Democracy can’t Buy People

I have no strong doubts that America will “only” be the second or third largest economy within two to four decades. In the meantime, while the trends will be suggesting that, many people elsewhere in the world, including Westerners who are focused on economic power alone, will start placing their political bets on China, too. In the views of many, a society where human rights only rank second or third and where democracy is deemed an unnecessary luxury will appear to be more efficient than a democratic model. Many will easily forget or push aside all evidence that democracy may be an essential human right, or an important practise to avoid untenable living conditions of the “ordinary people”, and therefore, in the end, a stablilizing rather than a destabilizing factor in the life of a country. Many people won’t see either that even under an undemocratic – i. e. inefficient – form of government, peoples’ livelihoods can still hardly drop in China. Quite naturally, the only likely direction is upwards anyway, at least for some time to come, as long as most Chinese citizens are living close to the bottom of their individual potentials.

Radio Canada International QSL, 1988

I got this feeling when I looked at the German press online yesterday. An article by Niall Ferguson, first published by Britain’s Financial Times (now only accessible for registered readers) on December 27, has since been published in German by the weekly Stern, the weekly Der Spiegel, the daily Die Welt, and probably a number of regional newspapers, too.

Niall Ferguson’s article doesn’t look wrong to me, but it can encourage short-sighted views of the future when it comes to the benefits that political concepts, rather than civilizations, can offer, or the drawbacks they can cause. The main factors which play a role in Ferguson’s article are money (American current account accounts, public expenditure and revenue) and military power (Afghanistan and Iraq). Even if democracy never becomes something most Chinese people would appreciate and fight for – and among many of them, national power may be viewed as a sufficient substitute for leading a full life individually -, China won’t be an attractive model for most other nations. A country or empire may be powerful – but it won’t be attractive elsewhere unless the citizens can live their lives to their full potentials.

That said, Taiwan before all other countries will be in a difficult position, unless a majority of its people actually like the idea of being “re-united” with China. Their window of opportunity to have their sovereignty internationally recognized – if the opportunity still exists at all -, has begun to shrink. Will the Taiwanese test their opportunities and risk to codify their sovereignty internationally? And how far will the rest of the world – most crucially America – be willing to support and help to defend them?

For those of us who live in democratic countries, China’s growing weight poses questions which would have seemed unimportant only a few years ago. It is unlikely that the average Chinese citizen will enjoy our standards of living in the foreseeable future. And besides, it is unlikely that our standards of living will remain as high as they are. We will need to save more, and to spend less – not only in America. There are ecological reasons for that, and economical reasons. Rises in productivity can’t be endless, as long as we are confined to this planet. Democracy stabilizes society when its promises are sustainable. But democracy may stop doing so if the promises made by its political class – in order to secure their election or reelection – become unsustainable. This question about sustainability has always been an issue, but it must become a central issue in our societies. Democracy isn’t here because Westerners were better people than the Chinese. And the matter of sustainability isn’t at all lofty. While China’s social insurance programs are facing huge challenges, they are only promising comparatively small benefits to the Chinese people. Our welfare systems are much less challenged than theirs, but the promises of our welfare systems to their clientele have become a great burden for every regular employee. If democracy shall stay, we must ask ourselves who we want to be, rather than what we want to own. Democracy can’t buy people. Democracy is either wanted, or it will go away.

Freedom is not a matter of where we live, and it is no matter of nationality or race. But it is, of course, a question about who governs us, which economic and political system we have, and into which direction we want to develop. As China is a totalitarian country, led by a “Communist” party which wants to stay in power (no matter if that will require Communist, Socialist or Confucian colors), its growing influence will require us to be vigorous competitors in terms of political concepts, and to some extent, in terms of power.

It doesn’t really matter how powerful the West’s position will be in the future. But there need to be democratic societies which are able to defend themselves, and which can convince the global public that people only live full rights in the light of human rights.

Once China is a country with a p0litical class that works to heal, rather than to cultivate the mortifications of its people, it can – and maybe should – lead the world. Otherwise, it shouldn’t get into that position.

____________

Related:
How to Corrupt an Open Society, Aug. 29, 2009
The American Era isn’t over, October 30, 2008

Shaolin Monastery: A Monk and his Merits

Zhengzhou / Dengfeng City (登封市), Henan Province — Shaolin Monastery won’t become a shareholder in a new tourism company which will seek to list in 2011 in either Hong Kong or on the Chinese mainland, Clifford Coonan of The Independent quotes Shi Yongxin (释永信), the monastery’s abbot. That said, abbot Shi has an undeniable sense for business: the temple’s list of commercial achievements would put any theme park to shame. The monastery’s management could and still can draw on the place’s traditional popularity with people at home and abroad, among them Kangxi (康熙帝), the Qing Dynasty’s second emperor (a Manchu and himself half-a-foreigner to China back then).

But it wasn’t popular with everyone. The monastery is certainly in need of solid funding, as it was destroyed or damaged many times during the imperial times, by warlords during the Republican era, then by the Japanese in 1941, and once again by the Red Guards.

Traditionalists distrust both the Wushu adaptation of Kung-fu by the PRC, and Shaolin’s commercialization. Both came with the post-Mao era, the policies of reform and opening. Allegedly, abbot Shi himself also reaped some fruits of the new times, by accepting a brand-new luxury car for his services to the local tourist industry.

It seems that as a party to the controversial plan, Shaolin Monastery would have entered as a shareholder via a company more or less of its own, the Songshan Shaolin Shaolin Cultural Scenic Area Co. Ltd. (少林景区的嵩山少林文化有限公司).

The company reportedly open for investment is the Songshan Shaolin Culture and Tourism Co. Ltd., co-established on December 27, 2009, by Songshan Shaolin Culture and Tourism Group Co., Ltd. (嵩山少林文化旅游集团有限公司), wholly owned by the Zhengfeng City Government, and China Travel International Investment Hong Kong Ltd. (香港中旅国际投资有限公司). The China Travel International Investment Hong Kong Ltd. itself is wholly owned by the China National Travel Service (HK) Group Corporation (中国港中旅集团公司), which again is a state-owned enterprise under the direction of the of the State Council’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (or 国务院国资委).

The China Travel International Investment Hong Kong Ltd. has a share of 49 per cent in Songshan Shaolin Culture and Tourism Group’s registered capital of 100 million Yuan RMB. And Songshan Shaolin Shaolin Cultural Scenic Area Co. Ltd. – i.e. Shaolin Monastery itself – doesn’t have a share in it, according to the disclaimers.

____________

Footnote/Disclaimer
The above is the background according to JR’s (possibly limeted) understanding of the Chinese articles linked to in this post.

____________

Related:
State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (国务院国有资产监督管理委员会) official website (in English)

No Global Governance as “Old Pain” lingers

“One World” – instead of “first, second, and third world” – used to be an unalienable piece of vocabulary in every do-gooder’s wordpool, at least from Western countries. German weekly Die Zeit, not really a bunch of treehuggers, but a paper usually giving responsible opinion and unhurried advice, is re-assessing the one-world concept in an online article. Yes, in London and Pittsburgh, the governments of the world did write new rules for the financial markets. In Geneva, they held another round of  negotiations about a new trade system. They will be back in Davos again soon, to perambulate all the global problems in their totality. They tried to save global climate in Copenhagen. But they are forgetting the financial crisis, the further we seem to leave it behind us. The more remote the memory, the smaller chances are to write global rules that would be globally effective.

And they failed in Copenhagen – “Every country has its own dirty taboo”. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schröder liked the idea of global governance, writes Die Zeit. In the end, they hoped, negotiated agreements and international organizations – NGO’s and corporations included – would lead to some kind of substitute for a desirable, but still unachievable global government. Liberals and left-leaning people in general seemed to support the concept.

But global emergency management has proved to be the maximum of what global governance could achieve together. There is no common concept of tomorrow’s world, writes Die Zeit. Both Europeans and Asians had gained a new self-confidence vis-à-vis America. Europe’s economic and social systems had shown a remarkable resistance against the effects of the economic crisis, and India and China put economic development before climate protection. “In India, you can’t see the climate problem eye-to-eye with Europe or the USA”, the paper quotes Shyam Saran, an advisor to India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh. On a global scale, Europe’s concept of political integration appears to be a  rather singular one.

Europe should get prepared for a world with a patchwork of powers which go it alone, like China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa, and clusters of global governance like ASEAN or the EU, Die Zeit quotes a study by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.

Die Zeit lists liberals and left-leaning people who actually start to like the idea of such a world – and of nationalists who had always been skeptical of any kind of global governance anyway.

The article’s author actually confuses China’s party and state chairman Hu Jintao with the country’s chief councillor Wen Jiabao. And in other ways, the author also still seems to underestimate the distance between East (arguably excluding several countries such as India, Vietnam, and possibly Japan and South Korea) on the one hand, and Western countries on the other. There isn’t really much reason to believe that a common view of the world will emerge any time soon. Jonathan Spence, in a Reith Lecture in Liverpool, broadcast by the BBC on June 10th 2009 June 10th 2008,  suggested that the issue of the Opium Wars

is now no longer a real one in any important sense and to harp on it now is not something the Chinese have to do. It’s something they can do if they wish to keep an old pain alive.

You can be pretty sure that China’s government does want to keep the old pain alive. “To remember the bitter past to cherish the happy present tense” is a tradition that either came into being or was revived by the CCP during the Chinese Communists’ early days in power – and it is still an efficient way to keep the Chinese public sufficiently afraid or distrustful of foreigners to disapprove of “foreign concepts”. Even otherwise highly open-minded Chinese people often cling to these “open accounts from history”.

At hindsight, at the end of the 20th century or at the end of the 21rst century’s first decade, one may probably say that it was naive to believe that world governance could be an option. You can’t do business with a totalitarian regime, unless you are ready to do business at its terms.

The Zeit article, as flawed as I believe it to be in one or another detail, caught me by surprise. I’m left-leaning myself, and until today, I have felt that my re-orientation towards regional solutions, rather than global ones, was something not too many others of my political color would share. But there seems to be a general trend towards regional action. Elinor Ostrom, an American economist, argues that people may actually commit to the common, rather than the individual use of resources, so long as they succeed in organizing the use and maintenance of such resources. A single system of rules for rather large international fishing zones was likely to fail, she suggests. Polycentric solutions – or regional ones – might work. Experimenting with different ideas in different places could amount to a competition of different ideas., which would either convince bystanders, or leave them unenthused.

And even steps deemed small by its actual practitioners might convince visitors from overseas.

____________

Related:
Mark Lynas: “How China wrecked the Copenhagen Deal”, December 24, 2009

JR´s Little (German) Press Review

The European Union and the United States must do more to support those countries which suffer most from climate change and added least to it, writes Dorothea Steiner in the Green Party´s gazette Schrägstrich of December 2009. Globally, the need for combatting global warming is estimated to be 100 billion Euros from 2020, she writes.

It is absurd to build walls and fences against “boat people” who have lost their livelihood to climate change, rather than supporting their countries in coping with the consequences of climate change for their societies. [...] More than “two degrees plus” hurt us all. Latest scientific calculations show that from now to 2050, we can only emit 750 billion tons more of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if we want to keep global warming at less than an additional two degrees. Any further rise is said to be neither technically nor financially controllable.

To learn from the Netherlands means to learn victory

In the long run, our carbon dioxide emissions needed to be reduced by 80 per cent, according to Steiner. The surprising bit: what Steiner, herself one of the two chairwomen of Lower Saxony´s Green Party, doesn´t demand much more than the older political parties, or the EU, or – in terms of money needed to be pledged to poor countries to cope with global warming – not all that far from Hilary Clinton´s qualified offer in Copenhagen. Ms Steiner does however remind her readers that the German government must tell the citizens in detail how they will need to help to achieve the stated goals.

Giesbert Wiltfang, a dykemaster in Krummhörn, Ostfriesland, is not so worried, reports the Ostfriesen-Zeitung (East Frisian Times) of Tuesday. Wiltfang refers to the Lower Saxony Water Management, Coastal Defence and Nature Conservation Agency´s data: the  agency´s tide gauge on Norderney has recorded no tidal rise in addition to the 25 centimeters per century which had long been known. Therefore, the sea level was certainly rising, but its rise wasn´t accelerating. Wiltfang doesn´t want to play the issue down, but carbon dioxide wasn´t simply poisonous: “After all, the flora needs carbon dioxide. One shouldn´t vilify it.” East Frisians had little to fear from rising temperatures: “After all, we are profiting from it – tourism, farming, lower heating costs. When lowlands (like the Netherlands or Ostfriesland) are threatened, “they must build dykes”.

Excerpts from Hermit’s Memoirs: “My first Chinese American Pizza”

Bremen – As we all know, China was subjected to a century-and-a-half of humiliation and cruelty at the hands of the Western imperialist forces. There are many small stories of Chinese individual fates which add up to the big historical picture, and Hermit, a well-known Taoist scientist and expert on Western imperialism and its everlasting snaky schemes, has some stories to share, concerning the more recent history. The following are excerpts from his memoirs (to be published in 2010), and in the following episode, he remembers his years of hardship as a student in Northern Germany, probably somewhere around 1990.

click here for the BIG picture

Unce Upon a Time in Bremen-Hemelingen: Hermit's Chinese American Pizza

Once upon a time in Bremen-Hemelingen, when I was a student of natural sciences in Germany, I opened a pizza parlor with some compatriot classmates. We called our pizza the Chinese American Pizza, but those stupid German passer-bys only looked at our big billboard and laughed in a silly way. When our market research team asked them why they were laughing, they said that American Pizza was just American Pizza, and that it was as simple as that.

We made the earnest representation to them that pizza was Italian before it was American, and that the Americans only stole it, and that it was silly to say that American pizza was hotter than Italian pizza or the original Chinese Pizza (invented in 2749 before 1949). It was only because of America’s so-called soft power that they, the Germans, found American pizza cooler than Italian or Chinese American pizza. But despite our patience and endurance, our representations didn’t really sink in. *)

So after a while, we started selling noodle soup and fried rice instead, which worked much better. For the time being, we had to live with that typically German bias. Their limits on our products were also typical examples for their slave mentality which became rampant after the Americans had won the war against them. As there are also some racist restrictions on Chinese students who want to run a business in Germany, we used a Germany-born Chinese dummy, and it worked alright.

But once the soft power of our motherland has grown to its due strength, we will come back to Bremen-Hemelingen and open a Chinese American Pizza parlor there.

Or a Chinese American Italian Pizza Parlor. Or a Chinese Italian Pizza Parlor, because America won’t count anymore. Or a Chinese Pizza Parlor. It will depend on our market research.

____________

*) The background behind their narrow-mindedness was of course obvious. If they had admitted that American Pizza is really Chinese American Pizza, they would have had to admit that Taipei is really Chinese Taipei, too! Germans are very logical people, but they are particularly “logical” (in a perverted way) when they are trying to maintain their anti-Chinese bias!

____________

Hermit’s Memoirs (Working Title: A Patriotic Student Travels the World) will be published by the Central Government Document Publishing House late next year. In accordance with the CCP’s Historical Resolution, the publishing will be done in accordance with The Historical Resolution, they won’t be published overseas, and these excerpts will appear exclusively on JR’s Beautiful Blog.

____________

Related:
Hermit’s Childhood and the Beautiful Stone, July 27, 2009

Xinhua Correspondents Learn from Mark Lynas*)

The following are excerpts from a Xinhua article of December 25

Wen’s whirlwind negotiations that afternoon [Dec 17] involved British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

The three industrialized countries, though ambitious in leading international cooperation on climate change issues, lacked understanding of developing countries and had therefore raised some unrealistic and unfair requests. [...]

At a banquet hosted by Danish Queen Margrethe II on Dec. 17 evening, Premier Wen was told that the United States would hold a small-scope meeting between several countries’ leaders after the dinner.

During his talk with a foreign leader, Premier Wen learnt China was on the list of the meeting’s participating countries while he himself was not invited and neither did the Chinese delegation receive a notice for the mysterious meeting. [...]

It was Premier Wen who played a key role in the last-minute attempt [Dec 18] to exchange ideas and reach consensus.

Wen believed that it was impossible to reach a legally binding agreement at that time, while no country was willing to be responsible for the failure if the conference yielded no result in the end.

“As long as there is hope of one percent, we should not give up and must instead make 100 percent of effort,” he told the Chinese delegation.

Wen decided to meet other leaders of the BASIC countries^*) again and make a final attempt.

At the same time, President Obama said he wanted to have a second meeting with Premier Wen. Wen agreed to meet him after the BASIC meeting ended.

The BASIC countries leaders agreed that the Copenhagen conference might fail and all-out efforts should be made to help achieve some results.

They agreed to reach consensus on key issues first and then negotiate with the United States and European countries on the basis of safeguarding interests for the developing countries and with the highest degree of flexibility.

Wen urged to keep contact and enhance cooperation with African countries, the Group of 77 and small island states.

At 6:50 p.m., when the BASIC leaders were reviewing their final common position, President Obama showed up, which was a bit of surprise for those in the room although the scheduled time for the Sino-American meeting was over.

Obama stopped with one foot outside the gate and asked Premier Wen with smiles if he should wait outside or join the discussion.

Premier Wen stood up and politely invited Obama to join them. Obama accepted and walked around the room to shake hands with all the people present, before taking a seat to the left of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and opposite to Wen.

The BASIC leaders knew very well the U.S. stance since they all met respectively before.[.....]

The [Copenhagen] achievement was a result of joint efforts by all the participating countries other than out of the will of one or two countries. [...]

Xinhua correspondents Zhao Cheng and Tian Fan, who accompanied and covered Premier Wen Jiabao’s tour to the Copenhagen climate talks last week.

Thanks to Matthew’s link on Found in China.

____________

Footnotes:
*) Mark Lynas, correspondent with The Guardian
**) BASIC countries: Brazil, South Africa, India, China

Related:
“A new agreement should contain the key Kyoto provisions”, The Deccan Herald, Dec 24, 2009

A Glimpse at China’s Social Security Programs

The National People’s Congress Standing Committee reviewed the State Council’s Report on the Promotion of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, measures for creating employment, and rural social insurance today, reports China National Radio (CNR). According to a report given by Li Yizhong (李毅中), minister of Industry and Information Technology, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that finished products and service value accounted for 60 per cent of China’s GDP, and for almost 80 per cent of jobs in cities and townships. The NPC Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee’s vice chairman Sun Wensheng (孙文盛) explained on the same meeting that generally, the level of social security in rural areas remained low, and some were merely in their experimental phase. The agricultural affairs committee suggested that appropriate adjustments to the arrangement of social insurance testing work and its acceleraton should be made, that a stable funding mechanism for rural social security should be established, and that in accordance with city and countryside overall planning, systems of  rural social security systems should be strengthened, and that this policy which benefitted the countryside should be effectively implemented.

According to China Radio International (CRI English), the State Council report says that 320 counties, or 11.6 percent of the country’s total, had been or would be approved to try a new rural social pension insurance system, which would benefit more than 15 million rural residents.

Social security in rural China usually means that the government will subsidize individuals’ insurance premiums. According to an article by Katie Lewis in the Canadian Medical Association Journal of June this year, such subsidies will amount to some 15 Yuan RMB per person, per year. This would provide 90% of China’s population with some sort of health insurance. But that will hardly put low-income families (by Chinese standards) into the position of buying social insurance. Despite central insurance programs, China seems to be a patchwork of different local  approaches and solutions to the problem. Depending on individual incomes and the treatment that is needed, social security is still looking unaffordable for many.

850 billion yuan will be allocated for medical and healthcare reforms over the next three years, according to a Brookings commentary of April this year. This would amount to some 283 billion Yuan for 2009, if equally allocated over the budgets of three years including 2009. This would be  4.28 per cent of China’s projected 6.623 trillion total national revenue of 2009, or 3.74 per cent of its 7.6 trillion budget (including a 950 billion deficit) as projected in March this year.

Mark Lynas: “How China wrecked the Copenhagen Deal”

Mark Lynas, correspondent with the Guardian, gives his account on the defining hours of the Copenhagen Accord on December 18th. According to his report, China only agreed to the Accord on the condition that the OECD countries would not commit to any binding target, not even unilaterally. If true, the rift wasn’t really between developed and developing countries - while India at times backed China’s positions, the Maldives certainly didn’t, and “Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position”. If true, this was apparently a point where the Four-Non-Negotiables coaliton dissociate, but that didn’t keep the Chinese delegation from seeing their policy through.

Lynas was attached to one of the delegations in the room.

Hat tip to The View from Taiwan’s Daily Links.

____________

Related:

Two Reactions to Mark Lynas’ Account, The Atlantic, Dec 23, 2009
“Developed Countries’ Copenhagen Positions Inconsistent…”, Dec 23, 2009