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I think any analysis of China today, is sorely missing out by not checking out Susan L Shirk's book China: Fragile Superpower.
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Oct 20, 2022 21:05
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Could you please summarize briefly what you think the important takeaways are from that book rather than just named dropping without elaboration?
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Oct 20, 2022 21:26
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Fritz the Horse posted:Could you please summarize briefly what you think the important takeaways are from that book rather than just named dropping without elaboration? I was cooking, so I was in a bit of a hurry to not burn my food.  But yeah, uh, bearing in mind its been like 10 years since I read it, and I may be misremembering; the general thesis as I understand it is the way the Chinese government in the late 90's to early 2000's had to grapple with its rising prominence on the world stage; questions regarding/surrounding its legitimacy post Event Where Everyone Was On Vacation; and how to respond to other ongoing incidents. The Hu Jintao era saw for example, the massive rise in military expenditure on the PLA by Beijing, decades after the massive reduction in spending under Deng who had pulled China back from border conflicts that interfered with internal developments. Largely explained as Hu Jintao being the first post-Long March leadership and lacked the same security in his power base as Zhiang did. So the rising military spending year after year can be seen as Hu cementing the loyalty of the army, essentially in the case of another Event Where Everyone Went on Vacation (this is a family guy joke I'm making). The Hu Jintao era also sees the massive rise in domestic protest incidents, something like from double digits pre-1989 to over 70,000 per year; with Beijing figuring out ways of deflating these while still asserting its authority; through methods like arresting the ring leaders but still giving into their demands. You also had the rise of ultranationalism starting in the 90's I think? You had an incident that I honestly find to be kinda novel is that when the Chinese Embassy in the former Yugoslavia was bombed, I think this was one of the first major nationalistic protests against that; where Beijing really wanted to keep things calm, but the protests against the US demanded they do something and they refused to accept the idea that the US could be incompetent; "They had to have bombed us on purpose!"  By all accounts the Officials on the Beijing side of things were super apologetic about it.In this period you have Beijing fanning the flames and encouraging student protests against foreigners, like the big anti-Japanese protests; because a foreign target helped to distract from domestic economic issues. Because of this less state-sponsored protests like the above anti-US one were hard to deal with. This is why you had that Taiwan incident in the early 2000's was a struggle, you had protests and a huge domestic demand for Beijing to respond strongly to Taiwan, and Chinese thinktanks desperately trying to come up with face saving response that would avoid war; hence passing the anti-secession law. Everything happening now is occurring in a political domestic context that came about because of choices made post-1989; and in general China: Fragile Superpower is a really interesting indepth read regarding China's struggles with its "peaceful rise". Susan also has a TED Talk where she gives an overview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrMjegvkyL0 I think she's a pro-click china watcher.
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Oct 20, 2022 22:16
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Books or talks with those kinds of titles remind me entirely too often of the slew of "paper tiger" narratives which have been around and predicting china's collapse down to an orderly expected "not an economic challenger to the united states" size, since I was a kid. I'm always suspicious of them and they have to do a lot to justify their depictions of chinese 'frailty'
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Oct 20, 2022 23:09
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Kavros posted:Books or talks with those kinds of titles remind me entirely too often of the slew of "paper tiger" narratives which have been around and predicting china's collapse down to an orderly expected "not an economic challenger to the united states" size, since I was a kid. I'm always suspicious of them and they have to do a lot to justify their depictions of chinese 'frailty' It's really different from that I assure you. She's well researched and tends to go by the Chinese perspective; which is where the title comes from. Her Chinese counterparts (IIRC; she tells the story in her ted talk) vehemently disagreed with the idea that China was a superpower, and insisted on that China's position was very precarious. Seriously I can't do the book justice, or her previous work, Inside the People's Republic, which was also just cool to read. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 00:07
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https://twitter.com/xu_xiuzhong/status/1583303667951996928?t=vczbucP3cJUjsE_eQT6auw&s=19 https://twitter.com/xu_xiuzhong/status/1583303676466466819?t=yVDTRwnjad73fIythIo-JQ&s=19
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Oct 21, 2022 05:24
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High quality development relates to deleveraging campaign rather than dynamic clearing, no? Perception that 2008-2013 fiscal stimulation encouraged disorderly development of capital etc.
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Oct 21, 2022 05:29
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Raenir Salazar posted:It's really different from that I assure you. She's well researched and tends to go by the Chinese perspective; which is where the title comes from. Her Chinese counterparts (IIRC; she tells the story in her ted talk) vehemently disagreed with the idea that China was a superpower, and insisted on that China's position was very precarious. I watched the video but it seems like it is exactly 10 years too late to be relevant. Take this choice quote at 38:54 - quote:We can help China become the responsible power that China's leaders claim it is, rather than reacting to their domestic predicament in a way that is dangerous internationally Sorry lady, but that would mean coming to an accommodation with the CCP over the future of an area of the world that the US is not prepared to cede primacy in. If anything, despite being one of the most illiberal governments in the world, the CCP has behaved in a way that she would most likely describe as a responsible power on the foreign stage. It has, rather patiently built up its economic and military power to the point where it is undeniably the most powerful regional actor in the Far East and waited patiently for the US to retire gracefully back across the Pacific. Yet the US has failed to do so and a responsible power is not necessarily a power that is subservient to US interests. One cannot refuse to share the ball with China on one hand and accuse it of being belligerent when it tries to forcefully take the ball on the other hand. She talks about the information challenge and the inability to control its populace. The CCP, especially under Xi, has deployed big tech precisely to combat this problem. Measures like constant CCTV monitoring with computer-assisted identification, and an army of censors ready to shut down the most controversial topics on Chinese social media have largely rendered this weakness a moot point. Its ability to lock down major cities for COVID in a manner that would be unthinkable in the West is a testament to just how powerful their internal mechanisms for suppression of dissent are. The CCP is likely in as strong a position as it has ever been in domestically. It has successfully fanned the flames of nationalism, which she attributes to the fall of the Qing and the Kuomintang, into a preserving force for the CCP by tying the CCP and China as one and the same. I simply don't see based on her presentation how these ideas are still relevant to how to approach and address China in a world defined by competition and containment.
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Oct 21, 2022 05:35
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ronya posted:High quality development relates to deleveraging campaign rather than dynamic clearing, no? Perception that 2008-2013 fiscal stimulation encouraged disorderly development of capital etc. I think it's a catch-all excuse for slower economic growth generally, with "deleveraging from corrupt malinvestment" being the framing excuse, yeah.
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Oct 21, 2022 05:51
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a decade later, the group of Chinese thinkers who felt that China's position was inherently precarious, and that superpower status was decades away, far from guaranteed, and contingent on reforms that may never come to pass, have been thoroughly elbowed aside by the China's Inevitable Rise types this being the point touched on here ronya posted:On the earlier topic of the rise of the generation born to law and order rather than boluan fanzheng:
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Oct 21, 2022 09:59
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MikeC posted:I watched the video but it seems like it is exactly 10 years too late to be relevant. Take this choice quote at 38:54 - Her views are of a China in 2010, not 2020. Since the fall of the USSR, the US has never had to deal with a real competitor. We will soon find out what this means; Biden's foreign policy approach is to China is to treat them like a competitor: not a client, not a partner, not an enemy. They will cooperate where there is mutual interest (climate change) and compete where there is not (such as in tech). These were outlined explicitly: https://www.state.gov/the-administrations-approach-to-the-peoples-republic-of-china/ The CCP can continue its zero covid policy, censorship regime, etc. but these do not threaten the US national interest. What does? Industrial/academic espionage, cybersecurity, Belt and Road/Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and so forth. Asia is not about the US needing to "cede" influence back across the Pacific from the rise of China: after all, this region isn't just one country. If Japan and Australia favor doing business with the US, that's not the US "not sharing the ball" with China. There's no ball to be entitled to here, this isn't 1980s domino theory with spheres of influence, these are sovereign countries we're dealing with. They can fight over countries like the Solomon Islands and Mongolia playing off the big powers.
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Oct 21, 2022 10:25
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MikeC posted:I watched the video but it seems like it is exactly 10 years too late to be relevant. Take this choice quote at 38:54 - As i fly airplanes points out, that video is from 15 years ago. That book I suggested was published in 2008 (and I even implied as much when I said its been 10 years!). What she said I think were highly relevant then, and still relevant now, but as I said mainly as context for how China's policymaking under Xi is operating. For the purposes of gaining additional insight into how China got to where it is today, it is important to look at how things were happening in the early 2000s. It doesn't really make much sense to look at it as if she said that analysis today, as that's not the point of why I brought her up. If you want to see what she thinks today of course I'd highly recommend that, she seems to have outputted more content since then you might find more relevant.
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Oct 21, 2022 13:53
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Anything about China written earlier than 2015 is outdated IMO. Too much has changed since then, not just in China but in the entire world.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:40
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Slow News Day posted:Anything about China written earlier than 2015 is outdated IMO. Too much has changed since then, not just in China but in the entire world. If someone is trying to get up to date information as to what's happening right now yeah, but previous scholarship, regardless of how many years old can be invaluable in gaining an understanding in how things changed and became what they are now.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:39
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Raenir Salazar posted:As i fly airplanes points out, that video is from 15 years ago. That book I suggested was published in 2008 (and I even implied as much when I said its been 10 years!). What she said I think were highly relevant then, and still relevant now, but as I said mainly as context for how China's policymaking under Xi is operating. I know very well the video was 10 plus years old but the point I was making was that she was giving out bad advice even back then. Thinking that China would somehow grow into a power, responsible or not, without challenging for its own sphere of influence in the Far East was always a pipe dream. In effect, her thesis is that the US shouldn't criticize or shine light on affairs in which China considers domestic or risk issues which would stoke Chinese nationalism so that China could be groomed into a benign economic power which would respect the existing structure of the Far East and play second fiddle to the US. If not this then she tacitly accepts that such a rise would necessitate the US stepping back from the region or at the very least giving China a big hand on the steering wheel willingly despite the fact that it is at its heart, an authoritarian regime with few shared values with the US. Neither option was likely even back when this video was shot. i fly airplanes posted:Asia is not about the US needing to "cede" influence back across the Pacific from the rise of China: after all, this region isn't just one country. If Japan and Australia favor doing business with the US, that's not the US "not sharing the ball" with China. There's no ball to be entitled to here, this isn't 1980s domino theory with spheres of influence, these are sovereign countries we're dealing with. They can fight over countries like the Solomon Islands and Mongolia playing off the big powers. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how geopolitics work. It is never a matter of entitlement, it is a matter of great power competition. A peripheral polity like Japan or Australia choosing the US over China does so knowing that this choice is in effect choosing one over the other. Sovereign countries are never an island unto themselves where decisions have no consequences outside their immediate realm. All actions are inherently within the context of region in which they exist I am not sure what the rest of your post was getting at.
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Oct 21, 2022 18:24
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MikeC posted:This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how geopolitics work. It is never a matter of entitlement, it is a matter of great power competition. A peripheral polity like Japan or Australia choosing the US over China does so knowing that this choice is in effect choosing one over the other. Sovereign countries are never an island unto themselves where decisions have no consequences outside their immediate realm. All actions are inherently within the context of region in which they exist Also framing geopolitics as zero sum is a bit reductionist. New Zealand has a FTA with China and is their largest trading partner. Does that put them in China's sphere of influence? Even Turkey's in NATO. quote:I am not sure what the rest of your post was getting at.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:49
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There are three provocative elements that distinguish contemporary Chinese claims to regional hegemony from earlier Japanese (~1980s) claims to regional hegemony: 1/ the territorial nature of Chinese hegemonic claims, 2/ the assertion of a duty/right to protect ethnic minority Chinese interests by force of arms, 3/ the propensity of contemporary Chinese regional investment to rely upon large numbers of Chinese guest workers operating under expectations of extraterritoriality My guess is that the eventual spark on the tinder is probably going to be an anti-Chinese riot somewhere in Southeast Asia or Central Asia, somewhere with enough Western media presence that Beijing cannot censor domestic coverage - although it is not what would compel the West to conflict, it is what would compel Beijing to conflict. Note that such riots do happen with some frequency; conspiracies accusing malevolent Chinese intentions are abundant in Indochina, even from governments which are relatively pro-Beijing Regional Japanese investment in the 1980s was generally with Japanese appreciation that regional host governments would have to work extra hard to legitimize foreign investment and smooth over tensions - conversely, element #1 plus contemporary exhortations from Beijing to 'tell the China story' make such face-saving gestures increasingly difficult. Clueless Chinese business leaders in Hanoi talking about Sinic contributions to Vietnamese culture may intend to highlight the bonds of traditional brotherhood but would be received somewhat akin to Russians telling Ukrainians about the greatness of pan-Slavic civilization (say). Conversely, I don't think e.g. Japan or New Zealand's opinion is likely to be problematic, simply because their interests are pretty self-evident ronya fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 02:14
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everyone's currently losing their mind about hu jintao being escorted from the meeting on tv
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Oct 22, 2022 09:33
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https://twitter.com/vshih2/status/1583741360242556928
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Oct 22, 2022 10:16
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It was meant to be seen by reporters.
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Oct 22, 2022 13:11
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Morrow posted:It was meant to be seen by reporters. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 22, 2022 16:30
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https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1583821411306479618 https://twitter.com/henrysgao/status/1583821691926458368 ronya fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 16:47
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Anyone said Pooh Tse Tung yet (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 22, 2022 17:20
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If this was an intentional act of humiliation, why is there a local media blackout on it?
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Oct 22, 2022 17:38
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i fly airplanes posted:There is a very clear sense of entitlement when it comes to the CCP: Taiwan is part of China, Hong Kong is a part of China, hands off the Spratley Islands, here are our passports with nine-dash lines. This is not great power competition: this is colonialism with Chinese characteristics. At the end of the day it does become zero sum if the two powers involved are in full tilt competition. In the economic sphere, China and the US are still entangled with each other so there is no need for the peripheral players to choose one or another. But in the realm of defense, NZ is firmly in the US sphere and is designated as a major non NATO ally of the US. You will find no such treaty obligations with China around most of the Pacific and the US clearly aims to keep it that way. See US keynote at the 2022 Shangri-la conference where SecDef Austin laid bare the needs of a 'rules based international order to counteract bullying' and then proceeds to list a litany of aggressive actions carried out by China in the past 5 years. The lines are being drawn and should economic disentanglement continue, it will not be long before everyone in the Pacific will have to make some uncomfortable choices. i fly airplanes posted:It was explaining the current US foreign policy approach to the PRC. There are precious few areas left for mutual cooperation especially after the Pelosi stunt and the subsequent withdrawal by the Chinese on several areas including high level defense channels. Re: Hu Jintao. The move seems incredibly cruel even for Xi. His faction was dismantled over Xi's rule and with Li forced into retirement, his power would appear to be absolute. What is there to gain by public humiliation of this magnitude?
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Oct 22, 2022 17:49
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Possibly lack of communication between the censors and the people orchestrating the humiliation. Alternatively, humiliating him, but only just in front of his peers, rather than trying to parade it in front of the country at large. But still, that's only theorizing.
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Oct 22, 2022 17:53
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Daduzi posted:If this was an intentional act of humiliation, why is there a local media blackout on it? Could have been expecting Hu to gracefully take pointed advice to go back and rest, rather than insist on attending, thus not notifying media in advance https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1583829797297598465 ronya fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Oct 22, 2022 |
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Oct 22, 2022 18:03
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lol "recuperating" has been CCP code for senior officials under house arrest since the end of the Cultural Revolution
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Oct 22, 2022 21:35
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Franks Happy Place posted:lol "recuperating" has been Chinese code for senior officials under house arrest since the invention of sharpened sticks
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Oct 22, 2022 23:10
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I'm kind of confused why they would do this to Hu but not Jiang, though I suppose Jiang is far too old for that sort of thing and maybe he wasn't even there? Correct me if I'm wrong, but from my understanding the Jiang faction has long been a harsher thorn in Xi's side than the Hu faction
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Oct 23, 2022 03:27
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Seth Pecksniff posted:I'm kind of confused why they would do this to Hu but not Jiang, though I suppose Jiang is far too old for that sort of thing and maybe he wasn't even there? Winnie is a petty lil' Pooh. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 23, 2022 03:35
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https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1584207042075852800 Pettis has, of course, himself pointed out that an unsustainable surge in debt is still something that one can do, and pay the price for later. And some perspectives on the new anointed premier: https://twitter.com/ZhangTaisu/status/1584047071790649346 https://twitter.com/KeithZhai/status/1584219158908407808
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Oct 23, 2022 18:38
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China GDP fell short of CCP goals. No wonder they delayed the release: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/business/china-gdp-economy.html
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Oct 24, 2022 04:03
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At work and can’t transcribe, but the DOJ is reporting arrests and charges tied to Chinese agents in the US for “malign schemes” including conspiracy to forcibly repatriate PRC nationals. It’s on the DOJ news page. Edit: looks like there’s some brief discussion in USCE. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Oct 24, 2022 |
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Oct 24, 2022 20:47
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Discendo Vox posted:At work and can’t transcribe, but the DOJ is reporting arrests and charges tied to Chinese agents in the US for “malign schemes” including conspiracy to forcibly repatriate PRC nationals. It’s on the DOJ news page. Here’s a link to the press conference https://www.justice.gov/live It’s 26 min long and goes into a lot.
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Oct 24, 2022 23:15
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https://twitter.com/VeerleNouwens/status/1584945033777758210 Dang, scary. Heard rumors of that kind of thing for years now but worrying to see actual confirmation. The article mentions allegations of more than 30 in Europe in total; wonder how many are in the US too.
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Oct 26, 2022 00:41
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https://twitter.com/JiangJiang43/status/1585386354791559171 direct link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QRFLOdsPlbSRBVjGwfCBls-lDArNKomv/view
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Oct 27, 2022 06:30
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The most interesting element of this piece: https://www.readingthechinadream.com/zhang-weiwei-on-color-revolutions.html by Zhang Weiwei: quote:Zhang Weiwei (b. 1958), head of Fudan University’s China Institute, is surely among the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite public intellectuals. Although he began his academic career in a conventional way, publishing monographs on ideological trends during the reform era and on cross-straits relations between China and Taiwan, over the course of the 2000s Zhang transformed himself into a major cheerleader for the regime, and has never looked back. is that it doesn't mention capitalism at all; it is entirely about 西式民主 Western-style democracy being not adaptable to local conditions and prone to magnifying conflicts in a multicultural society: quote:西化派与本土派的对峙、不同宗教和教派之间的对立、不同民族文化乃至语言之间的对垒都严重加剧对抗，结果是社会失序、企业倒闭、资本外流、经济衰退。归根结底，无视一个国家所特有的历史文化、政治制度、宗教信仰、族裔平衡、社会环境等，采用所谓西方“对抗式民主”的过程，往往就是一个各种矛盾不断被激化的过程。 The "Asian values" era has yet to leave us
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Oct 27, 2022 07:27
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Koramei posted:https://twitter.com/VeerleNouwens/status/1584945033777758210 That is wild and is absolutely something where coming down like a shitton of bricks is very appropriate. That should not even be remotely tolerated and requires severe consequences beyond "we deported everybody working there" Is it weird that it makes me much angrier than busting a chinese spy ring? Like spying is expected and part of the game but this is outside the "rules", even though traditional spying probably causes much more damage than this. Maybe the difference in reaction is spying is against the nation as a whole while this is against individuals that are under the protection of the nation?
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Oct 27, 2022 07:39
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Koramei posted:https://twitter.com/VeerleNouwens/status/1584945033777758210 This was a thing a little while ago in Canada too - several of these institutions had been found in major Canadian cities from Vancouver to Toronto. Supporters tried to argue they were places where people could go for Chinese cultural advice, drawing a direct comparison to Sharia courts in Western nations. I wonder how many people still buy the explanation.
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Oct 27, 2022 08:58
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