Red Imports in the Red States

Governor DeSantis is quite clearly fond of CCP policies and regulations. Many of his GOP fellow travelers are in thrall as well. Ridiculous? To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has signed legislation encouraging students to record and report teachers who espouse views unacceptable to DeSantis and the GOP. Just like CCP – see Monkey See, Monkey Do and more.

He acknowledges higher goals than simply “grow GDP,” now pushing Disney out of a billion dollar Florida investment. CCP apparently taught DeSantis how to do that, with its recent crackdowns on tech, tutoring, and real estate – China’s Economic Needs May Take a Back Seat to Security – The New York Times. The only fundamental truth is power.

DeSantis has worked hard to identify enemies of the people. He takes a hint from CCP and identifies whole industries or groups of people as class enemies – not just Disney. This from the DeSantis May, 2021 law that prohibits censoring of hate speech or fever-swamp lunacy online –

This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites. Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.

CCP claims the right to speak for “We, the Chinese people” when it actively censors speech. Other than the twist in non-censoring v censoring, one would be hard pressed to distinguish DeSantis’ voice from that of CCP in fostering hatred of the Other. In both cases, GOP and CCP vow they are acting to protect people from the evil outsiders. It is what authoritarian demagogues do.

He seeks to defund or cheapen public education. This is a long-standing GOP goal. My school in Hangzhou – admittedly, a science and engineering school not on par with Tsinghua or Beida – has no majors in history, literature, philosophy, psychology, international relations, logic or communications. Based on DeSantis’ proposals, I think he would approve of such a limited program for Florida schools.

He promotes book banning – not quite as vociferously as does Texas, but nevertheless. From the LA Times –Texas school districts had the highest number of bans in PEN America’s report, with 438 removals. Florida had 357 bans, followed by Missouri, with 315 bans. In Utah and South Carolina, there were more than 100 bans. … A law in Florida, which has more book bans than any state but Texas, requires that books be reviewed by certified media specialists, leading some districts to clear out or hide books in their libraries and classrooms.

Books, particularly those from outside, are heavily vetted before being allowed in Chinese classrooms. I’m not sure if the reviewers are called certified media specialists, but the function is the same.

DeSantis – along with the Republican legislatures in nine other states – has still refused Medicaid expansion, which would provide health care for millions of poor Americans. CCP claims to have improved health care in rural areas across China, but the realities are still that a poor person in Mississippi or Guizhou might just do better trying to get health care in India than in their respective state or province. Other states that haven’t expanded include Wyoming, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Red State legislatures may rant about Deep State overspending, but it remains that most or all them receive more money from Washington than they contribute. Red states are the most dependent on the federal government, which provides from 1/4 to 1/2 of state revenues. Eight of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government traditionally vote Republican. New Mexico (No. 2) is the only state in the top 10 to vote for the Democratic candidate in any of the last six presidential elections. Maine (No. 8), which splits its delegates, has voted for both Democrats and Republicans in the recent elections.

This is not so unlike China, in which six cities are “profitable” and net out sending tax money to Beijing. The other provinces and autonomous regions are net recipients of tax money from Beijing. See this and this.

The anti-gay measures in Florida are of a piece with those of CCP – Being gay in China has gotten harder under Xi Jinping. Until about a two decades ago, there were no gay people in China, per CCP. DeSantis is trying to replicate that now in Florida. “Don’t say gay” might as well have originated in China.

Texas lawmakers want to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom in the state. Now CCP won’t be doing that. But it does require all CCP members – all 100,000,000 of them – to read and be tested on Xi Jinping Thought, which is roughly equivalent.

Hypocrisy in politics is pretty universal. But GOP and CCP consistently establish new low bars. There are so many examples. But one each – the Texas state legislator-Christian pastor who raped his 19-year old intern; and CCP protestations about respecting individual sovereignty of other countries, but then goes about seeking to influence or threaten politicians in several countries, including the US, Australia, and Canada.

Chinese village elections in the first decade of the century were hailed as precursors to democratic transition. Village elections then became … aahhh… difficult … for Xi Jinping. Those elections have now been sidelined or eliminated as inconsistent with the goals of CCP. Elections now have greater … supervision, let us say, from party central, with the intent of eroding local autonomy. So too, for the GOP.

You’d never get GOP operatives to admit to such bald copying of CCP. After all, you’d hear, they are Communists, and we are Republicans. But perhaps the distinctions are not quite so sharp.

In a parallel move to control election outcomes, the GOP is seeking to go beyond unconscionable gerrymandering of districts to simply cancelling the results of local elections. In 2021 Republican-controlled legislatures passed 24 laws across 14 states to increase their control over how elections are run, stripping secretaries of state of their power and making it easier to overturn results.

Of course you know about the “independent legislature” Supreme Court case in which GOP state legislatures seek the power to overturn national election results for President or Congress in favor of legislatively appointed GOP flunkies. And we experienced plenty of vigilante action to prevent voting or interfere with ballot counting in the 2020 election. If allowed by the Supreme Court, such a development would spell the end of democratic processes in the US and put the US roughly on the same plane of electoral politics as CCP. Plenty of pundits in the US have already outlined how democracies die. We apparently don’t need CCP help, but China is always happy to oblige.

In the largest sense, GOP seeks not a multiparty democracy with the give and take of democratic debate, but totalitarian occupation of the country by its own version of an elite. Just like CCP, as I wrote about in Chinese People Under Occupation.

Anyway, one of the GOP clowns is going to need some stirring music for the entry of the candidate to rallies around the country. I have an idea that might work very well with some changes to the lyrics – The East is Red. It is martial and stirring and in line with recent GOP policy imports. I know – its mostly the American south that is red, but you can’t have everything when you are doing cultural appropriation. The spirit of the song can easily be adapted to Make America Great Again. After all, the song celebrates the people’s great savior. Somebody ought to be able to superimpose the Orange One’s face in the video. Would work great!

For any candidate, the song will go well with renditions of USA! USA! USA! The Red States maintain a clear lead over Red China in the number of guns per person, and the use of those to kill people. China is no match for the US in that category. Many GOP representatives sent Christmas cards posing with guns. And Red States lead the way in gun murders. GOP wins!

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.

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

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 21^st 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.

Wokeness – and despair for democracy

Americans seem to have woken up to disparities in our society, particularly for black people. This is a good thing. Wokeness will go a ways toward fulfilling the promises suggested in the Declaration of Independence.

But there is a most disturbing part of wokeness that is not limited to racial matters, and that is the language fascism of the left. It is as dangerous to a free society as any fascism of the right and too close to what we can observe every day in China.

Much of the language of wokeness does not inspire faith in a more equal future. It inspires only despair at the convergence I see between authoritarian rhetoric in China and similar language in the woke left in the US. That model of wokeness is what every authoritarian government wishes for America. It is retreat into tribes and truth in service of politics. Despair is the necessary result, for on the one hand no one can ever be sufficiently woke, and on the other, concurrent damage to civil society is not easily rebuilt.

University speech limitations have been around as long as I can remember, even in the sixties. We saw codes reappear a few years ago with the university speech codes and microaggression issues. Per wokeness, speech is only allowed to be free if it is correct. Ignored in a person’s “right” to be called what pronoun they wish is the “right” to demur. The most lightweight response – “I’m offended” – should not be anything more than a personal statement, but it became a call for apologies and more. The more insistent wokeness resulted in cancellation of speakers, changes in venue, and some faculty members hurt professionally or physically in trying to reply to accusations and restrain the mobs. Jordan Peterson is only cashing in on the difficult experiences of Jonathan Haidt, David Shor, and many others.

American liberals should be as deeply disturbed by such developments in censorship and language policing as they are to lies and conspiracy theories of the alt-right. It is inimical to civil society and to liberalism.

The Chinese model

We know the fascism in CCP in China now – the loyalty tests, the unwritten speech codes, sanitizing of history, the scrutiny of texts and teachers for incorrect thinking, the sense of being under attack, the arrests for mocking Xi or CCP.

There is no truth apart from what CCP says. The politically correct mimic the speech and ideas in pledges and writing. This “performative declamation” is an old fascist – and CCP – practice. Geremie Barme at Australian National University calls it New China Newspeak. The progressive warrior has a lot in common with a CCP cadre on speech codes. Whatever one calls it, it is straight outta 1984 and it is double-plus ungood. And it is spreading on the progressive left. See here, and here and here.

President Obama warned progressives in 2019 to avoid a circular firing squad on correctness. And Jonathan Chait warns about wrongthink and despicable behavior among progressives in a recent New York magazine piece. Purity on wokeness appears essential, but once ensnared by wokeness, there is no escape. James Lindsey has a penetrating analysis of wokeness as cult indoctrination at New Discourses. New China Newspeak appears to be another Chinese import to America.

Factions don’t balance factions

One can be sanguine about the language and behavior of wokeness. At the beginning of any cultural movement, there is a tendency to extreme behavior by some, and that motivates others. The extreme behavior is temporary and eventually the system adjusts to a new norm.

The progressive cultural movement of the last ten years does feel different because it is matched by extremists on the right (white nationalists, like Trump, and evangelicals who suggest a retreat from the world (Rod Dreher) until Trump, God’s appointee, can deliver us). When silence is violence there can be no middle ground. Democracy demands we be able to talk with one another. When communication fails, civil society fails, and democracy fails.

We have threats of real physical violence enabled by the alt-right. Michigan shut down its legislature rather than confront the armed thugs. Threats are also from the police, as agents of the state and from our ruler. The physical threats were there, in the Trump march to display his ignorance of the Bible and its contents. Ezra Klein – I was watching the speech Trump gave before tear-gassing the protesters in the park in DC. What so chilled me about that speech was how much he clearly wanted this — like this was the presidency as he had always imagined it, directing men with guns and shields to put down protesters so he could walk through a park unafraid and seem tough.

Most of the violence from the left is still verbal, but it tortures language to the point of meaninglessness – there is no racism other than white racism. Silence is assault. Students need safety from language or viewpoints with which they disagree. An “incorrect” pronoun is violence. Jobs and careers are destroyed in senseless witch hunts, all due to someone using incorrect speech or even alluding to ideas with which the speaker actually disagrees. This is Orwellian, to be sure. It is also reminiscent of witch hunts circa 1968 in China – academics, officials, loyal party members suddenly deemed insufficiently loyal.

The factions left and right do not offset or balance each other, for a middle ground to find consensus. The middle ground shrinks. The factions only encourage each other in democratic decay. Democracy does die in the darkness of censorship and mistrust. It is to remember Robert Oppenheimer in a different context – I am become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds.

Media infection

As in China, the major US media now seem controlled by a faction with a particular political agenda.

It is not just speech codes and sanctioning of university faculty for speaking their minds. It is corruption of what we used to consider the free press. If staff at the New York Times cannot restrain themselves in forcing resignation of the editor who okayed publication of an op-ed of which the staff (collectively) disapproved, what hope for journalism anywhere? There are other examples. Matt Taibbi made the point in The American Press Is Destroying Itself – how can any editor operate when the price of airing opinions shared by a majority of the population might be loss of job?

Right wing media – Fox News and other – now seem justified in making a pot and kettle accusation. What we thought was mainstream media attempting to pursue truth and openness seems just a sham. Reporting and truth give way to virtue signaling.

Discourse matters

Our democracy can only survive as our civil society functions. Our ability to disagree in a civil way, our ability to tolerate dissent and tolerate each other, our ability to bring kindness and understanding to social interaction are all disappearing. These traits add up to civility. Civility is not just smiling in public. It is how we use language, in print, in person, online.

Lucian Pye told us what society looks like in China without our norms of civility, without civil society, without generalized trust. The government become the arbiter of social norms, and that is dangerous. Civility, Social Capital and Civil Society: Three Powerful Concepts for Explaining Asia. To define the state as the only legitimate community, and thus deprive citizens of individual rights, comes close to advancing a fascist ideology. Protests are a necessary way for us to communicate with each other. We should use them, by all means. But extremities of language only divide. It is not the Christian way. It is not the King way.

In 1995, novelist Umberto Eco wrote a piece for the New York Review of Books called Ur-Fascism. Based on his youth in fascist Italy during World War II, he listed fourteen elements of fascism, regardless of political origins on the left or the right.

We can see Xi Jinping and today’s CCP in this list. The seven deadly sins in Document No. 9 are a warning to all Chinese. In the list we also see the Cultural Revolution and its destruction of statues, historical buildings, books, and maiming and murder of university teachers who were not sufficiently – well, let us say, woke. And now we can see the American progressive left – and alt-right – at every step.

This is an abbreviated list of Eco’s fourteen points, from Chris Hedges in American Fascists way back in 2006. Blogger Jason Kottke characterized each item. Think about current news stories as you consider each of the fourteen.

The cult of tradition. “As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all ….”
The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Appeal to social frustration. “…one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
The humiliation by the wealth and force of their enemies. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Eco quotes Franklin Roosevelt during a radio address on the “need for continuous liberal government”:

I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.

One can find every one of the ideas on Eco’s list – save perhaps number 12 – exemplified daily in news about the progressive left.

Chris Hedges used Eco’s list in an introduction to his book about the Christian right. Hedges – who describes himself as a socialist – shows the right wing oligarchic systems at work in Treason of the Ruling Class. To see the applicability of Eco’s list to the distinctly non-Christian left suggests the depth of my fears about democracy. Language extremism is a democratic sickness, and it can metastasize.

Reading forward

Civil discourse requires reading. Previously, we read Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), and Nickel and Dimed (Ehrenreich). Today we are told to read How to be an Antiracist (Kendi) or White Fragility (Diangelo). We should also be reading How Democracies Die (Levitsky and Ziblatt) and America: The Farewell Tour (Hedges) and the article by Amy Chua, Divided We Fall.

When our civility fails, our civil society fails, our democracy fails. Should that happen, we might as well be taking our marching orders from some other American autocrat in waiting, and it won’t matter if your sentiments are from the left or from the right. Civil discourse is democratic. It is the essence of democracy. Without it, we are headed for a fall, Trump or no Trump.

Lest We Forget June 4

In the social, economic, and cultural miasma that is the state of the world, we might let tomorrow slip by without notice.

A couple of old comments –

What Chinese cannot not talk about …

How to End June 4, et al.

Killer App

Trump, Xi, CCP, GOP is the title of a series of posts I ran about a year ago, pointing out some of the ways that Trump and Xi are alike, and CCP and GOP are alike.

We know that Mr. Xi and CCP wasted about six weeks at the early stages of the crisis. This no doubt cost lives in China, as people died at home without being tested.

We know that Trump has wasted more than six weeks, since he knew about the virus from early in January when China informed WHO. This waste of time has cost lives in the US, and is going to cost a lot more, as doctors and nurses work without a “safety net,” preventive measures are ignored by Trump, people die from overdose on hydroxychloroquine and GOP derides the pleadings of the scientists and doctors. The bungling will force the use of the “death panels” hypothesized by the GOP in Obamacare debates. In overwhelmed hospitals, doctors will be forced to triage virus patients. Public health and safety cost money, and Republicans say we can’t afford it.

So let’s help in the election. Let’s remind all Americans in our high-tech information age that the GOP has developed a killer app for the American people. Call it Trump. By June or July, Americans will have realized how true that is.

CCP and Mr. Xi’s Learning Disability

Two full months into the Covid-19 crisis, we see where Mr. Xi’s crackdown on communication and openness has taken him. He is himself in no danger, but CCP runs into a conceptual wall with free flow of information. That is a disability – a learning disability – for CCP and China now.

CCP has always shown itself to be flexible and adaptable. That has been a strength. But with a modern middle class society, and an arteriosclerotic governing structure, the crisis points out two things – limits of CCP tolerance for free flow of information in the Xi era and people’s anger, anxiety, and disgust at censorship of their heartfelt emotions.

Disability manifests in three ways –

There is no tolerance for officials who stray from CCP hierarchy – Officials who know better dare not speak out. Xi has reintroduced centralization of authority in Beijing, and consolidated power in himself. Historically, there is no truth until the senior leader announces it. But a crisis demands openness, receptiveness to new knowledge and local initiative in response.

Without local initiative, we see the failure of CCP under the most powerful leader since Mao to have operable crisis management plans to dull or halt the spread of the virus.

Even during the crisis, Hubei officials have been slow in coordinating transport and lodging for thousands of doctors and nurses from other provinces, come to assist in Hubei. No one could do logistics without an ok from Beijing.

China provide plenty of training for government officials and managers, but no independent decision-making experience. Isaiah Berlin was right in his essay On Political Judgment. Good political judgment is a skill – it is practical wisdom. Vetting and prior experience are important, but good judgment comes from exercising it, not suppressing it. Vetting in an authoritarian system prepares one only for authoritarian values.

A political response is considered far more important than effective disaster response. The Centers for Disease Control, the Chinese Red Cross, the local transportation and police departments have had any meritocracy in the ranks superceded by rank political decision-making at the top.

To be sure, there are plenty of Chinese party members and local government officials who are ready and able to learn. I know this because I taught scores of them – vice mayors, organization department leaders, political liaisons, police officials, urban planners and maritime law judges — over the last seventeen years, in university programs in Chicago and in China. Many now are long-term friends. I know, firsthand, that many CCP members, mid-levels and above, are smart, committed, and generous people. They can rightfully claim an elite status based on merit. They are now caught between “serving the people” and serving political masters.

Chinese friends and colleagues remind me how risky it is for local leaders to act until their own leader has acted – and that trail goes from a district health official all the way to Beijing. The (former) mayor of Wuhan said as much the other day – he had information, but he could only report to his leaders. He did not have the freedom to release what he knew.

There is no tolerance for open communication – You know about the death of Li Wenliang, the doctor who tried to warn others about the new virus, and was punished for doing so. A window of wechat openness has shut down, as Mr. Xi is starting to claim victory over the crisis. But CCP limits on open communication damage social trust. Suppression of information accelerates local and worldwide panic about the coronavirus. The flu in America kills tens of thousands each year; we don’t panic about flu. No one trusts the Chinese government – not Chinese, not foreign governments. When there is no trust, and information is in great demand, the market supplies rumor and anxiety and hoarding. This is Mr. Xi’s legacy, to promote this corrosive disability.

People’s anger is palpable – Truth dies in a rigid hierarchy with heavy censorship and punishment for those who speak out. “No one should comment unless they know all the facts” – this meme has permeated Chinese culture for decades. Since no one can ever know all the facts on any topic, this serves as a warning for people to say nothing. The wechat posts may only last an hour or two before deletion. But the followup posts spread like a virus online. “Trust the leader” has long been a political premise in China. Now, with online calls for officials to resign, or die, Mr. Xi has destroyed this meme.

What result for CCP and Mr. Xi

Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich Hayek and James Scott told us about the importance of local knowledge and experience. In a strict hierarchy, top leaders are truly masked from exposure to information. They are disabled.

The international brand of China and CCP is certainly damaged in this crisis. World leaders, perhaps even business leaders, will be less willing to show obeisance to Xi. The image of China as having a meritocratic and superior form of governance is certainly destroyed. The Chinese government response in this crisis will hasten the exit of foreign businesses and foreigners from China that began with the trade fiasco. Failure of government response in SARS in 2003, the ongoing swine fever crisis from 2018, and now Covid-19 are more than just a series of unfortunate events. They are the product of silence.

Xi will need to crack down harder on dissent. To facilitate delivery of food and monitor those with fevers, local governments have used the recently rejuvenated grid system, a fine-grained watching network of volunteers. This innovation was Mr. Xi’s idea for instilling patriotism and anxiety in the people. After the virus crisis subsides, it may become more of a standard means of observation and control. People watching is no leisurely pastime.

Xi recently claims to be in full control of the response to the crisis, which is a tricky position for him. He wants credit for success without responsibility for failure. We remember the old adage, applying all the way down the chain of command – authority without responsibility is tyranny; responsibility without authority is chaos.

In 2013, Chinese officials were reading deTocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution, by way of understanding how to avoid losing the autocracy. The French old regime tried to reform, but eventually reverted to a powerful central government. Mr. Xi must have missed the quote about the French kings when Louis XVIII restored the monarchy after Napoleon: “The Bourbons had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

Mr. Xi seems to find himself in a similar situation. After the disasters of the Mao years, even his own sent down experience, he is trying to take China to a 21st century version of the old regime. He can’t get there from where modern China begins.

Crash out (2)

update at November 13, 2019 to Crash out –

Crash out may not happen. We will find out in January. But the wounding of the British economy is happening as we type, and this piece in Foreign Policy – Chinese Firms Can’t Avoid Being Party Tools – is a good example of how and why Brexit is great for business … in China.

If you can’t get Foreign Policy, let me summarize. British Steel, an old-line British manufacturer, is being sold to Jingye Group, ostensibly a private steel-maker in China. This should save thousands of jobs in Britain and help towns in northern England devastated by privatization (!) and changes in the market for British Steel.

This deal is promoted as a private transaction, since Jingye is not owned directly by the government. But no matter.

As we have discussed many times, there is no such thing as a private company in China, particularly now that CCP has decided that all companies must have a CCP cell within top management and all – all – internal information, patents, contracts, revenues, orders, suppliers, employee information – must be available to the government upon request. See IP Theft in China – No More Worries. Once a business is beyond the mom-and-pop stage, there is no such thing as a private business as we understand the term.

From the article –

In China, the power of the CCP is an underlying reality in every sector—not a goal for the party so much as an assumption about the state of the world. The CCP simply must lead and thus, all measures that defend and further entrench the position of the party are permissible.

That has produced a state of affairs where no organization is beyond the orbit of the CCP.

The author reminds us of two illustrative events – the first hypothetical – thre absurdity, if it had occurred in China, of Apple defying the FBI in 2015 over encryption of an iPhone; the second, all too real – the Sanlu milk formula scandal in 2008, right before the Olympics in Beijing –

Take the Sanlu milk scandal, in which at least half a dozen babies died as a result of tainted formula, and tens of thousands became sick. The company’s board belatedly decided to issue a full product recall in the face of overwhelming evidence that its product was damaging infants. The board was supposedly legally autonomous, but its decision was overruled by the Shijiazhuang city government as political considerations took precedence over public health. Baidu, China’s internet giant, was reportedly part of the cover-up that followed, all while catastrophic damage to Chinese infants occurred. The scandal only came to light because of actors entirely outside China. Sanlu’s New Zealander partners at the dairy multinational Fonterra, after extensive deliberation, eventually reported concerns themselves to the central government via their country’s ambassador in Beijing.

What marks out the British Steel acquisition is not the pyrotechnics but the mundanity of the deal. Each time a CCP entity acquires a company in this way, the U.K. becomes slightly more entangled in the party-state’s networks. Such entrenchment makes pushback harder should a reckoning ever come. Other countries, such as Australia, are holding a national conversation about their involvement with the Chinese party-state. The U.K., distracted and divided by Brexit, is in no position to do so.

All you need is the background music to the movie Jaws.

original and prior update here.

Deer in the headlights

Aggressive moves by the government have sensitized the world to Chinese export of skullduggery, lying, theft, and threats to foreigners in their own country by Chinese organizations in business and government. Infiltration of politics and government in Australia and New Zealand has become a recurring story.

Unfortunately, such actions can bias some people against Chinese everywhere. So – what to make of Gladys Liu?

Gladys Liu was elected to the Australian Parliament this year from Chisholm, a district in which 70% of the voting population was born in China.

It has been discovered that she was listed as a council member of two chapters of the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association, a CCP United Front organization, from 2003 to 2015. She is also listed as an officer in a business organization which is also said to have United Front ties.

Ms. Liu cannot recall being a member of the organizations – in which she had membership for twelve years. The purpose of United Front is to influence overseas Chinese and foreign political and business organizations.

It is possible that mainland organizations could use her name without her knowledge. We have an incident earlier this year in which the former Prime Minister of New Zealand was quoted in China Daily without her knowledge – the interview was simply made up by the newspaper in China.

The Liu case follows that of Pierre Yang, another Australian MP forced to resign in late 2018 when it was discovered he was a member of two United Front organizations – the Northeast China Federation and Association of Greater China. And the case of Sam Dastyari, another MP forced to resign from a government position after disclosure of his possible collusion in stopping an Australian intelligence investigation of a Chinese businessman in Australia – a CCP member who had, incidentally, paid debts owed by Dastyari and made illegal campaign donations – $100,000 cash, in a plastic bag – to Dastyari’s political party.

For Ms. Liu, when questioned in a tv interview about her views on the South China Sea and on the character of Xi Jinping, her answers were less than forthcoming. The interview is remarkable for its length – over 17 minutes – and for the evasiveness and failures of memory in Ms. Liu’s answers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has expressed his support for Liu, who is a member of his party, and called criticism of Liu racially motivated.

More detail on the story is at the Conversation, Why Gladys Liu must answer to parliament about alleged links to the Chinese government.

What is one to make of all this? I certainly don’t know. That is the problem with being a bit paranoid – you don’t know if they are really after you or not. No doubt more will come out on this story.

Watch the interview. For a politician, even one from a place that is a bit of a backwater, she sounds remarkably inept, seeming to choose words quite carefully. It seems that people are watching her, and it is not just voters in Australia.

Gladys Liu Interview

China Reflections

Tag: CCP