable growth mechanism of wage income, explore the construction of a new charity system, and explore the establishment of a statistical monitoring system of common prosperity. It is necessary to promote the first demonstration of high-quality sharing of public services, accelerate the construction of a child-friendly society and an elderly-friendly society, improve the mechanism of promoting inclusive human capital, and build a whole-course health service system for everyone, basically realize the important application of the masses and enterprises being able to “handle affairs in the palm of their hands”, and iteratively upgrade “basic public services in Zhejiang”. It is necessary to promote the first demonstration of coordinated development between urban and rural areas, vigorously implement the integration reform of strengthening villages and enriching people with rural collective economy as the core, accelerate the integration reform of urbanization of agricultural transfer population, improve the mechanism of “one county, one policy” to promote common prosperity in mountain areas, innovate and improve the system and mechanism of “mountain-sea cooperation+enclave economy”, and make overall plans to promote future community and future rural construction.

It is necessary to promote the demonstration of the development of advanced socialist culture, strengthen the mainstream ideology and public opinion of common prosperity, thoroughly implement the global civilization creation project, build a precise access mechanism of volunteer service, build a “15-minute quality cultural life circle” and build a highland of cultural innovation and development. It is necessary to promote the demonstration of ecological civilization construction, systematically promote the carbon neutrality work in peak carbon dioxide emissions, implement the action of ecological benefit to the people, and improve the realization mechanism of ecological product value. It is necessary to promote the demonstration of social governance first, continuously improve the precise intelligent control mechanism of “dynamic clearing” for epidemic prevention and control, coordinate the implementation of the special action of “law to help common prosperity and law to protect peace”, promote the reform of “integration of county and township, unified management and control” in the whole province, and improve the great peace mechanism of closed-loop risk control.

No doubt all will be implemented at usual China speed.