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      in World Politics

      A Deeper Look into Hong Kong’s Evolution

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      In the wake of dramatic protests that Western media have covered extensively over the past two years, Keith Zhai and Chun Han Wong, writing for The Wall Street Journal, report that changes are about to take place in Hong Kong. Whether the planned changes will appease last year’s protesters remains to be seen. The practices they denounced concerned the system of government, the structure of authority. They worried that civil liberties were being threatened by Beijing’s interference in the governance of the former British colony.

      Coverage by Western media of the street battles that took place generally condemned what was perceived to be a betrayal by Beijing of “pledges to allow Hong Kong’s governance to remain semiautonomous until at least 2047.” Western politicians and pundits seized on China’s aggressive crackdown on the protesters as a pretext for denouncing the People’s Republic for its anti-democratic, authoritarian methods.

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      With the help of the coronavirus pandemic that helped to clear the streets, the government finally managed to quell the protests. Profiting from the calm, the Chinese are now planning a number of reforms. The WSJ quotes Bernard Chan, a member of Hong Kong‘s cabinet, on the nature of the intended effort: “What Beijing ultimately wants to address in Hong Kong is ‘not the politics, but the deep-seated issues’ including the lack of affordable housing and the city’s deeply polarizing income gaps.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Deep-seated issues:

      The kind of issues that developed nations with a modern, free market economy refuse to address directly due to their belief that private enterprise will step up as soon as they discover how solving such problems can become profitable

      Contextual Note

      Chan distinguishes between “politics” that fascinate the elite (as well as the media) and “deep-seated issues” that affect all citizens. The WSJ provides some indication of the nature of the struggle to come, particularly concerning housing: “Land-policy reforms can help improve access to cheaper homes, although officials must overcome the entrenched influence of local property tycoons whom Beijing regards as too passive in their support of government goals.”

      With its focus on how the economy works, The WSJ is well placed to understand the impact of “entrenched influence” exercised by “property tycoons.” For the past four years, the US itself was governed by a property tycoon specialized in wielding influence. The example of Donald Trump, the former president, may serve to demonstrate that the only effective way to “overcome” tycoons’ influence is to eject them from their position of power. But when the tycoons are legion and anonymous, as they are in Hong Kong, the struggle will be bound to last a certain time. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      The debate this has provoked in Hong Kong is fraught with the hypocrisy everyone would expect when the stakes are so high. The Chinese government appears to be focusing on soft power as it promises relief for a struggling population to distract from the issue of democratic representation. The policy may reflect the Marshall Plan approach that worked so well to consolidate America’s soft power in Europe following World War II.

      The Beijing government’s narrative attributes the discontent of the protests to the very concrete social issues, deviating attention from the political issues the protesters themselves highlighted. Chan bluntly explains: “They want us to fix it.” He may be right. Just as the Americans fixed Europe with the Marshall Plan and nobody complained about their encroaching power.

      Not everyone is convinced. Opposition politicians have expressed skepticism “that Beijing can overcome the decades of policy inertia and infighting that beset Hong Kong‘s political and business elite.” So long as those by virtue of their assets and cash wield actual power, the inertia is likely to continue.

      Emily Lau, a former chairwoman of Hong Kong‘s Democratic Party, complains that former leaders appointed by Beijing in the face of the social challenge “never bothered to solve it.” She believes the new ones appointed after the showdown with protesters are unlikely to do any better. This could be interpreted as an excuse for maintaining the status quo. But there are reasons to believe the new policy will force change. One member of a think tank dedicated to Hong Kong policy claims that if those in charge “can’t serve the people well, they must step down.”

      Historical Note

      Keith Zhai and Chun Han Wong remind readers of what Western media prefer to ignore: that Hong Kong is not just a glamorous, glitzy coastal resort, but has a history. Without returning to the dramatic historical events that made it a British colony, they cite examples of how things worked during the colonial period that only ended in 1997. Hong Kong has maintained a “low-tax regime, largely unchanged since British rule,” with no “duties on sales, consumption, capital gains, dividends or inheritance,” the journalists write. The British designed this to draw Western finance, multinational companies and tourists to the enclave, turning it into a free-wheeling platform for global capitalism with a commanding seaside view over all of eastern Asia.

      The writers also cite Hong Kong’s “land policies, another legacy of British rule, which have long been criticized for artificially inflating real-estate prices that boost government coffers and developers’ profits.” This system “effectively imposes shadow taxes on residents through sky-high housing prices and rent.” As in practically every modern democracy run less by representatives of the voters than by the forces of the free market, assets are privileged long before governments can even begin to consider the people’s needs. The journalists give the details of some of the proposed reforms but conclude by evoking a potential battle to come: “Such changes could see officials take on the city’s influential property tycoons, who have wielded outsize influence over land policy.”

      An article in The South China Morning Post suggests the real motives behind China’s new policy. The author cites “a historical moment rooted in the Chinese collective consciousness, and central to the very concept of national identity, that set the trend of that relationship [between Beijing and Hong Kong].” The historical narrative “cuts across various layers of society and is shared by both opponents and supporters of the Communist government.” The Chinese remember it as the “century of humiliation.”

      The Opium Wars stand as one of the most shameful episodes in the annals of British imperialism, an act of aggression that saw London apply the proverb, “to kill two birds with one stone.” The two birds were China and India, which together now represent approximately a third of the world’s population. Under British direction, India produced the opium that the Brits themselves, playing the role of the neighborhood drug dealer, incited the Chinese to get hooked on, which, according to mercantilist logic, produced the means to pay for the Chinese exports of silk, porcelain and tea that the British themselves were increasingly addicted to.

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      A major prize in the settlement of the First Opium War was the cession of Hong Kong to the British in 1841. That marked the beginning of the century of humiliation. For the British, the acquisition of a delicious Asian bauble was the reward for their military planning and valor. Contemplating the spoils of war, Queen Victoria famously boasted that her husband, Prince Consort Albert, “is so amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong.”

      The South China Morning Post article explains the sense of injustice felt by the Chinese after their treatment by the British. Many of them, and not just the government, see the question of Hong Kong as a question of national pride and part of their anti-colonial mission. “Deep down, Chinese nationalist sentiment is based on the hope of correcting and overcoming the legacy of imperialist invasion of Chinese lands,” The Morning Post reports.

      When the Chinese speak of “deep-seated” issues, their notion of depth includes the reality of the lives of working people in Hong Kong, many of whom can no longer afford rent even for a few square meters of living space. The issue no longer concerns preferences or superficial claims. It is even less about being “amused” at possessing a piece of coastal territory with a strategically situated harbor. These are indeed deep matters. The Western powers and their media, as they attempt to deal with the rise of China, would be well advised to break free from their addiction to shallow reasoning as they seek to defend their waning hegemony.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on defence and foreign policy: an old-fashioned look at the future | Editorial

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      The integrated review offers a nostalgic – at times, even anachronistic – response to the challenges of the 21st century. Its intent is laudable: acknowledging that attempting to defend the status quo is not enough, and seeking to carve out a path ahead. It recognises the multiple threats that the UK faces – from future pandemics to cyber-attacks – and the need for serious investment in science and technology. But overall, “global Britain” offers a hazy vision of a country that is looking east of Suez once more, wedded to the symbolic power of aircraft carriers, and contemplating a nuclear response to cyberthreats.The policy paper is in essence a response to three big shifts: the rise of China, the related but broader decline of the existing global order, and Brexit. Two of these confront democracies around the world. But the last is a self-inflicted wound, which the government appears determined to deepen. And the need to deal with the first two is not in itself a solution to the third, as this policy paper sometimes seems to imagine.The plan essentially recognises the move that is already taking place towards a warier, more critical approach to China, away from the woefully misjudged “golden era” spearheaded by George Osborne, and the fact that parameters will be set for us by the tougher approach of the US, in particular. It accepts that we must engage on issues such as climate change, and that we are not in a new cold war – we live in a globalised economy – albeit that there is likely to be more decoupling than many anticipated.But it does not try to explain how the UK can square the circle of courting investment while shielding itself from undue Chinese influence and expanding regional alliances. Australia is currently finding out what happens when Beijing is angered by a strategic shift.The tilt to the Indo-Pacific may – like Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” – fail to live up to its advertising. But it is true that Britain has paid insufficient attention to Asia, and is wise to pursue stronger ties with Five Eyes nations and other democracies in the region. These relationships will sometimes be problematic; India is the world’s largest democracy, but under Narendra Modi is looking ever less democratic. The pursuit of new partnerships could have been “in addition to” rather than “instead of”. Yet Britain is snubbing old, reliable, largely like-minded friends with clear common interests. The review is written almost as if the EU did not exist, preferring to mention individual member states. That seems especially childish when it also identifies Russia as an “active threat”. Nor is it likely – even if the UK joins the Trans-Pacific free-trade pact – that countries thousands of miles away can fully compensate for the collapse in trade with the EU that saw Britain record a £5.6bn slump in exports to the bloc in January. Geography matters.Behind the rhetoric of the review is a country that has failed to match its words and ambitions to its actions. Britain boasts of its soft power and talks of upholding the rule of law internationally – yet has declared itself happy to break international law when it considers it convenient. Though the paper promises to restore the commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid “when the fiscal situation allows”, slashing the budget is not only undermining the UK’s standing, but global security and stability too.Most strikingly, after 30 years of gradual disarmament since the end of the Soviet Union, and despite its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty, Britain is raising the cap on its nuclear warheads – a decision met with dismay by the UN Elders and others, and bafflement by analysts. Mr Johnson has not deigned to explain why.The review has rightly asked difficult questions. While Joe Biden has brought the US back to multilateralism, his predecessor has shown that the longer-term parameters of US policy may not be as predictable as Britain once believed. Old certainties have gone. But the new challenges cannot be met by turning back to nukes and aircraft carriers. The government should have looked closer to home and been bolder in addressing the future. More

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      in US Politics

      Chaos Under Heaven: Trump as raging bull in a China policy shop

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      Covid-19 has left more than 530,000 Americans dead and China’s standing with the US at a historic low. Only Iran and North Korea fare worse. US opinion is no outlier. China’s reputation has taken a beating in Australia, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. Images of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square in summer 1989 have been supplanted by Beijing stonewalling on the origins of the plague.In Chaos Under Heaven, the Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin reminds us that under Xi Jinping, China halted the export of personal protective equipment made by US companies, sent defective PPE to the Netherlands and barred Australian beef exports after Canberra called for an inquiry into the genesis of Covid-19. In Rogin’s telling, China’s “mask diplomacy” was a blunt instrument, designed to still criticism abroad and sow fear at home.Rogin delivers a needed modicum of clarity. Under the subtitle Trump, Xi and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century, he lays out what the US and its allies got wrong about China over decades, strife within the Trump administration and personal financial conflicts that affected US policy. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump feature heavily. But Hunter and James Biden bear watching too.McConnell’s wealth is tethered to his wife’s family interest in Chinese shipping. Angela Chao, his sister-in-law, is chief executive of the business and sits on the board of the Bank of China. Most recently, the US transportation department inspector general reported that Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife and Trump’s transportation secretary, escaped criminal investigation after the justice department weighed in.If the Chinese were to invade Taiwan, Trump said, ‘there isn’t a fucking thing we can do’. So much for US policyIn fall 2019, McConnell and Trump thwarted progress on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy bill, which had cleared the Senate foreign relations committee, then controlled by Republicans. Back in 1992, McConnell backed legislation enacted in connection with the autonomy of Hong Kong. As late as summer 2019, he wrote an op-ed in support. Time – and perhaps marriage – can change perspective.Rogin has longtime interests in human rights and the far east. He spent the early days of his career at the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily, and more recently rubbed shoulders with an informal group of opponents to the Chinese regime, which he calls the “Bingo Club”. One member was Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst and nephew of James Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary. During the 2016 Republican convention, Rogin broke the story of the Trump campaign “gutting” the GOP’s anti-Russia platform on Ukraine.Chaos Under Heaven moves quickly, is well-written and draws the reader in. Rogin makes clear that tension between Beijing and Washington will probably remain for the foreseeable future. China’s economy and military continue to grow, America’s social chasms remain on display. Under Xi, don’t expect the Middle Kingdom to back down.One of Rogin’s central points is that Trump correctly identified the threat and challenge posed by China yet proved incapable of formulating a coherent strategy and sticking with it. Much of the time, he conflated personal relationships with the national interest. As his approach to North Korea showed, not everyone was buying what he was selling. His effort to draw China into that quagmire was a bust. The art of the deal is way harder than Trump trumpeted.On the ground, the food fights of 2016 carried over to the White House. The West Wing was riven with factions. Wall Street transplants, military veterans and diehard Maga-ites exchanged verbal blows. The former reality show host zigged and zagged, blowing hot and cold as TV and his moods took him.During the 2016 transition, Trump accepted a congratulatory phone call from Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan. Not surprisingly, China was angered – it regards the island as its own. Ambiguity toward Taiwan was central to US rapprochement with China in the 1970s. Trump walked his words back, invited Xi to Mar-a-Lago and treated him to the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen”.As for Trump’s take on Taiwan, he told a senator it was “like two feet from China” and the US was “8,000 miles away”. Trump chillingly added that if the Chinese were to invade, “there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it”. So much for US policy.Trump’s inability to forge working alliances hampered US responses. Confronting China required playing well with others. Trump proved unable to set aside personal pique and drive a consensus forward. At times he caved on the technological threat China posed, for the sake of scoring an elusive trade deal.On the plus side of the ledger, the conduct of Beijing during the pandemic made governments realize “their dependence on China was a political vulnerability”. The UK reversed course and banned Huawei, the Chinese communications Goliath, from its networks.No book about Trump is complete without at least one salacious morsel. Chaos Under Heaven conveys that Trump came to believe an unfounded rumor that Gen HR McMaster, his second national security adviser, was conducting an extramarital affair. As expected, Trump could not keep the news to himself.At a crowded Oval Office staff meeting, the former president queried: “Have you heard who McMaster is fucking?” Ever the puritan, Trump warned: “He’s gonna get us all in trouble if he can’t keep his dick in his pants.” The Manhattan district attorney is still investigating all things Trump, including payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.Rogin observes that Trump was “great at flipping over the chess board but he couldn’t set the board back up again”. That said, he had “shifted the conversation about China in a way that cannot be undone”. More

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      in World Politics

      Press Freedom in the Philippines: Death by a Thousand Cuts

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      In less than two years, the editor-in-chief and CEO of the independent news site Rappler, Maria Ressa, has been issued 10 arrest warrants. The latest accusations against her involve tax evasion and failure to file accurate tax returns, which she testified against on March 4, 2021, before the Court of Tax Appeals. In addition, Ressa faces numerous other charges, including illegal foreign ownership of Rappler Holdings Corporation — the Philippine Constitution restricts foreign ownership of mass media in the country, subject to congressional regulation. The charges amount to 100 years of prison time if she is found guilty. This latest flurry of persecution is a continuum of the country’s troubling history of suppressing press freedom.

      The most high-profile case against Ressa, who is Filipino-American, concluded last year when she was found guilty of cyber libel. After an eight-month trial, Ressa, alongside Rappler journalist Reynaldo Santos Jr., was handed the verdict by the Manila Regional Trial Court on June 15. Ressa denied the charges, and both were released on bail pending appeal. However, they face up to six years in prison unless all appeals are rejected. The case against Ressa and Santos involves the latter’s article published in 2012 by Rappler, which made allegations of businessman Wilfredo Keng’s ties to then-Philippine Chief Justice Renato Corona. Santos’ article also alleged Keng’s involvement in illicit activities that include drug and human trafficking.

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      Based on information published locally by the Philippine Star in 2002 and an intelligence report by the National Security Council, Santos’s piece was published approximately four months before the Cybercrime Prevention Law came into effect in 2012. Its republication in 2014 due to a correction of a typo allowed for the court to give its guilty verdict to Ressa and Santos Jr. retroactively. The case has garnered attention and criticism from local and international media communities. Ressa herself claims the verdict and the numerous charges against her and Rappler are politically motivated. In her statement to the BBC, Ressa lamented, “I think what you’re seeing is death by a thousand cuts — not just of press freedom but of democracy.”

      A Dangerous Place

      Since his election in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has drawn criticism both nationally and abroad. According to The Guardian, tens of thousands of deaths in the Philippines are estimated to be the result of extrajudicial killings prompted by the president’s anti-drug crackdown. Rappler has been at the forefront of extensive coverage and criticism of the campaign. The correlation between Rappler’s reporting and the number of charges against Ressa has fueled the narrative of intimidation tactics by the Philippine government against the free press.   

      The Philippines has a long history of suppressing various forms of free speech and political activism. The current wave of persecution carries echoes of the martial law years during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s 1980s, when journalists and activists were arrested and interrogated by the military and a media lockdown was implemented as newspapers and radio stations were ordered shut.

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      In more recent years, hundreds of farmers, trade union leaders, activists and environmentalists have been targeted by the Philippine government. According to a report by the UN Human Rights Office, at least 248 activists have been killed in the Philippines between 2015 and 2019. While Maria Ressa’s high-profile case has regenerated national and global outrage, it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how treacherous an environment not only the media, but human and democratic rights defenders have to navigate in the country.

      The Philippines ranks 136 out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) World Press Freedom Index. After the 2009 massacre of 32 journalists in Maguindanao province ordered by a local warlord, RSF has regularly deemed the country as one of the most dangerous places in Asia for journalists. Adding insight to Maria Ressa’s criminal libel case, the organization noted that “Private militias, often hired by local politicians, silence journalists with complete impunity.” Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the country’s constitution, yet in 2018, the Philippine Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility tallied 85 attacks on the media by the Duterte administration, including death threats, killings and attempted murder.

      President Duterte’s public remarks against the media also contribute to the grim state of press freedom in the country. In 2016, the president stated: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong.” In 2018, responding to a Rappler reporter, Duterte was captured saying, “you have been throwing trash… If you are trying to throw garbage at us, then the least that we can do is explain how about you? Are you also clean?”

      The Cybercrime Prevention Law, which was used to convict Ressa, has itself been criticized by the public as having the potential to further threaten freedom of speech and expression. Signed into law by then-President Benigno Aquino III on September 12, 2012, the legislation was primarily established to address crimes such as hacking, identity theft, child pornography and cybersex. Its additional provisions caused worry amongst the public for expanding its legal parameters to include any libelous speech or statements made by citizens on their private social media accounts. Senator Tito Sotto, who at the time was being attacked on social media for alleged plagiarism, is noted for suggesting the inclusion of the libel provision in the law. According to GMA News Online, “There were fears that even retweeting an offensive comment could land one in jail.”

      Since the implementation, the law has been cited to charge journalists other than Ressa for cyber libel, including Ramon Tulfo and RJ Nieto. Prior to Ressa’s verdict, Councilor Archie Yongco, from the province of Zamboanga del Sur, was found guilty of cyber libel in March 2020 based on a scathing Facebook post against a rival politician. Although he deleted his post just minutes after its publication, screenshots of his comments were used as evidence in the case. Yongco faces up to eight years of imprisonment and is the first individual to be given a guilty verdict under the Cybercrime Prevention Law. 

      A Series of Threats

      The guilty verdict against Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr. was compounded by a series of legislative threats against the media in 2020. On July 10, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises voted against renewing the franchise license for the broadcasting network ABS-CBN. Ressa, commenting on the closure of the broadcaster, stated: “what happened to ABS-CBN can happen to all of us. Journalists, we have to hold power to account.… We need to continue to demand accountability.” 

      Shortly after the closure of ABS-CBN, there were public concerns over the introduction of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 that came into effect on July 18. The act allows the state to arrest and imprison suspects without a warrant. The alarm among citizens came from the act’s expanded definition of terrorism that broadly includes “engaging in acts intended to endanger a person’s life” and causing damage to public property. Similar to the provisions of the Cybercrime Prevention Law, the new legislation poses threats to users on social media who express political sentiments or dissent. In this case, however, fears are not related to being accused of libel but of so-called red-tagging — the practice of targeting or blacklisting suspected members of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army, both of which have been declared as terrorist organizations by the government.

      The legislation, compounded by the Duterte administration’s worrisome human rights record, incited widespread fears of the decline of freedom of speech and expression. Social media users who criticize the government also voiced concern over the act, especially since the head of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Lieutenant General Gilbert Gapay, expressed interest in including social media in the ambit of the law. Local and international press freedom advocates have filed petitions with the Supreme Court in Manila to reject the legislation, calling it unconstitutional.

      After nearly a year of grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn caused by lockdown measures, the Philippines continues to navigate numerous challenges. Maria Ressa’s and Rappler’s legal battles, as well as the continuous frictions between the Duterte administration and the media, exacerbate fears over the erosion of democratic rights and press freedom during these uncertain times. 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can Chinawood Win Soft Power for Beijing?

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      With movie theaters closed all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood studios had little reason for celebration over the past year. In business for over a century, Universal Pictures (founded in 1912), Paramount (1912), Warner Bros. (1923), Walt Disney (1923) and Columbia Pictures (1924) now have an extra reason to be concerned. In 2020, China took over Hollywood’s crown as the world’s biggest movie market, with a revenue of $3.2 billion, 84% of which came from domestic sales.

      Foreign-Language Entertainment Is Having Its Soft-Power Moment

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      Is this new status enough for China? Probably not. New blockbusters will soon rebalance these numbers, but soft power — the ability to seduce people from all over the world through culture — takes time to build up. Soft power also brings lasting income to its country of origin in terms of products and services, like tourism for example. When in 1934, Walt Disney began work on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” other film studio chiefs derided the project as “Disney’s Folly,” since adults, not children, were considered to be primary consumers. These executives forgot that children watch films over and over again and want all the related merchandise. “Snow White” went on to become the first film in history to gross $100 million, selling 400 million tickets from 1937 to 1948.

      Welcome to Chinawood

      These are just numbers. Disney’s greatest achievement was making his creations into lucrative vehicles of US culture for decades to come. That is what China wants to achieve. It has been taking similar steps ever since farmer-turned-entrepreneur Xu Wenrong began building Hengdian World Studios in the 1990s. Known as Chinawood, it became the largest outdoor film studio in the world and one of China’s biggest domestic tourist attractions, offering historic film sets, a resort hotel and live performances. Marketing itself “China’s tourism and performing arts capital,” Chinawood attracts thousands of TV shows and film productions every year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Also, since fewer than 40 foreign films are allowed to take a bite of this massive market due to a strict quota system, Chinawood also houses foreign productions like “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” a Hollywood-Chinawood co-production (these escape quota restrictions), starring the likes of Brendan Fraser and Jet Li, grossed over $400 million worldwide in the first 21 weeks of its release.

      Is this enough to make Chinawood a new soft power? The answer is, probably not. Because Chinawood productions face a similar challenge as all the other blockbusters shot in the country, these films often lack creativity, self-criticism, audacity and freedom. Take the recent historical war drama, Guan Hu’s “The Eight Hundred,” for example. The film — at $470 million, 2020’s top-grossing production — pushed China to the number one spot in global box office revenues. However, most of this profit comes from China itself and not international markets. While European and US theaters still struggle to open because of COVID-19, even without the pandemic, it’s hard to say that such productions could help the Chinese film industry overseas.

      “The Eight Hundred” was abruptly pulled from a scheduled premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2019 without an explanation. A version shorter by 11 minutes later opened in theaters, with much fewer scenes involving Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces. Besides likely censorship, what may explain the little impact the film had internationally, as the film critic Tony Rayns suggests, is that while avoiding the “rabid China-is-top-dog quality of the Wolf Warrior movies,” its “spirit is resolutely neo-nationalist,” with “all the bombast and jingoism of the current moment.”

      Hollywood became an effective soft powerhouse not only because of million-dollar budgets and top-quality products, but also thanks to creative freedom. For instance, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979), both masterpieces, were expressly critical of US military intervention in Vietnam. The films are also on the patriotic side, with American values overemphasized. However, by criticizing America’s own culture and politics, the films are far from being hard-power propaganda.

      Hard Power Interference

      The Communist Party of China (CPP), on the other hand, interferes directly in cultural productions. According to a report by James Tager, PEN America’s deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy, since 2011, the CCP’s Central Committee issued a statement declaring the “urgency for China to strengthen its cultural soft power and global cultural influence.” As Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin write in The Guardian, the party is trying to “reshape the global information environment with massive infusions of money” with the aim being to “influence public opinion overseas in order to nudge foreign governments into making policies favorable toward China’s Communist Party.”

      The official People’s Daily once declared, “we cannot be soft on soft power,” calling for culture must be exported in order to strengthen China’s international stance. Chinawood is part of this effort, which includes $10 billion spent annually on public diplomacy, in contrast with $2 billion allocated by the US Department of State in 2018. Soft power works well when China opens hundreds of Confucius Institutes to spread its language and culture around the world. What doesn’t work is when the same party severely punishes Chinese ethnical minorities, like the Muslim Uighurs facing persecution in Xinjiang.

      China already has an important cultural soft power: its art, poetry, painting, sculpture and pottery, from the early imperial dynasties to the 20th century, coveted by museums and collectors around the world. It succeeds because the state hard power doesn’t interfere significantly with it. But when it comes to contemporary culture — films, games, TV shows and apps like Tik Tok — Chinese hard power seems to impose harmful control. That’s not how soft power works. It needs freedom and self-criticism to produce genuine and seductive art.

      George Orwell once said that “Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” The phrase also pertains to the arts and the entertainment industry. When President Xi Jinping says that “the stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread and characteristics of China well explained,” by “well” he probably means “positive.” That is definitely not how one wins soft power for the long term.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Fault Lines in Biden’s Approach to China

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      So far, the White House has undertaken a flurry of activity designated to back up President Joe Biden’s pledge to be tough-minded on China. He has warned that Beijing will face “extreme competition” from the United States. Taiwan’s top representative was invited to the presidential inauguration on January 20 and the Biden team has promised to continue US arms sales to Taipei.

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      Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he agrees, conceptually at least, that former President Donald Trump “was right in taking a tougher approach to China” and that he supports the prior administration’s finding that Beijing’s treatment of Uighur minorities in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide.” In early February, the new administration conducted naval maneuvers to contest Chinese dominance in the South China Sea and reaffirmed the US security commitment to defending the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

      Veterans of the Obama Administration

      Yet all of this cannot conceal the two major fault lines threatening to undermine President Biden’s promise. The first centers on the heavy presence of Obama-era veterans on his national security team, particularly those associated with that administration’s “strategic pivot” toward the region. Two of President Biden’s top staffers were key architects of the much-touted initiative: Kurt M. Campbell, who was in charge of East Asian affairs in the State Department under President Barack Obama and is now the White House’s Asia policy czar, and Jake Sullivan, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is now Biden’s national security adviser.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The rhetoric of Obama’s pivot to Asia simultaneously antagonized Beijing while its actual track record largely failed to impress other Asian governments. According to one assessment, the pivot’s hype caused a marked increase in Chinese military spending at the same time that sharp cuts in the Pentagon budget were hampering US military operations in Asia. During a visit to Japan in 2013, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that “We are going to have to think about how to remain a global power with fewer resources. I think we are going to have to find ways to accomplish almost the same things but with smaller force structures.” In early 2014, the Pentagon’s acquisitions chief publicly stated that budget constraints were forcing a reconsideration of the initiative.

      As Obama’s coordinator for North Korea policy has acknowledged, the effort “was ill conceived and bungled in its implementation.” In late 2013, the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, noted an “increasingly widely shared view in Japan and the region that the Obama administration may not have enough political capital or the financial assets to implement” the pivot. It added that some have even come to see it as no more than a “bumper sticker.” Similarly, a leading Australian analyst observed, “There is a growing perception in Asia that the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed ‘pivot to Asia’ has run out of puff.” By late 2014, a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times argued that most of Asia had concluded the pivot was nothing more than hot air.

      Memories of this track record persist. A commentator focused on Asian affairs observed last year that “Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing.”

      Just before the 2020 election, The Washington Post noted that current and former officials of the Taiwanese government and ruling party had “privately expressed concern that a return of Obama-era foreign policy advisers in a potential Biden administration could mean a U.S. approach that is more conciliatory toward China compared with the Trump administration’s — and less supportive of Taiwan.” The Financial Times also reported along similar lines.

      The personnel problem extends to Biden himself, as he is a late convert to the tough-on-China crowd. Prior to his becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, he had regularly dismissed the notion that China mounted much of a geopolitical challenge. His campaign staffers were reportedly troubled by his naivete, and one adviser later admitted that for the rest of the campaign, Biden had to be “deprogrammed” on China. While this was going on, Robert M. Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary, reaffirmed to CBS News his earlier judgment that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

      Standing Strong vs. Climate Change

      The second fault line running through Biden’s approach to China is the irreconcilability between maintaining a hard line and his administration’s insistence on the pressing urgency of securing Beijing’s cooperation on climate change. Biden officials claim they can somehow manage this tension and will not have to make significant concessions in other policy areas in order to fulfill its global climate ambitions.

      John Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state when the 2015 Paris climate agreement was signed, is now Biden’s special climate envoy with a spot on the National Security Council. He insists, for example, that climate is a critical stand-alone issue that can be compartmentalized on the US–China bilateral agenda. Administration officials believe that collaboration is so self-evidently in Beijing’s interest that it will naturally sign on to Washington’s new push for significant climate action.

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      The Chinese government so far is not much impressed with this logic, with its foreign ministry stating that climate could not be separated from other issues “unlike flowers that can bloom in a greenhouse despite winter chill.” A Chinese government Twitter account also declared that “China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China–US relations. It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.” 

      Given the White House’s fervor on the issue, one suspects the Biden administration will be making the concessions in the end. During the presidential campaign, Biden asserted that climate change is an “existential threat” and the “number one issue facing humanity.” Now that he is in the Oval Office, Biden believes “we can’t wait any longer.” He signed a directive making the issue the “center of our national security and foreign policy” and ordered government agencies to factor “climate considerations” into their assessment of international priorities. Kerry uses similar language, declaring that “the stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential.” He added that Biden “is deeply committed — totally seized by this issue.”

      In shutting down construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, as well as freezing new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands and waters, the administration has also shown it is willing to subordinate important domestic goals, such as energy security and employment stability in the middle of a job-killing pandemic, to climate priorities. It has written off large job losses as inevitable and is accepting of a backlash from important labor unions that aided its electoral victory just a few months ago.

      Susan Rice Returns

      It is also telling that Susan Rice, the national security adviser during Obama’s second term, has returned to the White House as President Biden’s top domestic affairs coordinator. Bilahari Kausikan, the former senior Singaporean diplomat widely regarded in East Asia, recently exclaimed that Rice “was among those who thought that the US should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations.” Another observer has made the same point, noting that “Obama and Rice wanted to work with China on issues such as climate change, but they did so at the cost of treating Beijing with kid gloves.” 

      Influential members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have advocated the same thing. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of an influential think tank in Washington and a former director of policy planning in the Obama-era State Department, recently argued that “Biden should prioritize global issues over geopolitical competition” and that the president’s focus on climate “should guide his foreign policy as well.”

      Rank-and-file party members also share this view. In a recent public opinion survey, Democrats by a wide margin believe climate change to be a more critical threat than the rise of China as a peer competitor to the US. Indeed, according to Democratic respondents, China did not even rank among the top seven challenges facing the country.

      Something will have to give in the new administration’s approach toward China. There is already an early indication of how things will play out. Notwithstanding the protestations about Beijing’s egregious human rights abuses, the Biden team continues to support holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in that city.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Good American review: Bob Gersony and a better foreign policy

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      What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
      Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
      A son of Holocaust refugees, he never held a formal government position. He was instead a contractor for the state department, USAid or the United Nations. Yet his work improved the lives of millions, saving many, and corrected policies that might otherwise have been implemented by “ugly” or “quiet” figures who did not understand the countries in which they operated.
      Gersony’s method was simple: to conduct interviews through a trusted translator with individuals fleeing conflict, to stay “in continuous, tactile contact with the evidence”. It was exhausting work in extraordinarily difficult circumstances but his information, transmitted to senior policymakers in highly detailed “Gersony reports”, was both essential and frequently (as in Mozambique and Bosnia) the opposite of what the policy community believed or wished to believe.
      The truth about a place “emerges from the bottom up”, he said, and thus “you must always believe refugees”.
      Accountability, absolute integrity, objectivity and boldness in speaking to authority were his watchwords. His independence meant personal insecurity. He often shared a simple shack with a translator and slept with his notes under his pillow. Personal danger and hardship were part of the job, yet in no other way could the truth emerge and successful policy be formulated.
      “When you listen to ordinary people,” Gersony believed, “there is so much wisdom.”
      Kaplan calls Gersony “a business-oriented math brain with a non-ideological conservative streak … think of him as an emotionally tortured character straight out of a Saul Bellow novel, engrossed throughout his life in the brooding and dangerous tropical settings defined by Joseph Conrad.”
      This is also the story of another era of US foreign policy, one in which realism and humanitarianism combined to include human rights in the national interest, against the backdrop of the cold war, so often hot in the developing world. Human rights and grand strategy complemented each other. Gersony had bosses who were “authentic, heartland Americans … the ultimate selfless public servants … deeply moral without being ideological, while operating at the top of the power structure”.
      Gersony started in Guatemala, where he began a language school and after the 1976 earthquake worked with relief organizations. He took charge of hurricane relief in Dominica, standing up to the prime minister, asserting, “If you empower people, they won’t be corrupt.” Moving on to El Salvador in the civil war, he recommended massive employment programs for displaced persons, building sewage canals and cobblestone streets – practical improvements that also discouraged guerrillas from attacking the people.
      His solutions were often elegantly simple because they provided the dignity of work and reflected what people actually wanted. And yet, as Kaplan writes, “He still had no credentials … in the ordinary careerist sense, he had risen as far as he ever would.” For Kaplan, as for Gersony, “a meaningful life is about truth, not success.”
      The assignments kept coming: Vietnamese boat people in Thailand; Sudan and Chad; Honduras, where his counterintuitive but accurate recommendation showed once again that “ground-level fieldwork … triumphs over the discussion of big abstract ideas”. In Uganda’s Lowero Triangle, he uncovered genocide with the unexpected help of a British officer advising President Obote. The secretary of state, George Shultz, cut off aid.
      As Kaplan writes, “History pivoted in southern Africa thanks to Bob Gersony.” After an unusual meeting with Shultz and Maureen Reagan, daughter of the president, the US did not aid Renamo guerrillas in Mozambique. Gersony tackled a highly complex situation in Somalia and in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide worked with UNHCR on the repatriation of Hutus. As one official said, his unwelcome truth-telling “stopped the killing machine”. He worked in northern Uganda with World Vision long before Joseph Kony became a hashtag. Knowing the dangers of travel in that region, “he treated the motor pool chief like a high official”.
      Gersony worked tirelessly. “If we skipped lunch,” he said, “we could interview one more refugee, and each refugee was precious – you never knew which one would yield a breakthrough in understanding.”
      By Kaplan’s own admission, his book is also something of his own story, a lament for a time when internationalist moderates dominated both parties and the foreign service enjoyed “the last golden age of American diplomacy … when the bureaucracy at all levels had sufficient money and rewarded talent” in furthering “that sturdy, moderate national security consensus that no longer exists”.
      Embed
      Kaplan does not quite regret the end of the cold war but he does note the resulting separation between idealism and power.
      Indeed, Gersony’s career ended in a very different world. Kaplan sees Plan Colombia, an early 2000s push against leftwing guerrillas and drug cartels, as “a precursor for the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq”, where gigantic projects and a “dysfunctional interagency process” often failed for lack of perspective. Gersony’s later tasks included tracking food assistance for North Korea, examining the Maoist insurgency in Nepal (and wishing USAid had continued road-building there), and disaster planning in Micronesia, where “in this emerging naval century … Oceania was indeed at the heart of geopolitics” and control of shipping lanes.
      Can realism and idealism combine again? Only through what the French academic Gérard Prunier wrote about Gersony’s “great respect for the factual truth. The world is not just an interpretation or a place for competing narratives.” In the end, Kaplan’s life of Gersony recalls the advice of another quintessential American, Mark Twain: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
      The Good American is published in the US by Random House More

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      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

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      A week after taking office, US President Joe Biden made a point of breaking with the position of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who famously blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus. Trump insisted on calling it the Wuhan flu, Kung flu or any other xenophobic alternative. Coming to the defense of the entire Asian community in the United States, Biden issued a memorandum stating the following: “Inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.”

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      The World Health Organization (WHO) team conducting an investigation in Wuhan released its preliminary findings this week on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It maintained, as Reuters reports, “that the virus likely came from bats and not a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.” On February 10, an official of the US State Department announced what appeared to be a retreat to the Trump administration’s position: “The United States will not accept World Health Organization … findings coming out of its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan, China without independently verifying the findings using its own intelligence and conferring with allies.”

      One of the WHO inspectors, British zoologist and expert on disease ecology Peter Daszak, reacting to the State Department’s note, addressed this advice to Biden in a tweet: “Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Look tough:

      1. The principal action required to maintain the status of a bully, a person whose demeanor counts more than their substance
      2. The principal action required to maintain the image of the leader of a hegemon, called upon to make a show of being hyper-aggressive toward nations elected by politicians and the media as an existential threat  

      Contextual Note

      While the WHO team offered no definitive explanation of the origin, it focused on different possibilities of animal transmission requiring further investigation. When asked at a press conference on February 10 whether he had “any interest in punishing China for not being truthful about COVID last year,” President Biden cagily replied, “I’m interested in getting all the facts.” That answer leaves him free to look tough on China or, alternatively, to look tough at the intelligence that for the past four years has done what intelligence always does, responded obsequiously to the political solicitations of the administration in place.

      One American who, for the past four years, has made a point of looking tough and has been regularly featured in the media is Mike Pompeo, the final secretary of state under the Trump administration. In a desperate effort to keep the Trump mystique going to maintain its flagging ratings, Fox News brought Pompeo back to defend the Wuhan flu theme Trump consistently exploited for electoral advantage during last year’s presidential election campaign. In the interview, “Pompeo said ‘significant evidence’ remained that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, casting doubt Tuesday on the World Health Organization‘s assessment that it likely spread from animals to humans.”

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      Pompeo, a former CIA director, admitted in 2019 that his job at the Central Intelligence Agency consisted of lying, cheating and stealing. He implied that he was now telling the truth, a fact ironically borne out by his honest admission of duplicity while at the CIA. And yet, there may be reason even today to believe that Pompeo has retained something of his talent for lying, which he will be willing to use for what he deems virtuous purposes. 

      The language people like Pompeo use often reveals how they manage to bend the truth when they aren’t simply betraying it. In the Fox interview, Pompeo explains, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.” What can Pompeo possibly mean when he says, “I continue to know”? Is knowledge for Pompeo something that can appear and disappear? Knowledge is a state of awareness of truth, not an act of will, something one can decide according to the circumstances. 

      And because what someone knows must be a fact, what is the solid fact he says he continues to know? He tells us that it is the idea that the coronavirus “may have come from” the Wuhan laboratory. But something that “may” be true is at best a reasonable hypothesis and at worst a fabricated lie. Something that “may” be true cannot be called knowledge. Any honest speaker would use the verb “suspect.” But, in this age of conspiracy theories, people tend to suspect anything that is merely suspected. And Fox News has always preferred assertions to suspicions.

      In the same interview, Pompeo describes his recommendations for the US policy on China. He says the nation must “continue to make sure that the next century remains one dominated by rule of law, sovereignty and the things that the America first foreign policy put in place.” 

      Besides the fact that Pompeo offers another example of his favorite verb, “continue,” his odd assertion that “the next century” (the 22nd?) must be “dominated by rule of law” offers a curious yoking of two theoretically antinomic ideas: dominance and rule of law. The very idea of “rule of law” posits a relationship of equality between all concerned parties. It opposes the effect of domination. Rule of law is about level playing fields and fair play. Pompeo’s formulation reveals that he thinks of the rule of law as a specific tool of American domination. This is of course consistent with the facts, whatever the administration. The US still steadfastly refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Trump’s “America First” policy refused any law other than its own.

      For those wondering why Fox News has taken the trouble to interview the former secretary of state of a president now being tried for sedition, the journalists reveal the interest at the end of the interview. Fox sees Pompeo as a worthy contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He’s a cleaner version of Trump, but one who will always talk and look tough.

      Historical Note

      After the most contentious presidential election in its history, the US has been preparing to experience the transition from one radical style of hyperreality to another — from Donald Trump’s outlandish display of petulant rhetoric committed to reshaping the world in his image to Joe Biden’s reserved and fundamentally uncommitted avuncular manner. Just as in 2008, when they voted in Barack Obama after eight years of George W. Bush’s chaotic wars and a Wall Street crash, Americans are expecting a change of style and focus from the never-ending drama of the Trump years. 

      But just as the self-proclaimed change candidate Obama, once in office, showed more respect for continuity than commitment to renewal, on the theme of foreign policy, President Biden appears to be following Trump’s lead while simply reducing the tone. This phenomenon reflects a more fundamental reality at the core of today’s pseudo-democratic oligarchy. It is regularly masked by the transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa. The reigning political hyperreality, despite the contrasting personal styles of successive presidents, will always prevail. Continuity trumps change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden’s future policy on both China and Iran provides two cases in point. The clock is ticking on the need to recalibrate both of these relationships, more particularly on Iran, which has an election coming in just a few months. As the world anxiously awaits the new orientations of the Biden administration, the kind of continuity Pompeo appreciates may prove more dominant than the reversal people have come to expect. After all, Trump set about reversing everything Obama did, so why shouldn’t Biden do the same? The answer may simply be that that’s not what Democrats do.

      The average American has never been seriously interested in foreign policy. That very fact has consistently led to the kind of Manichaean thinking that dominated during the Cold War. In his 2000 election campaign, the inimitable George W. Bush summed up how that Manichaean system works: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” As John Keats once wrote, “That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More