The View from Right Field

Jamal Khashoggi: What’s Worse? Foreign Policy Edition.

What’s worse (it’s easy until you think about it):

(i)  Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, has been living in self-imposed exile for the last year, while writing articles critical of the Saudi government for, among others, The Washington Post.   On October 2, he enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and is killed at some point thereafter, while in the embassy, by people connected with the Saudi government.

(ii)  Between October 2015 and December 2015, five employees of Causeway Bay Books, a bookseller in Hong Kong, disappear.  At least two of them disappear while in the People’s Republic of China, one while he is in Thailand, and another in Hong Kong itself.  All five are later confirmed to be in the PRC in connection with an alleged investigation of an old traffic incident involving one of them.  Causeway Bay Books sold political books, banned in China, that were critical of the Chinese government.

A Cashless Society Plus China’s Social Credit System Equals …

­In May, FT Weekend had a long article on the increase in the number of payments being made electronically and asked, “Does cash have a future?” The subheadline read: “Electronic payment is quick, convenient, germ-free and can deter crime, from tax evasion to terrorism.  So why are we so reluctant to give up on coins and notes.”¹

The pluses of cash-free transactions are many.  For businesses, more cash-free transactions mean lower costs.  There are fewer break-ins by people looking for money.  Not having to handle cash is cheaper: you don’t have to count it; and you don’t have to physically take it to the bank.

“Trade wars are good, and easy to win”

At least, that is what Donald Trump tweeted back on March 2.  I don’t think it true, but as the U.S. and the Chinese counter to each other’s latest tariff increases, I hope President Trump keeps a couple of things in mind.

First, though, several initial comments.  One, China has been playing unfair.  Among other things, many U.S. companies, especially those in industries with proprietary technology, are only allowed to do business in China if they (i) sign a joint venture agreement with a Chinese company and (ii) license their intellectual property to the Chinese joint venture.  That needs to be changed.

Also, none of the tariffs that have been announced has taken effect yet, and they won’t for several months.  In effect, at this point, they are just threats.  Plus, apparently there are negotiations going on behind the scenes, so they may never come into effect (other than the effect they have on U.S. stock prices).

The Return of One-Man Rule: Increasing Risk in China

In my prior post, I talked about the tendency in foreign affairs to assume that things will continue as they have been.  I looked at Russia and the risks that may come from Russia as it declines.

The country, however, that could be an even greater risk is one that seems the very opposite of instability right now: China.  While The Economist saw Russia as a declining power, it said “China is clearly a rising one that has time on its side”.  Such a view fits with President Xi’s reelection last year and his changes to both the Chinese constitution and the party/governmental structure this year.  It certainly seems that President Xi is in control and that China has the time – and stability – to play the long game.  Once again, I wonder,

When Stability Is Most Expected, Change Often Intrudes: Russia

There is a tendency in foreign affairs, as in life generally,¹ to assume that things will continue as they are.  Of course, this is not true, but people still get surprised when things change.  Examples of this are too numerous to mention, though I feel obligated to list a couple.  In December 1944, nobody expected a German offensive on the Western front.  Voila, the Battle of the Bulge.  The same could be said for the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968, except for the fact that, when the Battle of the Bulge was over, we understood it was a German defeat.

A more recent example is the January 1989 statement by Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany, that the Berlin Wall would be around for another 50, or even 100, years.  Oops.

“The Post,” Richard Nixon, and an Historical “What If”

As a movie, The Post is going to be a blockbuster.  But you expect that with any movie starring both Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep (in alphabetical order).  As history, however, it leaves a little to be desired.  First, it was The New York Times, not The Washington Post, that had the scoop on the Pentagon Papers, and it was the Times, not the Post, that was sued by the Nixon administration.  The Supreme Court case is, after all, New York Times Co. v. United States.  However, it could be that the Times’s newsroom did not have a role for Ms. Streep, while the Post did.

Second, I have yet to see the movie, but I hope it makes it clear that the Pentagon Papers were about how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations misled the public about the Vietnam War.  The Pentagon Papers were not about Richard Nixon.  In fact, according to Henry Kissinger,¹ there was sentiment among some political types in the Nixon White House to let the Pentagon Papers be published to show how Kennedy and Johnson had messed up Vietnam.  Obviously, President Nixon did not take that approach.

China’s Unbelievable Economic Numbers. Are They Believable?

The Wall Street Journal reported last week on China’s GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2017.  It seemed to be big news that quarterly growth rate (i.e., the change from the quarter a year earlier) was 6.9%, an increase from 6.8% the previous quarter.  It would seem to me that 0.1% is almost a rounding error, but the article thought it was important.

Perhaps more interesting, though, was the chart of China’s reported quarterly growth rates, on a year-over-year basis, for the last several years:

China’s Main Concern is Keeping North Korea Around

In a post last week, I talked about what I understand to be North Korea’s main goal in its foreign and domestic policy: maintaining Kim Jong Un in power, and how that goal is driving North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

But what about the People’s Republic of China?  China is viewed by many as the key to controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.  What are China’s concerns?  According to most commentators, they have several.  First, if North Korea collapses, there could be a flood of refugees into China.

Campaign Financing Disclosure and Shutting People Up: In China and the United States

The Obama administration has rightly complained about a new law that China has passed with respect to foreign NGOs (non-government organizations).  According to the Associated Press, the new law subjects NGOs, inter alia,

“to closer financial scrutiny, requiring that they submit annual reports detailing their sources of financing, spending activities and changes in personnel.”

While the law was passed at the end of April, Secretaries John Kerry and Jacob Lew mentioned the law again in their recent visit to China.

The purpose of the law is pretty obvious: To subject foreign NGOs to more government scrutiny and to make it harder for them to do things the government doesn’t like.  In particular, if financing sources have to be identified, some of those sources may stop contributing to NGOs.  They may decide it’s not worth jeopardizing their business or other interests in China to do so.  If NGOs have less money, they can do less to help people in China – and they cause less trouble for a Chinese government that is becoming more hostile to dissent and disagreement.

May 16 in History: Anniversaries in the Middle East and China

May 16 is the anniversary of two significant events in history.  One hundred years ago today, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed between France and Great Britain.  The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret convention that partitioned the Ottoman Empire after World War I.  It served as the foundation for the modern Middle East and much of the bad and good (if, in the case of the latter) that has happened since.

Speaking of bad, fifty years ago today, China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution started when Mao Zedong approved a secret document declaring war on “representatives of the bourgeoisie” who had “sneaked into the Communist Party, the government, the army,” etc.  A year later, Mao explained to his wife, that his aim was to create “great disorder under heaven” in order to achieve “greater order under heaven.”  Whether he believed that or not, who knows.