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.

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

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.

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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”.

Dumpstuff ‘09

Before the are leaving this decade (the 2000s, that’s the timespan from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2009), let’s do away with some unnecessary things here in Germany.

• the German-Chinese “Dialog on the Rule of Law” (Rechtsstaatsdialog), initiated by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and then Chinese chief state councillor Zhu Rongji, in 1999. It’s a waste of money and time.
• some aspects of our country’s family policies, especially the litter bonuses. We don’t need to encourage parents to have more children. We “only” need to take better care of the kids who are already here. That may even lead to higher birthrates. And if not, let’s think hard: won’t low birthrates offer opportunities, too?
• the Non-Smokers’ Protecton Law (Nichtraucherschutzgesetz). Smokers may stink up the air, but conferences which turned their venues into heavy industrial zones usually achieved more, than all the treehugger events of these days. We may live shorter, but we may also accomplish more in our lives.

Further suggestions from home and abroad are welcome, but hurry up. This decade is rapidly drawing to a close. And before anyone comes up with dumb ideas, lemme tell you that this beautiful blog is here to stay.

Teng Biao: Invalid Use of Testimony

Teng Biao (滕彪), a lawyer and one of the founders of the Open Constitution Initiative, has made a statement on a testimony to the Beijing Public Security Bureau  which was apparently used as “evidence” in the trial of Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), which ended on Friday with an eleven-year jail sentence. In his statement of Friday, he points out that he didn’t even mention Liu Xiaobo in his testimony to the PSB, and that he hadn’t been questioned and cross-examined as a witness in court for verification, as required by article 47 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Under the Jacaranda has published Teng Biao’s statement in Chinese, and an English translation. His statement also refers to use which had been made in Hu Jia’s verdict.

Hu Jia: Two Years in Prison

Hu Jia (胡佳) will have served two years of his prison sentence on December 27. When his wife Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕) told a Vietnamese friend some time ago that Hu would probably be released on June 26, 2011, her friend sincerely congratulated her. Her enthusiasm sort of grabbed Zeng, and encouraged her to be patient, Zeng wrote on her blog on Tuesday.

She also writes that neither Hu nor she have illusions about Hu’s health (hepathitis HB5), which hadn’t shown much improvement, and that what she hopes for is that Hu feels peace of mind.

Zeng Jinyan visited Hu Jia in prison yesterday, with Baobao (宝宝, her and Hu’s daughter).

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Related:
Posts tagged Hu Jia
Hu Jia, China’s Enemy Within, The Independent, April 4, 2008

Mr Premier, are you ready?

climate: maybe it doesn't matter after all

U.S. president Barack Obama ran into a Chinese Wall of resistance and and delaying tactics, writes Austria’s online service OE24. The president had to get into China’s chief state councillor’s conference room after Wen Jiabao was reportedly overdue for a meeting, calling (in an ice-cold voice): “Mr. Premier, are you ready to see me? Are you ready?”

Plus “It’s up to you”, according to OE24. According to Germany’s biggest tabloid Bild he sort of joined Wen and India’s, South Africa’s and Brazil’s heads of government or state after Wen had stood him up at an appointment earlier, and only sent a lower-ranking official to talk with the American president.

Many Chinese observers may like the show – if this is really how it went. But Obama apparently returned to Washington pretty much at ease: He had shown good will, without committing himself. And the electorate at home is much more interested in health reform and the economy, than in global warming, writes Der Spiegel. Many Americans don’t believe in a link between global warming and carbon-dioxide emissions anyway.

Pretty much the same as in China, probably.

Net Nanny: Internet needs Rule

Comrades and Underlings,

Net Nanny: An absolute NO on China Daily

when children approach their parents, or when the tributaries of the world approach their Middle Kingdom Emperor (or his viceroy overseas), they should ketou, or at least they should keep their hands clasped.

By no means should they spread their hands or fingers – this looks very vulgar. And if such things really happen, at least they shouldn’t be shown on the internet, because it only helps to spread the vulgar behavior. Photos showing barbarian manners like the one underneath my complimentary close should be completely out.

We must think of the internet as a transportation net, also in terms of manners. We need regulations to rule  it.

Thank you for your attention.
Net Nanny

a vulgar breach of protocol

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Related:

“Real Action”, China Daily, Dec 19, 2009