Match-making days for Taiwan officials?

Because, apparently, Taiwan needs more bureaucrats.

A Tale Of Two Dissidents

So the beat goes on. From one side we are assured that Liu Xiaobo is a traitor, an American agent (despite the fact that even the PRC authorities have not made this claim) based on allegations that he received support from organisations like PEN and the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy. From the other side we hear that awarding the Nobel Prize to him was counter-productive. As Nick Young, whose article making this claim in last week's Guardian I criticised, explained to me in an email:

Over the years I came to understand that, alongside the many tensions inherent in China's fast-forward change processes, state-society relations were on the whole adversely affected by the conceited self-righteousness of foreign China-bashers in general, and, in particular, of some internatioal human rights 'advocacy' organisations that busied themselves looking for disaffected Chinese citizens and turning them into prison fodder. That remains my view.

This, of course, from a man who was thrown out of China for writing on political issues.

The main position on both sides appears to be that foreign involvement with Chinese dissidents serves only to dirty them in the eyes of the Chinese public and put them in danger of government reprisals. The supposition appears to be that, had Liu Xiaobo not received support from foreign organisations, then he would perhaps have avoided prison. Unfortunately we cannot go back in time and see what might have happened had he never been associated with foreign organisations.

Or can we? Liu Xiaobo is far from the only dissident held by the Chinese authorities on charges of 'subversion'. We have also the example of former Nanjing Normal University professor, Guo Quan. Unlike Liu Xiaobo, Guo Quan has publicly eschewed association with foreign human rights organisations, and his writings have struck a decidedly nationalistic tone.

Did this save Guo? Clearly not. In fact it is remarkable that, whilst Liu, who cultivated links overseas, is now the subject of high-profile international appeals for his release, Guo Quan remains virtually forgotten even in his own country. Even were there a domestic campaign for Guo's release this would be unlikely to achieve anything, since it would be nigh-on impossible for it to make head-way against government censorship.

Whilst I disagree with Nick Young's characterisation of people like Guo and Liu as merely disaffected individuals, we must admit that they exist in every society, and would exist with or without foreign assistance. The decision, then, is not whether they should be 'created' (in Nick Young's parlance "[turned] into prison fodder"), but whether to support people who will work to improve their society whatever foreign observers do.

Liu Xiaobo and the "Gunpowder Prize"

Hello after a long, work induced, hiatus. Of course yesterday's news of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo is still very much in my mind. Here's a few thoughts -

• Beijing-based talking head and Baidu exec. Kaiser Kuo tweets:
  

  I predict they wait slightly longer than Japan did with the trawler captain, then Beijing releases Liu for "medical reasons"

  
  
  Me, I'm less hopeful. The previous cases in which someone has been released (such as Wan Yanhai) due to noise made in the outside world mainly involved activists who had been detained but not actually been charged. Given the high international profile of Liu's case, the severe nature of his sentence, and the threat to the CCP's rule represented by Charter '08, it seems unlikely that the Beijing government will wish to risk showing weakness in this case. Moreover, Liu is unlikely to take the option of going into exile, as he has previously eschewed doing so when previously detained.

• Liu Xiaobo and Charter '08 will remain largely unknown inside China because government censorship (which now appears to extend even to text-messaging of Liu's name in pinyin) will prevent the people ever hearing about it. The only ones who will learn about it will consist mainly of the radicalised Fenqing who populate ultranationalist websites like Anti-CNN.com and tie xue. These people will undoubtedly be out in full force to condemn the perceived 'meddling' of western nations in Chinese affairs. Amongst those who are aware of the prize and wish to discuss it, in an effort to avoid automated censorship the Nobel prize (诺奖) has already been renamed the "gunpowder prize" (炸药奖), a reference to Alfred Nobel's invention of dynamite.

• It seems the totalitarianism's useful idiots in the west are also out in force. In this execrable piece in today's Guardian, after paying lip-service to the idea that Liu's imprisonment might be a bad thing (but "not irrational"), Nick Young hails the "unsung heroes" of the CCP (because the CCP's achievements in China are 'unsung'?) whose quiet behind-the-scenes efforts may be jeopardised by the award. The fact that no meaningful results can be seen for such "incremental reform", despite years in which such reform might have gone forward does not appear to register with Mr. Young. The results he touts (the attendance of Chinese NGO's at the Tianjin climate talks) are, quite simply, paltry, and do not seem to have led to a fresh approach to this issue on the part of the CCP. The only part of this piece I can even partly agree with is this:
  
  

  The Nobel award will embolden those in China who are most inclined to confrontational tactics

  
  
  Whilst Nick Young appears to think this is a bad thing, I do not. Mr. Young apparently believes that the CCP will at some point gradually reform itself out of power. What we have seen, however, is that the CCP has learned the lessons of the fall of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe and is committed to never allowing a centre of power outside its control to form in China. The CCP will therefore never bring about meaningful political reform without open and undeniable pressure to do so. As long as the CCP and its "heroic" members control the dialogue, power will only remain in the hands of its corrupt leadership, only pressure of the kind which this prize will encourage can change this.

Foxconn makes the news again

With the latest round of suicides making the news, it seems that Foxconn and Hon Hai are irrevocably marked as especially poor, oppressive and exploitative employers, despite efforts to combat the wave of depression that has hit the company including bringing in Buddhist monks.

Such a reputation would, in my opinion, and despite my previous criticism of the company, be unjust. Foxconn is in no way any worse than any employer in mainland China and by many measures a lot better.

Yes, hours are long, but overtime is not compulsory and is not badly paid by mainland Chinese standards. The company places a firm emphasis on training of mainland Chinese staff as part of its policy of localisation. It is true that some of the Taiwanese managers display an almost colonial level of contempt for the mainland workers, but the central policy of the company is to replace the highly paid non-mainland Chinese staff with cheaper but equally skilled mainland employees. This is mandated by Terry Guo, not out of the goodness of his heart, but for strict business reasons of profit.

The Aftermath

A few points:

1) Talk of a Lib-Lab coalition government is vacuous - to deliver a majority it would also have to include the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and Northern Irish parties like the DUP, an extremely unlikely scenario, whilst still making concessions to the Lib Dems on vote reform - which would not be universally popular in the Labour ranks.

2) Gordon Brown has lost this election, and must go for the Labour party to stand any chance in the next election, which will probably not be delayed by more than a year or so.

3) A Conservative-Liberal coalition is also somewhat unseemly, but the fact is that a government of some kind must come from some where, and this is the only viable configuration (whether through a simple deal or a full-blown coalition) which will not create a British government held hostage to the whims of the smaller parties.

4) This election demonstrates very well exactly why a proportional representation voting system would be so undesirable - it would guarantee that almost every election would end in the kind of horse-trading that we have seen over the last 24 hours.

5) Final thought - it cannot be emphasised enough that the Liberal Democrats would be taking a substantial risk in engaging in a full-blown coalition with either of the other main parties. The Liberal Democrats have built their narrow wedge of support on being an alternative to the big two, the moment they enter into a coalition this rational will wither away.

Election 2010

I have little to say that hasn't already been said about tomorrow's general election except this - barring some unforeseen last-gasp break-out for one of the parties it's likely to be followed by another in short order. A Conservative majority is not likely to be big enough to get everything the Conservatives want, and any Lib-Lab pact is likely to be very unstable, especially given Nick Clegg's obvious dislike for Gordon Brown.

My prediction: a Conservative minority government, followed by another election later this year or early in the next.

[ELECTION NIGHT THOUGHT - If the Conservatives squeak a majority in coalition with the current 8-seat DUP, will they still condemn the idea of a Lib-Lab pact? And what of the Tories' previous condemnation of Lib-Labery?]

Damage to ROK ship consistent with torpedo hit

Here's some more pure wonky awesomeness from the Arms Control Wonk: IDing the likely cause of the sinking of ROK Navy Ship Cheonan a day before the ROK government.

You have much to learn young grasshopper . . .

Awesome quote from the Arms Control Wonk:

"The value of any briefing on China is inversely proportional to the number of Sun Tzu quotes in the briefing."

It's high time that people realised that quoting Sun Tzu is not a replacement for knowing how things are done in modern-day China.

Hong Kong has no referendums, so don't vote in the referendums we are having in Hong Kong . . .

Or such seems to be the basic message coming from Beijing's men in Hong Kong at the moment, at least according to the excellent Big Lychee Blog. The only problem with the HK government's position on the by-elections which have been called to as a "defacto referendum on democracy" is that it doesn't make that much sense:

After encouraging people for years to take part in, and therefore legitimize, our rigged election system, it would look odd for Sir Bow-Tie and his colleagues to implicitly urge us all to stay away. It would raise concerns that civil servants of all levels, who are sworn to implement government policy, could be pressurized into not voting or penalized if they exercise their right to do so. Most of all, how many of us will be tempted to go along to the polling station if Donald indicates that he would prefer us not to?

China's Military Growth to Slow

Amidst all the talk there has been lately about the growth of China into a world-bestriding superpower, signs are appearing that even China has limits. Money quote:

Mr. Li said that the government has always tried to limit military spending and had “set the defense spending at a reasonable level to ensure the balance between national defense and economic development.”

The legislature must approve the government’s 2010 budget at its session this month, but the vote is a formality.

A budget report submitted to the legislature said the government had earmarked about $77.9 billion for the military in 2010, an increase of about $5.4 billion from actual spending last year.

Basically, even if you buy the narrative of the Chinese stimulus package rescuing the Chinese economy, rather than perhaps merely creating more capacity in industries which are already in over-capacity, you cannot deny that the Chinese government's spending means cuts in other places. Growth in Chinese military spending has been in double digits since 1989, outstripping economic growth most years. The reasoning behind this is simple - since the CCP no longer exercises the kind of thought-control over the population that it was able to pre-1979, it now relies on the military as its guarantor of power should the populace turn against them as it did in the year of the Tiananmen protests. For this reason the needs of the military became paramount.

Of course, Chinese military spending still lags that of the US, China's most powerful potential adversary, by a considerable amount - even by the most exaggerated estimates it is still less than a quarter of American spending. This was less assuring when China's military spending was roughly doubling every 4-5 years, but if this trend continue perhaps China's potential adversaries can rest easy. China, of course, maintains its threat of invading Taiwan, and at various times over the last few years has rattled sabres on its borders in the Himalayas, in the South China Sea, and in the East China sea. Nor is Chinese military supremacy in the region anything more than delayed by this announcement. All the same, it does give breathing space.

Just a quick heads-up: Global Times to speak truth to power?

A reporter on the English-language version of the Global Times (the sister paper of the ultra-nationalist Chinese-language paper of the same name, both of which are printed under the auspices of CCP-mouthpiece People's Daily) has been tweeting about a new editorial stance for the paper's coverage of the "two meetings" being introduced tomorrow, with almost every subject being opened up for discussion, in fact . .

"老总提到报道唯一的禁区是国家领导人的私生活。"

"The boss said that the only subject on which we cannot report is the personal issues of the leadership.

There's been a lot of false dawns in the progress of freedom of speech in China To my mind the freeing up of freedom of speech in a government-operated English-language newspaper may not actually add up to much, but then I may be wrong . . . .

The failure of the mass movement

Okay, no, this is not about China, at least not about anything which is happening in China at the moment. In fact it's about conservative political movements in the west. In 2008 Barack Obama swept to power at the head of a grass-roots political movement in which much of the most effective content was generated by the participants themselves. Ever since then right-of-centre groups have been trying to get in on the act, but, speaking as a confirmed Thatcherite, I really wish they wouldn't.

The problem is that by their very nature right-of-centre parties do not come to power with genuinely radical plans for change. Even the most revolutionary of British political movements of the past 50 years - the Thatcher government - did not come in in 1979 with grand plans for change and only started to implement large-scale reform after the 1983 election. In most eras and at most times, Conservative parties promise a break from the legislative and political turbulence offered by left-of-centre parties. It is therefore difficult for a right-wing party to attract the kind of head of steam that a left-wing party can, and instead the content of the campaign is likely to be generated by the party faithful, a group seperate and apart from the mass of the population which the party wishes to attract.

The result is that instead of "Change we can believe in" we get mush which is likely to make people more likely to favour the opposition, not less. Here's an example:



The other posters aren't much better.

Just 'cause

Amazing footage shot by an enthusiast of a cross-wind landing at Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport shortly before it was closed down and replaced by the new (and far less heart-attack-inducing to land at) Chep Lap Kok airport -

Modern Heavyweight Boxing Sucks

The conclusion of one sedentary sports fan on the heavyweight-hitters of today:

I have always thought that the Klitchkos get bad press, in the main, because they're intelligent, educated, good-looking Ukrainians who carry around Phd.s and world championship belts, winning a lot of fights simply by being better than the other guy.

This is, I feel, certainly a valid point.They are, however, the first fighters I saw to use the tactic of hitting their opponent's lead arm so as to nullify the jab. Sure; they look for the right through the middle to follow, but this makes for a lot of pawing and a spectacle not unlike two 6 year old girls having a mild tiff.