RCEP

Last week at the most recent ASEAN conference, China announced that they would be joining RCEP (Regional Cooperative Economic Plan). The previous video features the stuffed shirt talking head hot takes from India and Japan. RCEP becomes the largest free trade agreement in the world covering 30% of the world's population and an equal amount of global GDP--and that's without India, who has flirted with RCEP over the years but ultimately (for now) backed away. RCEP is currently: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam. 

But...no USA (*).  

You may recall that in 2016, US presidential candidates Trump and Clinton agreed on pretty much only one thing: that the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) was a bad idea for American workers and both poo-pooed the idea of joining in--even though it was Hillary Clinton that initially put the organization together while Secretary of State under President Obama. The whole point of the TPP was to create an East Asian trade block that would be aligned against China but Trump was against this because of his rabid anti-China policy (uh...wait that doesn't make any sense) and Clinton caved in the face of the Bernie Bros that (for whatever reason) think global trade is somehow bad for American industrial production. *sigh* Even when Americans have the right idea they manage to talk themselves out of it. 

So instead of an American-based free trade coalition spanning vast chunks of human population arrayed in opposition to China, now we have a China-based group without the need of American economic muscle behind it. Between the Bernie crowd and the Trump idiots (**), I'm certain I'm in the minority when I say this is a colossal wasted opportunity for USA. And likely an all-out triumph for China. 

Instead of TPP, Trump pursued a trade war with China built around unilateral tariffs--which would've been greatly aided by a TPP-like organization but somehow he didn't see it that way. My personal belief is that Trump's anti-China rhetoric was merely a staged attempt to create a détente with China going into the 2020 election and that the first three years of tariffs were really just a pantomimed attempt to gin up rapprochement. (***) But once Covid-19 appeared, the hope of détente with China evaporated. So instead, Xi Jinping has moved on with other plans: testing nuclear weapons again, cracking down on Hong Kong, picking fights with India, continuing to grow a military presence in the South China Sea and snatching the free trade bonanza the Americans let wither on the vine. 

About 15 minutes into this video, Ambassador Fujisaki refers to the 1990s-era belief (mostly in USA) that expanding trade with China would bring about a democratic revolution among Chinese workers/consumers. To further flesh out this belief that he refers to, I went back to "The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations" by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner from the Mar/Apr 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs (****). The authors say things like, "Growth was supposed to bring not just further economic opening but also political liberalization...with a burgeoning Chinese middle class demanding new rights and pragmatic officials embracing legal reforms...for further progress." But "(r)ather than becoming a force for greater openness, consistent growth has served to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party". I think it's fair to say the first sentence was a popular belief in American foreign policy circles in the 1990s and that the second sentence is a popular belief in current American foreign policy circles. 

So, in short, the Americans believed that expanding economic cooperation with China was a necessary post-Cold War step to make sure that Chinese growth came with an American imprimatur and that over time the growth would create a more liberal, open Chinese establishment that would fall in line with Western democratic capitalism. We had become accustomed to pictures like this. We saw China's leadership as capable only of oppressing the in-born desires of millions--billions--of good hearted Chinese people that yearned only to buy more stuff (I mean, it's not insignificant the man in this iconic picture carries a grocery bag, is it?). And we saw ourselves as a force for good by way of infiltrating the Chinese economy and allowing a newly burgeoning middle class to demand more democratic representation. (Or perhaps we saw the opportunity to co-opt the inevitable economic expansion of China and to get rich off of China getting rich....there's that, too) 

But when Xi Jinping came to power in 2010 and then retained power in 2015 (and will be granted another 5-year term any day now), something previously unconstitutional in China, Americans began to wake up to the idea that the grand design of democratic capitalism wasn't taking hold as it should. Indeed, the power structure seems all the more powerful because the last 20 years of Chinese economic growth hasn't produced a middle class but a thin layer of super-rich private citizens eager to wed themselves to the CCP's hold on the culture. Oh...yeah....there has to be a middle class to have a middle class revolution.

For my part, I never really bought the idea back in the 1990s. China has been China for more than 3000 years and the only hint of democracy they've ever had was a brief flirtation with Republican gov't in the early 20th century that was not popular, not successful and is likely considered their lowest point in the last 3000 years (at least by the Chinese themselves). The people of China have been ruled by the imperial Middle Kingdom since before the beginning of time--yeah, check it out: Chinese history kicks off with several hundred years worth of a dynasty that no one's sure even existed. The Emperor emerged from the mythological primordial ooze of life itself and that's all they've ever known. And--here's the thing Americans will NEVER understand--the Chinese people are...pretty cool with that. They don't mind it, they rage against it every once in a while but nothing else has ever replaced it. So expecting the Chinese people to rise up and demand more self-determination is gonna take some time. Like, a lot of time. Like, I dunno, a thousand years...? The idea that two decades of selling Chinese people Wal-Mart bedsheets was gonna completely reverse several millennia of culture...uh...never made any sense to me. Americans are beholden to iconic images like the one above, but I gotta tell ya: you don't control a billion and a half people with a line of tanks.  

Frankly, it just shows a misapprehension on the part of the West of how China works. We look at the Chinese Communist Party and see only the Communist part and totally neglect the Chinese part. I would suggest the CCP functions pretty much just like the Confucian bureaucracy that was the spine of the last thousand years of the Middle Kingdom. Hell, I would suggest the CCP is way more enlightened, egalitarian, forward-looking, responsible and inclusive than the Confucians ever were. So what the Chinese people have is already light years more advanced than what their ancestors would've expected from their emperors. Furthermore what they have is not actually something that we would recognize as "Communist". The way the CCP operates in China is not at all how Communism has ever been practiced anywhere else--and certainly not what Karl Marx would've imagined (an agrarian peasant rebellion was not what Marx had in mind (*****)).  

Actually what Americans think of as Communism is just Authoritarianism with a fancy name on it. In the west we fear Communism for its authoritarian tendencies and we use Stalin and Mao as the examples; but the authoritarianism in both cases pre-dates Marx and has little to do with top-down Marxist economics. When we say that Communism has never worked, that isn't really true: it's never been tried. When the Russians latched on to Marxist thought, they were working within a tradition of brutal authoritarianism and they saw the opportunity to push the Czar out and grab that authoritarianism for themselves. Stalin grabbed power and glommed onto Marxist ideas about committees and class warfare, neither of which really come from Marx, but I see no evidence that Stalin had any interest in the economic precepts of Marxism. I am convinced that Marxist top-down economic doctrines are doomed to failure but I am not convinced the failure of the Russian Soviets was because of Marxist economic dogma. As for the authoritarianism, it wasn't a product of Marxism, it was already there, the Czars ruled with an iron fist long before Karl Marx was born (******). Stalin was born from a tradition of Czarism more than Marxism and Mao represented a new type of Middle Kingdom rather than being the Marxist ideal.

As for the economics, the reason Americans fear it is because we are born of commerce and bristle at any notion of fettering it. In America we have created not a worker's paradise but a consumer's paradise: it is still not uncommon to find items in your local grocery that are cheaper than the lands they came from. That's because we're awesome and those other places suck and the likely reason those other places don't have the options that Americans have is because there is some top-down authority keeping the citizenry from full self-expression. We have a tendency to call this "Communism", whether or not that is actually the case. Thus, we equate Communism with Authoritarianism and Capitalism with Democracy: it is only in a free economy than we can have a free society (or something like that). And, the thinking goes, the expansion of Chinese economy must necessarily be joined with the expansion of civil liberties and voting rights, while a decrease of Chinese Communism will produce a decrease of Authoritarianism. We have come to see these things as two separate poles and presume the rise of one will spell the doom of the other. But this isn't necessarily so. I never bought that Chinese capitalism would lead to freer gov't because I think the gov't and the economy are two separate and distinct paradigms. And in this case it shows our fundamental misunderstanding of Communism. 

The Chinese are doing something that no one else has ever done before: they're actually following Marxist economic ideology. The authoritarianism has been there for thousands of years but their recent forays into global trade are because Marx says quite explicitly that Communism derives from Capitalism. Marx says you must indulge entrepreneurial industrial Capitalism in order for Communism to arise (re: you have to create wealth that so that you can then have wealth to control). Thus, the Chinese have allowed a greater expansion of market activity and wealth creation among the citizenry over the last 30 years because that's what Marx says to do--not because it seeks to adhere to American-style capitalist democracy. Capitalism will morph into Socialism, then Socialism will morph into Communism. I think Marx is probably right (*******) but whereas in the West we fear the steady decrease of individual choice due to the imposition of more and more top-down economic activity, in China they already have the top-down activity and are trying to bring the relative wealth of the citizenry up through a burst of macroeconomic activity. In the long run, the Chinese will either become prisoners of the endless chase for economic growth or they will actually achieve the Marxist Utopia (which is basically just Europe before the French Revolution). Neither of those options sound very "Chinese" to me but they gotta do something, I guess. 

And so here we are at a juncture of history where the Chinese are expanding their economic frontiers and reaching out to their neighbors (something they've done very little of in 3000 years), while the Americans are acting like trade is bad for workers. Yes, I was skeptical back in the 1990s of the political liberalization the Americans promised would happen, but I did kinda believe that Chinese people would get used to having choices and that would filter into the Party structure on the local level. Not on the national level, because that is now and will forever be just a room full of chain smoking old men making the decisions for a billion other souls. But I did think and still do that on the local level the reach of the CCP will actually--perhaps in spite of itself--give more people more opportunity to exert some bottom-up control. But that would be relatively invisible to American eyes and probably have little to do with the foreign policy/foreign trade powers of the Party. So while I didn't really buy it back in the day, I think it's much too early to say the liberalization didn't work because even if it does work, foreigners probably won't be able to tell. And it'll take a while before it works anyway, maybe not a thousand years but probably something like a hundred years. 

Marx was not talking about Russia, Marx was certainly not talking about China. Marx was talking about England--and by extension America. Marx presumed that the Capitalism Americans so cherish will eventually devolve (evolve/devolve? You decide) into Communism: a world where all the economic decisions are made by a handful of old men in committees telling everyone else what will be available to purchase. I understand Marx's point: as economic growth binds social structures together, an overarching abstract power will naturally arise on top--indeed, may be forced to arise--in order to smooth the flow of resource distribution. But Marx (like Einstein) was wedded to a steady state universe. For some reason he didn't account for economic expansion, so his notion that wealth would entropically rise to the top is not quite how things work. Also the notion that economic power and political power are the same thing is frankly not how America ever worked.

Granted, the super rich in America become super richer all the time but they don't hoard that wealth, they put it back into the markets. Indeed, the rich people are the ones creating the wealth that drives all economic growth. So while Marx was correct that a handful of rich people would control all the money, he was mistaken in that it would be controlled by a gov't force. It is not. That is private wealth put to private ends and the aim of of private wealth is to create ever more private wealth, which is not at all what a gov't would do. And Marx's notion that a gov't committee would be the best source of resource distribution is...man, as wrong as it could be!

Only private wealth can create capital; the gov't produces merely inflation. "Helping" people through gov't demand doesn't help anyone because it doesn't create sustainable economic structures, it just creates inflation. A sugar rush is fine for a while but it isn't nutrition, it won't keep the body from dying. Likewise, gov't spending can be an occasionally worthwhile stopgap but it does not provide nourishment. Only markets build into the future.

The American Congress is ruled by a series of committees but frankly the sheer amount of wealth it controls is pretty piddly compared to the private wealth in our capital markets. The politicians (and the politically minded citizenry) are fighting over tax dollars, which by definition is a tiny percentage of the overall economy. They can be as Marxist as they like, it'll actually have a pretty minimal effect on the wealth redistribution that happens all day long in the American economy. The politicians like to act important--and the citizenry is eager to make them appear important--but they're pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. They have the ability to waste a lot of time and money but not much more than that--they certainly can't make money or invest it. Congress's only real economic power is making money go away. Congress is absolutely invested in helping the citizenry be more productive (re: produce more capital) because that's where the wealth comes from. It doesn't come from the gov't. Wealth can never and will never come from gov't spending. That's just as true in China as it is in America. 

The Russian Soviets didn't care about economics, they cared only for the maintenance of their iron fist, generally by cowing people into silence and inactivity. China, too, has a long history of just shutting people up rather than dealing with their desires. In America we blame the political structure but frankly it doesn't do much because it actually effects a pittance of the overall spending. Marx's assumption that gov't power is real power is only true when you follow the top-down economic structures that Americans have always eschewed. But the idea that Capitalism and Democracy go hand in hand is not plainly obvious. I think its quite possible to have free economies in a tyrannical state and loads of democracy in a top-down economy. Market forces are latent, permanent and exist regardless of the particular ruling authority; ruling authorities can make economies worse but they have no power to make them better because economy comes from the People not the State. 

The fact that we've lumped all of these ideas in a single stew is an unnecessary complication that clouds our vision of objective reality (an effect of Media, I'd say). It makes Americans think that our politicians should do more and then complain when they try to do anything. And it makes us fear any other country in the world doing anything because we see competition as a zero-sum game rather than a source of continual growth. 

I've long been "soft" on China, even though I didn't buy the 1990s-era rhetoric of Chinese capitalist democracy. The Chinese people have been empowered over the last few decades but that doesn't mean they have much political participation. Yeah....because they don't want it. They like American-style improvement of standard of living but they think our politics is stupid and corrupt (and I agree). But I believe that China's continued growth and international influence is coming whether we like it or not--and, personally, I like it. I do not fear it and I think economic growth in all places is good because it empowers the citizens, the individuals, the People, even if has the unfortunate by-product of making States seem more powerful than they actually are. 

But it's hard to wrap my mind around a China that yearns for free trade while in America our politicians are clamoring for the cancellation of student loans; while I agree that our method of financing higher education is shameful and stupid, using the gov't as a mechanism to release people from their contractual obligations is precisely the opposite of what our gov't should be doing (and would be ruinously expensive for the higher educational opportunities of future generations). When American Liberals dream of a "better world", they are invariably thinking only of a more expensive one...and then expect the price to be paid by someone else. For some reason, they think that's what Socialism is but I bet they wouldn't if they ever read Marx.

(*) You will notice that North Korea and Taiwan, the two inescapable lightning rods of Pacific Asia, aren't there, either. But why isn't Bangladesh in the RCEP? 

(**) Obama gave lip service to TPP in 2016 but I suspect this was simply because he knew it was a losing cause. I thought at the time that Congress might've wanted TPP so much that they would actually let Obama have a little victory on the way out, but either Obama didn't care enough to take up the offer or Congress didn't care enough to extend it. Instead, the presidential candidates both talked Americans out of its usefulness...and we got a lame-ass trade war instead. *sigh* The business of America is business and we forget that at our peril.  

(***) I think Xi Jinping was on board with this plan. Enduring three years of an American tantrum for the prospect of 4-5 years of American support probably looked pretty good to him So, in case you're trying to read between the lines, I would suggest this shows that Covid-19 is absolutely NOT a Chinese conspiracy to weaken the global economy because I think it actually hinders what Xi wanted to do going forward. Or if this is some kind of devious plot, it is anti-Xi plot more than an anti-American one. 

(****) I started this post on Aug 29, 2018 initially with my thoughts on Foreign Affairs Mar/Apr 2018 essay "The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations" by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner.  But...I'm a lazy guy, picked this back up based on recent events.

(*****) I kept trying to convince my Chinese Political History professor that in an agrarian economy the farmers control the means of production, but he never bought it. I still (sorta) believe it but I still have no way of making anyone else believe it. Like I still believe that when looking at a US electoral map, it's easy to point out that the red states produce little of the overall GDP but how can you not notice it's where all our food comes from? Do you honestly think that's insignificant? 

(******) I'd say it's an outgrowth of the Golden Horde. Prior to the Mongols ransacking Russia circa 1250, there were democratic movements in that area, there was the attempt to make the leadership responsible to the citizenry. The Mongols ruled not merely with an iron fist but went out of their way to humiliate local Russian leaders and for 200 years brutally repressed any kind of movement at all. When the Muscovite princes were able to finally shake off Mongol rule around 1450, they took on the tenor of that bone-crushing leadership and that's the way it's been ever since in Russia. At to that end: Yeah, I know you're not gonna dig this but Vladimir Putin is easily the kindest, sweetest most benevolent leader they've ever had. I would say by a fucking longshot, he's the most enlightened leader they've ever had. Russia today actually has something that could be referred to as a middle class....when in the last thousand years was that even a possibility?

(*******) Though I don't agree with his rationale. To Marx economic growth will necessarily create an underclass that can only be cared for by the State and the State will then have to collect more and more from the citizenry to account for the left behind. I think the actuality is different: I think the upwardly mobile citizenry want more than they want to pay for and will think that gov't spending will be able to provide more and more. Thus, wealthy gov'ts will steadily drift toward Socialism and ultimately Communism through the force of ever-growing debt obligations. Politicians in charge will take on more and more spending as a means of holding on to power. But as gov't accrues more purchasing power, it will continually depress its own currency and all other markets. And in the long run we'll end up with dwindling consumer choices and more expectation of the gov't to make our choices for us. Kinda the same but Marx thought of helping the poor within a world of economic growth while I see it as steady decrease of economic growth as the people have fewer and fewer choices that only makes life tougher for the poor. 

PS -- Here's the Chinese stuffed shirt talking head hot take version. I think its noteworthy that they close by allowing the Singaporean representative to remind everyone that RCEP does not keep these Asian nations from militarily hedging against China (oh yeah: militarism is another separate and distinct paradigm that I didn't even touch on here). The agenda for the Americans is clear: guns but not butter. 

Hong Kong

"We should take to the streets first and then decide what to do."
-- Anonymous protester in Hong Kong (on or around October 13, 2019)

Protests in Hong Kong erupted in May when Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam introduced a bill to allow mainland China to extradite criminal suspects from Hong Kong for trial. Hong Kongers immediately took to the streets to protest this action and were able to get the bill removed from consideration (for now) back in June. The protests continued because...well, because protesters gottta protest.

Last week, Houston Rockets general manager, Darryl Morey, re-tweeted a comment supporting the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Harmless enough, a bland tweet about actions a million miles away that I presume Morey thought would yield a coupla 'likes' and then be forgotten under the weight of a gajillion new tweets. But this was not the case. Authorities in Beijing were offended that the head of China's favorite basketball team (*) would throw shade at the ruling party and give support to what they see as rioters in their (roughly) 7th largest city. Morey deleted the tweet and the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, immediately issued an apology for the tweet and distanced his league from the actions of one of its team's employees. Chinese broadcasters still announced their intention to remove all NBA games from local television--even the pre-season games being played at the time in China--and all Houston Rockets gear was subsequently removed from sporting goods stores and sites across China (most notably Nike).

Around this time Blizzard Entertainment, one of the world's largest video game developers and publishers, banned one of their players in a Blizzard-sponsored competition after he made pro-Hong Kong comments during a post-victory interview. This has earned Blizzard a great deal of on-line vitriol from the gaming community (**).

Americans look at these kerfuffles and likely think, "Right on! Those people just want freedom and democracy! Why are American companies kowtowing (***) to China?" Lebron James, just last night, criticized Morey's tweet in serpentine language worthy of a political candidate, and has already suffered the wrath of Hong Kong protesters burning his jersey.



Let's take a quick overview of Chinese history. China as we know it more or less goes back to roughly 1050BC when the Zhou dynasty came to power. The Zhou basically peaked at that time and slowly withered away over the next 800 years or so before devolving into the Warring States Period, which was 400 years or so of chaos where smaller states asserted themselves over a singular empire. The Warring States eventually consolidated into the Qin Dynasty, where we get the name 'China' as this was roughly the time when the Chinese and the Romans became aware of each other; they are perhaps most notable for consolidating the written Chinese language that is still (more or less) in use to this day. The Qin collapsed pretty quick and gave way to the Han Dynasty, where we get the ethnic name of the Chinese people (still referred to as the Han Chinese).

Long before all that, there were people along the Yellow River that settled into clumps and had to periodically fight off interlopers from the steppes of central Asia. An 'empire' arose out of the consolidation of villages as they banded together to fight off incoming hordes. Now the hordes came and went and the 'empire' would come and go, as well, reappearing when necessary but going dormant when the threats died down. Over time, though, the necessity of empire won out, as seen in the fact that the empire produced continuity whereas the nomads from the steppe may produce an excellent general from time to time, but otherwise didn't build much or evolve as a consistently dominant force. Empire survived whether strong or not, nomads just drifted and only occasionally made a difference. The aforementioned Zhou Dynasty, for example, springs to life but then meanders for centuries because it doesn't really do anything the people need done. There are periods in the Zhou years, for example, where the emperor is more of a religious figure than a political one because he doesn't actually have much real power, so he had to grip on to symbolic power just to stay relevant.

During the Zhou period lived a man named Confucius. In the West, we think of Confucius as a spiritual force, a great ponderer on life but I'd suggest that's not the case at all. Confucius was a man of stark practicality whose message is really about getting a job and being useful to the polity of the time. He was very temporal, very pragmatic and his message is that the highest form of life is to serve the emperor. Over time--and it took more centuries than it seems like it should have!--emperors took up the message of Confucius and began to form academies where Confucian thought was extolled and tested. This formed the backbone of the political bureaucracy until well into the 20th century (and I would suggest the modern Chinese Communist Party serves much the same function in much the same way with much the same propaganda, albeit now directed to the Party itself rather than the leader).

I could continue to recount dynasties and the inter-dynastic periods of hardship but I'll just sum them up thusly: empire would rise, then fall apart, then come back together, then fall apart, etc., until around 1900 when it completely collapsed and was reborn as something new. At any rate, the point is the long and ancient history of China is the empire rising against an outside force, collapsing from within, then reemerging, over and over again. But some things remain constant: the written language, the Mandate of Heaven (whereby the emperor ruled), the Middle Kingdom (a real thing and a symbolic thing in equal measure), the Confucian Bureaucracy and (generally) the fealty of the individual states to the concept of a central imperial presence. Rather than falling into a pile of competing states (like Europe), they stayed a single unified entity with core values and communication and practices, even in the periods when it all fell apart.

The empire has not overcome every challenge--no, the empire fell apart numerous times in the last 3000 years. But the core concepts and the desire for unification are ancient. And fighting outside forces is when the Chinese are most united.

Back to the history lesson: the Chinese had a period of good growth and relative calm from roughly about 1690 to 1820. They finally defeated their Mongol enemies, they turned Tibet from an enemy to a protectorate, they signed treaties with other countries for the first time (thus, acknowledging that there are lands beyond the Mandate of Heaven), the population boomed, the economy (re: agriculture and manufacturing) was good for an extended period and they had a run of long-lasting emperors that provided continuity relatively rare in their history. Then the Europeans showed up and all that turned to shit.

The French invaded Vietnam, the Japanese invaded Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, Russia held large chunks Xianjiang, the Portuguese took Macau, the Americans used Most Favored Nation status as a way to really crack open Chinese economy and the Brits wanted more than the rest. The Chinese were bewildered by all of this as they had no interest in anything these foreigners had to offer and no need of their 'diplomacy'. But they put up with it all until the opium epidemic swept their lands in the early 19th century and they felt they had to outlaw it to save their population. This angered the British, who made good money off the opium trade in China (****) and they came at the minuscule Chinese military with the furious wrath of the world's finest navy and broke down the Chinese will. The Chinese reversed their laws, imported massive amounts of deadly opium which kept their population weak but their foreign overlords pleased. And in the settlement the British took Hong Kong.

In later years the Chinese were able to finagle an end date for the British occupation of Hong Kong and in 1997 Hong Kong was formally returned to China. Now by 1997 the Chinese Communist Party (in a rare correct reading of Marx) had embraced entrepreneurial capitalism and saw Hong Kong as a way to be a financial bridge to the markets of the world; and likewise, the people of Hong Kong had grown up with a lifestyle not quite in step with mainland China, so the two groups were agreed that separate identities and practices were mutually beneficial. So Hong Kong has a unique place in Chinese culture: it is part of China, no longer controlled by foreign forces, but its ways are a bit alien to the rest of Chinese culture (which in this context is referred to as the 'Mainland').

And that brings us up to today. And the protests and such. So what is that the protesters in Hong Kong want? They have a separate identity, they have more freedom and wealth already than the rest of their Chinese brethren. They don't want to be submitted to the Chinese judiciary (*****), but that issue has been removed already. Now the claim is they want 'democracy', the iconography of which has taken the form of visualizations of the Statue of Liberty, waving the American flag and readings of the American constitution. But is that really what's going on?

Watch the video above, posted by the South China Morning Post (*****) on October 13. What do you see? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIqx3YIHntc)

Do you see people yearning to breathe free under the yoke of a violent tyrannical gov't? I don't. I see pointless vandalism. I see people taking to the streets with the intent of blocking the way of their fellow non-protesting citizens. I see the people threatening the police, not the other way around. I don't see any desire for democracy, nor do I see a gov't making much effort to stem the tide of the wanton destruction of a tiny portion of its citizenry.

This is what Daryl Morey supports? This is what gamers all over the world support? This is what activists and freedom fighters support? This is what the United States Congress (in three resolutions just passed by the House of Representatives) supports? This is what we are shaming Lebron James and the NBA and Blizzard Entertainment for not supporting?

A thought experiment: what if the NBA said that their marketing this year was going to be all about Donald Trump, MAGA hats for everybody, signage at the arenas extolling the virtues of 'Trumpism', making basketball great again, etc.--how do you think that would go over with the NBA's core fans in the USA? I think it'd be a bad idea and wouldn't work well at all. Oh sure, a handful of media outlets and Twitter accounts that currently have no need for the NBA would cheer but I think it'd be a pretty tiny portion of the population and wouldn't make up for how many fans the NBA would alienate. And I don't think the players would much care for it either.

Well, that's what supporting the Hong Kong protests is like to the mainland Chinese that make up the NBA's fanbase in Asia. The mainlanders look at the Hong Kongers as people already spoiled with too much money, too much foreign influence and too much freedom--and now they're rioting in the streets for more? I assure you, my fellow Americans, these Hong Kong protest are NOT popular with regular Chinese people. Hell, I doubt they're even popular in Hong Kong! Gambits like shutting down the airport and the train stations and looting the shopping malls is of no use to the vast majority of those people. And if these protests look like massive numbers of people, remember: Hong Kong has 7,000,000 people and those pictures show only a tiny percentage of that total population. Distancing themselves from this is the right move for the NBA (and Blizzard, too).

To the rest of the Chinese people, trying to get ahead through education and stock market investment, these protests are a sign of betrayal, weakness and ignorance. The idea that the Chinese people need American political activity is frankly just rude. They like having a central leader that does all the things they don't have to worry about. They don't look at USA's fractious political debates and think, 'Yeah, we need more of that'.  No! They don't. And supporting the fringe that has adopted American-style protest is not a winning strategy for American companies, nor is it respectful to the Chinese people themselves.

I'm a big fan of the American founding fathers. I view the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as two of the greatest works in human history. I don't see these protests in Hong Kong as IN ANY WAY representative of a fundamental desire for representation or progress or freedom. Indeed, in the context of Chinese culture, this is just childish behavior with no meaningful intent whatsoever.

My complaint about China is that it is a mono-culture that seeks to produce only the average. In 4,000 years of Chinese there's no Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison, no Bill Gates, no Jimi Hendrix, no Emily Dickinson, no Micheal Jordan or Mark Twain--that's what they need! They need self-expression through intellectual and artistic achievement, not rioting in the streets. They need the NBA and Blizzard (and South Park, too, for that matter) more than they need Occupy Wall Street.

Make no mistake: the reason Lebron James backed away from Morey's tweet is because Lebron wants to make gajillions of dollars and knows that China is the place to do it. Lebron needs China. But even more than that: China needs Lebron. And American do-gooders that believe what they see on TV might well be the death of a beautiful relationship and that would be a god damn shame.



(*) Fun fact: mainland China has more basketball fans than the USA has people.

(**) Also recently the show South Park feuded with the Chinese gov't and has since been banned from Chinese TV. I'll gloss over this because (a) they court controversy as a matter of course and (b) as resilient as South Park has managed to be over the years, they are not the day in/day out obsession that sports and video games are.

(***) The term "kowtow" comes from China and specifically refers to showing obeisance to the Chinese emperor. Kinda refreshing that it is finally getting used in its original definition.

(****) ....As did a man named Warren Delano. Ever heard of him? Give him a Google.

(*****) In my humble opinion China needs two things: an independent media and an independent judiciary. The Communist Party is everything in China and the legislature, the executive, the military and the banks are cool with that because it does flow from a long a tradition of one-party rule. But a judiciary that is beholden to centralized political forces is not much of a judiciary. You may complain as much about the American judiciary and while I'm no fan of the two-party system we've anchored ourselves to, I'd suggest our judges are vastly freer to interpret precedent in this country than...well, anywhere else in the world or in the history of civilization. And the media needs to allow the people to be free, to make their own choices and make up their own minds. Indeed, what good is a gov't that doesn't allow the people to be people?

(******) In case you think the South China Morning Post is a pro-Beijing rag, I assure you it is not. It is a Hong Kong dissident paper that delights in Beijing's failings.

Saudi Arabia

Over the past week in Saudi Arabia a dozen princes and a few various gajillionaires (and undoubtedly hundreds of lesser-known citizens) were arrested for the nebulous crime of corruption. Among the arrests was the head of the Saudi National Guard, Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the nephew of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud. Having already ousted the head of the Saudi Land Forces, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (another nephew), this past summer, the entire military and police apparatus of the Saudi state falls to the king's son, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. There are vague reports suggesting a coup was in place and that these maneuvers staved off a revolution, but claiming victimhood while being the aggressor is just what bullies do. With the vanquishing of the last of the previous king's sons, the path to the throne of Saudi Arabia has been laid for MBS.

MBS has already issued a decree (called Vision 2030) to make Saudi Islam more kindly and gentle, allowing for more women's rights and cultural activities, and swearing off Jihadi violence, all in recognition that as fossil fuels wane (*), the Kingdom's entire economy and society will soon be in flux. The Kingdom needs to change, to modernize and MBS is set up to be the man to try. It seems to me, though, that the recent arrests will create something like a gov't in waiting, a revolutionary force ready to snap into action should MBS make any fatal mistakes. So though MBS shored up his grip on power at home, he will likely have a pack of vultures hovering over him for the foreseeable future, to say nothing of the foreign enemies he is now preparing to go out and face.

As the Saudi purges were taking place, the Yemenis assassinated another Saudi prince and launched a ballistic missile at Riyadh's airport (shot down with an American Patriot missile). MBS has been the Saudi point man on the war on Yemen and while I think the Saudis are ready to be done with it, the missile launch (of Iranian origin?) and the high profile assassination will undoubtedly keep the Saudis in Yemen for a while.

Amidst all this activity, the Saudis were able to force Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri to resign (and remain in house arrest in Riyadh...?), which is meant to undercut the Iranian-backed Hezbollah faction in Lebanon. I don't understand how this is the effect, Hariri and Hezbollah were not natural allies, but I assume the Iranians understand the game has changed in the Levant.

Likewise, earlier this year the Saudis (along with Egypt, the UAE and Kuwait) blockaded Qatar, home to al-Jazeera and the 2018 World Cup (which the Americans won't be attending...), a straight-up bully maneuver. Again, I don't understand the purpose of this, it seems to me it pushes the Qataris into the orbit of Iran (and possibly Turkey), which doesn't necessarily seem like a good thing for the Saudis.

A grand confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been brewing for decades. The Persian Shia and the Wahhabi Saud have nowhere to go but at each other. The Iranians resent the wealth and influence the Saudis have accumulated by sucking up to the West, the Saudis reject the notion that Iran is a great empire of people. The Shia-Sunni divide is less philosophical at this point than logistical: for hundreds of years Shia have allied with Shia, Sunni allied with Sunni, the grand networks of the Muslim world are long since built out and in place.

But it looked for a while that the Saudis were backing away from the fight. With the Kingdom's economic stagnation due to flat oil prices (an effect they themselves created, I think, to forestall Iran's economic growth in the face of their 2015 deal with the Obama White House) and their new touchy-feely young Crown Prince, it seemed like they were turning their attention elsewhere. But considering the massive arms shipment President Trump (following through on an arrangement with  Obama) sent to Saudi Arabia earlier this year, the Saudi detente with the Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, the deepening relationship with Israel, diplomatic interaction with Russia (including a missile defense system--to go alongside the American Patriot missiles I presume) and now this complete restructuring of the military and political forces in Riyadh, it seems like the Saudi war machine is gearing up.

Traditionally the West's natural ally in the Middle East was Iran: the Persian Shia are the most like us and the least like everyone else in that region. They relied on Western support for centuries until the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. Since then Iran has disdained the West, forcing the Europeans and Americans to cozy up to the Saudi regime instead. I've long thought this was gradually flipping back and that the key to American foreign policy was recognizing that the Iranians are the good guys and the Saudis are the bad guys.

I've long thought that the Saudis were the enemy. When one compiles a list of nations with repressive cultures and broken economies where the citizenry are devoid of economic opportunity, social mobility or self-expression, Saudi Arabia goes right near the top. The regime is richer than God and utterly without regard for their own people. The people of Saudi Arabia are basically the property of the royal family in the way the trees and the dirt of the land are. Iran, on the other hand, is a vibrant democracy (well, sorta...) where women are allowed to participate (well, sorta...), where the people are allowed to come and go freely and interact with the outside world (well, sorta...) and where the oil riches are plowed back into a civic structure rather than diverted to some royal family's coffers.

Now we've come to a new milestone in Saudi Arabia's history. Don't get me wrong: palace coups and subtle back-stabbings are long how the Saudi royal family (most all royal families really) has handled their business. But the fact that this is so public, so obvious, and such a seemingly desperate maneuver is all together new. And the fact that it coincided with an attack on their capital and an enemy assassination of one of the still favored princes is eye-opening. (Indeed, why isn't this bigger news in the USA? Because Americans don't care about the rest of the world, I suppose)

Some will see this as a weakening of the American position in the Middle East. I think getting out of the Middle East is probably a good idea. When Obama removed the bulk of the American troops from Iraq in 2010 and began working with Russia in Syria, that signaled our shift out of the greater Middle East. After 9/11, we cleared out Iran's enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq with forces that we removed from Saudi Arabia. We went from protecting the Kingdom to strengthening the Kingdom's adversaries (and why not? 9/11 was carried out by Saudi hijackers with Saudi coordination and Saudi funding, not Iranians with Iranian coordination and Iranian funding). Then we invited in Vladimir Putin to take our place as the major meddling foreign power in the region. It didn't seem like a good idea at the time but at this point I'm embracing it. And I think the sudden dissolution of the Saud Kingdom is probably a step in the right direction--indeed, it suddenly seems like the culmination of George Bush's strategy in 2001.

My pause is the effect this will have on the global economy. Since going off the gold standard in the early 1970s the underlying basis of the American economy is oil. As long as there is oil in the world pumping up out of the ground and flowing into markets around the globe, the American economy has its bedrock. This is why American presidents have been so willing to sacrifice much blood and hardware for the preservation of ocean shipping and propping up dictators. But our interest is merely that it flows, not who owns it or who uses it (**); but as long as Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia are interested in pumping up the oil and selling it around the world, that's all that needs to happen. If our enemies will keep doing that, then what interests do we have left in the Arab world? We have established the oil economy infrastructure, as long it keeps running--and our enemies are motivated to keep it running--then why do we need to be there? (Other questions, like, as the world's energy needs cycle away from oil, how does this effect the value of the US dollar?, will be answered over time, whether or not there is war in the Middle East)

So how does the coming war play out? Well, part of MBS's plan for the future of the Saudi economy means bulking up industrial production and expanding the work force to becoming a consumer class (standard feature in the West, kinda brand new in the Arab world). Undoubtedly that industrial production will be military materiel probably to be sold to Sunnis throughout the Arab world to fight the Shia. This is all together new for the Saudi regime and the Saudi people, are they prepared for this kind of massive cultural shift? We've seen in America the leveling force of social media, how will the Saudi population take to more openness? Will the Saudi economy prosper? The bulk of the industrialization will undoubtedly be military in nature, will the Saudis make war or just the materiel?

The larger area is still in flux. Lebanon is suddenly in need of a new prime minister, Syria may be on the cusp of a Putin-led Constitutional Convention, Yemen is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, Iraq is still figuring out how to react to Kurdish separatism (and is there room for the Saudis to maneuver in Kurdistan?), Egypt is still in a serious identity crisis, Qatar is still blockaded, Turkey is going through its own recent set of purges, and the recent merger of Hamas and the PLA has yet to fully take shape.

And what of the Americans? I've long believed in supporting the Iraqi Kurds (Syrian Kurds, too) but otherwise I'm cool with standing back and letting the area re-shape itself. Trump's blustery talk, I suspect, is just talk and he may well see the wisdom of not putting Americans into the coming fray. Imagine that: a major global war without American marines. And if Iran comes out the victor...well, you know Americans love a winner.


(*) The concept of "Peak Oil" I think is generally misunderstood. The phrase doesn't indicate the end of supply of oil but rather the end of demand for oil We've already discovered that renewable energies (wind, water, solar, biofuel) are increasingly efficient for more local needs (making the average consumer less dependent on the grid) while nuclear is cleaner, faster, cheaper, etc., for large scale industrial or emergency production. Ideally the recent move toward cleaner natural gas (and corn) will guide us to the necessary mix of renewable and nuclear that will obviate the need for oil or coal or timber soon.
(**) The oil market itself is the basis of the American economy. Who actually owns the oil or uses the oil is not of interest to me. It may be of interest to politicians, plutocrats and business men but that is of secondary interest to the USA itself. And they are not my concerns, so I don't give a fuck about the businessmen that won't get rich off the oil they don't control.

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Today was the signing ceremony for the Asian Infrastructure Bank. China is seeking to compete with the World Bank and/or IMF to gain some real muscle in the world of international finance. I say welcome to the party and obviously a brilliant move for China.

USA and Japan (and not too many others) are bummin' because there is the chance that the Chinese are watering down global finance opportunities rather than growing the pool, but I say so if the Chinese want to pump big bucks into trade infrastructure, that means more business for everyone, more world citizens are brought into the sphere of controlling their own lives, all for the good.

I grew up in a Libertarian household. I say that for two reasons: 1) I have never been a Democrat or a Republican (nor can I imagine any scenario in which I'd want either of those clown colleges representing me); 2) Its all about free markets, if its not about free markets then its more likely just politics as opposed to governance. And since I personally gravitate toward international affairs more than domestic ones and the Libertarian Party basically has no foreign policy, I was pretty much done as a Libertarian by the time I hit voting age. Realistically I am not now (nor have I ever been) politically a Libertarian. I never replaced the Libertarians with anything else, choosing instead to disdain all politics for being an unfortunate waste of time and energy.

I do not vote, don't feel the need to nor the desire. I don't like people that run for office, I could tolerate them but they have such a perverse need to loved and admired irrespective of their inconsistencies, insecurities and/or repulsive habits. And I don't really roll that way. I respect better than I love and I got no respect (or love for that matter) for the vast majority of politicians of my lifetime. I am told voting is my "duty" to which I ask: whose "duty" is it to give me something I want to vote for? Even duty needs a hint of reciprocity and the Democrats and Republicans have yet to offer any to me. I'm not a huge fan of democracy, I find it merely leads to elections. But democracy is what we got here in America and I can live with that, if anyone ever tried to take away my right to vote I would vote against it. But until then I don't see much I want to vote for. My life is just fine, I don't rely on gov't for livelihood or entertainment, not voting has yet to make a difference in my world because I don't make the assumption that the idiot that lost the election would really be better than the idiot that won.

I am generally a global optimist. I think everything is getting better all over the world. We live in a world suddenly bathed in sunlight. Some embrace it, some fear it. This period of history we currently inhabit is the early connected years: a clumsy mix of the people who love this shit and those that think this shit is an abomination (or at least an annoyance); in many place we see barriers coming down and in other places we see more barriers than ever. I don't believe the barriers will hold, I believe the people will make the most of each opportunity and gov't of the world will be powerless to stop it. The interconnectedness will be second hand to the next generation: even the most epochal civilization-warping inventions are just everyday objects to a baby and the kids that grow up with this processing power, this social reach, this astounding depth of knowledge available will expect it as an ordinary way of life and the only way for politicians to stop it is to get better at it.

Humanity is growing together on a global scale and that reach is still fairly new. I think it's a beautiful thing. Our art and our commerce will keep us healthy, happy and prosperous and the digitization will make so much available to so many people for such minimal investment. Humans learn from each other and we can learn faster and more completely than ever before.

There will be disagreements, there will be disputes, there will be egos with more power than they ought to have, there will be fights, there will be skirmishes, there will even be wars. There will be people who fail to succeed in even the most prosperous peace. But I am convinced the opportunity to live a better life will be available to steadily more people throughout my lifetime.

The first step for making the world a better place is developing trade infrastructure for more people in more places. The AIIB makes that possible. It'll open markets, create more consumers, bring more professional opportunities to more people and that should not worry the World Bank, IMF, USA or Japan. More money makes more customers, more stability, competition will make the World Bank better, competition indicates that the financial universe is growing. Some Americans bristle at the news of the AIIB but I think its good news, suggestive of greater (not lesser) stability.