Press and Blog Review: Perfectly Logical Chains

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1. Li Ruihuan: Modest and Scrupulous about every Detail

Main Link: “Just talking won’t do, we need to argue” – Li Ruihuan’s “Views and Statements” / 光讲事儿不行，得讲理儿” ——李瑞环的“看法”与“说法”

In spring 2013, permanent member of the 14th and 15th politburo standing committee and former Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference chairman Li Ruihuan has published his fourth book (four volumes) after retirement, “Views and Statements”, writes an intern at Nanfang Weekly who reviews the book. Renmin University (People’s University) president Chen Yulu is quoted as referring to it as authentic history and an encyclopedia of party and government work. The reviewer at Nanfang finds a perfectly logical chain in the opus, which begins with reform and opening up, and carries on with party construction (or building the party), the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, ethnic religion, propaganda and art, ideological and political work, urban construction, etc. Li had been scrupulous about every detail, he had issued 108 issues to deal with, and all had gone through the editorial team’s discussion. Obviously, the book also contains speeches.

Li Ruihuan’s approach had been democratic, Renmin University Publishing chief editor He Yaomin is quoted as saying – Li Ruihuan liked to let the editors discuss, looking on and listening. “He also spoke his views, but in case that he didn’t convince us, he’d let us return home and think things over again.”

Given the encyclopedic nature of the work, party secretary at the Central Institute of Socialism, Ye Xiaowen, was also part of the team of editors. Not missing are remarks about Li’s modest lifestyle, and his awareness of the importance of self-criticism, so as to be aware of problems early on.

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2. Village Teacher: It’s Now or Never

Main Link: One Explosion after another, and Obama still hasn’t pissed off? / 美国爆炸连连，奥巴马还不滚蛋吗？

A “Farmer Teacher from the Village” (农村老师) also made a statement this week, with a focus on international politics. Chances are that there was no editorial team around to assist him:

These are some of America’s most unlucky days, and this American president is good for nothing. Not only is he black, intelligent and self-confident, but also unable, and all he can do is to show off his eloquence. [...] This decade hasn’t been good for America in military, diplomatic and political terms, and the main reason is the election of a black president. Facts have shown that a black sheep cannot get along well with a bunch of bold lions. One could say that America has gradually become the most unsafe country, with one explosion after another, making Americans question Obama’s ability to govern. Indeed, as the Korean peninsula shows, Obama is one of the most incompetent presidents in American history, which is America’s nightmare, but China’s good luck. From the American president’s incompetence, greater benefits can be drawn, and China needs to do this. It needs to dispatch troops to fishing islands [this apparently refers to the Senkaku Islands in the first place], to make sense [of the fact that] American president Obama just relies on tricks. There is no need to fear this kind of president, but if this president is good for nothing, can we think of ourselves as stronger than him? We need no re-play of the Sino-Japanese War [of 1894/1895], I don’t want to see China sign another Shimonoseki Treaty in my lifetime, because that would be painful. Of course, big countries like China and America won’t simply go to war, but America’s decline is inevitable. They chose a useless president and gradually enter their own era of decline. If China doesn’t seize this opportunity to cripple America now, there will hardly be opportunities later. If in future, America becomes strong again, this won’t be good for China. I said early on that that black devil is useless, that his election is China’s opportunity, but there won’t be too many of such opportunities, [... - unable to translate this - JR.]
Therefore, with one explosion after another in America, why doesn’t Obama piss off? If he doesn’t piss off, the damage will only be America’s, and America will be more and more unluky, and China’s opportunities will get ever greater, but if the opportunity isn’t being seized, there will be a rude awakening.

Only one reader cared to comment so far, and offers some cooling analysis: A president can’t change America’s current situation in a moment.

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Related

» Make America collapse, Feb 14, 2010
» Stock Taking, Feb 8, 2013

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Obituary: Stéphane Hessel, 1917 – 2013

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Main Links:

» Stéphane Hessel, gentleman indigné, Le Monde, December 23, 2011 / February 27, 2013
» 《愤怒吧！》： 93岁愤怒战士一夜爆红, Beijing News, April 11, 2011

Links within blockquotes added during translation.

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Hessel was born German, grew up French, and became a French citizen in 1939. He took part in the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and never stopped promoting its values, Le Monde wrote in December 2011 (article updated on February 27, 2013).

He had joined the résistance in 1941. He had been arrested, tortured, and survived the Buchenwald concentration camp.

And his hope was contagious (Le gentleman indigné, dont l’espérance est contagieuse).

He was also a diplomat. Compromise was hardly something foreign to him. But to react to wrongs seems to have been second nature to him.

On October 20, 2010, on his 93rd birthday, his booklet “Indignez-vous”, Time for Outrage, was published in France, with more than two million copies sold in France, and almost two million more in the rest of the world. He published another edition soon after, describing his admiration for Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Indignez-vous was followed by “Engagez-vous”, Get involved, came next.

Counter-espionage was Hessel’s job from 1941, when he followed General de Gaulle to London, a correspondent for Beijing News wrote  from Paris, in April 2011, six months after “Time for Anger” had been published:

In March 1944, he was assigned to organize the resistance network in Paris, and to gather intelligence for the allied troops as they prepared to enter continental Europe. Named “Ge Like”, he secretly entered France, but was soon betrayed and then arrested by the Gestapo. Neither punishment nor lure by promises led to the results [his captors] desired, and Hessel was then transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on August 8, 1944, only days before the liberaton of Paris. He later wrote a detailed description of these experiences, in “Danse avec le Siècle”.
1941年，他为追随戴高乐将军来到伦敦，从事反间谍的侦查行动。1944年3月，他受命组织联络巴黎的抵抗网络、为盟军登陆搜集情报，化名“格里科”秘密潜入法国。由于叛徒的出卖，他很快便被盖世太保所捕获。刑逼利诱毫无收获后，8月8日埃塞尔被押解往德国布痕瓦尔德集中营，而这仅仅就是巴黎解放的前几天。之后他在自传《世纪之舞》中对这段经历有着详细的记述。

His narrow escape from death – by obtaining the identity of a fellow inmate who had died of typhus – inspired him.

Just as Hessel said: “this kind of leap from death, back into life makes him the more determined to enter the enthusiasm of global politics” (正如埃塞尔自己所说的：“这种死里逃生经历更加坚定了他介入世界的政治热情”).

The article’s description of Hessel’s post-war life included his co-authorship of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

To help this document of tremendous historic value obtain acknowledgment as [a set of] universal values, Hessel and his colleagues went to great pains to make it suitable for East and West, for ideologies, and the different situations of countries and nations.
为了使这份人类历史上极为重要的文件获得公认的普世价值，为了能使其适应东西方、意识形态、国家种族不同的状况，达成一致的认同，埃塞尔和他的同事们费尽心机，奔走疾呼。

There was nothing new in the novel, “Time to get Angry”, and it provided neither a logical analysis of the problems faced by humankind today, nor practical methodology for dealing with them, the Beijing News author quoted Hessel, in 2011, and added that its fascination was to be found in the emotions it stirred, and the lesson it taught: not to allow evil to repeat itself.

An initially small, unobtrusive book, written without much preparation, of only some thirty pages including footnotes and a postscript, but inevitable content, unexpectedly led to this kind of reading, discussion and dissemination. (Frequently, customers went to a bookstore and bought ten or more copies for their families and friends). While many publishers call this a coincidence, many others explore the reasons for the book’s strong sales. There is this global upheaval, and worried people are seeking some relief. This small book is just right in its simplicity, legibility, its sentiment and excitement, and its catchiness. [...] And secondly, the author’s personal charm adds an envelope of respectability and trustworthiness to this small book. It seems that only with the historical experience and the energetic and passionate involvement of this 93-year-old warrior, a man may be qualified to appeal to public enthusiasm.
一本事先毫不张扬，也无甚精心企划的小书；一本加上注释和后记才三十多页，内容无可避免的略显单薄的小册子，竟然引发了如此的阅读、讨论和传播（经常有顾客到书店一买十多册赠与身边的家人朋友）。在大多出版界人士大呼偶然的同时，也有不少人研究它畅销的必然所致。首先，世界局势的动荡，对未来的担忧让人们急需找到一个释放内心情绪的出口，而这本小册子正好简单、易懂，情绪激昂、朗朗上口。 [...] 其次，作者的个人魅力无疑为这本小书笼罩了一层令人尊敬和信赖的气场。似乎，唯有这种经历过历史，并以自身全部的精力和激情投入其中的长者（93岁的老战士）才有资格以这种语气号召起大众的热情。

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Related

Hessel dies at 95, The Guardian, Febr 27, 2013
A Resistance Hero Fires up the French, NYT, March 9, 2011

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From the Bottom of a Dead Volcano? Public Vehicle Petitions and Open Letters

The following article was published on China Value last Friday, nearly a week ago. It seems to date back to about 2008, but I can’t tell for sure. And maybe the reason for (re)publishing it now can be found in the current news.

An age of open letters has been going on in China ever since, say, 1895, suggests Fu Guoyong (傅国涌), a mainland Chinese journalist. Naval defeat against Japan, then considered a small neighbor, led to the Gongche Shangshu movement (公车上书, literally: public-vehicle movement), a movement that never fully achieved, and at the end of which Kang Youwei began to publish his thoughts about modernization. (Kang actually led the movement.)

Entering the Republic of China, from Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei and a total of sixteen renowned intellectuals who wrote “Our Political Position” in 1922 to the 1940s, intellectuals wrote one joint declaration or manifesto after another – the open letters of their times. The traditional open letter was reborn in the late 1980s, including authors like Shi Yafeng, Xu Liangying, Mr. Liu Liao, and others from the quarters of science, and including Mr. Wu Zuguang and other gentlemen from the circles of literature and art, writing open letters expressing their political views and conscience. This reached its peak in the peaceful protest movement of 1989 – a great number of open letters emerged, more than people could usually read, including Qian Zhongshu, Ba Jin and other signatories.

And after 1989, open letters were almost the only way to express views, writes Fu. A number of open letters, among them one in 1995, written by Xu Liangying, and one by a medical doctor, Jiang Yanyong, to the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 2004 – the latter with a request to re-evaluate 1989 – were relatively influential.
“Open letters in large numbers bear testimony to the vitality of a nation, proving that an old nation hasn’t died”, writes Fu. “Under a dead volcano, there are still unusual voices.”

But open letters also showed that society was lacking effective legal channels and protection by the law, which led to the need to making appeals by such open letters: “a huge tragedy”. Simply said, open letters were one-way, with one side speaking, and the other mostly brushing the appeal aside, acting as if it hadn’t heard the voices, not being used to listen to peaceful voices. Only thunderbolts would shed light. A move from the era of open letters to dialog was contemporary China’s major issue which couldn’t be easily ignored or delayed anymore.

In my view, the “game” is about stating prices and making concessions, by mutually transparent and fair principles, each side giving in a step at a time, with standoffs, compromises, inching forward, giving in and backtracking, and if one sight is dominant and belongs to the side of the exclusively powerful interest groups, and the other interest group is weak, there is no great likelihood for a fair game, and the weaker are mostly at the mercy of the stronger.

The game, concludes Fu, needs clear rules. And it doesn’t work when the stronger side alone determines the rules.
Dialog had once been a hot word, in the CCP’s 13th national congress political report. But it had long since become absent. But dialog had been useful in the more recent past, in critical moments of history. Negotiators for Yuan Shikai‘s side and Sun Yat-sen‘s negotiators had their “South-North Peace talks” and came to the conclusion to send the Qing Dynasty into the museum of history. Another dialog approach, although not successful, was tried to overcome the Chinese north-south divide in 1919, to address the issue of warlordism. 1945 brought the Chongqing talks, and in 1946, a consultative conference came together in Chongqing, too.

Fu also addresses “politicization”. This is a term that is often used in an accusing fashion by the powers that be, against those they think of as their “challengers”. Fu doesn’t say that, either because he doesn’t actually address this context, or because it should go without saying among his readers.
The Chongqing talks and conference were “politicized”, he writes, and successfully so, in a peaceful, rational way, by solving problems and contradictions through dialog, with all sides representing their interests and negotiating them. It was China’s pain that dialog was destroyed by violence, with the complexities of Chinese history behind the violence. But more than once, Chinese people had chosen dialog and negotiations between different interest groups over violence.

I’m taking a short break from Fu’s article here.

The official term, concerning the 13th national congress of the CCP, was – probably – social consultation and dialog (社会协商对话, that’s how Fu puts it), or social system of consultation and dialogue / system of social consultation and dialog (社会协商对话制度). You have to turn to books rather than to websites to find clues about those times.

Back to Fu.

But the weaker weren’t completely bereft of dialog opportunities,he writes. There were (smaller) opportunities, and there was always room for reflection – even though the stronger side had decided to keep its powers, at the cost of dialog. “At the time”, civil representatives’ anger, overboard emotions, childishness, naivete and immaturity had shown that there was still a long way to go to the “era of dialog”, and that the tribulations for the Chinese nation hadn’t been over.

But “no matter how long it will take, I believe that the ‘era of open letters’ will be replaced by an ‘era of dialog’ in the end”, writes Fu. Discussing this transition was an urgent task.

The article also refers to Vaclav Havel‘s and other Czech intellectuals’ Civic Forum and its Eight Dialog Principles (as described/translated by Fu):

- the goal of dialog is to seek truth, not to compete
- no personal attacks
- stick to the topic
- use evidence when debating
- do not insist on your errors
- mind the difference between dialog and only allowing yourself to talk
- keep records of dialog
- do your best to understand the other side.

Fu had read the “code” about ten years before writing his article, and it had been a “new, rocking” experience, in its simplicity and practicality. To learn dialog, he believes, means parting from just talking to oneself, from a winner-take-all mentality, oppression of the weak, lame arguments camouflaged by strong words, but also from a mentality of hate, hostility, an absolutized feeling of superiority, and a place for people from different social classes, with different positions and values to talk with each other.

The main field of China Value, the website who published this article last Friday, isn’t politics, but finance. It addresses professionals. But according to their “about” page, they participate in shaping legislation, and cooperates with Chinese Central Television (CCTV).

Fu Yongguo, born in 1967, writes for a number of literary magazines, and for Southern Weekly (南方周末, aka Southern Weekend).

The rich and the talentend are turning their back on China’s political system as long as there was no legal certainty, Johnny Erling, correspondent for German daily Die Welt in China, (indirectly) quotes CASS scientists. Systematic reform, a reliable social-security network and emancipated participation by the people were needed. For the first time, writes Erling, the CASS blue book mentions China’s brain drain, in the context of China’s economic slowdown. More than 150,000 rich or well-qualified Chinese nationals had acquired resident permits abroad, in 2011.
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Related

» Scholars petition CCP, South China Morning Post, Dec 27, 2012
» Between Negotiation and Affirmation, March 25, 2012
» Scudding Clouds of Modern Thought, October 18, 2011

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Blogging Break: Plus ca change, plus c’est Deng (or Franco)

If KT takes a break from blogging, why shouldn’t JR? I’m thinking of a duration of ten days or so – but if Jiang Zemin leaves this world, or Deng Xiaoping rises from the dead, or whatever kind of colossal thing occurs, JR will be here to make sense of it for you.

foggy day

A look back on the CCP’s 18th national congress: Felix Lee, a correspondent for Germany’s green-leaning daily taz, runs a China blog at a German weekly, Die Zeit. He’s usually very positive about, as we like to say, “China” – certainly from my perspective, but such optimism might sometimes give way to Welsh rats. His latest blogpost refers to Zhang Dejiang and Liu Yunshan as the new pigheads in the politbureau (Die neuen Betonköpfe im Politbüro).

And expectations towards reformers like Wang Yang had been too high. After all, even Wen Jiabao never had his way with more inner-party democracy, during his ten-year tenure.

Well, in fact, Wen Jiabao had his way with very few things (and I’m not sure that I can remember any, now).

I don’t know where many China watchers took their optimism from. The party had documented its schedule very clearly, in fall 2011. Now, I’m not saying that I could have predicted the composition of the 18th politbureau – but whoever would have entered the standing committee, would have had to stick to the line. If Wang Yang had entered the standing committee, it would have meant that he isn’t that reformist after all, or that he’s prepared to become less so.

But of course, Felix Lee doesn’t consider China’s future hopeless. After all, society is changing bigtime, he writes. Three controversial industrial projects had been thwarted by citizens this year, he writes.

Then again, you can discuss industrial plants with anyone, anyway – even with Zhang Dejiang. To object to them is no principal contradiction (主要矛盾).

The party published their line, Hu Jintao re-iterated it a few weeks later, but most correspondents seemed to take that lightly, or as some funny little theater. As if the document had been written (and agreed to by outgoing and incoming dictators) for fun, or out of boredom.

Hint (and, granted, no imperative logical connection): a year earlier, in September 2010, Wen Jiabao had made his last serious foray on those pig-headed fortifications: he talked to journalists from Hong Kong and Macau, about the need for political reforms. That was in New York, apparently. People’s Daily disagreed. Wen insisted. Half a year, there was the cultural decision.

Same with other concepts, such as social management. There weren’t a few Zhou Yongkang‘s sitting around a table and picking that stuff out of their nose.

Either, too many correspondents in China have no sense for political trends, or they don’t report their real assessment, because they wouldn’t sell. Or maybe something else I can’t imagine right now.

Either way: “staff issues” within the CCP are, in my view, hopelessly overemphasized in our press. Yes, it’s a dictatorship. Yes, it’s a totalitarian system. But it’s a collective oligarchy leadership – pragmatic, maybe, but not unideological.

What interested me during the run-up to the 18th national congress was how the system tried to shape their citizens’ perception of their (local) realities. Some of the derivatives from the State Information Office’s publicity work prescriptions were – just my impression – written somewhat tongue-in-cheek by cheesed-off journalists who had to work with those guidelines. But that, too, shapes reality. It shows the small man who he is, and who they are. Dictators aren’t out with baseball bats to hit you every day. Quite obviously, harmony is cheaper.

bright day

That’s the year that was, I suppose, in terms of China and politics. The American fiscal cliff is moving to the fore, and so is the Euro crisis. Talking about baseball bats, democratic governments seem to know how to use them, too. Henryk M. Broder, not a great friend of demonstrators, I believe, but no great friend of the European project either, contrasted two European “events” on Thursday: Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for justice, basic rights and citizenship, celebrated “a historic day” for womens’ rights in listed companies: by 2020, 40 percent of board seats would have to be for women. Patrician daughters will be delighted to hear that, of course. But some of Ms Reding’s smaller sisters were protesting in Madrid, about very different worries.

Clubbing is so much fun, isn’t it? Maybe Deng is already back from the dead. And if you see Francisco Franco dining and sniffing snow in some hip Madrid institution, don’t be too surprised. Chances are that he’s always been with us.

Obama gets Second Term: a Sigh of Relief

I was hopeful that Barack Obama would get re-elected – but I didn’t expect that the results would be announced that early. And obviously, who could have told for sure?

Many people in my family, here in Germany, had to leave school after the few years of education that were mandatory. One of them was my grandaunt who lived next door to us. When we were kids, she often told us – her grandnewphes and -nieces, and her grandchildren – about how she cried when, as they say, “life began”, with the usual small, ill-paid jobs and then marrying and raising kids who would then enter the same life after a few years. We laughed at the time, and she laughed with us (or at us). We found the idea ridiculous that we would cry on our last day in school. But that was in the 1970s, and times had changed. A window of opportunities had opened to “small people”. Access to education was no longer a prerogative of people who could afford it. Our grandaunt’s experience had been very different from ours.

Germany is very different from the U.S.. I’m not trying to judge now if there have almost been more opportunities for everyone in America. What I do know that what happens in America is still quite formative for Europe, too. That’s, too, why I’m glad that Obama’s presidency is going to continue.

I believe that America has done herself a favor, and that she’s done many of us outside America a favor, too, last night. When things looked rather bleak, i. e. before the Democrats’ convention and Bill Clinton‘s great speech, this was about how I felt about the presidential elections.

As an outsider to American politics, but one who hopes that America will remain a leading nation, I hope for a number of reasons that Obama will get a second term. It may – but that’s probably an open question, given that this is a very different Republican-dominated House of Representatives from the one during the later Clinton years – also lead to an end of the current permanent Republican “election campaign” (which started more than two years ago, and which has never ended).

The point is this: Obama acknowledges that America needs rebuilding, and addresses this issue, however flawed at times. The Republican ticket suggests that Americans just need to be “themselves”, and God, natural law, or whatever else, will add its decisive blessings. Mullahs rule more brutally than Republicans – but Republicans haven’t ruled more rationally than Mullahs, after Y2K.

Obama will continue to face a Congress with a number of outrightly hostile members. But that would have been true for Mitt Romney, too. He would either have turned out to be a relative moderate and would have faced similar gridlock tendencies, or he would have complied with the sectarians, which would have been a nightmare. The truth is, Romney gave nobody a chance to tell which kind of president he would be.

That left a lot of room for Obama – “the devil we know”, as the Economist put it last weekend, in a lacklustre endorsement for the incumbent. When a paper which actually dislikes Obama for “not loving capitalism” needs to endorse him anyway, this should be food for thought for the Republicans.

While being happy with the outcome of the presidential elections, I seem to understand that voters need real, credible alternatives to a status quo. That’s what elections are about. If large swathes of the GOP continues to ignore that, another “market-oriented” party – some kind of Bloomberg party, maybe – will replace them.

Next stop (unless it’s ignored): the fiscal cliff. Maybe we’ll see a few weeks of sanity in Washington, D.C.. But at any rate, there will be a safe pair of hands in the White House.

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Related

» Obama wins re-election, BBC, Nov 7, 2012

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BBC: Taking Back their Gift to the World

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For many millions of people around the world the World Service is the voice of Britain overseas. The former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described the World Service as quite possibly “Britain’s greatest gift to the World in the 20th Century”, and I see as Foreign Secretary the immense contribution it makes to how Britain is perceived internationally.  For 166 million listeners and viewers each week across the globe the World Service is a source of reliable and impartial information that transcends borders, regions and cultures.
[...]
one of our country’s most important sources of soft power, with an unparalleled ability to reach out across the globe.

William Hague, British Foreign Secretary, celebrating the BBC World Service‘s 80th birthday early this year.

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Goodbye, External Services, …

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By making these changes, we are achieving the savings required whilst crucially, ensuring our audiences continue to receive the best programming.

Peter Horrocks, BBC Global News director, quoted by the BBC in October this year.

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» … hello, Radio Scotland! Are you still there?

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The English short wave service will continue to all regions, but will be reduced from between seven and 19 hours per day, depending on region, to six hours per day across all regions.
[Arab and Middle-East English service cuts]
We estimate that the changes being announced today may result in a loss of up to 2.5 million listeners, an overall loss of 1% of the total Global News audience across all platforms. Any loss of audience is of course regrettable but we are not in a financial position to continue to distribute our services on all frequencies.

Peter Horrocks, in an e-mail to staff on October 25 this year.

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Related

» Stuff of the Past, April 2, 2011
» BBC drops Languages, Jan 28, 2011
» We all now speak English well enough, BBC, March 27, 1999
» Bruno Adler, Wikipedia, acc. 20121104

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For whichever Presidential candidate I’d vote, I wouldn’t vote for a Tea Partisan Congressional candidate

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A not so disguised “endorsement” for President Obama

In 1994, Germany’s incumbent federal chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was in trouble. General elections loomed, and his challenger, a social democrat, was leading in the polls. East Germany would be blooming, Kohl had promised four years earlier, in the 1990 general elections, the first after German reunification. But in 1994, the five new federal states were anything but blooming. There was some disappointment in West Germany, because it had become clear that the road to a blooming East Germany would be long – and costly for West Germans not least. The East Germans were probably even more disappointed – the 1990 elections had been their first free elections on the national level ever since the Weimar Republic, and these first four years with a all-German parliament had taught them a number of disillusioning lessons about election promises.

On October 16, 1994, the Kohl coalition government won the Bundestag elections by a narrow margin anyway. Compared with the 1990 elections,chancellor Kohl’s christian democrats lost 2.2 percentage points in former West Germany, and 3.3 percentage points in former East Germany. But this still proved a stable majority for another four years.

Many observers had considered Kohl politically dead in 1989. He had been chancellor for seven years by then, and change was in the air. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall. The way Kohl handled the aftermath, especially reunification talks with America, the USSR, Britain, and France, brought him back. The surprise was that in 1994, after he had been in office for twelve years, people, even if fed up with him, gave him another chance.

Contrary to Americans (and French people, probably), Germans are (sometimes shockingly, maybe) patient when it comes to politics. Four years are considered a short time for things to grow in my country. Many Germans probably agree that to cap a political chief executive’s maximum time in office to eight years would make a lot of sense – but to change the direction of politics every four or eight years wouldn’t necessarily make as much sense – unless a government turns out to be quite a disaster. Even as the going got tough under Helmut Schmidt, in 1976, his social-democrat/liberal coalition was confirmed, even if only narrowly. In 1980, it was confirmed with an even bigger majority – and times had become still tougher in the meantime. Unemployment had risen to unprecedented levels in post-war Germany, but justifiably or not, Germans gave Schmidt’s government credit for what they saw as a still better situation than the one found elsewhere in Europe. In the end, it wasn’t the voters who finished his government – it was the social democrats’ coalition partner, in 1982. Kohl replaced Schmidt, and remained in office for sixteen years, before a majority of German voters decided that his government had become useless. When the shift came, it came swiftly, and with a clear majority for the opposition parties.

In its September 1 issue, The Economist – no friend of “big government” – graded Barack Obama as follows:

Subject	Grade
crisis response	A-
stimulus	B+
housing	C+
labor market	C+
trade	B-
industrial policy	F
regulation	D+
debt/fiscal policy	incomplete

More details here »

The Obama administration’s marks in the field of industrial policy, according to the Economist’s report card, indicate maximum failure. In short, saving Detroit alone isn’t an industrial policy after all. It’s just crisis response. But then, I can’t even imagine Mitt Romney‘s industrial policy. “Buying American” isn’t one, either. However, taking cases to the WTO is still better than branding China, or any other global manufacturing competitor, a “currency manipulator” at a time when it makes less sense than any time previously in more than a decade.

Maybe Obama’s core problem is the messiah-like status he had reached in 2008 – naturally, he wouldn’t live up to that image. Another problem may be that he hasn’t sufficiently “reached out” to the Republicans when it came to Obamacare. But then, Obamacare was pretty much Romneycare. If that couldn’t satisfiy even a single Republican on Capitol Hill, one may wonder how Romney should convince them – chances are that as a president, he would only be able to deal with Congress once there is a Democratic majority, say, after 2012 after 2014.

I don’t know how the American people will decide on November 6. But I do know what I would do. I’d vote for Obama, and for Democratic candidates for Congress. Yes, a president needs to show leadership. But it seems to make no sense to me to build a tea party into any presidential term, be it a Democrat’s or a Republican’s presidency.

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Related

» Creative Destruction or…, March 15, 2010
» U.S. fiscal cliff, Wikipedia, acc. 20121031
» So habe auch ich mich getäuscht, Febr 1994
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Mitt Romney has no China Strategy

When it comes to China, it becomes obvious to me that Mitt Romney has a problem. Heard on the radio this morning, and found on a transcript of the debate.

Barack Obama:

And that’s the reason why I set up a trade task force to go after cheaters when it came to international trade. That’s the reason why we have brought more cases against China for violating trade rules than the other — the previous administration had done in two terms. And we’ve won just about every case that we’ve filed, that — that has been decided. In fact, just recently, steelworkers in Ohio and throughout the Midwest, Pennsylvania, are in a position now to sell steel to China because we won that case.

We had a tire case in which they were flooding us with cheap domestic tires — or — or — or cheap Chinese tires. And we put a stop to it and, as a consequence, saved jobs throughout America. I have to say that Governor Romney criticized me for being too tough in that tire case, said this wouldn’t be good for American workers and that it would be protectionist. But I tell you, those workers don’t feel that way. They feel as if they had finally an administration who was going to take this issue seriously.

Over the long term, in order for us to compete with China, we’ve also got to make sure, though, that we’re taking — taking care of business here at home. If we don’t have the best education system in the world, if we don’t continue to put money into research and technology that will allow us to — to create great businesses here in the United States, that’s how we lose the competition. And unfortunately, Governor Romney’s budget and his proposals would not allow us to make those investments.

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Mitt Romney:

Well, first of all, it’s not government that makes business successful. It’s not government investments that make businesses grow and hire people.

Let me also note that the greatest threat that the world faces, the greatest national security threat, is a nuclear Iran.

Let’s talk about China. China has an interest that’s very much like ours in one respect, and that is they want a stable world. They don’t want war. They don’t want to see protectionism. They don’t want to see the — the world break out into — into various forms of chaos, because they have to — they have to manufacture goods and put people to work. And they have about 20,000 — 20 million, rather, people coming out of the farms every year, coming into the cities, needing jobs. So they want the economy to work and the world to be free and open.

And so we can be a partner with China. We don’t have to be an adversary in any way, shape or form. We can work with them. We can collaborate with them if they’re willing to be responsible.

Now, they look at us and say, is it a good idea to be with America?

How strong are we going to be? How strong is our economy?

They look at the fact that we owe them a trillion dollars and owe other people 16 trillion (dollars) in total, including them. They — they look at our — our decision to — to cut back on our military capabilities — a trillion dollars. The secretary of defense called these trillion dollars of cuts to our military devastating. It’s not my term. It’s the president’s own secretary of defense called them devastating. They look at America’s commitments around the world and they see what’s happening and they say, well, OK, is America going to be strong? And the answer is yes. If I’m president, America will be very strong.

We’ll also make sure that we have trade relations with China that work for us. I’ve watched year in and year out as companies have shut down and people have lost their jobs because China has not played by the same rules, in part by holding down artificially the value of their currency. It holds down the prices of their goods. It means our goods aren’t as competitive and we lose jobs. That’s got to end.

They’re making some progress; they need to make more. That’s why on day one I will label them a currency manipulator which allows us to apply tariffs where they’re taking jobs. They’re stealing our intellectual property, our patents, our designs, our technology, hacking into our computers, counterfeiting our goods. They have to understand, we want to trade with them, we want a world that’s stable, we like free enterprise, but you got to play by the rules.

Ezra Klein explained ahead of the debate why this is unlikely to impress Beijing, and why it shouldn’t impress the Chinese leadership. The New York Times adds some more points.

If Romney uses this one argument when it comes to U.S.-chinese trade relations (it’s been his leitmotif throughout his campaign), it only shows that he has no comprehensive strategy – other than doing business with China, and that would be that. What he refuses to see – ostensibly, anyway – is that as a president, he wouldn’t be in a position to talk to Xi Jinping the way Ronald Reagan talked to Zhao Ziyang. This is 2012, not 1988. There have been many crackdowns and many years of Chinese economic and political growth in between. And mind you, Reagan had come to office promising that he would seek to restore normal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. We know where that promise ended.

Obama on the other hand hasn’t talked tough, but he has been tough in defending his country’s industrial base. Basically, the choice between Obama and Romney boils down to a choice between these concepts.

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Related

» Can China Handle America’s Return, The Diplomat, Dec 14, 2011

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