It seems to me that the US government’s (and its politicians’) stance on China is contradictory. That should be no surprise, right?
Obviously, a rising new empire – really, more the phoenix-like rising of a very old empire – is going to be a matter of concern, but the leader of US fake democracy are very upset about how China is fake communist. I’m sure you’ve all seen the comments from various supporters of the US laissez-faire capitalism, to the effect that communism is bad, in all its forms, etc. Well, granted, the Russian attempt to implement communism did not work very well, and China’s (Mao’s, really) attempt was a disaster that killed millions – but what China has ended up with has as much to do with communism as a kitten has to being a dog: precious little. China is as communist as the US is democratic, in other words, though it’d be hard to quantify the degree to which political claims are bullshitful; let’s just acknowledge that both claims are bullshit and work from there.
The US and China’s rulers have both realized that imperial power does not need to be exerted in the 19th century manner, with armies, and putting the queen’s image on everyone’s money – they’ve realized that if you control a nation’s economy, you control their politicians, too, and therefore you control that country. The US’ “stealth empire” concept is about “projecting soft power” rather than just stomping around conquering places, which is a good thing, because we’re terrible at it. The Chinese have watched the US’ imperialism play out and are pursuing the long game – which mostly consists of sitting back and waiting for the US to face-punch itself stupid some day. As Napoleon didn’t say, “by the grace of god, let me have stupid enemies.”
But here’s what I don’t get: the oligarchs who run the US keep talking about how bad Chinese “communism” is and how destructive it is and yet somehow China has been a massive economic success, and a rising superpower and – more importantly to decent people: China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. [xin] Naturally, Americans would want to quibble with that but it doesn’t make much difference if the number is only two times the size of the US population, or 3, or what “raising out of poverty” means when the US population is experiencing worse and worse economic outcomes and the Chinese “communists” appear to be doing much, much better. So, don’t we have a problem: either maybe communism is not so bad, or US politicians need to stop pointing at China and screaming “communism” because, actually, China is an oligarchy just like the US, only its leaders appear to be doing a better job because they understand that if you abuse a population of billions, you will wind up in the embrace of Madame Guillotine.
It just seems a bit dumb, to me, for the US to be saying “communism is bad” at the same time that “China’s economy is kicking ass.” I mean, I know that saying dumb things is political hacks’ stock in trade, but maybe they should be working on demonstrating how great capitalism is. Of course, they are – as everyone knows, the very richest of America’s very rich made gigantic sums of money, while the middle class (aka: educated white people) stagnated and the poor got poorer. That’s a hell of a way to showcase capitalism’s political and economic success, folks.
Also, and it almost doesn’t bear mentioning, the US is on shaky ground when it points the finger of condemnation at China for its genocide of the Uighur population – the US having these things called “reservations” to which we have banished the traumatized survivors of the establishment of US democracy. And, the American South, which is still struggling to revert to its slave-state apartheid roots, politically and economically. The US also loves to complain about China stealing intellectual property (they do) while ignoring the fact that the US industrial revolution was built on stolen English, Scottish, and French technology. The Jacquard looms on which Southern cotton was woven – that was a French invention for which US “inventors” paid nothing. The Chinese are sensible people, and appear to realize that this kind of complaining is just mouth-noises from losers, and ignore it. The US complains about Chinese hacking, while ignoring that its National Security Agency has repeatedly backdoor’d the global critical software infrastructure, weakening the internet security that they complain the Chinese are exploiting. It looks to me like a bunch of circus clowns pointing at another bunch of circus clowns and laughing at them for dressing funny.
But the number that really sticks in my head is the 800 million. The US can’t get its head out of its own ass enough to arrange some sensible spend on infrastructure, instead it’s got run-away spending on the military. I was saddened and fascinated to see that China is responding the US’ new build-out of nuclear first-strike weapons, by a measured increase in its deterrent. China is not the one building a nuclear arsenal designed to “win” a global armageddon; they’re building in order to make sure that if the US decides to start a global armageddon, it does not come away unscathed. Again, the US screeches that Russia was cheating on its nuclear treaties (which is true) while cheating on its nuclear treaties (which it did) and trying to browbeat a minor regional power, Iran, into not being able to build a credible deterrent against Israel. The layers of hypocrisy are so complicated that all I can think is “what a bunch of shitheads.”
And the biggest shitheads are the US electorate, who have somehow managed to swallow that whole big lie. The Big Lie is not that Trump is saying he lost 2020 – it’s that the US is a democracy in the first place. The electorate should be tearing down the walls in Washington, because its entire political system is deliberately and obviously built in order to preserve white supremacy, in the form of the oligarchs whose opinions and money matter, against the rest of the citizenry. But the electorate has become so thoroughly propagandized that they simply turn their brains off after someone in power accuses China of “communism” when, if we objectively measured some aspects of China, they are doing vastly better for their people than the US is doing for theirs. For one thing, the Chinese government has enough credibility with its population that they don’t argue when the government says “get vaccinated.” I’m not a fan of information control and propaganda but you’ve got to admit that China’s moderating Facebook and, basically, controlling media, looks increasing like a pretty good idea. Maybe they have looked at Americans and realized that the lumpenproletariat will gobble up the most ridiculous nonsense if it’s said in a tone of authority. That’s another thing the US is becoming bad at: keeping its population informed. Failure to have a good mechanism of disseminating facts and directives is a serious problem – it cost hundreds of thousands of lives because the US government’s credibility with its own citizens is that pathetic. Again, tell me how bad “communist” authoritarianism is compared to laissez-faire capitalist clusterfuck.
Last, but not (quite) least, the US is so stupidly divided against itself that one major party, the republicans, have arranged to be 95% of the current sufferers and diers from COVID-19. It beggars my imagination that they are suppressing votes over here with one hand, while literally slaughtering their voters over there, with the other. That’s “Great Leap Forward”-style stupid.
800 million. And the US is struggling to mandate a living wage for the people who keep things working. It ought to make you wonder.
To be fair the Chinese government (!), they never said they have managed to establish Communism. They are a Communist Party, but Communism is their stated goal, not what they claim to have already achieved. The Soviet Union was much the same until it stagnated so badly that Stalin decided it was best to propagandise that they actually had achieved “Communism”, rather than working on further reforms.
What the Soviets called their current state of government, before the dishonesty set in, was “State Capitalism” (i.e. it’s organized along the lines of Capitalist hierarchical enterprises, but with government officials running the show instead of shareholders and boards of directors). The Chinese call theirs “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (the “Chinese Characteristics presumably being an openness to foreign investment and Capitalist enterprises within a largely state-run system).
The Big Lie is … that the US is a democracy in the first place.
Which comes, ftr, primarily from schools and “news” venues. Actual right-wingers, in my experience, enjoy insisting the US is a “republic”.
The frustrating thing about China, to me, is that American businesses moved there and invested in China and not the US. I know they did it so they could make a higher profit margin, but it still aggravates me. Why is it that the phone I’m carrying with me everywhere I go is not made in the US, and that I can’t really buy one made here? It seems like the US is not even trying to compete in any of these industries. These corporations are just sending money elsewhere in order to exploit low wages and workers in other countries, in order to make a bigger profit but in the meantime screw over the US people.
kestrel: We are still competitive in the Boondoggle Overcomplicated Military Equipment sector and the Convoluted Financial Scams and Ponzi Schemes Industry. Look how prosperous parts of Washington DC and the Gold Coast in Connecticut are!
kestrel @ #3: to be honest, at the most basic level, it may simply be because it’s cheaper.
It’s very difficult, politically, to fix that. The usual way is to declare that China has an “unfair advantage” because it does not offer equivalent wages, conditions and protections to the workers, or that the Chinese state subsidizes that industry, or that they manipulate their currency, or a number of other reasons. Then set tariffs on imported Chinese merchandise to an amount that exactly offsets said unfairness (or a bit more, if we feel like punishing them). The political problem with that is that it makes things more expensive for everyone (upset voters), and it eats into the profit margins of US and multinational companies (upset billionaire donors). So tariffs are used only as an arbitrary political gesture (“trade war!”), not as a tool to enhance fairness and encourage foreign manufacturers to be nicer to their workers, while protecting local producers from unfair competition, as they are nominally intended.
@#5, cvoinsescu Yes, I can see that people make more money that way. But is that ultimately what is “the best” for the US? It doesn’t seem to me that it worked out that way at all. Is it “the best” for mankind”? I would argue that it is not. I guess when it comes down to it, I simply don’t believe that someone making way more money than they otherwise would have, helps out the greater good. Sure! It does help out those individuals. I suppose that at the bottom line, I don’t think someone making more money than someone else is the “best” that can be done for all of mankind. I suppose I’m super weird. I always thought the idea was to do the best for the most people, not the best for one single person. ***shrug*** I suppose I am hopelessly naive. Ah well. I’ll just have to go to my grave with those ideas as no one else seems to agree.
@ 6 kestrel
But is that ultimately what is “the best” for the US? It doesn’t seem to me that it worked out that way at all. Is it “the best” for mankind”?
Not the concern of oligarchs, especially it seems, in the USA when operating under neoclassic economics. Some people have read too much Ayn Rand.
@ Marcus
the US is on shaky ground when it points the finger of condemnation at China for its genocide of the Uighur population
What genocide? Hint, where are all the refugees? Kyrgystan? Nope. Tajikistan? Nope.
I have been trying to follow this and so far I just have not seen any believable evidence of genocide.
The main original source of this seems to be a German religious nutter ( and a non-speaker of Chinese or Uighur) who feels called by god to save the Chinese. Ah got him, Adrian Zenz.
I would not doubt that there have been abuses, however, one has to remember that the Xinjiang Autonomous Region and other parts parts of China to a lessor extent have been the targets for jihadi terrorist attacks by the East Turkish Independence Movement —housed since before WWII in Turkey—for some time though this has tapered off in the last few years.
My impression is that the Chinese Gov’t and most Chinese citizens place more importance on stability than theoretical human rights. Those car bomb attacks and so on in Ürümq and as far away as Kunming may have had that effect.
Some of those camps which the Chinese acknowledge seem to be jihadi deprogramming camps.
Others, for some complex reasons due to Uighur demographics, look like they are actual training schools. Whether attendance is voluntary I don’t know.
The only hint of cultural genocide that I have seen is reduced hours of instruction is Uighur and more in Chinese. However this is reduced not forbidden as Ukrainia has just done to Russian.
I get the weird feeling that at worst Xinjiang is more like Northern Ireland during the Troubles than any thing else though it is not a good comparison
kestrel @ #6, jkrideau @ #7: Clearly not the concern of the oligarchs, or even the company shareholders, and rightly, or, at least, understandably so. That’s what government regulation is for: to compensate for negative externalities.
But the oligarchs own the government and have tranquilized enough of the rest of us with Randian fantasies and the American Dream, and for long enough that they’re now fatally entrenched. The system doesn’t stand a chance of working as— Hmm. I’m reluctant to say “as intended”, because I’m not sure how much of the apparent intention is genuine but ineffective, and how much is purposefully deceptive whitewashing, impotent by design. Probably both. The system is vulnerable to both “classical” and emergent conspiracies, because too many incentives and feedback loops at all levels are wired the wrong way — and, by the way, this applies equally to manufacturing/outsourcing/trade, and to the environment.
In short, we’re fucked. Possibly emergently, but still fucked.
cartomancer@#1:
To be fair the Chinese government (!), they never said they have managed to establish Communism. They are a Communist Party, but Communism is their stated goal, not what they claim to have already achieved.
That is correct. So then why is the American oligarchy so worried and upset about “communism”? I can only assume it’s just more bullshit and that they’re worried about is more revolutions, regardless of the underlying politics of the revolutionary movement.I don’t think any of us here are credulous to believe the US’ stated objections to communism, namely that it’s bad, bad, baddity-bad. Another objection I’ve heard from so-called “conservatives” is that “communism and socialism don’t work!” – which is true if the socialism is one that the CIA interferes with, but otherwise, the European social democracies – we don’t talk about those because they appear to work quite well for citizens but no so well for oligarchs. Therefore, they do not work well.
The Chinese call theirs “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (the “Chinese Characteristics presumably being an openness to foreign investment and Capitalist enterprises within a largely state-run system).
I believe the “Chinese characteristics” are a nod to confucian submission to the state.
It seems to me to be a highly regulated capitalism – one which tries to circumvent the problems that laissez-faire bring.
kestrel@#3:
The frustrating thing about China, to me, is that American businesses moved there and invested in China and not the US. I know they did it so they could make a higher profit margin, but it still aggravates me. Why is it that the phone I’m carrying with me everywhere I go is not made in the US, and that I can’t really buy one made here? It seems like the US is not even trying to compete in any of these industries.
That’s a fascinating topic, and we could go on for days about how the US has its own foot squarely in its sights. But what’s funny is – to stick to the China topic – that is exactly the sort of regulated capitalism the Chinese system would step in and control. The government doesn’t care if the capitalists can make 1% more by exporting critical production – it’s critical production and if someone wants to export it out of the country they will be told, with increasing force, “no.” To the US that translates as “government closing markets to us” but to the Chinese it looks more like “why on earth would we allow a US company to dominate our media?” And US companies like Google get so annoyingly huffy-puffy when the government tells them that they’re not in charge and they do business only so long as it serves the interests of the state.
I have long pondered that China continues to buy Microsoft Windows and Intel processors, which are a tremendous economic drain and a gigantic security hole. China appears to be pragmatic about it, and hacks the US back in return, which makes the US establishment go ballistic. Eventually some other nation will get sick of the US’ owning the OS stack and develop national software. China is the closest to being able to do that.
kestrel @ #3 and #6
Unfortunately, capitalism, at least in its pure, unregulated form, isn’t concerned about the good of the people of any particular country or of the world as a whole, except insofar as the good of the people helps the corporations be more profitable. If a company can make better profits by moving most of its operations to other countries while still proclaiming itself as an “American” company, it will generally do so. A lot of companies spend a lot on PR to convince people that they care about this or that community, but that will generally vanish if they see opportunity to make more profit elsewhere.
There are some advantages for consumers – I’ll bet smartphones would be two or three or more times as expensive to US consumers if they were made in the USA, because labor costs are a lot higher. The same thing is true with consumer goods of all kinds.
jrkrideau@#8:
What genocide? Hint, where are all the refugees? Kyrgystan? Nope. Tajikistan? Nope.
OK, that’s a tough one. I used the word “genocide” because so many politicians are afraid to deploy it (since, in theory, it invokes specific anti-genocide treaties if someone declares a genocide is in progress) terms like “culturecide” are artificial and clunky so I avoid them.
You’re right that there’s a shortage of knowledge about what’s going on. That makes me inclined to believe the worst, rather than the better.
My impression is that the Chinese Gov’t and most Chinese citizens place more importance on stability than theoretical human rights. Those car bomb attacks and so on in Ürümq and as far away as Kunming may have had that effect.
That is definitely the case. Stability and submission to the ruling government/monarch is baked into confucianism and is still a profound influence on Chinese culture. Basically “don’t rock the boat” – reinforced by some historical incidents in which the boat was rocked and truly horrible things resulted from it.
The only hint of cultural genocide that I have seen is reduced hours of instruction is Uighur and more in Chinese. However this is reduced not forbidden as Ukrainia has just done to Russian.
A lot of the advanced security tech is being deployed apparently to protect the ruling Han Chinese, and if that means stomping on another culture, so be it. The Chinese system accepts that cultures get stomped on, see also: Tibet. The Chinese attitude there always seemed to me, “of course we’re stomping on the local culture. That’s why we took over in the first place!”
I guess we’ll see. I’m more inclined to assume that there’s fire where there’s smoke. Obviously, the US and other nations’ intelligence services would know what is going on, and they’re not talking. They didn’t have much to say about the German death-camps, either, and it was pretty clear what was going on. I don’t think it’s anything on that order and I don’t think China would tolerate unrest on the order of Northern Ireland – it’s bad for business. So, what’s going on? I guess we’ll see. Is it good? Probably not. The lack of openness about what is going on is a huge red flag, though the Chinese government is accustomed to not having to answer questions from the peanut gallery.
Still, it does appear to be a fact that China has lifted a huge number of people out of poverty. Is that a good thing? I don’t know, and I guess it depends on what those things mean, but there are a lot of busy, happy, productive, workers in China, some of whom are living a lifestyle that is mind-blowing to their parents.
I know a Chinese-born executive who worked in Silicon Valley, made a bunch of money, and went back to China. This was a woman who grew up during the cultural revolution, and who walked to school while her teachers were hanging from trees outside of the building. She thought California was great. But then she moved back to China because she thought it was even better than California and she wanted to start another business in China because the Chinese government makes foreign entrepreneurship very difficult. I have no idea what she’s up to now, but she’s got to be doing fine: money talks loudly in China. I think it’s interesting to see 3 generations that grew up in dirt-floored houses without electricity, who are now urbanite executives. It’s an economic shift similar to what the US did in the 1930s-50s.
cvoinescu@#5:
The usual way is to declare that China has an “unfair advantage” because it does not offer equivalent wages, conditions and protections to the workers, or that the Chinese state subsidizes that industry, or that they manipulate their currency, or a number of other reasons. Then set tariffs on imported Chinese merchandise to an amount that exactly offsets said unfairness (or a bit more, if we feel like punishing them). The political problem with that is that it makes things more expensive for everyone (upset voters), and it eats into the profit margins of US and multinational companies (upset billionaire donors).
Our leaders believe all that crap about “free markets” just as much as I do. I.e.: not in the slightest.
“Conservatives” would have us believe that these economic imbalances will drive profitability and growth! Well, they have, but not in the ‘right’ directions.
Kestrel @3: welcome to capitalism. @6: I applaud and sympathize with your idealism, but the oligarchs don’t give a good goddamn about humanity, only themselves. This is life in the real world. Conservatives are genetically compelled to control power and wealth, and I mean all of it, and if they can control the thinking of enough people this facilitates their efforts. That’s why they promote ignorance and demonize knowledge.It’s the 1984 scenario, and we’re watching it play out in the tactics of the American Fascist Party, formerly known as the GOP. Given human nature, Utopia is a goal we can never achieve, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to get closer to it.
springa73 @ #12: […] except insofar as the good of the people helps the corporations be more profitable.
Even that is, sadly, an oversimplification. Corporations are not people, so they don’t act in their own interest. Owners, directors and executives of companies act in their own personal interests, and even getting those aligned with the company or shareholder interests over the long and even medium term is a difficult problem.
@ 11Marcus
I have long pondered that China continues to buy Microsoft Windows and Intel processors,
Because they are not quite ready to roll out their own? Do they have the chip capacity yet? With an installed base it may not make sense to change until one can do a revolutionary one.
@ 13
A lot of the advanced security tech is being deployed apparently to protect the ruling Han Chinese
I don’t see this as priorizing Han Chinese in particular . Overall protection of Chinese citizens with special emphasis on Party cadre of course. The security tech favours Han Chinese because everyone (~90% of population) is Han.
China seems to have a half-decent record of protecting minorities at least constitutionally. Practice probably varies widely as it is a huge country with impressive regional differences. As I believe the old Chinese saying goes, “Heaven is high and the emperor far away”.
I think a serious problem with our (Western? North American? I’m Canadian so perhaps should speak only for my country) culture is our obsession with abstractions and artificial entities. Corporations do not, in any meaningful sense, exist.
They were (and may still be) a useful way to fund large scale projects that governments couldn’t/wouldn’t invest in. In exchange for facilitating these often risky investments, the government granted their investors near-total immunity from the kinds of liability that attach to normal everyday economic and non-economic activities. Gradually, our laws evolved (under constant pressure from those who would benefit from the change) to limit, restrict or abolish any kinds of meaningful penalties for the directors/executives in those organizations as well. As I understand the concept, our courts are reluctant to ‘pierce the corporate veil’ and seek the individual people responsible for the decisions ‘made by the company’, and should instead focus on punishing ‘the company’ instead.
This is a practical impossibility. You can no more punish a corporation than you can punish a bank account or the idea of Truth. The corporation does not exist. Any actions that would harm it are actually actions that harm its owners, employees, or directors. Cynically the people operating the company, the very ones shielded from personal responsibility by the ‘corporate veil’ will then hold up their shareholders and employees as public relations shields against any kind of meaningful consequences for the actions of the organization. We saw this quite clearly in Canada when the SNC-Lavalin scandal was playing out
In brief, SNC has a long and sordid history of bribing various third world leaders for preferential contracts. They were deeply in bed with (possibly literally – there are allegations of supplying sex workers) the Qaddafi family in ways that were illegal under international law. This was discovered and the company was charged. The mandatory penalties for the offenses of which it was clearly guilty would have been a near death-sentence for the company, and the scandal is that it is alleged that our Prime Minister attempted to pressure his Attorney General to offer a Deferred Prosecution Agreement to the company that would allow it to essentially continue business as usual. This was justified publically by saying, essentially “Think of all the jobs that would be lost if this company goes under! Anyway, they’ve changed – it’s been literally years since they were caught bribing anyone. Shouldn’t that be enough?”
It’s a variant of the too-big-to-fail dodge. If a corporation can get large enough, it can render itself effectively immune to meaningful consequences for its actions, because any of thosewould fall hardest on the low-level employees of that company and/or large institutional shareholders.
As was noted in a comment above, it is flatly impossible to cause the directors of a large company to work in any interests other than their own selfish short-term goals, no structure exists that would compel them to do so.
Given that, we should start instituting incarceration as a penalty for corporate misdeeds. If a company commits a crime, it should be a rebuttable presumption that the entire C-suite and board are jointly responsible for that crime. Individual members, who should be required to fund their own legal defense with funds already-in-their-possession, would be free to argue that not only did they not know the crime was going to take place, that they instituted controls that should have been sufficient to prevent it but for the criminal actions of another person, and further that upon knowing of the offense that they immediately reported it to the proper authorities and turned over all documents they possessed in support of it. Otherwise they are guilty of the offense of negligence, and are a party to whichever offense the company committed.
We don’t need long sentences here, sending a member of the aristocrat class into our brutal and unaccountable incarceration system would have a strong deterrent effect even if the sentences are short. It might also help to reform the jail system, which is mainly used to the powerless and disenfranchised being committed to its care.
As for the owners – fines are not enough to convince them to institute a responsible board. Confiscation is the medicine required. Companies that crime should be wholly or partially nationalized so that they can be reformed without harming the economy or non-responsible employees.
Don’t even get me started on the absurdity that is the stock market. Our collective obsession with what is nothing more than a casino is baffling and depressing.
Interesting, more dour view of China in The Economist June 26-July 2 issue. I know it’s neoliberal,. but The Economist is still very well written and very…rational…in its analysis of issues.
I have no delusions about American “democracy”, but the utter submission to The Party required in modern China, and the Panopticon they are building (far more so than our NSA dreams of) is still disturbing. I would also note, Marcus, that your anarchist self would probably not enjoy China very much.
snarkhuntr: Awesome post. I also thought the WHOLE POINT of “corporations” was significant public benefit. If there is none of that, and if the corporation is in fact malignant on the body politic….abolition of the charter.
and…getting back to the main theme of this post…that is another thing China seems to do better….punish corporate malefactors. Or at least the ones who are not directly tied to the CCP faction in favor at the moment.
Bmiller@ 22:
I recall seeing an article, no idea how true, that the CCP actually disappeared a billionaire a while back. If there were (any) consequences at all for corporate misfeasance around here, perhaps we’d see less of it. There was a mining disaster in my Province where an undermaintained and underinvested dam collapsed and sent huge volumes of toxic mine waste into a number of streams. Were I dictator of Canada, the Engineers responsible, and Executives who hired them and the Board that oversaw the company would spend the rest of their (working) lives out in the forest scrubbing their waste off of the affected rocks and streambeds – a salutary example to others.
I do not admire the CCP or the Chinese state generally, I’m not a fan of totalitarianism in any form, but it seems that their leadership is not burdened by some of the same failings that ours is. They can think longer-term than our politicians are capable of/allowed to (generally next quarter/next election at most), and they are somewhat less beholden to the oligarch class.
Watching the right-wing political elite in the US dodging and weaving to avoid having to publically admit obvious truths (like who won the last election, or the efficacy of vaccines) is terrifying. As a Canadian, we seem to get a lot of spillover from US politics and I dread the arrival here of the “there’s no reality” school of politics that the US right is perfecting. I’m sure the CCP has its own version of this, but to an ignorant outsider it seems less “hitting self in the head with hammer” stupid than the US version.
@ 19 snarkhuntr
The problem AIUI with SNC-Lavalin & Jody Wilson-Raybould was that the horse had already left the barn.
The Crown had tried and failed to convict the execs years before and said execs were long gone. She came in at the tail end.
I do not have a feel on how bad SNC is in Canada but they have never met a foreign politician or civil servant they did not want to bribe.