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REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s CDS PRICING AND ELECTIONS IN EMERGING MARKETS CDS Pricing and Elections 123 Journal of Emerging Market Finance, 10, 2 (2011): 121–173 levels of investor fear during periods of potential instability.BANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+ WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy.REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s CDS PRICING AND ELECTIONS IN EMERGING MARKETS CDS Pricing and Elections 123 Journal of Emerging Market Finance, 10, 2 (2011): 121–173 levels of investor fear during periods of potential instability.BANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+ FRAMING DISENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA Truex is effectively arguing that engagement is a success because Chinese technocrats are better trained and more efficient due to engagement to enact illiberal policies that build concentration camps. If engagement is divorced from any underlying value system, then yes, by that metric engagement with China should be considered a roaringsuccess.
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy. STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. THE UNREALITY OF THE CHINA PIGEON The Unreality of the China Pigeon. There is a new breed of China watcher stalking editorial pages. Potentially concerned, though not always, about various China misdeeds which few deny but clinging to unrealistic beliefs about solutions or simply unwilling to adopt firm beliefs about solutions, the China pigeon is unable to target workablePROJECT TIME
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECT TIME - 3 - 1. SUMMARY 1. Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). IS TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM ShareThe short answer: absolutely not. There is a profound inability to think rationally about policy pervading the Acela Corridor so that every decision means the end of democracy or some other vast rhetorical flourish implying rampaging Godzilla. The latest is Continue reading → PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
FINANCIAL PERSPECTIVE ON BELT AND ROAD: THERE IS A BETTER ShareThere has been so much non-sensical thinking by even people outside the Chinese propaganda establishment that I think we need to go back to some real basic financial concepts. In this post, I am not going to really focus on Continue reading →BANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+ WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliancesBALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party. REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically.PROJECT TIME
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECT TIME - 3 - 1. SUMMARY 1. Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliancesBALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party. REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically.PROJECT TIME
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECT TIME - 3 - 1. SUMMARY 1. Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’sBALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party.REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to FRAMING DISENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA Truex is effectively arguing that engagement is a success because Chinese technocrats are better trained and more efficient due to engagement to enact illiberal policies that build concentration camps. If engagement is divorced from any underlying value system, then yes, by that metric engagement with China should be considered a roaringsuccess.
BALDING'S WORLD
The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
BALDING OUT
ShareI am leaving China. After nine years working for the HSBC Business School of Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School as a professor teaching international trade, negotiations, and ethics, I am leaving China. In early November 2017, the HSBC Business School Continue reading → INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
APPROACHING THE CHINA CHALLENGE AND JUDGING THE BIDEN ShareAs we prepare to turn over a new leaf with the incoming Biden administration, let us revisit what I believe is the correct way to approach the China challenge and by extension how we should judge the incoming Biden administration Continue reading → HOW SHOULD WE FRAME THE US-CHINA TRADE CONFLICT? LET'S USE ShareI think too much ink (or 0’s and 1’s) have been spilled analyzing Trump and his administrations actions on trade, specifically proposed tariffs on China. For many reasons, not least of which way too much of this debate revolves around Continue reading → CDS PRICING AND ELECTIONS IN EMERGING MARKETS CDS Pricing and Elections 123 Journal of Emerging Market Finance, 10, 2 (2011): 121–173 levels of investor fear during periods of potential instability. WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion.REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination toPROJECT TIME
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECT TIME - 3 - 1. SUMMARY 1. Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. PERSONAL STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENHUA DATA LEAK Personal Statement on Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Leak. Last year I began research into Huawei, simply because I thought I was well placed to figure out some basics I had heard people talk about but remained open questions. I never guessed the relatively abrupt turn my research focus would take due to stumbling into what, for China researchers, is IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion.REVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination toPROJECT TIME
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECT TIME - 3 - 1. SUMMARY 1. Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. PERSONAL STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENHUA DATA LEAK Personal Statement on Shenzhen Zhenhua Data Leak. Last year I began research into Huawei, simply because I thought I was well placed to figure out some basics I had heard people talk about but remained open questions. I never guessed the relatively abrupt turn my research focus would take due to stumbling into what, for China researchers, is IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’s SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy. CHAPTER 6 THE STANDARD TRADE MODEL Title: Microsoft PowerPoint - Krugman06.ppt Author: aglass Created Date: 11/1/2011 1:04:22 PM WHY CHINA DOES NOT HAVE A TRADE SURPLUS The value of goods leaving and entering and China is recorded by the Customs Bureau. According to Customs data, China imported $1.69 trillion (10.45 trillion RMB) and exported $2.27 trillion (14.14 trillion RMB) for a resulting trade balance of $593 billion (3.7 trillion RMB). These often repeated numbers form the basis for whyChina is running
SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
INTRODUCTION THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE technology, geography, and trade 1743 TABLE I Trade, Labor, and Income Data Imports ImportsfromSampleas Human-CapitalAdj. %ofMfg. %of Mfg.Wage Mfg.Wage Mfg.Labor Mfg.Labor’sREVISITING HUAWEI
Revisiting Huawei. Posted on February 5, 2021. by Christopher Balding. Share. It has been brought to my attention that some Chinese academic has written a paper attempting to refute the paper Donald Clarke and I wrote about Huawei ownership which is now being promoted by Chinese state media affiliates. I have neither the time nor inclination to A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
INVESTMENT RESEARCH
Investment Research. Given the demand for more specialized, focused, and tailored investment research on both the macroeconomy, industrial sectors, and companies of China. The research will be more focused on specific investment driven and tradeable questions that contains data rich content that is unique to my approach. HOW SHOULD WE FRAME THE US-CHINA TRADE CONFLICT? LET'S USE ShareI think too much ink (or 0’s and 1’s) have been spilled analyzing Trump and his administrations actions on trade, specifically proposed tariffs on China. For many reasons, not least of which way too much of this debate revolves around Continue reading → FRAMING DISENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA Truex is effectively arguing that engagement is a success because Chinese technocrats are better trained and more efficient due to engagement to enact illiberal policies that build concentration camps. If engagement is divorced from any underlying value system, then yes, by that metric engagement with China should be considered a roaringsuccess.
BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party. REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy. CHINA, THE SEC, AND STRATEGY China, the SEC, and Strategy. There are a grab bag of issues that have popped up about China so let me try and hit them and wrap it all up into some type of coherent big picture idea. First, I had heard recently Sen. John Kennedy had introduced a bill to effectively delist Chinese companies listed on US markets unless they effectively submitto
STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
ACCOUNT - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Username or Email Address. Password. Remember Me . Developed by Think Up Themes Ltd.Powered by WordPress.. EnglishBANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party. REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy. CHINA, THE SEC, AND STRATEGY China, the SEC, and Strategy. There are a grab bag of issues that have popped up about China so let me try and hit them and wrap it all up into some type of coherent big picture idea. First, I had heard recently Sen. John Kennedy had introduced a bill to effectively delist Chinese companies listed on US markets unless they effectively submitto
STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
ACCOUNT - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Username or Email Address. Password. Remember Me . Developed by Think Up Themes Ltd.Powered by WordPress.. EnglishBANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% in three years.ACADEMIC RESEARCH
ShareAcademic Research My academic research is varied and diverse covering whatever I find intriguing. My primary areas are international and public economics and you can find a complete copy of my CV here. International Trade: My paper in the Review Continuereading →
WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic THE CASE AGAINST HUAWEI The debate over the inclusion of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei into the network of developed countries has provoked a heated battle. The debate has taken rhetorical turns veering off into a variety of tangents and logical arguments rather than focus on the facts that are known about Huawei. Here I will attempt to correct thatby
IS CHINA DELEVERAGING REVISITED ShareProbably the biggest question facing China and international investors is whether China is deleveraging. The Chinese debt and fixed income markets have changed though to the point that people can see almost anything they want. You choose to see China Continue reading→
IS CHINA EXPORTING AUTHORITARIANISM? Viewing China as the global, multi-channel, influencing, authoritarianism exporting threat that it is lays out how the United States needs to respond. First, China presents a global authoritarian exporting risk to the United States and other democracies and requires a large response. If it is not viewed as the fundamental threat it is,then you
BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER There are always surprises with Chinese data and today’s trade data is no exception. According to China Customs, exports increased by 9% and 17.7% in RMB terms. There are some clear explanations and some puzzles for what we are seeing in today’s trade data. Trade with China has been distinctly weak over recent years with. SUBSCRIBE - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Subscribe. The Baldingsworld China Data Newsletter is a daily newsletter covering our own insights into the Chinese economy, financial markets, and society, as well as perspective on broader trends, stories, and events. We are a data driven newsletter graphics that will help you understand what is happening everyday from themarkets you have
BALDING'S WORLD
Global Finance and Economics. President Donald Trump has released his proposed budget for 2021. Despite making it the center piece of his domestic and foreign policy, his budget does little to institutionalize his initiative or prepare America for the longer term challenges presented by the Chinese Communist Party. REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Let us start off by saying what the conflict with China is not. 1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY For our purposes, it resulted in two specific changes with regards to the broader focus of foreign policy. First, it resulted in enormous increased reluctance to exercise American influence in foreign policy whether bilaterally or otherwise, not least because there was heightened cynicism about the goodness of US values or policy. CHINA, THE SEC, AND STRATEGY China, the SEC, and Strategy. There are a grab bag of issues that have popped up about China so let me try and hit them and wrap it all up into some type of coherent big picture idea. First, I had heard recently Sen. John Kennedy had introduced a bill to effectively delist Chinese companies listed on US markets unless they effectively submitto
STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Statement on Shenzhen Zhenua Data Leak. The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. PUBLIC POLICY OPTIONS FOR FINANCING GLOBAL 5G ROLLOUT Public Policy Options for Financing Global 5G Rollout. Below is a rather long post about the financing of 5G roll out and public policy options given the subsidized financing being received by telecom operators from non-market states and firms. I have also uploaded it as a paper which you can find here and may find more readable given thelength.
A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY PART I The United States needs a new foreign policy vision. Imposing a self-driven retreat from its position as the global leader on issues from human rights to economic liberalization, United States foreign policy demands a clear realist, principled vision of how to advance its interests and values that are also shared by a wide range ofstates.
ACCOUNT - BALDINGSWORLD NEWSLETTER Username or Email Address. Password. Remember Me . Developed by Think Up Themes Ltd.Powered by WordPress.. EnglishBANKERS' ACCEPTANCE
This piece on Bankers’ Acceptance has proved popular, so we are re-upping here for free with today’s news bulletins. Feel free to share the link with friends and colleagues. Our ongoing research into Chinese economics occasionally uncovers data that needs to be researched further. We recently ran across a piece of data regarding bankers’ acceptanceRead More+BALDING'S WORLD
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REPORT ON BIDEN ACTIVITIES WITH CHINA Posted on October 22, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
A number of months ago, I was approached by an individual I had known for the better half of a decade. I had known this individually professionally and enjoyed their company and deep insight into our overlapping professional interests. Consequently, I would not infrequently seek out their professional opinion. They had written aresearch report
for a client worried about political risk that involved background on the Biden’s in China. This individual believed that the information that had been discovered, and with the approval of the client, needed to make its way into the public domain. They asked my help in putting the research report in the hands of press asking them just to use the information for their own professional purposes leaving the report anonymous. Knowing this individual and the quality of work they do, I agreed after reviewing in detail the report that was produced. There are a couple of key points about the report. First, it is almost exclusively taken from public sources and documentation. Everything from Chinese news reports to corporate records. The report is immaculately cited so that anyone who wishes to replicate where a specific piece of information was found or see the underlying documentation can do so. Second, the complexity of the overall story, attempts have been made to break down the key points about what happened, who was involved, with timelines and indexes. Third, only three human sources are used in the report. Two human sources only confirmed top line information in the acknowledgement of an individual and no other information. The third human source was not consulted for the story but agreed to let the information be used for the story after the importance of the information became apparent. For two months I have worked on behalf of my colleague to ensure that this report helped others report on the documented evidence of Biden activities with regards to China. I want to emphasize a couple of things about my own involvement. First, I did not write the report and I am not responsible for thereport
.
I have gone over the report with a fine tooth comb and can find nothing factually wrong with the report. Everything is cited and documented. Arguably the only weakness is that we do not have internal emails between Chinese players or the Chinese and Bidens that would make explicit what the links clearly imply. Second, I will not be disclosing the individual who did write this report. They have very valid reasons to fear for both their personal safety and professional risks. Throughout the years that I have known this individual we never discussed politics. I have never heard them criticize any political party other than the CCP. They are not aRepublican.
Third, it was my very real wish that the press would have reported on the documented evidence in this report and left me and the author entirely out of this situation. I did not vote for Trump in 2016 and will not vote for him in 2020. This information however is entirely valid public interest information that the press has simply refused to cover due to their own partisan wishes. I have serious policy differences with President Trump. I am pro-immigration. I would like to see more free trade efforts to shift trade away from China and into partner countries from Mexico to Vietnam and India. I believe that institution building in Asia is vital and America needs to take that lead. However, I cannot in good conscience allow documented evidence of the variety presented here go unreported by partisans who are simply choosing to hide information. Finally, I will not be answering any questions about the report. I had no wish to be involved in Presidential politics. I do not want to be on the news. I will not be answer any questions about who wrote the report. We need to return the focus to the known documented facts. KEY POINTS OF THE REPORT: * Joe Biden’s compromising partnership with the Communist Party of China runs via Yang Jiechi (CPC’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission). YANG met frequently with BIDEN during his tenure at the Chinese embassy in Washington. * Hunter Biden’s 2013 Bohai Harvest Rosemont investment partnership was set-up by Ministry of Foreign Affairs institutions who are tasked with garnering influence with foreign leaders during YANG’s tenure as Foreign Minister. * HUNTER has a direct line to the Politburo, according to SOURCE A, a senior finance professional in China. * Michael Lin, a Taiwanese national now detained in China, brokered the BHR partnership and partners with MOFA foreign influenceorganizations.
* LIN is a POI for his work on behalf of China, as confirmed by SOURCE B and SOURCE C (at two separate national intelligenceagencies).
* BHR is a state managed operation. Leading shareholder in BHR is a Bank of China which lists BHR as a subsidiary and BHR’s partners are SOEs that funnel revenue/assets to BHR. * HUNTER continues to hold 10% in BHR. He visited China in 2010 and met with major Chinese government financial companies that would laterback BHR.
* HUNTER’s BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx. $50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR’s $6.5 billion AUM as stated by Michael Lin). * HUNTER also did business with Chinese tycoons linked with the Chinese military and against the interests of US national security. * BIDEN’s foreign policy stance towards China (formerly hawkish), turned positive despite China’s country’s rising geopoliticalassertiveness.
SUMMARY:
Lost among the salacious revelations about laptop provenance is the more mundane reality of influence and money of major United States political figures. Ill informed accusations of Russian hacking and disinformation face the documented reality of a major Chinese state financial partnership with the children of major political figures. A report by an Asian research firm raises worrying questions about the financial links between China and Hunter Biden. Beginning just before Joe Bidens ascendancy to the Vice Presidency, Hunter Biden was travelling to Beijing meeting with Chinese financial institutions and political figures would ultimately become his investors. Finalized in 2013, the investment partnership included money from the Chinese government, social security, and major state-owned banks a veritable who’s who of Chinese state finance. It is not simply the state money that should cause concern but the structures and deals that took place. Most investment in specific projects came from state owned entities and flowed into state backed projects or enterprises. Even the deals speak to the worst of cronyism. The Hunter Biden investment firm share of a copper mine in the Congo was guaranteed with assets put at risk by the larger copper company to ensure deal flow to Hunter’s firm. In another instance, Bank of China working on an IPO in Hong Kong gave its share allocation to the BHR investment partnership. They were able to do this because even though the Hunter Biden firm completed no notable work on the IPO, it is counted as a subsidiary of the Bank of China. The Hunter Biden Chinese investment partnership is literally invested in by the Chinese state and a subsidiary of the Bank of China owned by the Chinese Ministry of Finance. The entire arrangement speaks to Chinese state interests. Meetings were held at locations that in China speak to the welcoming of foreign dignitaries or state to state relations. The Chinese organizations surrounding Hunter Biden are known intelligence and influence operatives to the United States government. The innocuous names like Chinese People’s Institute for Foreign Affairs exist to “…carry out government-directed policies and cooperative initiatives with influential foreigners without being perceived as a formal part of the Chinese government.” Interestingly the CPIFA is under the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the investment partnership was struck in 2013, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was Yang Jiechi. Yang would have been very familiar with Hunter Biden from his days in Washington as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 2001 to 2005 during which he met regularly with Joe Biden chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Today the same individual who oversaw institutions helping shepherd Hunter’s investment partnership as the Minister of Foreign Affairs is Xi Jinping’s right hand man on foreign affairs and member of the powerful Politburo. Most worrying is the financial leverage this gives the Chinese state over a direct member of the Biden family. Despite the widely reported $1-1.5 billion of investment the reality is likely much higher. A co-founder of the investment firm reports the total assets under management as $6.5 billion. While this number cannot be completely replicated, given that two deal alone were worth in excess of $1.6 billion this number is not unrealistic at all. A 2% annual fee on assets under management would generate $130 million annually. Add in the 20% fee on capital gains the firm would recognize and it is not difficult to see Hunter’s stake being worth in excess of $50million.
According to Hunter’s attorney, he did not invest his $400,000 in the company until 2017. Even assuming the veracity of this statement, this raises a major problem. Founded in 2013, the firm had large amounts of revenue and assets under management by 2017. In other words, his $400,000 stake would have already been worth far more than what he paid for it. This paltry $400,000 investment worth more than $50 million now would have realized a gain of more than 12,400% inthree years.
The difficulty in eluding these concerns is their documentability by anyone who cares to look. There is no potential for hacking because it is all public record in China. Any journalist who wishes to look can go review IPO prospectuses, news reports, or corporate records. There is no secret method for discovering this data other than actually looking. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that Hunter Biden was granted a 10% stake worth far in excess of what he paid for a firm that is literally operated and owned by the Chinesestate.
I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and have significant concerns about his policies in areas like immigration. Having lived in China for nine years throughout the Xi regimes construction of concentration camps and having witnessed first hand their use of influence and intelligence operations, the Biden links worry me profoundly. Whether Joe Biden personally knew the details, a very untenable position, it is simply political malpractice to not be aware of the details of these financial arrangements. These documentable financial links simply cannot be wished away. Here is the report if you missed the previous linksPosted in China |
Tagged China
PERSONAL STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENHUA DATA LEAK Posted on September 14, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
Last year I began research into Huawei, simply because I thought I was well placed to figure out some basics I had heard people talk about but remained open questions. I never guessed the relatively abrupt turn my research focus would take due to stumbling into what, for China researchers, is something akin to discovering the Holy Grail. Out of this initial research question, a series of events and introductions took place that unveiled enormous amounts of data collected by activists from China. This data provides proof of activities that China was believed to engage in, but for the first-time, data confirmed these activities. Our team has an enormous amount of work provided to us that we are working through and intend to publicize about the authoritarian threat that is China under Chinese Communist Party rule. Reviewing the raw data, even Chinese “experts” continue to radically _underestimate_ the investment in monitoring and surveillance tools dedicated to controlling and influencing, not just its domestic citizens and institutions, but assets outside of China. We are working with governments, journalists, and select academics or think tanks around the world to help provide the necessary range of expertise needed to analyze and understand the data. What cannot be underestimated is the breadth and depth of the Chinese surveillance state and its extension around the world. The world is only at the beginning stages of understand how much China invests in intelligence and influence operations using the type of raw data we have to understand their targets. A project of this size would not be possible without multiple people. The first thanks goes to Rob Potter and his entire team at Internet 2.0. They brought significant technical expertise to the data across a range of areas. From working through how databases were constructed, to how governments use this data, their work has been vital to realizing this project. The individual who provided the Shenzhen Zhenhua database by putting themselves at risk to get this data out has done an enormous service and is proof that many inside China are concerned about CCP authoritarianism and surveillance. The journalists who worked so hard on this story to understand the data, its intended use, the company, and the technical tools behind the database deserve enormous praise. This was a difficult and complex story, but their commitment to working collaboratively and in good faith as a team and with us to understand and fact check everything represent the standard journalism strives for. Finally, there are many people who contributed in big and small ways that deserve recognition, but for various reasons wish to remain or need to remain anonymous. Their contribution was instrumental in bringing this project forward and for their work I am deeply grateful for seeing the vision. I am motivated by the concern that the scope of the authoritarian threat from Communist China remains poorly understood, by even many China experts. The depth and capabilities of their desire to engineer the soul, as John Garnaut so eloquently put it, must be acknowledged. They have and are building the tools to accomplish these objectives. Hopefully, this provides some small evidence to their objectives and that we in open liberal democracies begin taking them seriously.Posted in China |
Tagged China
STATEMENT ON SHENZHEN ZHENUA DATA LEAK Posted on September 14, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
The People’s Republic of China under Party Chairman Xi Jinping presents an unprecedented challenge to open freedom loving rule of law states around the world. Constructing a techno-surveillance security state that gives the Communist Party powerful means to control citizens domestically. We now have evidence of how Chinese firms partner with state agencies to monitor individuals and institutionsglobally.
The database built by Shenzhen Zhenhua from a variety of sources is technically complex using very advanced language, targeting, and classification tools. Shenzhen Zhenhua claims to work with, and our research supports, Chinese intelligence, military, and security agencies use the open information environment we in open liberal democracies take for granted to target individuals and institutions. Our research broadly support their claims. The information specifically targets influential individuals and institutions across a variety of industries. From politics to organized crime or technology and academia just to name a few, the database flows from sectors the Chinese state and linked enterprises are known to target. The breadth of data is also staggering. It compiles information on everyone from key public individuals to low level individuals in an institution to better monitor and understand how to exert influencewhen needed.
Compiling public and non-public personal and institutional data, Shenzhen Zhenhua has likely broken numerous laws in foreign jurisdictions. Claiming to partner with state intelligence and security services in China, Shenzhen Zhenhua operates collection centers in foreign countries that should be considered for investigation in those jurisdictions. Open liberal democracies must consider how best to deal with the very real threats presented by Chinese monitoring of foreign individuals and institutions outside established legal limits. Increased data protections and privacy limits should be considered. The threat of surveillance and monitoring of foreign individuals by an authoritarian China is very real. Open liberal democratic states can no longer pretend these threats do not exist. Today’s database is compiled primarily from open sources, other databases China holds present much greater risks to Chinese and foreign citizens.Posted in China |
Tagged China
IS TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM HISTORICAL US FOREIGNPOLICY?
Posted on August 31, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
The short answer: absolutely not. There is a profound inability to think rationally about policy pervading the Acela Corridor so that every decision means the end of democracy or some other vast rhetorical flourish implying rampaging Godzilla. The latest is the intellectually vacuous think tank crowd of DC debating such profound questions of whether US foreign policy can be repaired or how radical a departure Trump foreign policy represents. The absolute reality is that focused strictly on policy, leaving aside Tweets, Trump foreign policy is well within the historical boundaries of traditional US foreign policy. Before I lay out the case for this, I want to define and limit some of what I mean or am going to do. First, I am not going to use Trump rhetorical flourishes whether in reported conversations, Tweets, or live mic. We are going to focus on the policies that are being carried out by the US government. Second, I am going to strictly limit (as much as I can) any judgement on whether the actions are right or wrong, but rather where there is policy continuity or breaks between the Trump administration and the Obama administration and even where possible previous administrations. Third, we are going to judge an action by whether it was either previously used by the US government or advocated by mainstream individuals or institutions from either party. The goal is here is not to determine a policies rightness or wrongness but whether this carries forward or breaks with existing policy and whether that break or continuity is considered a mainstream policy. Make sure to understand the limits and parameters of what we are setting out to do here. Finally, we won’t be able to hit every issue so I apologize in advance. Russia: This one gets a lot of focus for obvious reasons (which I am going to mostly avoid) but the reality is one reviews the list of policy initiatives towards Russia, what we basically see is policy continuity between the Obama and Trump administrations. Trump administration policies on sanctions and other areas have been pretty consistently in line with the continued policy pressures escalating used by the Obama administration and have largely used similar tools and in similar magnitudes. Based strictly on the policy record, there is little evidence of any real break with recent Obama administration in the few years prior to Trump election. Furthermore, this is largely a return to more hawkish Russian policy of previous administrations and the later part of the Obama administration after the early Russian reset. While some may argue the Trump administration should be harder or that the public signaling has been problematic, both have some merit, the Trump administration is clearly in line with historical US and the last couple years of Obama policy. Saudi Arabia: The Trump administration has received a lot of criticism for their Saudi policy, primarily due to their bone sawing of a prominent critic and Washington Post columnist. In reality again, their Saudi policy is clearly in line with historical US policy towards Saudi Arabia. Let me strongly emphasize this is no defense of Saudi Arabia or bone sawing critics. It is however the clear headed recognition of the history of US, and yes Obama administration, foreign policy alignment towards Saudi Arabia. While Obama may have expressed some unease about Saudi Arabia, he was a full fledged supporter of their war in Yemen (which we will get to in a minute in another case) and defended them regularly in different areas. This is not a critique of Obama as he was very much within the mainstream of how US foreign policy has treated Saudi Arabia over time, but it points to the intellectual bankruptcy of critics of Trump Saudi policy. Trump policy on Saudi Arabia is actually rather continuous of Obama and historical US foreign policy towards Saudi Arabia. Europe: From NATO to trade to individual countries many have seen the actions of the Trump administration towards Europe as unprecedented and attacks on allies. In reality, I would argue it is, to use a simple distinction, neither broadly contiguous nor a full break but rather an escalation or expansion of previously existing thought and policies of previous administrations. Many of Trump policies on NATO and Germany, to take two simple examples, build upon existing policies and signaling of previous administrations from both parties dating back to the first Bush administration. The Obama administration (not blaming) removed US troops from Germany just as the Trump administration has done. Also forgotten are the relational difficulties the Obama administration had with key European leaders such as when Angela Merkel found out US intelligence had hacked her phone. This is not to blame Obama as this behavior likely would have occurred regardless but caused significant relational difficulties and has definitely tainted US German relations to this day specifically in light of the Huawei decision. It may be entirely fair to debate the delivery of policy expansions or key decisions, the timing in light of other events, but just as with other policy domains, what we see is mostly continuity with some definite expansion of policy thinking. Iran: This is a rather unique case. Trump most definitely broke with Obama policy on Iran but, and this is very important, Obama policy was a significant break with historical US policy. Quite arguably, the Trump administration is merely returning US Iranian policy towards a historical norm. Importantly, neither Obama nor Trump should be considered outside the mainstream for either decision. It is not the intention of this exercise to litigate Obama or Trump’s decision but I will briefly note my personal opinion is that Obama set too low a bar to reach a deal which was likely to result in significant problems and the Trump administration likely set too low a bar in ending the deal. However, it is rather clear at this point that Iran was cheating on the deal barely after the ink was dry if they ever stopped violating it at all. What makes the Iran matter rather unique is its centrality to pretty much every problem in the Middle East from Yemen to Syria. This is a case where yes, the Trump administration clearly broke with the Obama administration but it was really Obama who moved the US away from historical US policy. Nor is Trump policy on Iran in anyway outside mainstream or remotely radical thinking on Iran. Human rights and democracy: The issues are not as neatly linear as they are with a specific country policy, but the policy comparisons between Obama and Trump are interesting here. In global human rights, Obama’s record is at spotty at best. From Yemen to democracy protests in the Middle to Syria, the Obama record is weak at best. The Obama administration was decidedly better at rhetoric than the Trump administration but as a matter of policy, the Obama administration has significant problems. Leaving aside the rhetoric, the Trump administration record has been spotty but as a matter of policy no worse than the Obama administration and likely better. From Taiwan to Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the Trump administration has implemented a slew of policies to address these issues. However, there have been other areas where the Trump administration has been decidedly weaker. The Trump administration, just like the Obama administration, has largely chosen to stay out of Syria and continuing to follow Obama or general US historic policies in the Middle East. On democracy, Trump has strongly supported Hong Kong and Taiwan, however, has spoken minimally about Belarus and come under fire for not doing more on Venezuela. One can fault both Presidents for choosing to prioritize some democratic changes in foreign countries and not others but there is little to believe the Trump administration represents any clear break on from Obama or historical US policy. Fundamentally, both the Trump administration and the Obama, as well as previous administrations, pursued limited human rights agendas using sanctions or financial penalties as the primary channel with clear mistakes. One can fault Trump or Obama but it is difficult to see how anything in the Trump administration represents a clear break fundamentally or philosophically with historical policy. It may focus on different areas or utilize different calculus, but there is little to indicate a move outside historical policy trends. International organizations: The record here could generally be classified as somewhat in line but expanding on previous thinking within the USG and mainline thinking somewhat similar to how I classified Europe. The Obama administration and historically true of recent administrations, say post Reagan, have demonstrated a growing ambivalence and wariness about many international institutions. They may do so for different reasons, but both political parties have grown increasingly distrustful of major international institutions. To take one example, despite the criticism of the Trump administration over WHO, Dr. Tedros was elected under the Obama administration as the preferred candidate of China. Now to the Obama administrations credit, they worked hard against Dr. Tedros seeing him as problematic. However, whether it is the WHO, WTO, UN Human Rights Council, many international institutions have fallen under increasing criticism from individuals of both parties and Democratic and Republic administrations have reasons to be very concerned about the failures and unreformability of these institutions. Trump can be considered an extension of historical policies in that many Republicans for a long time have complained, for a variety of reasons, about these institutions and Democrats have increasingly acknowledged their weaknesses even if preferring to try to continue to work with them. China: The change in China policy might be classified just beneath the complete break I classify Iran as but distinctly beyond any mere policy extension. The Obama administration executed a broadly weak policy on China doing very little. They engaged regularly but have almost no tangible results that can be pointed to. They were entirely too trusting of China and rarely pushed back against China. The only reason I do not call this a complete break is some of the basics were there though little was done on them. US policy on companies like Huawei and ZTE has been long standing and bipartisan in both the Executive and Legislative branches. Though the Obama administration was entirely too trusting of Chinese promises over the South China Sea and did little when China revealed its building plans, they at least conducted occasional Freedom of Navigation operations though they were very restrictive. The Trump administration has expanded policy efforts in both of these areas. More broadly however, Trump policy is a clear break. From working to enforce laws pertaining to university transfer of data and foreign donations to increasing counter intelligence efforts imposing sanctions, there has been a very clear break with both historical and Obama China policy. One final area of note is tariffs. Obama actually imposed numerous tariffs on Chinese firms for things like dumping. Trump has significantly expanded on this policy but even this would not be considered the clear distinct break many consider it. Fundamentally, nor does anything Trump is doing represent radical breaks from pretty main stream thinking or policy issues that people can argue over. The Joe Biden campaign policy, not saying it would be true if he is elected, is that Trump has not been HARD enough on China. In fact Biden policy is as one person described it, Trump on steroids. Other criticisms are that there is no grand strategy behind it. This is not a criticism that the policy represents a break or departure from mainstream thinking or historical policy trends rather that the ideas are not knit together in a strategic manner. There are many valid debates, as there are with any administration, about policy outcomes, inputs, and strategies. I think there are valid debates about China, international organizations, timing, and issues like the public communications strategies. I would not have left TPP and while I generally agree on troop draw downs in Germany, the timing and roll out are very debatable. However, Trump foreign policy, again focusing on the policy, is for the most part a continuation and expansion of existing US foreign policy thinking or policies. In most areas it is right in line with historical policy or expanding on previous initiatives or thinking that was mainstream in both parties. There are policy differences between the two administration but policy differences are not major breaks with historical US or Obama foreign policy. In fact, we only see two real areas where there are major breaks of policy and that is Iran and China. Importantly, and again not relitigating the decision, rightly or wrongly Trump is returning Iran policy to its more historical norm rather than deviating from the norm. China is much more of a break with both history and Obama. One can validly debate these policy decisions but it is completely false to argue that these policies are in some way far outside the mainstream or over turninghistorical policy.
> On the record: The U.S. administration’s actions on Russia>
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/obama-saudi-arabia-228521 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/barack-obama-world-popularity-cuba-egypt-ukraine-bbc-documentary-214032 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-administration-criticizes-u-n-human-rights-council-but-still-wants-to-keep-its-seat Posted in Uncategorized FRAMING DISENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA Posted on July 29, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
One of the biggest challenges facing foreign policy thinkers on either side of the China debate and even foreign policy strategists around the world is what does US disengagement with China look like? China has ended One Country Two Systems in Hong Kong, oversees genocidal concentration camps in Xinjiang, just to get started. Look the other way uncritical engagement is not an option. Critics of recent policy moves have attacked every restrictive move taken by the US government against China. As I have long argued, it is completely fair to debate or argue over whether restrictive policy A is better than restrictive policy B but there is no point in arguing between restrictive policy A and no restrictive business as usual policy. What critics of recent policy moves have not done is provide any real sense of what restrictive moves would appease the Chinapigeon crowd.
Before we begin let us think about some framing about how to think and about how we make decisions about specific policies and then move into specific of disengagement. I am by nature and experience entirely pro-engagement. I have lived for 9 years in China, 2 in Vietnam, worked almost exclusively with Chinese, Vietnamese, and other students from around the world My colleagues have overwhelmingly been non-American. My children have gone mostly to Chinese and Taiwanese international schools going to school entirely in Chinese. Philosophically, I lean economic and social libertarian in that the free market is good and government should also stay out of personal and social decisions. This means the free movement of capital, labor, goods, and services to where they can be most productive. I am entirely in favor of engagement. Too often however, whenever we use these words, there is little thought given to the meaning we imbue in these words that bring conflict. I have found myself more than once irrationally criticized because I am not blindly and entirely in favor of all forms unquestioningly of engagement. I am entirely in favor of engagement but we also need to define or frame what we mean by engagement or potential limits to engagement. There is a key distinction or underlying assumption when we talk about engagement that most people overlook and that is what is the purpose of engagement? Proponents of engagement talk about it as if it is an unqualified (i.e. no possible negative) good. Is engagement a good in and of itself or is engagement a means to an end? Put another way, is engagement the objective or does engagement help realize anotherobjective?
Proponents of engagement confuse these two concepts to such a degree they do not even realize they do it. Take a simple example. The underlying intellectual value (not used in an economic sense) of engaging in educational exchanges is that freedom of thought is attractive and as more people are exposed to freedom, it will win friends, build relationships, and change the state of affairs between states. While total factor productivity in terms of higher quality research output and improved educational outcomes are important, as occurs under freeing of international trade, the value proposition is that exposing people to freedom will change thinking. If improving research output or student flows to the US are the only metric of “engagement” then this effectively removes the unspoken implied value of spreading liberal principles from any role in the underlying reason for engagement. Engagement is reduced to a valueless concept focused only on revenue from student and increases in research. Put another way, engagement is used for the pure self interest of universities and professors not for the much touted principles of the academy. If we believe that engagement has some purpose beyond pure economic interest, in the case I am using here of universities increasing research and student revenue, it then becomes incumbent to think how one can alter the terms of engagement to pursue the value proposition that alter how states and societies interact. Too many university spokesman confuse the two. Ezra Vogel of Harvard University argued for continued engagement citing specific examples of success. What he never cited was the broad failure of engagement with China to impact the governing ethos of China. Even if we posit that no shift to democracy should be expected or set as the metric of success, one could have stated then and now that engagement should change the broad direction of government both domestically and internationally. Instead, what we see is a China that for most of its modern history (here being used as since 2000) that has become increasingly illiberal and makes no secret of its intent to change the world to become more illiberal. Put another way, even if we say we do not expect China to become a democratic state, we expect they would at very least not oppose the broad spread democracy and would not work to spread authoritarianism any concept of engagement as promoting values failscompletely.
Another professor, makes another similarly defense of valueless engagement. Rory Truex argues that “we have no idea whether engagement with China “worked” or not. China has not become democratic, but it is undoubtedly better governed today than it was during the isolated Mao era.” Prof. Truex is making the argument that engagement worked because Chinese government workers are more efficient but clearly removes any concept of the importance of engagement being a value based proposition. Prof. Truex is effectively arguing that engagement is a success because Chinese technocrats are better trained and more efficient due to engagement to enact illiberal policies that build concentration camps. If engagement is divorced from any underlying value system, then yes, by that metric engagement with China should be considered a roaring success. China is much better equipped to spread authoritarianism. When many, professors and universities as is the case here, talk about the principles and importance of engagement, the clear implication is that engagement is a means to spread liberal values. Engagement merely provides a method for that to take place. However, when pushed many, professors included as noted by two examples here, fall back on valueless engagement partially because values based engagement has been a complete, total, unmitigated failure. Most people when using engagement in general usage take it as an epistemological given that there are larger reasons for engagement not simply describing an economic transaction. Take for a minute another similar issue immigration. When we talk about immigration, everything about immigration is value laden rather than simply reductionist into GDP input units. Proponents believe the act of accepting immigrants is not merely an economic transaction but filled with values implication on the part of the receiver and the leaving immigrant. Proponents further believe, and research supports, that immigrants widely adopt American values from languages to respect for American values like free speech. There is an implied assumption that engagement is a value laden proposition. Notably, China considers the implied meaning of engagement as a value laden concept. While professors at Harvard and Princeton, among others, may try to remove all value from the concept of engagement, China above all others understands that engagement is meant to convey and spread a specific value set. This is why China censors news, employs the Great Firewall, will require foreign teachers to respect Chinese national honor, sends students and Party members to monitor students abroad, produces vast amounts of propaganda about the infiltration of foreign ideas, centralizes Xi thought, and arguably most importantly urges all counter parties to reduce productive engagement to purely economic transactions. China treats engagement as the value laden concept that it is. This results in a perverse outcome: to ensure continued engagement with China, universities (as well as other individuals or institutions) adopt Chinese demands about a variety of things such as censorship. This transforms the engagement into effectively a one way flow whereby the non-Chinese entity adopts Chinese norms such as stripping engagement of any value meaning and transforming the engager into the changed while China reduces enormously the scope for anychange.
The question of engagement then no longer rests upon demanding engagement at any cost but reframing engagement into what type of engagement we should have with China? Put another way, rather than creating a binary of total engagement or no engagement how much engagement and what type of engagement should we have with China? There is really no universal standard upon which we should engage or disengage from China but I would suggest highlighting the importance a principled engagement. Rather than just opting to disengage, we should centralize the importance of engaging on our terms not Chinese terms. Just as US university research has ended up helping China in Xinjiang concentration camps, we can no longer take all engagement with China as a positive out. So how should we consider standards around which disengagement occurs? Let me give for universities, since that is the primary use case I am focusing on today, reasonable steps or things to think about on how to engage on US terms. First, vet US China research collaborations regardless of funding source for potential misuse. As China has used US university research in ways that would never be allowed domestically, just as there is an institutional review board for various types of research and related ethical issues, it bears worth considering how to vet research that involves a Chinese partner orco-author.
Second, if Chinese students are to be valued beyond their full tuition payment, what steps need to be taken by universities to meet these specific needs that fulfill the universities mission on liberal education? This could mean working harder to make sure that Chinese students do not live with other Chinese students. Changing the curriculum for international students that involve classes on philosophy and learning so they understand the centrality of free speech and open inquiry. There are other steps but universities need to better think about how to ensure that engagement with Chinese students is not appeasing the CCP or fostering isolation. Third, reconsider study abroad and Chinese based campus operations. Let me strongly emphasize that this does not mean ending them but reconsidering their viability and how to use these options. Major universities have effectively given the CCP control over their brand in China and willing block most nature of liberal education to expand in China. Professors invited by Chinese institutions have been arrested and are required to avoid any topic remotely sensitive in China. Just as US universities send students and professors to work with and study in other authoritarian countries, it seems like problematic to end all of those ties. It also is very problematic to acquiesce to demands for control over curriculum and silence on key issues by the university. The key to disengagement, or as it is known in economic terms, is how to selectively disengage or decouple from China? This is not calling for nor is it believed to currently warrant a total disengagement or decoupling but how to selectively disengage. Put another way, there must be punitive measures taken to address behavior or reallocate resources or economic interdependence, how and what should bereallocated?
If we look at economic flows, we probably need to revisit as a simple technology exposure to China. The US government has already begun requiring vendors to certify no made in China components. Especially for more products like cameras that have the potential to be involved in sensitive matters, it probably warrants greater consideration. Part of what we need to consider when discussing decoupling or disengagement is not blocking economic or financial flows based upon the national origin of the sender or receiver but based upon the broad security risk of the product or potential uses. The other aspect of decoupling from China is engaging with trusted partners using this as an opportunity to reorient aspects to trusted or similarly minded states even if not official allies against China. Take a simple example which we have already seen movement towards. Given the concern about Chinese 5G vendors such as Huawei, the US has brought together 30 countries who are considered trusted where companies make components for a 5G network. As another example, Japan is subsidizing firms that relocate from China to other countries. Two recent pieces even make the argument in different ways for one way engagement with China. An FT piece and CSIS argue for various forms of allowing China to engage with the US on their terms while allowing China to remain walled off from the US. The CSIS piece actually argues for allowing Huawei into US networks as one way engagement. Leaving aside the technical issues of how grossly wrong this analysis is, this is arguing for further one way engagement with no demands on China. Continually engaging on their terms in not actually two partyengagement.
While new engagement steps could go on and on (and may be turned into another blog post) we need to think about not just how to disengage from China but how to re-engage with other countries specifically when trying to move resources or reliance away from China to other countries to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated and that engagement is not stripped of value in the way it has been in engagement with China. One the interesting things is how after the Gulf War II, the United States in many ways made clear decisions both in government and business to project less influence focusing primarily on the economic transaction. (I use the Gulf War II more as a simple dividing line as I think there are many reasons for the resultant changes). President Obama in a wide reflection of social appetite opted to lead from behind and do very little to project US influence. In many ways, he adopted the current German thinking that simply by exposure behavior would change by osmosis. I think it has become clear that this only emboldens China to pursue pushing engagement on its terms and its values around the world and in bilateral relations. Decoupling or disengagement should not mean walling ones self off from China, but nor should it mean business as normal flows preferring willful blindness to the risks of engagement with China on their terms. It also means laying out terms of engagement with othercountries.
Posted in China |
Tagged China
THE UNREALITY OF THE CHINA PIGEON Posted on July 23, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
There is a new breed of China watcher stalking editorial pages. Potentially concerned, though not always, about various China misdeeds which few deny but clinging to unrealistic beliefs about solutions or simply unwilling to adopt firm beliefs about solutions, the China pigeon is unable to target workable solutions with difficult choices. We see this easily tossed softness in a variety of guises that remain unable to grasp the difficulty facing the world today. The first failure of the China pigeon is an unrealistic belief in the non-China state of the world. For many this is an obvious defense mechanism. Many of them agree that China has done bad things like Xinjiang and Hong Kong so clearly they cannot be faulted because they agree with you. Where this pigeon goes wrong is in holding unrealistic views on the non-Chinese world. The most obvious, but just one of many that could be cited is the oft repeated but poorly understood phrase of relying on allies to challenge China. In reality the fall back on clichés about allies are a defense mechanism revealing little more than intellectual emptiness about actual realistic state of the world or steps that could be taken to challenge China. They do not demonstrate any great profundity of thought but lack of understanding about the world outside their university campus or newsroom. Look around the world, talk to civil servants or political appointees in governments throughout Asia and Europe and one quickly discovers relative lack of interest for a variety of reasons to take any tangible steps to challenge China. Europe is in the midst of doing its best to appease China and Asia generally wants to avoid the topic as much as possible. The commendable idealism of those talking up the importance of allies to challenge China is quickly drowned in a sea of 2020 real economikpolitik.
We can seek to remake the world more to our liking but we must work with the world now as it is not as we hope it to be. The reality is that almost no countries have any real interest in addressing the myriad of problems obvious to the China hawk and China pigeon. The second primary defense of the pigeon is the ability to spout profound sounding clichés that are nothing more than empty words devoid of policy steps that could be taken to balance reasonable concerns. China pigeons lack concrete thinking about how to address the myriad of challenges China presents. Skilled at critique and clichés, they lack ability to provide concrete policy steps to challenge China. The examples of allies reveals the bankrupt nature of these cliched talking points. Recruitment of allies, leaving aside the state of countries, is positive only if they can be marshalled into taking tangible policy steps to challenge China. China pigeons talk only of allies with no thought that this is only an intermediate step and not an end in and of itself. Most allies lack the willingness to even issue anything beyond vague concern over Chinese behavior but somehow these allies are the bedrock of enlightened foreign policythinking.
Take a simple example. The leader of Europe Germany cannot bring itself to offer even any statement on China other than vague unspecified concerns about Chinese behavior. Falling back on the importance of allies is only valuable if those allies move much closer to the US position on China rather than the US moving closer to a German position on China. The inclusion of allies ultimately requires them to both honor commitments and gives them influence over the position. It would be a terrible tragedy if working with allies required watering down the US position on China. However, the China pigeon unable to recognize either the state of the world or requirements of allies believe that allies are simply a basicunqualified good.
Examples of the China pigeon as stunningly common despite the widely held perception that China hawks dominate. A recent blog post by Brookings capture this charade well. The post entitled “Why now? Understanding Beijing’s new assertiveness in Hong Kong” spends most of the piece analyzing Beijing’s strategy in passing the National Security Law. While reasonable people could have reasonable disagreements the author posits various theories about why Beijing chose the summer of 2020 to pass the NSL and gives nod to the fears they create. At this stage of the piece, if one read no further, you could be forgiven for believing the author would be in favor of any number of policies that would seek to punish Beijing. However, the blog closes with a few paragraphs that call for “goal of America’s presence in Hong Kong should be to keep as many relationships open with as wide a range of key figures as possible…(and hoping) the “one country, two systems” model can be preserved.” This is not any type of debatable policy response to CCP termination of civil rights like free speech. This is nothing less than dressed up appeasement of the rankest nature. Another recent piece by Harvard professor Ezra Vogel talked about the need to continue engagement policies between China and the United States. Leaving aside the obvious failure of historical engagement that brought us to the point in time and enmity we are at now, the author compounds the original error by failing to grasp the state of the world outside of the college campus. It trots out the agency and context free one sided view that “it is not in the United States interest to turn the Chinese into our enemies. If we want to encourage them to work with us for our common interests, we need some fundamental rethinking of our policies.” The simplistic view of 2020 China makes two fundamental errors. First, the United States has worked for years to that end while China has engaged in an unceasing pattern of adversarial behavior. The shift in US policy and attitudes is not happening in a vacuum as the author supposes. Second, it further assumes the US is the only side in this relationship removing agency from the Chinese. At what point do the Chinese become responsible for their own country and making it a responsible actor in the global liberal international order? The last major problem of this piece is its complete lack of any mention of Chinese behavior. Forget Xinjiang. Hong Kong is never mentioned. Security threats are made up stories divorced from reality. Complicating this is that the author literally works at an institution where a colleague has been charged with illegally working with the Chinese but yet we are supposed to believe America is turning Chinese into enemies. In the last highlighted piece, the author at least gives a nod the misbehavior of China in recent years writing in quiet confession that “I cannot excuse China’s behaviour in recent years…”. However, after this seemingly heartfelt and honest acknowledgement it falls a part in misguided logic and appeasement. The author actually argues that the current behavior is nothing more than a long pattern of behavior that should have been fully expected writing “What it is doing is not shocking if you have paid attention to the way it obtained power and has held it over the past seven decades.” If this is the case why was the United States engaging with this type of power so hard at all? This leads into the next piece of misbegotten and tortured logic. What has caused this conflict between China and the United States given the authors recognition of China’s “current behavior”? It is not China that is responsible for the state of affairs but the United States! The author argues that relations were driven by engagement which allowed, if we follow the authors logic, a malign state to metastasize but now the United States challenging these nefarious actions is driving the current state of conflict. This misguided logic is at least part right in that the relationship has tumbled because the United States has said this type of behavior will no longer be tolerated. Instead the author chalks the problems between the United States and China up to “blind confrontation” by the Trump administration. The author offers absolutely no suggestion, however misguided, of even a policy worth of consideration that might better respond to China’s acknowledged misbehavior other than continued engagement. Like many who will at least nod towards China’s behavior he authors nothing other than vague clichés. The reality is that the problems of decoupling are driven fundamentally and overwhelmingly by an increasingly intolerant and totalitarian China. While I personally sympathize and have lived the upheaval the author talks about of moving from China after living there for many years, it is nothing less than misguided appeasement of racial authoritarianism to continue a failed policy of engagement. I could continue to cite example after example of people or institutions who try to sound enlightened looking at US China relations but fundamentally struggle to grasp the fundamental natureof the problem.
I believe there are three specific points that must be addressed for any argument to be considered reasonable. First, is the given state of the world an accurate representation of the reality we must deal with? To take a simple example, one is free to argue that greater ally involvement is positive, but any argument that fails to grasp the national level concerns of individual states can be considered nothing more than cliché writing. The hard reality is that irrespective of President Trump, countries have a myriad of issues that cause them to be reluctant or opposed to challenging China. That is the state of the world we must deal with. Second, any argument of serious weight must present actual policy solutions. Let me emphasize, this is not clichés about challenging China or critiquing current policy but what are tangible policy options in the same tangible policy domain that would result in improved outcomes? For instance, when the Trump administration announced PLA linked graduate students would no longer be allowed to attend university in the United States, the policy proposal came under all nature of criticism such as cutting off lines of communication to racism but I know of no proposal to address the valid security concerns linked to an adversarial military power and key research put forth by any interested party. We must recognize the state of the world about China and the PLA and valid American interest in protecting certain information. In reality, barring PLA graduate students impacts a relatively small number of students and is not racially motivated and protects relatively narrow specific types of research. If universities want to argue for better policies designed to address specific downside risks or threats, I for one would be interested in how to better address valid and documented security issues. Until that time, there public demonstrations of concern are sound and fury signifying nothing. Third, any serious argument about China must focus on the relative costs and benefits of cost imposition policy A v. cost imposition policy B rather than cost imposition policy v. status quo. In each of the examples cited, the underlying argument being made is that the deterioration in US China relations was due to US actions to punish or challenge Chinese behavior and that a return to engagement or no action should be taken. The Brookings piece actually said the recommended course of action was do nothing. This is simply not a remotely reasonable position. It is reasonable to debate whether an expedited visa policy, human rights sanctions, financial sanctions, or other policy actions should be taken or the details of these policies but returning to a policy of engagement or inability to take tangible actions against Chinese misbehavior is simply an untenable position. We should only be debating which cost imposition policy are we prepared to impose, accept the costs, and specific policy outcomes desired with comparison to results. When the China pigeon is prepared to recognize the true state of the world, put forth words beyond cliched critiques, and engage in debate between cost imposition policies that challenge Chinese behavior, then and only then will they be considered credible.1.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/07/17/why-now-understanding-beijings-new-assertiveness-in-hong-kong/2.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/22/us-policies-are-pushing-our-friends-china-toward-anti-american-nationalism/3.
https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-culture/kicked-out-of-china-and-other-real-life-costs-of-a-geopolitical-meltdownPosted in China |
Tagged China
FRAMING THE CONFLICT WITH CHINA Posted on June 3, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
There has been a lot going on in all things China and I think it is important to step back and put what is happening into a bigger picture framework and better understand the evolving conflict and specifically what the conflict is not. Let us start off by saying what the conflictwith China is not.
1. The conflict with China is not due to Trump administration policy. This is an argument that to me is both nonsensical lacking any factual basis but speaks directly to many of the domestic political conflicts rather than the reality of China 2020. It would be fair to debate whether specific policy actions might have individually brought slightly different responses in narrow specific cases, but China has made clear across policy domains the nature, character, and direction of its domestic and foreign policy. The change and direction in Chinese foreign policy has been apparent for most of the past decade, definitely at least demarcated by the ascendance of Great Leader Xi in late 2012. Since then China has made no secret of its muscular foreign policy from the South China Sea to Uyghurs around the world and in Xinjiang to economic and industrial warfare. This strain of Chinese foreign policy began well before President Trump and will outlast a one or two term President Trump. 2. The conflict with China is not due to needing better communication or better understanding. Many have argued that due to Trump communication style, ending regular meetings, or lack of nuance the true failure lies with an inability to effectively communicate with China. This attributes to China a lack of intent about their actions rather than recognizing the reality that these actions and the larger framework within which they occur happens in a well planned manner to achieve specific objectives. The reality is that the policies that China is executing now have been planned and discussed clearly for years. Xinjiang, Taiwan, South China Sea, economic protectionism, Hong Kong, techno-authoritarianism these are clearly stated objectives by China across a variety of institutional formats that have been discussed widely within formal governmental forums and permissible propaganda type forums. To argue that the current escalated conflict is due to poor communication between the US and China is nothing less than staggering ignorance about what China has stated clearly and repeatedly as its objectives. These two points, and various derivatives of the same generalized arguments, are made by China apologists, think tankers, and Open Letter writers as a form of condescending infantilization of China as if it needs to be shown the enlightened path upon which peace and harmony will reign. There are a couple of problems with this general line of thinking. First, it effectively believes the CCP and Chinese lack agency. If only they could be shown the light it would result in rapid change of events. In fact, Chinese writers have written at length both in official and unofficial circles about the projected growth of China in both political and economic terms. Official and unofficial China has thought long and hard about their preferred policy path and have the agency to make their own decisions about howto proceed.
Second, it implies that decision makers lack information about their decision set. In other words, engagers implicitly believe that due to wide spread state censorship in China, decision makers and political leaders have censored information and would benefit from better access to information and how their political decision making would result in better outcomes. However, decision makers have vast access to information and exposure to these ideas and policy options. Whether it has been studying abroad or censoring the specific ideas, it is a failed savior complex to believe that different information would change their behavior. They know why they are behaving in a certain manner and the decisions they are taking. Third, this line of thinking require ignoring vast amounts of Chinese government work about what Beijing and the CCP sees as viable decision sets or alternatives. Put another way, China has said repeatedly over the years what they want to attain and they have dedicated vast amounts of of resources to attain its desired ends. Peter Mattis from the Congressional China Commission did a great Twitter thread on the wealth, depth, and modern history of documentation in planning and statement of intentions by China. I fundamentally disagree with their philosophy and objectives but they have put enormous amount of work and thought into their intentions, objectives, and reasoning. Believing any variation on the two themes of what the conflict is not requires one to believe that China has not done this, which we know isnot true.
Fourth, engagers present this push to engage China as a brand new strategy when in reality their strategy has been the dominant strategy since the turn of the century. Their preferred strategy of how to prevent deepening problems between the United States and China is the exact strategy that brought relations to this point. If anything we have seen the complete and absolute failure of this strategy over the past 20 years but true believers, like communists, believe just a little more will make all the difference. Engagement advocates have truly had unfettered ability to demonstrate the efficacy of persuading China over the past 20 years and simply failed spectacularly. That this is even still discussed as a remotely viable strategy speaks nothing less than to the delusion of its advocates. So this brings us to the fundamental question, and something that China apologists refuse to grasp, and many even hawkish to semi-hawkish China focused personnel struggle with: the conflict between China and the United States is a fundamental conflict between the values of open liberal democracy with human rights, and free markets at its core versus the closed authoritarian state centric governance system of China. This sounds so simple but so difficult to grasp because it fundamentally changes the understanding of the conflict and how to resolve it. Take a simple example. In the first scenario, two countries are in a trade dispute. However, both countries agree that free trade is the driving objective, they agree what the rules of trade are, they recognize this as a narrow specific technical dispute that does not affect their other cooperation, they both accept how disputes are settled, and to accept the ruling in good faith and abide by the ruling making any changes. Now take another example. Two countries are in a trade dispute. However, the countries do not agree that free trade is the driving objective, they do not agree what the rules of trade are, it does impact their relationship in other areas beyond the narrow technical area, they do not accept how disputes are settled, and they do not in good faith accept rulings and implement rulings. There is an entire set of pre-dispute rules and framing that alter how we view the dispute and this this changes the entirety of how we approach the same exact same set of facts depending on the framing of each party. What we have seen is that most people at the beginning believed this was a simple trade dispute between China and the United States. Even when the trade deal was announced, the structuring of the deal reflected a framework reflecting a fundamental dispute (refusal to negotiate foundational issues like subsidies), disagreement over the framing rules (managed trade in Stage 1 with free trade negotiated in Phase 2), and mistrust of the counterparty (target dollar purchases for China) even though most people continued to analyze it as a simple trade dispute. However, we knew as I said in April of 2018 how China would behave and using simple game theory this instructs us about how the Trump administration should behave and what the expected payoff from Presidential strategy replace given challenging China as the underlying principle. China is not approaching and has not behaved as if it is a marginal or technical dispute but cuts directly to the core of their entire political and economic governance philosophy. Why this comes as any type shock to any China watcher is a rather puzzling question but let us set that aside for now. This understanding guides us into what to expect about the general path of the conflict between China and what will ultimately become large parts of the world. This is not a conflict about specific policies but about an entire system of human governance. This gives us a couple of principles moving forward about how to frame thisconflict.
First, openness and engagement is relatively pointless with the objective to change Chinese government policy. I want to be very clear as I know how many will want to read this. Openness is good and useful policy across many policy domains and it still should be pursued pretty generally but we must realize it has little to no impact on changing Chinese government policy in a range of areas that would fit US government satisfactory policy sets or ranges. If openness and engagement with China actually changed Chinese government policy in the general direction of US or developed country democracy acceptable sets, the past 20 years would have yielded vastly different outcomes than where we stand. If anything the generalized policy of openness and engagement towards China has been shown to produce the opposite of its claimed outcome. I will leave aside the arguments for openness and engagement for now as they do not pertain to our argument about what type of conflict this is or the benefits but this should not be taken as an argument for closing up and blocking any interaction with Chinaor Chinese.
Second, better negotiation or communication will have little to no impact on Chinese government policy. A common argument whether it is on bilateral basis, whether the personnel at the negotiating table, or at international organizations, a common argument is that better communication or negotiation strategies will give the US influence. However, the CCP will never negotiate its authoritarian stranglehold on China willingly. The CCP will not change its intent to establish a loose alliance of global authoritarians as a bulwark against open democracy due to better PowerPoint slides from well meaning DC think tanks. The CCP will not change its policies on import substitution and policies after reading a report from about what is really in its best interest in a Washington Post oped. It has not happened in since the turn of the century and it is not going to happen going forward. Unfortunately this leads to a rather sobering direction on what it does mean for the conflict between the United States and China. It basically means a type of cold conflict will take place and we have already started seeing this effectively. I have no real interest in the specific linguistic terminology used. My preferred nomenclature is Cold War 2.0 but historians and linguists get puffy because the parallels are not exact but I do not have a strong opinion so if there is some type of widely adopted phrasing I will use it but for now I’m going to call it Cold War 2.0. As the conflict is a fundamental conflict over the state of the world and system of governance, this leaves little room for negotiation but rather competition and conflict in most every policy domain promoting divergent visions of power and state to state interaction at every locus. In reality, this is what we have already been seeing for years. China has been a clearly revisionist power for example in the South China Sea seeking to take by force international waters in contravention of international treaties. China, as it has been for sometime well before the Trump administration, is actively working to cast forth a different vision for international organizations like the WHO. The xat Chinese strategy depends on the exact institution. At the WTO, Beijing will have difficulty changing the underlying agreements to its liking but they can drive it into irrelevance by keeping counterparties from pursuing disputes there, prevent any market opening reforms, and ignore agreements either technically or via lack of enforcement. Just as the United States built a variant of its own technocratic state on to the international arena after WWII and countries joined because the rules based system being projected globally, China is attempting to replicate its own domestic systemglobally.
It further implies that global institutions will become increasingly meaningless as they drift from their original technical mandate and agreement on either the terms of the institution itself mean and require of members or lack enforcement mechanisms (think WTO) or they become bogged down adrift in politics that prevent it from focusing on and executing its most basic tasks (think WHO or WIPO). We must remember that many of these institutions were created for the express purpose of challenging a major authoritarian communist or demarcating friendly states not trying to reform an existent authoritarian communist. Research across many disciplines have found that generally speaking whether a business or religion or other organizations that the more they dilute their membership the weaker it becomes in focusing on the mission, driving voluntary adherence, or that coalescing idea that made it great to start. In an era when China openly censors criticism on itself from pretty much any global organization, this creates problems in viewing global institutions as a channel for change in Chinese policy. It will also require broad direct competition and challenges to China across policy domains and the establishment of a new international system. Cold War 2.0 will require United States competing and challenging China across virtually every policy domain about how best to project liberal open democratic human rights free market vision on to the world. Whether this is new international institutional arrangements or competing telecommunications standards or development funding for lesser developed countries, the United States must be prepared to challenge and compete with China across every policy domain. Every policy domain. The United States has been waking up to these challenges and is moving to address them but an enormous amount of work remains ahead. If we exclude any type of armed conflict, which for two countries the size and technical sophistication of the United States and China would truly be catastrophic, the objectives and field of conflict become rather clear. It is an economic and world view conflict between closed authoritarian states and open liberal democratic system of governance. We can already see evolving soft alliances with China surrounding itself with DPRK, Iran, Syria, and other authoritarian states and building up other authoritarian states. This framework provides a few clear implications for how to approach the China challenge. First, the United States must build alliances and institutions whether bilateral or multilateral but must be willing to exclude countries that are not good partners. The weakness of the global multilateral system is the total dilution of any agreed upon norms and values to which the members aspired. Even if the signed up for the words and the document, it is perfectly clear they did not agree with the mean and adjust their actions and policies accordingly. Just as China has built its own salad bowl of bilateral and multilateral institutions, the United States must challenge and compete with China whether in Asia or Latin America to work with countries that aspire to the same values. Second, we need to recognize and behave as if there is an evolving type of Cold War split and countries need to treated as extensions of the larger framework. To take an example, though it may seem hard nosed, the United Kingdom cannot expect to receive special benefits and access to United States assets or markets while simultaneously allowing dangerous access to Chinese intelligence gathering assets. Other countries face similar decisions or tradeoffs. This makes it incumbent on the United States to both increase its cooperation and work with other countries while also making it clear that benefits can be excluded as well. Values need to be defended and that may come with a cost but if you respect those values the United States will supportyou.
Third, this means challenging countries that are align themselves with China. Just as we would take issue with allies funding the Soviet Union in the Cold War, we should understandably raise concerns about allies cooperating with China. Many have the concern that this is forcing countries to choose between China and the United States. This frames the questions incorrectly. One cannot both cooperate heavily with China like Germany is in Xinjiang, for instance, while also claiming to uphold the values of liberal open democracies. Germany and Volkswagen are simply funding brutal racist authoritarianism though kudos to remaining true to Volkswagen founding principles. It is not the United States forcing these questions but merely imposing costs. The same holds for states that are not allies like Iran. We cannot have détente and cooperation with countries that seek the benefits of working with the United States and its market without altering practices and policies. All sharing of benefits much be accompanied with specific sets or ranges of policies. Otherwise it is not us influencing them but us being influenced by brutal authoritarians. Fourth, change in countries to whom we are in conflict with will come not by reasoned change of policies towards optimized sets but by imposition of painful outcomes from non-military policies. In other words, if we are in conflict with China and the CCP and we accept they will not negotiate into more open liberal democratic policy ranges accepting foundational beliefs, we must be prepared to impose upon them costs for their behavior that may ultimately force them to make those changes. For instance, that means taking action that may result in the collapse of a firm like Huawei. Enough of these individual actions together can increase the pain or narrow the decision set forcing changes in policy or raising the costs to maintaining the system. Make no mistake this is likely over time to impose significant costs and cause collateral damage to Chinese and Chinese allies but the United States must raise the costs of non-compliance to the values and norms we hold. To take one future possibility, if the United States were to begin crimping USD flows to Hong Kong due to its loss of special status, this may cause economic pain in Hong Kong as firms look to relocate and dislocates labor. While the United States should be careful, it cannot be held hostage by the CCP and must understand that when seeking to avoid any military confrontation, it must be prepared to impose these policies to raise the costs of behavior. Fifth, we need to plan for and anticipate a long and costly shift in relations between the United States and China. We have crossed the Rubicon and China has laid bare their intentions. We cannot return to the days of blissful ignorance when the learned could feign ignorance on the goals, objectives, and intentions of China. That’s the reality. This is the conflict.Posted in China ,
Essay | Tagged China WHY EUROPE IS IRRELEVANT TO CHALLENGING CHINA Posted on June 2, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
One of the most widely watched geopolitical events is how will Europe respond to Chinese aggression from the national security law in Hong Kong to the invasion of India as well as a range of other events. Given that many have built a counter Trump foreign policy contingent upon attracting European allies to confront China, the importance of Europe in the unfolding geopolitical tragedy becomes even more important. The only problem with the Old World obsession? Europe is almost entirely irrelevant to the China problem. America has a European obsession. Coming out of a post World War II geopolitical environment there is good reason why that was the focus of resource allocation. This resulted in significant work that focused on the trans Atlantic relationship from bilateral and multilateral alliances and institutions to economic and security relationships that built the post war world. In a post war world, rebuilding Europe rapidly and building alliances to confront the Soviet Union was tantamount. This formed the foundation for the post war institutionaland alliance order.
However, even beyond the broader institutional and alliance focus many in America looked to Europe as a natural ally that shared the same values but also behaved differently acting as a type of moderating influence on US foreign policy. They preferred to highlight different policy domains like the environment and human rights. They focused on institution building whether it was the European Union or whether it was NATO and post 1989 institutions. This endeared them to many foreign policy wonks in the United States who admired Europeansensibilities.
However, these threads of foreign policy and institutional alliances also overlooked key problems. First, much of this European cooperation flowed from the need to solve uniquely European centric problems. Whether the NATO security alliance facing the USSR to the United Nations Security Council with the two major victorious European powers as members or receiving financial benefits to rebuild Europe, enormous amounts of the cooperation involved European centric or adjacent needs, alliances, and institutions. In a post WWII world this is not a major problem. In a 2020 Asia focused threat theater, this is aproblem.
Second, organizationally, Europe and the European are not really a political entity with delegated decision making, authority, and significant budgetary authority. Power for foreign policy within Europe continues to reside not with the European Union foreign minister but with the respective states foreign ministers. Each state has individual relationships with each other and with China and the issues that cause reaching and agreement to speak with a common voice on security issues half a world away a virtual non-starter. In reality, though we use the term Europe there is no European voice. Third, Europe having received a security guarantee from the United States for most of the past half century has little interest in expending energy or capital on challenging China. Despite the criticisms of the Trump administration taking steps to make Europe take its own security more seriously and reduce American assets in Europe, this is a long standing problem faced by many Presidents dealing with a continent that is happy to free ride off of American security guarantee. While in European linked matters they may be able to muster at least some security assets to protect their own country, asking Europe to plausibly take interest in in security matters outside the Old World is simply a non-starter. There are two separate issues to consider that are separate from Europe’s link with the creation of the international institution system. First, for a variety of reasons Europe broadly speaking does not see or refuses to address the potential Chinese threats. Despite the seemingly overwhelming list of reasons for Europe to consider China a threat, including many that fall directly into areas that Europe broadly prioritizes such as human rights and democracy, Europe almost without exception cannot even make strong statements about Hong Kong. There is a variety of reasons for this but fundamentally, Europe cannot be considered a reliable ally that prioritizes these values and policy issues willing to raise them with strongly authoritarian states. It bears worth noting that this pattern extends well beyondthe China case.
Second, where as previous institutional arrangements prioritized Europe and European states played an important role in their creation and maintenance, the theater of engagement is now Asia. Even assuming the political willingness to challenge China, there is little to no ability by European state available to influence China other than scolding. They barely have a military to contribute to European defense much less projection into areas like the South China Sea nor can they even muster the ability to assist European telecom network firms like Nokia and Ericsson whom the US is trying to protect to help European cyber security. Think of it another way, after World War II, this would be like the United States proclaiming it was worried about the Russian marching into Europe and promptly flying to Asia to figure out what should be done. Europe can contribute minimally to the challenge ahead based simply on the theater of engagement. So this turns us to the question of what is the framework for alliances and institutional building that lays before us? First, rather than burning down the old institutions they are best dealt with by rotting under their own entropy. We do not need to dismantle NATO or the WTO for instance, nor would it be adviseable, we simply need not prioritize them. If other partners are unable or unwilling to invest in the maintenance or the reform of those institutions to make them valuable institutional resources, then the US should not waste valuable political and economic capital in attempting to make the impossible happen especially when those institutions cannot rise to meet the new challenges. However, this also argues against any destruction or withdrawal but rather a form of management into general irrelevance. If Germany does not wish to invest in its own security than neither will the US but we will maintain a security presence for our own needs in western Europe. Assuming no significant increase in military spending, this would require a reallocation of military assets away from western Europe and towards the Indo Pacific. Second, this requires investing a new landscape of institutions and organizations designed to meet new challenges. As a simple example, the WTO language and ruling provide little hope for dealing with China in areas like state owned enterprises and separating enforcement from worthless technical alteration of legislation in an authoritarian government. Nor will the WTO be able to reform itself and the underlying agreements again. While newer agreements like CPTPP and the EU Vietnam FTA for instance, cover issues like SOEs in significantly greater detail with much broader language. In reality we see the beginnings of system institutions that could form the basis of an actual Asian Pivot. President Obama first coined the term but had no follow through in accomplishing anything and President Trump has made targeting China a policy priority but worked little to institutionalize his approach outside the United States government. With the strategic approach document released recently which was a multi-agency collaboration document from across the US government and not a single office, there is a clear framework for moving forward. The US should join CPTPP and go further creating a directorate to coordinate and work with lesser developed Indo Pacific neighbors on standards, development, and investment. Recently, the Development Finance Corporation (DFC) was incorporated to finance development assistance though it currently has limited capital and borrowing capability to meet large broad needs across the Indo Pacific. While the US has ramped up security cooperation with partners in the Indo Pacific it needs to go further and begin to formalize a more institutional structure. This could take the form of military training and cooperation centers well short of anything that would replicate a NATO type control and mutual guarantee alliance structure it would lay the ground work for further institutionalization if needed by cooperating now. Third, the reality that neither party really wants to acknowledge is that focusing on China will require both a significant reallocation or shift away from Europe and increase in current spending levels across policy domains. CNAS a left leaning security focused think tank in DC wrote a report entitled “Rising to the China Challenge”
that came out in January about how the US should approach China by policy domains going forward. As much as a criticize Acela Corridor think tanks for their work on China, which is abysmally bad, the CNAS report was actually very good and got all the key points right. Where they stumble is they do not go far enough or lay out the realities of what they are implying: major increases in spending and major absorption of costs and refocusing of alliances and institutions. The fundamental framework and objectives they lay out is entirely correct. They stop short however of what the implication and the choices that will have to be made. This will require major increases in spending and a refocusing and redrawing of alliances to meet those goals andobjectives.
Focusing on our example here, the United States does not need to kill NATO or the WTO but there is little clear reason for to invest or prioritize them if they are objectively failing or unable to address the new policy domains objectives. Furthermore, other than rubber rafts and unused vacation time, Europe can and will contribute nothing to Indo Pacific focused institutions, policies, and security strategies. The United States should not be bound by historical alliances to fight different security threats and economic objectives. Given the inability of Europe to project power and influence even within Europe what makes us think they could project influence toAsia?
There is broad interest in greater US involvement across a range of policy domains from greater security cooperation and training to economic development and trade. The US needs to prioritize working with other countries but not quiet in the way most people think.Posted in China ,
Europe | Tagged China CHINA, THE SEC, AND STRATEGY Posted on May 21, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
There are a grab bag of issues that have popped up about China so let me try and hit them and wrap it all up into some type of coherent bigpicture idea.
First, I had heard recently Sen. John Kennedy had introduced a bill to effectively delist Chinese companies listed on US markets unless they effectively submit to big boy audits and SEC jurisdiction. This issue has been floated numerous times and in slightly different ways in the past couple years so I did not pay it much attention as many bills get submitted and die. I was surprised to wake up this morning and see that it has already passed the Senate. According to Politico California Rep. Brad Sherman has already introduced a bill in the House with identical language. This is going to be interesting to watch the legislative sausage. What is notable is that it passed the Senate by unanimous consent. What makes this time so notable is there has been so little push back that have typically accompanied previous floating of this idea. I don’t know if this is simply because it happened relatively fast but given how it passed in the Senate, that will create enormous pressure in the House to pass it. The other issue is that there is no language about US investment capital going to China via indexes or other channels. This bill only deals with Chinese firms listed in the US. What is notable is that Chinese firms for most of the past decade have been allowed to eschew SEC jurisdiction and standard US accounting requirements for public firms. This matters because this bill does not impose any type of extra ordinary standard on Chinese firms, it only requires them to adhere to the standards that all other listing firms adhere to. Second, the White House has released a document entitled “United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China.”
The document is measured and realistic in its assessment of the challenge posed by Communist China. It includes such highlights as: “ Since the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations in 1979, United States policy toward the PRC was largely premised on a hope that deepening engagement would spur fundamental economic and political opening in the PRC and lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible global stakeholder, with a more open society. More than 40 years later, it has become evident that this approach underestimated the will of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to constrain the scope of economic and politicalreform in China.”
“The CCP has chosen instead to exploit the free and open rules-based order and attempt to reshape the international system in its favor. Beijing openly acknowledges that it seeks to transform the international order to align with CCP interests and ideology. The CCP’s expanding use of economic, political, and military power to compel acquiescence from nation states harms vital American interests and undermines the sovereignty and dignity of countries and individuals around the world.” “To respond to Beijing’s challenge, the Administration has adopted a competitive approach to the PRC, based on a clear-eyed assessment of the CCP’s intentions and actions, a reappraisal of the United States’ many strategic advantages and shortfalls, and a tolerance of greater bilateral friction. Our approach is not premised on determining a particular end state for China. Rather, our goal is to protect United States vital national interests, as articulated in the four pillars of the 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS). We aim to: (1) protect the American people, homeland, and way of life; (2) promote American prosperity; (3) preserve peace through strength; and (4) advance Americaninfluence.”
“Beijing’s poor record of following through on economic reform commitments and its extensive use of state-driven protectionist policies and practices harm United States companies and workers, distort global markets, violate international norms, and pollute the environment. When the PRC acceded to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, Beijing agreed to embrace the WTO’s open market-oriented approach and embed these principles in its trading system and institutions. WTO members expected China to continue on its path of economic reform and transform itself into a market-oriented economy and trade regime. These hopes were not realized. Beijing did not internalize the norms and practices of competition-based trade and investment, and instead exploited the benefits of WTO membership to become the world’s largest exporter, while systematically protecting its domestic markets. Beijing’s economic policies have led to massive industrial overcapacity that distorts glo bal prices and allows China to expand global market share at the expense of competitors operating without the unfair advantages that Beijing provides to its firms.” “The CCP promotes globally a value proposition that challenges the bedrock American belief in the unalienable right of every person to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Under the current generation of leadership, the CCP has accelerated its efforts to portray its governance system as functioning better than those of what it refers to as “developed, western countries.” Beijing is clear that it sees itself as engaged in an ideological competition with the West. In 2013, General Secretary Xi called on the CCP to prepare for a “long-term period of cooperation and conflict” between two competing systems and declared that “capitalism is bound to die out and socialism is bound to win.” “The CCP’s campaign to compel ideological conformity does not stop at China’s borders. In recent years, Beijing has intervened in sovereign nations’ internal affairs to engineer consent for its policies. PRC authorities have attempted to extend CCP influence over discourse and behavior around the world, with recent examples including companies and sports teams in the United States and the United Kingdom and politicians in Australia and Europe. PRC actors are exporting the tools of the CCP’s techno-authoritarian model to countries around the world, enabling authoritarian states to exert control over their citizens and surveil opposition, training foreign partners in propaganda and censorship techniques, and using bulk data collection to shape public sentiment.” “Beijing’s military buildup threatens United States and allied national security interests and poses complex challenges for global commerce and supply chains. Beijing’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy gives the PLA unfettered access into civil entities developing and acquiring advanced technologies, including state-owned and private firms, universities, and research programs. Through non-transparent MCF linkages, United States and other foreign companies are unwittingly feeding dual-use technologies into PRC military research and development programs, strengthening the CCP’s coercive ability to suppress domestic opposition and threaten foreign countries, including United States allies and partners.” “The NSS demands that the United States “rethink the policies of the past two decades – policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners. For the most part, this premise turned out to be false. Rival actors use propaganda and other means to try to discredit democracy. They advance anti-Western views and spread false information to create divisions among ourselves, our allies, and ourpartners.”
“The United States holds the PRC government to the same standards and principles that apply to all nations. We believe this is the treatment that the people of China want and deserve from their own government and from the international community. Given the strategic choices China’s leadership is making, the United States now acknowledges and accepts the relationship with the PRC as the CCP has always framed it internally: one of great power competition. United States policies are not premised on an attempt to change the PRC’s domestic governance model, nor do they make concessions to the CCP’s narratives of exceptionalism and victimhood. Rather, United States policies are designed to protect our interests and empower our institutions to withstand the CCP’s malign behavior and collateral damage from the PRC’s internal governance problems. Whether the PRC eventually converges with the principles of the free and open order can only be determined by the Chinese people themselves. We recognize that Beijing, not Washington, has agency over and responsibility for the PRC government’s actions.” “Beijing has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not offer compromises in response to American displays of goodwill, and that its actions are not constrained by its prior commitments to respect our interests. As such, the United States responds to the PRC’s actions rather than its stated commitments. Moreover, we do not cater to Beijing’s demands to create a proper “atmosphere” or “conditions” for dialogue. Likewise, the United States sees no value in engaging with Beijing for symbolism and pageantry; we instead demand tangible results and constructive outcomes.” “Chinese students represent the largest cohort of foreign students in the United States today. The United States values the contributions of Chinese students and researchers. As of 2019, the number of Chinese students and researchers in the United States has reached an all-time high, while the number of student visa denials to Chinese applicants has steadily declined. The United States strongly supports the principles of open academic discourse and welcomes international students and researchers conducting legitimate academic pursuits; we are improving processes to screen out the small minority of Chinese applicants who attempt to enter the United States under false pretenses or with malign intent.” “Having failed since 2003 to persuade Beijing to adhere to its economic commitments through regular, high-level dialogues, the United States is confronting China’s market-distorting forced technology transfer and intellectual property practices by imposing costs in the form of tariffs levied on Chinese goods coming into the United States. Those tariffs will remain in place until a fair Phase Two trade deal is agreed to by the United States and the PRC.” This is a great, well written document that lays out the reasons for the policies clearly. Would definitely encourage anyone to read it as this will form the corner stone of China dealings for years to come. Third, there was an interesting speech by Sen. Josh Hawley about the international system and his push for the US to withdraw from the WTO. Now I should say, I do not support withdrawing from the WTO for multiple reasons. For instance, the restraints it places on the US are really not burdensome or excessively costly. While Sen. Hawley notes that the US has lost 90% of cases where the US has been challenged, the US has also won similar amount of cases where it is the plaintiff. This is likely due to high probability that only egregious cases get challenged so defendants have higher probabilityof losing.
Looking at the bigger picture of what Sen. Hawley is saying there are some very interesting ideas. Without revisiting too deeply how the China shock impacted the United States, it is worth emphasizing that while yes on aggregate America did better by opening up to more trade with China, there is much to great a willingness to overlook the narrow and targeted shock felt by many industries and parts of the United States. I personally do not believe that trade policy is proper channel to address those specific economic challenges, but WTO and China defenders choosing to ignore those issues and segment that feel aggrieved for a variety of understandable and less rational reasons simply makes them sound removed from valid concerns. One of the points which is likely to remain most overlooked in his statement, is the point that the GATT was designed to build up a system of like minded countries agreeing on the rules but the entry of and inclusion of countries like Russia and China altered dynamics fundamentally. Now it was meant as a broader mission trying to change norms and practices rather than like minded countries already having general view of the world and governance. China has systematically worked to keep disputes out of the WTO threatening countries and seeking to later the fundamental understanding of the rules of engagement around trade, reciprocity, and national treatment. Though defenders of the WTO may argue with Hawley’s interpretation of events or WTO strengths or Chinese compliance, what is distinctly less arguable is how countries around the world have behaved with regards to trade agreements since the WTO and China’s entry. The WTO has not engaged in any significant reform this century either to its operations or trade rules. Yes, that it not necessarily a reflection upon the WTO as an organization. Countries around the world for the most part have moved trade agreements into bilateral or regional multilateral formats and chosen non-WTO formats for dispute resolution either in political or in other formats. Furthermore, newer trade agreements are covering issues around things like SOEs in bilateral and regional agreements that are not covered in the WTO and will not be allowed to be covered in the WTO. One can have reasoned disagreements with Sen. Hawley about some of his finer points but the reality is that countries have been behaving for some years to treat the WTO as an atrophying organization that does not provide the value they need effectively incapable of reforming itself to provide value. It is hard in a larger sense to disagree with the broader brushof his argument.
One of the major reasons I would advise against pulling out of the WTO is there is no agreed upon vision for what comes next and what it looks like. There are some positive and negatives but workable starts here. The biggest hurdle is there is no well formulated plan for what comes next and how to achieve it. The dispute resolution format described by the Senator are interesting but would need more work. Whatever the WTO short comings, it was pretty widely respected as a dispute settlement format because countries felt their complaints got recognized even if they did not always win. As an American I can say, most every case I know of where America lost, there was a very strong argument for America to lose based upon the agreement and behavior in question. Many countries would fear strictly bilateral format where they would face a super power like America alone. His proposal however does however speak to potentially addressing issues more frequently if they can be resolved through lower level arbitration or more speedily than multi year litigation where many times the market or situation has moved beyond the original dispute. What the Senator seems to be calling for more broadly while not explicitly laying it out in any detail, is broad economic alliance of like minded countries that stand in opposition to China and their like minded authoritarianism such as in Russia or Iran and the vassal state relationship Beijing seeks to establish with many Belt and Road countries. I fully support this broad vision but there are two basic hurdles: first, this is actually a much more expansive and differentiated view of American foreign policy than most people realize requiring a lot of new work to execute. Whether one leaves the existing institutions or just allows them to atrophy, this vision of bilateral or multilateral agreements in trade and other policy areas of like minded countries requires an enormous amount of work. Given that this seems to be the beginning of a long Cold War type of period between China and the US, this is a reasonable approach but requires a lot more work and coalition building both within the United States across party and groups and around the world. This could imply not simply rejoining TPP but beefing it up to give it a small secretariat or an economic development section. It could mean creating security cooperation mechanisms across the Indo Pacific countries that are concerned about Chinese encroachment. It could mean significantly expanding the newly established Development Finance Corporation to assist in economic development across countries that wish to be like minded about freedom and authoritarianism. Fundamentally, however, it implies a much broader institutional and agreement framework for the United States with other countries that does not currently exist. Finally, the US will need to persuade countries that it is not simply trying to use bilateral power but will constrain itself to rules of engagement and behavior and persuade others of its vision for groups or alliances of countries concerned about the latent authoritarianism of China. The initial reaction by many will to discuss Trump but the reality is the US government as an institution must demonstrate the commitment to the Indo Pacific and willing governments. Europe is unlikely to play any meaningful role in dealing with China and has a long demonstrated lack of interest in their own security unless the United States provides it. The focus of relationship, alliance, and institution building should be focused in the IndoPacific. The US must demonstrate this through approval of trade regional and bilateral trade agreements. Increased allocation of resources from military training to development assistance and investment and visas for students from places like India and Vietnam. Many will be persuaded by this vision if the United States invests political and financialcapital.
I believe there is increasing realization that there is significant scope to change a generation of relationships and rise to the challenge to confront an authoritarian China seeking to expand its authority and influence. Believe it or not, policy is moving in the right direction and great moves are being made to counter and address China. I have this sense there is a lot more to come.Posted in China |
Tagged China
HOW FAST IS CORONA SPREADING AND HOW MANY UNDETECTED CASES ARE THERE? Posted on March 29, 2020 by Christopher BaldingShare
I had hoped to avoid writing a blog post on corona but there is one key piece that is informing public policy and driving the popular debate that simply does not match the underlying data that unknown researchers and doctors are finding around the world. That key question comes down to how fast corona is spreading and then and arguably more importantly how widely has it already spread beyond the observed confirmed cases? Let us use a simple example and start introducing the starting point for what we are doing here. Let’s set the start date for corona as November 15, 2019 and say that the absolute first patient recorded in the Chinese medical system with a case of corona was the absolute first case. According to public Chinese records, the start date is accurate but this person would have been contagious before being discovered. It is also likely there were other unreported cases that helped it spread much wider and faster than our restrictive assumption but our goal here is to be very conservative in the number we report. So on November 15, 2019 corona started spreading in the population from a patient of 1. The question then becomes how fast and wide did it spread in Wuhan, China, and the rest of the world? Now the beauty of these numbers is that I do not have to prove the current estimates are wildly wrong, which they do appear to be, but that they are not perfectly accurate. Let me give you an example. If we assume that the first patient was in Wuhan on November 15 and began infecting people at what we will assume is a fixed rate, the daily rate of growth through Friday March 27, 2020 based upon confirmed cases would have been 10.51%. In other words, if corona cases grow everyday from November 15, 2019 through March 27, 2020 by 10.5%, the numbers would grow from 1 to the number of confirmed cases of 596,000. The confirmed observed cases would account for the entirety of corona transmission vectors. Does this match what the research shows us empirically? No. In this case there are two important assumptions being made. First, the assumed growth rate matches the real growth rate and all cases are observed confirmed cases. In reality both are false and we know both are false. What is important for our purposes here, is that they do not even need to diverge enormously for the end results to be significantly different. To again, take a simple example. Let’s assume, corona is really growing at 11% daily instead of 10.5% daily. How big of a difference does that make? Now the real number is of corona infections is not 596,000 but 1.1 million all because corona grew just a little faster than we expected. 12% becomes 3.5 million and 15% becomes 118 million with real infections outpacing observed infections by a factor of 200. So now we need to focus on two specific questions: how fast is corona actually growing or spreading within the population and how closely do the observed and confirmed cases match what we know about real case spread in the population? Let me reemphasize: I do not even need to show that these two numbers are wildly wrong only that they are even a little wrong. We can easily show with empirical data that both of the popular conceptions are not just a little wrong but very wrong. Let us start with how rapidly corona spreads. As we can show with simple match, assuming all corona cases are observed confirmed cases, corona grew at a daily rate of 10.5%. However, according to widely cited public sources, the daily growth rate in many countries is wellabove this.
Arguably the most repeated phrase in corona publicity is that it is growing at 30% daily. At the outset, we can discard this number as entirely unrealistic. How do we know? If that number were true of the virus from when it became known on November 15, it would have already infected 1.4 quadrillion people. However, this number must also be false even if we just focus on the United States. Again, how do we know? Assume the virus entered the US, roughly accurate assumption based upon existing evidence, on January 1, 2020 and grew at 30% daily, it would have already infected 6.3 billion Americans. In other words, it would have infected every American man, woman, and child 19 times. However, neither can it be the globally observed number of 10.5%. If it entered America on January 1, this would result in fewer than 6,000 corona cases. So the question becomes: how fast is coronaspreading?
Before we look at what research from lots of countries is producing, let us point out, many theoretical studies are using the official World Health Organization number. This number typically sits in various modeling papers of an R0 between 2.0-2.5. I will save the notes about how poorly the WHO has handled things for another time but note here that papers like the Ferguson paper rely on these numbers. The Ferguson paper utilize R0 ranging from 2.0-2.6. A lower R0 says that the disease is spreading slower than a high R0 and would be more consistent with observed confirmed cases equaling the total number of real cases. A higher R0 means corona is spreading faster and implies higher numbers of unobserved cases. Given the WHO use of these numbers, many researchers can be forgiven for relying on them. However, are the official WHO R0 accurate? In China, researchers generally put the R0 distinctly higher than WHO range of 2.0-2.5. One literature review of R0 estimates for China found “estimates ranged from 1.4 to 6.49, with a mean of 3.28, a median of 2.79.” One study from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health focusing on Wuhan discretely on the December 1 to January 1 time frame estimated an R0 of 4.1. Another paper focusing on China and using a mathematical model used by later researchers at Harvard, found an R0 of 3.3 and noting a daily growth of .3. There are a lot of studies that either directly or indirectly estimate this number but there are not many studies from China supporting the WHOclaim of R0.
What about other countries? In Iran, one team of researchers estimated the prelockdown R0 at 4.7 though dropping to under 2.0. Another team focusing on Iran from Georgia Southern University estimated the R0 at 3.6. Another team from Iran studying Iran estimated the preloackdown R0 at 4.9 the first week of infection dropping to 4.5 and 4.3 before entering lockdown where it dropped to 2.1. What is notable in this case is that even when implementing movement restrictions the R0 for corona still remained within WHO R0 range. In Italy, Chinese researchers estimated an R0 of 4.1 compared with their estimate of 3.15 for Wuhan. Other Chinese researchers comparing South Korea and Italy found R0’s of 2.6-3.2 and 2.6-3.3 respectively. An Italian mathematician using standard disease modeling softward found an R0 of 3.5. One researcher doing a cross country study estimated Italy at 3.8. What is notable however is in countries that appear to have been doing well. In South Korea, numerous pieces of research found examples of “super-spreader” clusters with R0 around 4 with the rest of the country on heightened alert having a very low R0 around 1 in this case. One researcher estimated that the total country R0 was at 3.8. In the case of Singapore and Tianjian, China some Canadian researchers found that even with significantly more restrictive measures R0 at 1.97 and 1.87 just barely below the WHO standard range but within themargin of error.
There are a few specific notable take aways from this brief literature review. First, this research was all done using very standard methods. Second, like any research area there will be a range but there is striking similarity in arriving at R0 numbers that are materially different from the WHO range. Third, even in some countries held up as examples, significant steps appeared to only push the R0 just below the WHO range and not even below 0. Fourth, events are unfolding too fast that we do not have research on other countries like Germany, Spain, and the United States. Fifth, these findings indicate that the disease spread much more than the WHO guidelines. This is important because as has been noted earlier, to demonstrate the broader point, I only need to demonstrate that corona grew a little faster than believed. The weight of evidence clearly demonstrates that corona grew much more than is believed. This has a major and material impact onpublic policy.
This leads to the second important question of what percentage of real corona cases are captured by observed and confirmed corona cases people watch on the internet? Importantly for our purposes, there are many factors that would lead us to miss corona cases. In sum, these add up to a large percentage of missed cases. Let us detail some ofthe problems.
First, the speed is wrong which tells us how many to look for. The WHO estimates have guided numerous theoretical models which are relying on faulty assumptions. Think of it another way. Think if you are flying a plane and you only have directions to fly in a specific direction at 500mph. Unbeknownst to you however, you have actually been flying at 1,000mph. So when you look at your watch and the directions say you should start to see the airport, you cannot find it. We can say with a pretty high degree of certainty that based upon empirical country by country analysis, the spread is much broader than WHO guidelinesadvise.
Second, testing in most parts of the world, especially China and Asia, is significantly flawed with high numbers of false negative tests. Research from China finds false negative tests on 30-60% of positive patients with some studies going higher. Let us use a low estimate and say 25% of cases who got tested for corona tested negative were actually positive and they in turn infected one other person at some point. Both are low estimates but for our simple example will work. In an additional attempt to be conservative, I will do this only for China. This gives us an additional 27,00 additional cases just from false negatives and if we assume they each infected one person, this gives us a total 54,000 new unknown cases. How big an impact would that be? That increases global cases by 9.1%. Third, we know that numerous key countries record cases differently leading to large undercount. Leaving aside political interference, we know that China for instance states they do not count asymptomatic or only mild cases even refusing to test. Mild an asymptomatic carriers are still transmitters of the disease even if they do not require significant care, hospitalization, or ICU access. According to places that have taken broad quasi random or population tests, asymptomatic and mild cases of corona are the large majority of all cases. For our purposes, we will again undercount this population and assume them to be 50%. So if China records 82,000 moderate to severe symptomatic cases, this will imply an asymptomatic or mild population of 82,000. We make the same follow up assumption, each of these people then infected one additional person. This gives us an additional population of 164,000 cases not counted in official data. We now have 218,000 new cases just from how data is counted. This would be equal to 37% of total global cases. However, there are other channels through which corona cases have been missed. Fourth, another class of people that are missed in the total count is the number of infected that never get tested or consider getting tested for various reasons. This could range for having mild symptoms so that one has no reason to get tested or that no symptoms present in the patient. This is actually quite common. Just as a simple baseline, of the roughly 40 million estimated flu cases in the United States every year only about 40-45% of those result in medical visits. Another way to think of these people is people who did not even know they were infected. While we would be justified in setting this number as equal to confirmed cases, we want to be conservative, so I will set this as equal to one third of confirmed cases across some major countries. Let’s take a low round number of 200,000 untested cases based upon 600,000 global cases. This now raises our missing count to 418,000 out of 600,000 total global cases though that number risesdaily.
It cannot be emphasized enough, the numbers I have added to confirmed observed cases are very conservative based upon highly restrictive assumptions. What I have done here however, is used theory and anecdote to build a very simple and conservative model of how many are missing. The question is do we actually see evidence based upon documentation and research of the missing cases I am arguing are out there? In short, absolutely AND in much higher numbers than I am conservatively estimating. We know of a few places, and I am absolutely not excluding others only that these are the ones I know about, where we have either quasi random or broad population testing. These tests are not perfectly random but they give us clues about how broadly spread throughout the population corona is beyond the observations being taken at hospitals and medical centers or by self selected individuals. Iceland has taken a broad population sample that now comprises nearly 5% of the entire population. There is not much detail about the specific testing criteria but the reports are that it was designed to test for corona in the population and not merely sick at the hospital or a medical clinic. According to Icelandic data available from the government, they recently listed 963 confirmed cases for a positive rate of 6.6%. Sounds bad right? Actually, because of the testing criteria, most people did not even know they had corona because they did not feel any worse. Out of the 963 cases only 19 needed hospitalization and only 6 needed ICU care. In other words, while there have been some tragic outcomes, corona is already much more wide spread and it has no or only mild impact on most people who testedpositive.
In Holland, a similar thing happened. Hospitals in the Netherlands started seeing reports of corona and had a couple staff members fall ill from corona. To make sure their staff was protected, the conducted a broad population testing on medical staff to see how prevalent corona was among front line personnel. According to their data, after testing 1,353 they found 86 positive tests for corona a rate of (tell me if this sounds familiar) 6.4%. Only half had a fever and most positive cases continued working because they felt either no different or symptoms were so mild. Notably under existing criteria 40% of positive cases would not have been even tested because they did not have a known risk factor. Westchester county in New York implemented an aggressive testing plan. Their tests were largely by self selected individuals and needed to pass a criteria screening protocol so it is different from Iceland and Holland in key ways. However, they have tested 29,000 people. What have they found? They registered 7,187 positive result for a 25% positive rate. This large jump in positive rate is expected from self selected individuals that pass a screening protocol. So what is the severity? 73 hospitalized and 12 deaths in county. In other words, from positive cases in Westchester county, hospitalization rate of positive cases is running at 1% and deaths are running at 0.26%. There is another case of broad population testing. The first resident of Vo, Italy died from corona in late February. Local officials being aware of corona virus spreading in China with the help of a local university opted to quarantine and test the entire city of roughly 4,000. Now it is worth noting that Vo is a small remote town in north eastern Italy. It is not one of the major cities which would have lots of international traffic. 89 people out of 3,300 or roughly 3% of the population tested positive after they discovered one death. There is no additional data but they do not report additional tests and actually advised people against going to the hospital unless they had severe problems. Testing two weeks later revealed positive tests dropped to roughly 0.5%. What we have seen in each of these four cases is very broad infection levels well beyond either the expected infection levels and very low levels of severity relative to the total number of cases. In other words, if we factor in the unobserved cases that are being found this dramatically changes our view of the broad severity of corona. What has been taking place before is observations being recorded at hospitals of sick people needing medical care. This gives us a biased view of disease severity. This is like going to a car crash and then making a decision about all vehicular traffic. What is potentially most notable is that the number of real cases of infection relative to observed cases of infection is not off by a percentage but many many magnitudes. In other words, the unobserved real transmitters do not comprise even 50% of total cases but like many magnitudes of observedcases.
However, are these four cases with seemingly reliable data from different places an outlier or are they consistent with research from other places? In fact, they are very consistent with research from other countries about corona spread. One paper by American researchers conducting a cross country study with anchor countries estimated that Chinese confirmed cases were under estimated by a factor of nearly 10. If remotely accurate that would more than double existing cases globally. Mathematicians at the university involved in testing Vo wrote a paper estimating that globally undetected cases are four times larger than detected cases. What makes these asymptomatic carriers so difficult is that they may not even know they were exposed and are disease carriers. Other Italian researchers reached similar conclusions writing “our model predicts that when the first 3 infected cases had been identified by Italian authorities there were already nearly 30 cases in Italy…only 0.5% cases had been detected and confirmed by Italian authorities. While official statistics had 132 confirmed case we believe a more accurate estimate would be closer to 26000.” This is important because it reaches general conclusions in line with the Vo population sampling. UK researchers using different methods reach similar conclusions finding that “by the time a single death occurs, hundreds to thousands of cases are likely to be present in that population.” Even statisticians from the Italian National Institute of Statistics have completed research finding that corona is likely at least ten times more wide spread than official cases. A key aspect here is how the disease spread from China in the early stages when they were censoring information. One cross country study from China, the UK, and the US using a combination of unique datasets estimates that undetected cases in China account for 86% of all corona cases. Another study found that though Wuhan was the epicenter, for every one case exported internationally from Wuhan other major Chinese cities exported 2.9 cases that “likely remained undetected”. Japanese researchers focusing on Wuhan re-estimating real infection rates rather than official Chinese rates with asymptomatic transmission estimate that real infection was much lower with actual time delayed fatality rate of 0.12%. One of the key areas is how much this under detection of asymptomatic travelers led to disease spread. A research paper between researchers at Peking University and Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles estimated there were roughly 10,000 asymptomatic carriers who flew from Wuhan and China to the United States as of March 1, 2020. Researchers at Harvard found most countries had low level capability to detect asymptomatic travelers setting their detection rate to 38% of Singapore noting that “estimates of case counts in Wuhan based on assumptions of perfect detection in travelers may be under estimate by several fold, and severity correspondingly over estimated by several fold.” Another similar study found that even under the best of circumstances more 50% of carriers would not be detected because they would not have symptoms and many would not even know they had been exposed. It is worth noting that research generally find that disease detection for corona is very hard given the prevalence of asymptomaticcarriers.
In short, not only are the real number of cases under estimated based upon observed confirmation data, they are likely enormously under estimated. As one can see from the research by in country researchers from Iran to Italy and Japan, there is a range of magnitude but there is significant agreement that the real number is off by at leastnumerous multiples.
This post has already gone on too long but I wanted to document the logic and the research that supports what I think is happening. The two primary key ideas so far are that corona has spread significantly faster than the WHO estimates and that there are large amounts of undetected cases of corona. So what is the importance of all of this and what does this mean for policy makers? First, track and trace is a pointless. If your confirmed cases account for only 50% of your threat vectors you would have a hard time constraining the spread. If your confirmed cases account for 10% of your threat vectors track and trace is little more than a waste of time. Undetected transmission cases are simply too numerous and wide spread to make track and trace effective. Second, case severity out of the infected population is actually much much lower and by one account on par with flu outcomes. Current numbers widely used in the press grossly distort the reality by measuring data at known severe outcome locations. This is like measuring driving safety at a hospital. The overwhelming number of observations will be severe cases. When looking at the population wide data, case severity appears radically different. This is not to say corona is only the flu as we do not have the depth of data to say that, only that it is decidedly less severe against infected population which when adjusted are decidedly less severe than theyfirst appear.
Third, the two primary points here actually dovetail nicely. For the R0 to be higher than the WHO guidelines, we needed to have significantly higher population estimates. We have significantly higher infected population meaning the R0 is significantly higher. The results are complementary. Fourth, the most widely cited Ferguson paper therefore relies on factually incorrect assumptions by assuming a much lower R0 that is only reached according to one paper under lockdown and by assuming there are very few undetected cases. We can say with a high degree of certainty both assumptions are wrong and enormously impact the scientific validity of the paper. Fifth, governments would be well advised to focus mitigation efforts on less intrusive and disruptive behavior rather than near total economic shut downs. Other countries have focused on factors like increased mask wearing to help slow transmission. Put another way, more targeted precision policies rather than the broad blunt disruptive measures we have seen. Sixth, a key factor in outbreaks has been super spreader nodes. From South Korea to Italy, there are clear examples of super spreader nodes. In many cases those nodes can be responsible for the overwhelming number of cases. Rather than disrupting an entire country, it is important to focus efforts on mitigating and detectingthose nodes.
Seventh, there are clear examples of medical resources being taxed at super spreader locations. Public policy interventions would best be focused on helping allocate medical resources to specific locations rather than using broader blunter instruments. Whether that is through dispersing patients throughout large metro areas or short term larger facilities. Importantly, it would help to focus on targeted resource allocation to impacted areas rather than broad more coerciveinterventions.
Let me emphasize a few brief final points. First, nothing here is intended to down play or pretend corona is not a significant health risk. Do not behave irresponsibly. However, the panic and debate clearly suffers from profound misunderstandings. Second, I do not mean to sound insensitive when writing here. Clearly people are dying and there are difficult problems. My intent is simply to try and grasp what is best research and data telling us about the risks and bestapproaches.
The final pieces of research I will leave you with are this: a meta study of corona R0 found a pooled R0 number of 3.32 with a mean of 3.38; probability of being diagnosed correctly with severe symptoms at 0.6, diagnosis probability with mild or asymptomatic at 0.001, and the probability of developing severe symptoms at 0.01; higher transmission from interval between incubation and symptom onset allowing carriers to infect larger number of people. Hope I’ve given you something to think about. ADDENDUM: I WROTE THIS ON WORD AND FOR SOME REASON THE LINKS DID NOT TRANSFER. I HAVE UPLOADED THE DOCUMENT WITH LINKS HERE IN A PDF TO THE RESEARCH FOR ANYONE THAT WANTS TO REVIEW WHAT I HAVE CITED.Posted in corona
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