Category: Western Culture

Aren’t You Forgetting Something?

Taiwan's China Post wrote a pretty good editorial about the trapped Chilean miners a while back, and concluded on this note:

…the Chilean miners' first steps above ground gave us a timely reminder of what can be achieved when there is optimism, ingenuity and an unerring faith in the human spirit.

None of which can be gainsayed, but the editors seem to have missed one key ingredient to the miners' survival:

D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y.

We know now that pretty much ALL of their decisions were made democratically.  This approach wasn't a panacea – in the coming months, we'll hear more about personal conflicts that occured and even about physical altercations.  But at some point, the miners realized that the best way to minimize the MAJOR frictions existing within their little society was to put matters to the vote.

For them, democracy represented not merely an idealistic dream but a practical neccessity for their own survival.

So yes, "optimism, ingenuity and faith in the human spirit" all had their roles to play in the outcome.  But ponder for a moment how different the conclusion might have been had a small, self-appointed elite resorted to coercion and violence to lord it over the others, all the while cynically trumpeting their own "benevolence".

Thuggish Is As Thuggish Does

Did you think that Beijing would be selective in its rare earth trade embargo, wielding its market position against Japan (alone, among all the countries of the world) as a weapon of last-resort?

Think again:

American trade officials announced last Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing its clean energy industries. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal efforts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

[…]

Hours later, according to industry officials, Chinese customs officials began singling out and delaying rare earth shipments to the West. [emphasis added]

Earlier this year, Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party signed a free trade agreement with China, all the while insisting that the Benevolent Butchers of Beijing would never abuse their economic power over Taiwan.

That proposition of theirs appears more divorced from reality with each passing day.

UPDATE (Oct 20/2010):  Daniel Drezner on China's rare earth embargo against the West —

"[This is] going to encourage some obvious policy responses by the rest of the world. Non-Chinese production of rare earths will explode over the next five years as countries throw subsidy after subsidy at spurring production. Given China's behavior, not even the most ardent free-market advocate will be in a position to argue otherwise." [emphasis added]

 

Nobel Peace Prize Predictions

Damn.  Remind me never to play a game of Machiavelli with Michael Turton!

All kidding aside, Occam's Razor suggests to me that China was sincere in its brutish objections to Liu Xiaobo's nomination and win.  Thuggish is as thuggish does.

But I'll go further out on a limb and predict that within the next 3 or 5 years Liu will have company, when another Chinese dissident will be awarded the prize.  And my reason for believing that is that the Chinese Communist Party REALLY hacked off the Nobel Committee.  So much so, that the committee broke with precedent and leaked the name of the winner to the media a few days before the official announcement.  (Hard to imagine a bigger F U being issued to the Butchers of Beijing.)

Remember how the Nobel committee spent the last 6 or 7 years repudiating George W. Bush?  It was almost a steady stream – Mohammed ElBaradei…Al Gore…Barack Obama.  (If I'm not mistaken, there were also a couple anti-American authors for the Literature Prize tossed in just for good measure.)

Message received.  Loud and clear.

But one thing cannot be denied:  in response to these rebukes, the American government did most assuredly NOT threaten the government of Norway, nor the livelihood of its people.  Great powers get criticized, and they learn to live with it.  Goes with the territory.

In contrast, the Communist government of China gave the Nobel committee only two alternatives:  humiliating surrender, or honorable defiance.*  One or two more Liu Xiaobo's this decade will drive home to the Chinese what stuff Norwegians are made of.

* During a conversation with some Taiwanese youths a few years back, one of them announced in all seriousness to me that "Face didn't matter to Westerners." 

(No offence was intended by them.  I think the subject came up when I remarked that I wouldn't feel any loss of face if I offered a last-minute dinner party invitation to a coworker, and they declined due to prior commitments.)

It's a view charming in its naivety when held by the young — but foolish to the extreme if it's held by the Chinese leadership.

UPDATE:  An Indian reporter blogs on the Chinese media black-out.

UPDATE #2:  Liu's not hard-line enough, protest some exiled Chinese dissidents.  Sad.

 

Cheese Commercials Which “Hurt The Feelings Of The Chinese People”

After Zhongnanhai watches these Panda's are jerks! ads, can a major diplomatic row between Beijing and Cairo be far behind?

(Those living in countries bordering China will probably see a LOT of subtext in these ads.)

UPDATE:  The original link, which has a larger player screen.

Tom Friedman Throwdown

Dr. Jerome Keating did a pretty good job last month.  But for bust-out funny, Iowahawk's the man to beat:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. For example, some argue that one-party autocracies might not always do stuff Thomas Friedman agrees with. But this risk can easily be avoided if the one party is a reasonably enlightened group of people, such as China, and/or Thomas Friedman. Only through this one party system can we impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward into a thousand-year empire of benevolent, iron fisted enlightenment.

Come to think of it, Iowahawk sounds like Sino-Imperialist Bev Chu over on Lew Rockwell's site.

(Only difference being Iowahawk has tongue planted firmly in cheek, while Bev is dead serious.)

Politics and Economics: Still Kept Miles Apart in PRC

Been meaning to link to this brief (but eye-opening) note on management's decision to light up the Empire State Building to celebrate the founding of Communist Party rule in modern China.

One wonders whether the board of Taiwan's Taipei 101 skyscraper will  be willing to sell themselves quite so cheaply.