The View from Right Field

Traveling Can Make Current Events More Current

One of the great joys of travel is going to places where history has happened.  The Pyramids, Machu Pichu, Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois, the Capitol building in Washington, etc.  Seeing places like these can help you better understand history, as well as giving you a personal connection to events in the past.

But if you are lucky, travel can also take you to places where things are happening now or may happen in the future.  Seeing such places can make current events more interesting and personal and maybe even more understandable.  We were lucky enough to be in West Berlin and East Germany in 1979 and 1982, so when the protests arose and the Wall came down in 1989, we had an appreciation of what was happening that we might not have otherwise had. 

Beijing Says Taiwan Is an “Ant” – But an Ant Can Have “High Hopes”

China has ridiculed Taiwan’s increase in defense spending as a waste of money.  According to Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman:

“No matter how much it spends, as we all know, Taiwan is a small island.  If it wants to fight against mainland China, it is like an ant trying to move a tree.”¹

Still, as we know, if a Taiwanese ant has “high hopes”, Beijing may find that “oops, there goes another rubber tree plant”²:

China, WHO, and the Next Time

In a conversation with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, former New Zealand Prime Minister and former head of the United Nations Development Programme¹ Helen Clark said that, at the multilateral level, the world has not risen to the challenge of Covid-19.  She noted that, in 2014, the UN Security Council declared a public health emergency with respect to Ebola, but this time, the Security Council has done nothing.  As to why, she says it relates to the toxic nature of international politics.

Which is true.  But it seems to me the reason is more specific than that.  While Donald Trump does not believe in multilateral organizations and is, in my opinion, a terrible president in terms of foreign relations,² the biggest reason there has been no coordinated international action on Covid-19 is simple.  It’s China.  It appears China screwed up big time on Covid-19.  The best information is that Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China.  But for some reason China did not get on top of it right away (or at least didn’t do enough).  There are a number of possible reasons (and there needs to be an investigation), but regardless of the reason(s), at this point it looks like China had a chance to stop or contain this virus before it spread.  But it didn’t, and now it’s killing people all over the world.³  And the problem with a coordinated international response, from China’s part of view, is that part of such a response would be an investigation that would make China’s failings more difficult to hide.

What’s With WHO? WHO’s With China?

No, this is not some 2020 version of Abbott and Costello.  It’s a question about how the World Health Organization, and China, are doing vis-à-vis the Covid-19 pandemic.  The answer is not good – or at least not nearly as good as they should be.¹  WHO ignored a report from Taiwan on December 31 that about person-to-person transmission of Covid-19 in Wuhan.²  WHO ignored the report because Beijing won’t allow WHO to include or listen to Taiwan.  When President Trump imposed a partial travel ban on travel to China on January 31, WHO was saying that travel bans were a bad idea.  WHO didn’t declare Covid-19 a pandemic until March 11, which was absurdly late.

So, what do we do with WHO – and more importantly China?  President Trump is delaying U.S. contributions to WHO.³  I understand the frustration, but is that what we should be doing now?  Is WHO the real problem or is it China?  If it is China, what do we do about them? 

For some good thoughts on the latter, look at these comments by former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, now a Fellow at the Hoover Institution:

Among the Reasons You Can’t Trust China's Reports on Coronavirus

While on our trip to Egypt, I saw an article in The Egyptian Gazette last Thursday on the coronavirus efforts in Wuhan, China.  The article reported that inspectors were going door-to-door in Wuhan, trying to identify every infected person.  Wang Zhonglin, the new Communist Party secretary in Wuhan, was quoted as saying, “If a single new case [of coronavirus] is found (after Wednesday), the district leaders will be held responsible.”  Which means, of course, that no new cases will be reported because the district leaders know what will happen to them if one is.

It reminds me of this story:

Hong Kong: Freedom’s Light Still Shines

Three weeks ago, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, people were wondering what went wrong.  Democracy is on the decline in eastern Europe and elsewhere, while nasty populism is rising all over the world, including the United States.

But then, when things seem dark, a tiny ray of light shines, a delicate little flower blooms.  In 1977, it was Vaclav Havel and Charter ’77 in Communist East Europe.  In the 1970s, it was Spain, Portugal and Greece leaving dictatorships behind and becoming free.  Next were Taiwan and South Korea.  In 1994, it was Nelson Mandela in the South Africa of apartheid.

LeBron James and China. Whose Financial Harm Is He Worried About?

At this point, to mix sports references, piling on Lebron James about his China comments probably deserves an unsportsmanlike penalty.  In any case, perhaps the most hurtful comment, at least from the viewpoint of LeBron’s normal constituency, was in today’s Wall Street Journal, when they noted how similar LeBron’s comments were to Donald Trump’s.  Ouch. 

The only comment I wanted to make was on LeBron’s concern that “so many people could have been harmed not only financially [but] physically, emotionally, spiritually” by Daryl Morey’s tweet.  Hmmm, “financially”.  Do you think LeBron was talking about little people, people who might lose their jobs in Hong Kong or China, or the U.S., if there is a big dispute between China and the NBA?

Russia and China: Dangers and Opportunities. But Is Anybody Paying Attention?

Protests in Hong Kong have extended into their tenth week, with the airport in Hong Kong being shut down over the weekend.  Meanwhile in Moscow, and elsewhere in Russia, there are growing protests with respect to upcoming local elections and efforts by the Vladimir Putin regime to prevent opposition candidates from running in those elections. 

The protests in Russia have been met by force and large numbers of arrests.  Beijing has yet to intervene in the Hong Kong protests, but one wonders how long that restraint will last.  In both Russia and the People’s Republic of China, government-controlled media have limited dissemination about the protests, but I am sure some information is seeping around and through Putin’s barriers and the Great Fire Wall.

Foreign Policy in 2020: We Need a President Who Has Thought These Things Through.

While the world looks at the possibility/risk of war between the United States and Iran (understandably), let me suggest that I hope we have people thinking about Russia, China, and our future relations with them.  I doubt very much that President Trump is doing this or that he has asked anybody to do this.  However, perhaps people such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and/or National Security Adviser John Bolton are having it done at the staff level.

As for the Democratic candidates for President, maybe some of them are thinking about this, though it seems most of them are focusing on how to stand out among the twenty-some candidates running.  And in-depth foreign policy analysis isn’t the kind of issue that is going to separate you from the crowd.  (I don’t know how you tie foreign policy to “free” stuff, which seems to be what many of the Democrats are talking about.)  Still, hopefully some of them are actually thinking about this some – because it is important. 

Will Trump Reach a Real Agreement With China? More Importantly, Can Pandas Fly?

Donald Trump has delayed the March 1 deadline for increasing tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that he expects the details of a final deal between the U.S. and China will be worked out at a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, to be held at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.  One question, of course, is what any such agreement would provide.  Would it just cover China agreeing to buy more stuff from the United States or would it really change the way the Chinese economy works?

The Economist, in a leader in its current issue (“Can pandas fly?”¹), encourages President Xi to, inter alia, limit the state’s role in allocating capital and temper China’s industrial policy.  The Economist says that “[a] more economically liberal China would end up richer and make fewer enemies.” 

But this misunderstands President Xi’s priorities – and the priorities of his predecessors.  Thirty years ago, Deng Xiaoping crushed the protesters in Tiananmen Square because maintaining control was worth putting his economic reforms on hold for a time.  It is the same with President Xi.  Growth is nice, but political control is more important.
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¹ “Can pandas fly?” was the title of the leader in the print edition of The Economist.