The lotus symbolizes the co-existence of pure and impure, mundane and eternal, mortal and divine, and offers a promise that earthly things can aspire to perfection.
On a less exalted plane, observers at ponds have always marveled how water droplets skitter across the surface of the lotus leaf like blobs of mercury.
Now, a scientist in Germany has revealed that the secret of the lotus is nanotechnology.
Jewels don’t have too much to do with it.
The Buddhist chant Om Mani Padme Hum, traditionally translated as “The Jewel in the Lotus” (padme is “lotus” in Sanskrit), is perhaps the most common religious invocation on this planet. Every time a prayer wheel is spun, the chant is repeated millions of times through copies of the chant inscribed on paper rolls inside.
I found a website that alerted me to the karmic benefits of an Om Mane Padme Hum screen saver and could even turn my disk drive into a high tech, 5400 rpm prayer wheel.
Another site, www.omanipadmehum.com stated, “we are asking for your help in two ways, 1) install the OmMaNiPadMeHum files on your computer and every computer you can, 2) contribute financial support as you may so that we can convert internet servers into massive prayer wheels”. Remembering that Arthur C. Clarke short story, The Nine Billion Names of God, I declined to turn my PC and sympathetic servers across the Internet into an Om Mani Padme Hum-chanting machine.
The Jewel in the Lotus mantra invokes the intercession of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who renounced Buddhahood in order to take the universe and its creatures under his/her care.
Avalokitesvara appears in a myriad forms, from a multi-tasking thousand armed and headed deity solving everybody’s problems at once; to a feminine form—Kuan Yin—sometimes described as the Chinese Virgin Mary; to the Dalai Lama, whom the Tibetan Buddhists regard as the bodhisattva’s incarnation.
The lotus is one of his/her most commonly-depicted attributes. Buddhists revere the sacred lotus (nelumba nucifera) as a symbol of the Bodhisattva and expression of their creed because it rises from the muck but still retains its purity, just as the soul can arise from the muck of human existence and achieve Buddhahood.
Science now intrudes on the scene.
As reported by Adam Summers in Natural History magazine, the leaf of the sacred lotus is one of the most water repellent materials known to science. Water that strikes the surface of a leaf balls up to a contact angle of 140 degrees—almost a perfect sphere.
But that’s not the whole story.
Wilhelm Barthlott, a German botanist, examined lotus leaves under an electron microscope and discovered that the leaves are not smooth. In fact, exactly the opposite is true. At the microscopic level, the surface is a wild landscape of tiny mountains and valleys that offer water droplets virtually no foothold to cling to.
[A water drop] touches only the peaks of the little wax mountains, leaving such a tiny area in contact with the surface that the adhesive forces between the drop and the leaf’s contours are vanishingly small…cohesive forces…hold the droplet in a nearly spherical shape as it rolls off the leaf.
Adam Summers, Secrets of the Sacred Lotus, Natural History, April 2006
The utility of the arrangement to the lotus is this: when water strikes the leaf, dirt adheres to the water droplet. When the leaf sheds the soiled water droplet, the leaf is cleansed, achieving that wondrous purity that inspires Buddhist practitioners while ensuring that a lotus sitting in a muck-filled pond still has plenty of clean, unobstructed leaf surface available for photosynthesis.
The ingenious Dr. Botthold has patented the lotus leaf micro-pattern as the Lotus-Effect and licensed it to a coatings manufacturer for an exterior paint that needs only dousing with water to keep it clean.
An eye-popping computer visualization of the lotus leaf’s nano-landscape is available here.
You might think That’s the jewel in the lotus.
However, according to Donald Lopez, there never was a jewel in the lotus at all.
In a teaser for his book, Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Lopez writes:
Here is something for the initiated: The most famous of all Buddhist mantras, om mani padme hum, does not mean "the jewel in the lotus." It means instead, "O Jewel-Lotus." Nineteenth-century European scholars of Sanskrit misread a vocative ending as a locative ending, thus thinking that the jewel (mani) was in the lotus (padme). The mistranslated mantra took on a life of its own, probably because of its sexual symbolism; for instance it has been the title of scores of books, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with Tibet or Buddhism. The mantra is actually a prayer, calling upon the bodhisattva of compassion—of whom the Dalai Lama is the human incarnation—who is depicted holding a jewel and a lotus in two of his one thousand hands. One of his epithets is thus (Mr.) Jewel-Lotus, so the mantra could be roughly translated, "O, Mr. Jewel-Lotus. Please give us a hand."
But to me, there’s still a jewel in the lotus where science, nature, and spirit intersect.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
China's Military Modernization and the "Second Island Chain"
The current iteration of the Pentagon’s report to Congress on Chinese military modernization is, to me, a relatively moderate document.
It starts off with the Foggy Bottom-approved “responsible stakeholder” trope, another sign that Donald Rumsfeld is sitting on the porch of the Old Folks Home for Defense Secretaries Who Masterminded Utterly Failed Wars and grumbling that Nobody Ever Visits.
It does include the Rumsfeldian riff that “China’s military sector is too opaque to inspire confidence.”
The alarmist high estimate of China’s actual military spending, which attracted some notice, is so risible piece of Powerpoint Rangering I actually wonder if they were laughing as they cranked it out.
C’mon guys, at least mess with Excel spreadsheet so the whole bar chart doesn’t look like it was stamped out with a cookie cutter!
Demonizing China as irrational and dangerous—a staple of Bush-era good vs. evil pre-emptive foreign policy posturing—is off the menu too.
The document does a good, evenhanded job of analyzing Chinese military priorities and concerns in the context of the PRC’s economics-driven but Taiwan-shadowed foreign policy.
Discussing China’s perspective on attacking Taiwan, the report says on page 40:
Finally, Beijing’s planning must calculate the virtual certainty of U.S. intervention, and Japanese interests, in any conflict in the Taiwan Strait. It views the United States, especially in combination with Japan, as having advantages over China in many scenarios involving the use of military force. China’s leaders also calculate a conflict over Taiwan involving the United States would give rise to a long-term hostile relationship between the two nations – a result that would not be in China’s interests.
The phrase “Japanese interests” is a little clumsy. It sounds like Prime Minister Koizumi and the Japanese people would be sure to set their Tivos to CNN if war broke out in the Taiwan Straits. It’s worth pondering that “Japanese response”, “Japanese opposition” or “Japanese condemnation” or even “Japanese concern” didn’t make it into the text.
The LA Times commented somewhat perspicaciously (in its May 24 article, Chinese Threat is Expanding, Pentagon Says) that a key audience for the report seems to be China's neighbors in the western Pacific. The report talks persuasively about China’s blue water ambitions and a rather interesting graphic lays out China’s purported interest in the “Second Island Chain”.
If the expectation of the report's authors is that Taiwan, terrified by new evidence that the Red tsunami will sweep across the Pacific and scour freedom from the shores of Formosa, will finally get off its butt, pass the immense special budget for arms purchases from the United States, and reoccupy its proper place as our Israel in the Pacific, I’m afraid the result might be just the opposite.
The implication I drew from the report is not that the Chinese intend to contest this perimeter in order to deny the Western Pacific to the United States so that the PLA can have its fiendish way with Taiwan while our carrier groups slug it out with the newly emboldened Chinese navy on the same godforsaken string of islands that we conquered in World War II.
Those islands are as defensible as Dien Bien Phu. They aren't part of any Taiwan invasion strategy.
Quite the opposite.
Consider that line on the map a blueprint for China’s vision of a future peace and prosperity zone in maritime Asia after the Taiwan issue has been resolved to its satisfaction.
Extending China’s reach to those remote, extremely vulnerable islands only makes sense if the Western Pacific is universally accepted as China’s legitimate sphere of influence; in other words if Taiwan has peacefully reconciled with the mainland, turned over its regional security interests to Beijing, and told the US to bug out.
That’s what probably really worries the U.S. government the most: not that the Chinese will suddenly go nuts, attack Taiwan, and start World War III.
Instead, Washington fears that some combination of political disarray and public confusion in Taiwan will provoke a Hong Kong-style accommodation with Beijing--and a disaster for America's prestige and strategic position in the area.
It starts off with the Foggy Bottom-approved “responsible stakeholder” trope, another sign that Donald Rumsfeld is sitting on the porch of the Old Folks Home for Defense Secretaries Who Masterminded Utterly Failed Wars and grumbling that Nobody Ever Visits.
It does include the Rumsfeldian riff that “China’s military sector is too opaque to inspire confidence.”
The alarmist high estimate of China’s actual military spending, which attracted some notice, is so risible piece of Powerpoint Rangering I actually wonder if they were laughing as they cranked it out.
C’mon guys, at least mess with Excel spreadsheet so the whole bar chart doesn’t look like it was stamped out with a cookie cutter!
Demonizing China as irrational and dangerous—a staple of Bush-era good vs. evil pre-emptive foreign policy posturing—is off the menu too.
The document does a good, evenhanded job of analyzing Chinese military priorities and concerns in the context of the PRC’s economics-driven but Taiwan-shadowed foreign policy.
Discussing China’s perspective on attacking Taiwan, the report says on page 40:
Finally, Beijing’s planning must calculate the virtual certainty of U.S. intervention, and Japanese interests, in any conflict in the Taiwan Strait. It views the United States, especially in combination with Japan, as having advantages over China in many scenarios involving the use of military force. China’s leaders also calculate a conflict over Taiwan involving the United States would give rise to a long-term hostile relationship between the two nations – a result that would not be in China’s interests.
The phrase “Japanese interests” is a little clumsy. It sounds like Prime Minister Koizumi and the Japanese people would be sure to set their Tivos to CNN if war broke out in the Taiwan Straits. It’s worth pondering that “Japanese response”, “Japanese opposition” or “Japanese condemnation” or even “Japanese concern” didn’t make it into the text.
The LA Times commented somewhat perspicaciously (in its May 24 article, Chinese Threat is Expanding, Pentagon Says) that a key audience for the report seems to be China's neighbors in the western Pacific. The report talks persuasively about China’s blue water ambitions and a rather interesting graphic lays out China’s purported interest in the “Second Island Chain”.
If the expectation of the report's authors is that Taiwan, terrified by new evidence that the Red tsunami will sweep across the Pacific and scour freedom from the shores of Formosa, will finally get off its butt, pass the immense special budget for arms purchases from the United States, and reoccupy its proper place as our Israel in the Pacific, I’m afraid the result might be just the opposite.
The implication I drew from the report is not that the Chinese intend to contest this perimeter in order to deny the Western Pacific to the United States so that the PLA can have its fiendish way with Taiwan while our carrier groups slug it out with the newly emboldened Chinese navy on the same godforsaken string of islands that we conquered in World War II.
Those islands are as defensible as Dien Bien Phu. They aren't part of any Taiwan invasion strategy.
Quite the opposite.
Consider that line on the map a blueprint for China’s vision of a future peace and prosperity zone in maritime Asia after the Taiwan issue has been resolved to its satisfaction.
Extending China’s reach to those remote, extremely vulnerable islands only makes sense if the Western Pacific is universally accepted as China’s legitimate sphere of influence; in other words if Taiwan has peacefully reconciled with the mainland, turned over its regional security interests to Beijing, and told the US to bug out.
That’s what probably really worries the U.S. government the most: not that the Chinese will suddenly go nuts, attack Taiwan, and start World War III.
Instead, Washington fears that some combination of political disarray and public confusion in Taiwan will provoke a Hong Kong-style accommodation with Beijing--and a disaster for America's prestige and strategic position in the area.
As China redefines and asserts its intentions and capabilities as a “responsible” regional power, the possibility of a modus vivendi between a nominally independent Taiwan and the PRC increases, and with it the odds that the Taiwanese will take the path of least resistance and rapproche with Beijing.
In this case, maybe it’s easier for us to retain the diplomatic initiative if we continue to assert that the Chinese intentions remain opaque, and that its leadership is a hive of irrational dingbats.
After all, when we acknowledge China as a rational actor, we are implying that its goals are understandable, achievable...and perhaps even acceptable.
If the Chinese said it’s time for Asians to take over Asian security because a certain alien, dangerous, distracted, and overstretched superpower is no longer up to the job…
…and the choice is either Co-Prosperity Sphere redux with the Japanese acting as American surrogates…
…or a genuinely independent Asian policy in alliance with the region’s dominant economic and military power…
…we might not get the answer we want to hear.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Farewell to Zoellick?
The Financial Times reports that Robert Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State, will probably soon leave for the private sector.
The immediate cause of his departure was his failure to get the post of Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Zoellick is an acute financial mind. If he was willing to take the job of Treasury Secretary—recognized as the premier impotent scapegoat and albatross position in the Bush cabinet, if I may mix a few metaphors—maybe there is still hope that our galumphing federal deficit, national debt, and trade imbalance are not going to push our nation’s economy (and the career of one ambitious banker-bureaucrat) off the cliff after all.
My uninformed speculation is that Mr. Zoellick is intent on an upward career trajectory. Having pushed for the Treasury job and not received it, remaining in a Deputy Secretary post is a de facto and spiritual demotion.
So he will move to the private sector, possibly, according to the FT, in a post with Merrill Lynch.
Then I assume he expects to return to the next Republican administration as Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Zoellick is a skilled foreign policy realist who recognized the power—but did assume the invincibility—of American arms and understood that diversity of interests between the US and its allies had to be acknowledged and mediated.
Together with Secretary Rice, he has skillfully executed rapprochement with Europe post-Iraq. Recently he pushed through a Darfur settlement that sought to counter growing Chinese influence and prestige in Africa. In Asia, he has worked to reassure the region that callous recklessness is not an integral part of the Bush administration’s strategy against China.
Rightweb has an excellent profile of Mr. Zoellick.
It remains to be seen whether his successor will display similar skill and subtlety in promoting American interests overseas.
The immediate cause of his departure was his failure to get the post of Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Zoellick is an acute financial mind. If he was willing to take the job of Treasury Secretary—recognized as the premier impotent scapegoat and albatross position in the Bush cabinet, if I may mix a few metaphors—maybe there is still hope that our galumphing federal deficit, national debt, and trade imbalance are not going to push our nation’s economy (and the career of one ambitious banker-bureaucrat) off the cliff after all.
My uninformed speculation is that Mr. Zoellick is intent on an upward career trajectory. Having pushed for the Treasury job and not received it, remaining in a Deputy Secretary post is a de facto and spiritual demotion.
So he will move to the private sector, possibly, according to the FT, in a post with Merrill Lynch.
Then I assume he expects to return to the next Republican administration as Secretary of State or Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. Zoellick is a skilled foreign policy realist who recognized the power—but did assume the invincibility—of American arms and understood that diversity of interests between the US and its allies had to be acknowledged and mediated.
Together with Secretary Rice, he has skillfully executed rapprochement with Europe post-Iraq. Recently he pushed through a Darfur settlement that sought to counter growing Chinese influence and prestige in Africa. In Asia, he has worked to reassure the region that callous recklessness is not an integral part of the Bush administration’s strategy against China.
Rightweb has an excellent profile of Mr. Zoellick.
It remains to be seen whether his successor will display similar skill and subtlety in promoting American interests overseas.
And now for something completely irresponsible...
We talk about all the deep strategic, economic, and political factors...
...but maybe there’s a simpler explanation for why President Bush soft-pedals the Chicom menace.
From OSS.net:
OSS Note: A major European intelligence service is absolutely convinced that when George Bush was a drunken teen-ager in Beijing with his father the Ambassador, the Chinese were able to arrange extraordinarily compromising photographs, including homosexual photographs with his Chinese male tennis teacher (the boy may have been so drunk he had no idea was what happending (sic)).
OSS.net is the corporate vehicle for Open Source Intelligence evangelist and ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele. He is an untiring proselytizer for the intelligence value of unclassified information systematically collected and analyzed.
He’s got a strong pitch:
OSS.Net is the leading teacher and practitioner of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). We help our clients …[deal] with the global information explosion, especially in relation to non-traditional threats, especially sub-state tribal and non-state transnational threats, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours that can be focused on hard targets. We do this by tapping into global sources in 29+ languages…
But then Steele continues:
…the good stuff is not online, not in English, and not visible to most vendors…
Holy Mother of Mary! Is there any stuff out there better than allegations that George W. Bush was successfully romanced by his Chinese male tennis teacher?
I don’t think so.
Mr. Steele has achieved a certain credibility and visibility in his field, though it isn’t apparent what kind of success OSS.net has enjoyed in supplying its services to paying customers. However, in today’s highly-politicized procurement environment, I wouldn’t count on a lot of contracts from President Bush’s DNI or CIA.
...but maybe there’s a simpler explanation for why President Bush soft-pedals the Chicom menace.
From OSS.net:
OSS Note: A major European intelligence service is absolutely convinced that when George Bush was a drunken teen-ager in Beijing with his father the Ambassador, the Chinese were able to arrange extraordinarily compromising photographs, including homosexual photographs with his Chinese male tennis teacher (the boy may have been so drunk he had no idea was what happending (sic)).
OSS.net is the corporate vehicle for Open Source Intelligence evangelist and ex-CIA officer Robert David Steele. He is an untiring proselytizer for the intelligence value of unclassified information systematically collected and analyzed.
He’s got a strong pitch:
OSS.Net is the leading teacher and practitioner of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). We help our clients …[deal] with the global information explosion, especially in relation to non-traditional threats, especially sub-state tribal and non-state transnational threats, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours that can be focused on hard targets. We do this by tapping into global sources in 29+ languages…
But then Steele continues:
…the good stuff is not online, not in English, and not visible to most vendors…
Holy Mother of Mary! Is there any stuff out there better than allegations that George W. Bush was successfully romanced by his Chinese male tennis teacher?
I don’t think so.
Mr. Steele has achieved a certain credibility and visibility in his field, though it isn’t apparent what kind of success OSS.net has enjoyed in supplying its services to paying customers. However, in today’s highly-politicized procurement environment, I wouldn’t count on a lot of contracts from President Bush’s DNI or CIA.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Beyond Bush: Old Europe's New Take on America--and China
Who’s afraid of the big bad Bush?
Nobody, it seems.
And that’s a problem for China, as was demonstrated during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recently-concluded visit to China. The rhetoric and symbolism of her visit indicated that Merkel has replaced Gerhard Schroeder’s accommodating posture toward China with her own pro-US tilt.
During her recent visit to Beijing, Chancellor Merkel—who had championed the EU arms embargo against China while in the opposition--made clear Germany’s pro-US stance by harping on Iran and human rights.
Her entourage reinforced the impression by employing what I’m sure Chinese find the incredibly irritating and condescending Robert Zoellick-approved buzzword of the moment for reproaching China: responsibility.
As in:
"The economic role of China has grown and so has its responsibility on the international stage," an official told the news agency AFP, on condition of anonymity. "Based on its economic position, China must take on more responsibilities."
Responsibilities shmesponsibilities.
I have a feeling Wen Jiabao was thinking, Yeah, lady, I’ve got responsibilities. 1.3 billion people, a runaway economy, a political infrastructure teetering toward collapse, US military forces ringing the country, a huge need for imported oil, and what looks like a concerted campaign by the West and Japan to cut me off from hydrocarbon supplies in the Middle East, Russia, and South Asia. I’m not just sitting here worrying that the chef is going to burn the schnitzel.
Essentially, what Merkel was saying that fears of US unilateralism have receded, while concerns about Chinese economic and military expansion—and the unfavorable if not world-ending consequences of Iran and China achieving a win over the US on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program-- have grown.
One of the expected consequences of America’s failure in Iraq has been a decline in American prestige and clout.
But China hasn’t been particularly successful in filling the vacuum, at least in the Old World.
That’s because fear of rampant US unilateralism has faded, and been replaced by a more nuanced concern in Europe about the implications of China’s untrammeled economic growth, the weakness of its moderating democratic institutions, and the unpredictability of Beijing’s willingness to resort to military force in its foreign relations.
Back in 2002, when America appeared ascendant in Iraq, had assembled a complete ideological and legal infrastructure supporting unilateral, pre-emptive war worldwide, and George Bush had the political wind and invincible US armed might at his back and was talking about marching on Damascus and Teheran and militarizing the Malacca Straits and who knows what else, France and Germany banded together to provide a counterweight to the United States.
In international relations-speak, there was an attempt led by France and abetted by Germany to midwife a multipolar system i.e. challenge the US unipolar vision with a constellation of European states centered on the European Union, which would provide diplomatic and economic support to states that didn’t want their foreign policy and regional security arrangements dictated by the United States.
Challenging the US power monopoly would, by implication, allow the creation of a third pole in Asia.
China could have become a pillar of such a multi-polar system, a near-equal partner with Europe, its shortcomings in the areas of human rights, democracy, and Taiwan overlooked in favor of its relatively benign foreign policy driven by domestic economic development.
French President Chirac and German Chancellor Schroeder, while seeking to counter the US on Iraq, conducted ostentatiously pro-Chinese foreign policies.
The European multi-polar effort fell victim to the basic weakness of the EU system, exemplified by French rejection of the EU constitution, and assiduous divide and conquer efforts by Washington, typified by Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious Old Europe crack.
Nevertheless, it was only with the greatest of effort that the Bush administration and John Bolton were able to forestall the symbolically significant lifting of the EU arms embargo to China in 2004.
The EU arms embargo, whatever one thinks about the moral and political advisability of arming Beijing, is a diplomatic anachronism, dating back to the Tian An Men massacre of 1989.
In a world awash with arms—and the United States responsible for tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi deaths as a result of the botched occupation, and not only arming India but sanctioning (as in approving) its nuclear weapons program—it seems inconsistent for the European Union to harsh Beijing for the deaths of 3000 people 17 years ago—a massacre that has ushered in a period of unprecedented Chinese political stability and economic growth.
But the EU arms embargo looks stronger than ever.
Part of it has to do with the election of Angela Merkel as the German chancellor—and she probably owes her ascendancy to the fact that American weakness made it impossible for Gerhard Schroeder to replay the anti-Bush card effectively during the recent election.
Part of it has to do with the fact that France—in a development conspicuously underreported by the US press—bereft of a close German partnership and with its EU dream in tatters, has returned to a more productive bilateral relationship with Washington and has been backing American diplomatic moves, particularly in the Middle East.
But I think much of it has to do with the fact that the world is not dealing with American power. It is dealing with American impotence. And that makes a rise in Chinese economic, military, and diplomatic power more disturbing than it would otherwise be.
In the current circumstances, there’s no compelling reason for the Europeans to support the development of Chinese military strength.
Instead, there’s a desire in Europe to move beyond bilateral dealings between weaker individual states and China, and raise its collective profile, without the implication of anti-US confrontation inherent in the term “multipolar”.
The current term of art is an old word: “multilateralism”.
A piece of German thinktankery describes the current zeitgeist:
The European Union should concentrate on remultilateralizing its China policy and in the process seek the greatest possible agreement with the United States.
Gudrun Wacker, ed. China's Rise: The Return of Geopolitics?, SWP Research Paper, Berlin 2006
Rebuffing China on arms and human rights isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s the safe thing to do, and it’s good for relations with the United States.
Interestingly, the EU arms embargo can also play a useful role for Europe in its dealings with Washington, beyond serving as a demonstration of transatlantic solidarity.
It’s one of the few meaningful bargaining chips available to European diplomacy—and it works both ways.
As in: if the US attacks Iran—thereby announcing it has not renounced its dream of a unipolar, America-dominated world—the EU slides closer to China, lifts the arms embargo, and creates a greater deterrent to US adventurism in Asia.
But until then China can dangle in the wind.
So China—the world’s most populous and vibrant economic power, which hasn’t engaged in military aggression since its disastrous border dispute with Vietnam 25 years ago—must still content itself with second-class world citizenship; listen to the self-serving lectures about responsible global citizenship from the same group of nations whose sins of commission and omission created the geopolitical and human disaster in Iraq; and accept that the White Nations’ Club + Japan denies China has the right to arm itself and chart its military and foreign policy destiny without outside interference as befits a world power and Asian empire.
That’s gotta chafe!
But I’ve got to say anything that promotes the demilitarization of foreign policy and forces nations to promote their interests primarily through diplomacy and economics is a good thing.
So, in the realm of unexpected consequences, we can say Thank you to George Bush, for discrediting and destroying the terrifying vision of unipolar, unilateral, war-based American supremacy.
And if that means that China is unfairly excluded from the international arms bazaar as a result, well, that’s collateral damage I think China and the world can live with.
Nobody, it seems.
And that’s a problem for China, as was demonstrated during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recently-concluded visit to China. The rhetoric and symbolism of her visit indicated that Merkel has replaced Gerhard Schroeder’s accommodating posture toward China with her own pro-US tilt.
During her recent visit to Beijing, Chancellor Merkel—who had championed the EU arms embargo against China while in the opposition--made clear Germany’s pro-US stance by harping on Iran and human rights.
Her entourage reinforced the impression by employing what I’m sure Chinese find the incredibly irritating and condescending Robert Zoellick-approved buzzword of the moment for reproaching China: responsibility.
As in:
"The economic role of China has grown and so has its responsibility on the international stage," an official told the news agency AFP, on condition of anonymity. "Based on its economic position, China must take on more responsibilities."
Responsibilities shmesponsibilities.
I have a feeling Wen Jiabao was thinking, Yeah, lady, I’ve got responsibilities. 1.3 billion people, a runaway economy, a political infrastructure teetering toward collapse, US military forces ringing the country, a huge need for imported oil, and what looks like a concerted campaign by the West and Japan to cut me off from hydrocarbon supplies in the Middle East, Russia, and South Asia. I’m not just sitting here worrying that the chef is going to burn the schnitzel.
Essentially, what Merkel was saying that fears of US unilateralism have receded, while concerns about Chinese economic and military expansion—and the unfavorable if not world-ending consequences of Iran and China achieving a win over the US on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program-- have grown.
One of the expected consequences of America’s failure in Iraq has been a decline in American prestige and clout.
But China hasn’t been particularly successful in filling the vacuum, at least in the Old World.
That’s because fear of rampant US unilateralism has faded, and been replaced by a more nuanced concern in Europe about the implications of China’s untrammeled economic growth, the weakness of its moderating democratic institutions, and the unpredictability of Beijing’s willingness to resort to military force in its foreign relations.
Back in 2002, when America appeared ascendant in Iraq, had assembled a complete ideological and legal infrastructure supporting unilateral, pre-emptive war worldwide, and George Bush had the political wind and invincible US armed might at his back and was talking about marching on Damascus and Teheran and militarizing the Malacca Straits and who knows what else, France and Germany banded together to provide a counterweight to the United States.
In international relations-speak, there was an attempt led by France and abetted by Germany to midwife a multipolar system i.e. challenge the US unipolar vision with a constellation of European states centered on the European Union, which would provide diplomatic and economic support to states that didn’t want their foreign policy and regional security arrangements dictated by the United States.
Challenging the US power monopoly would, by implication, allow the creation of a third pole in Asia.
China could have become a pillar of such a multi-polar system, a near-equal partner with Europe, its shortcomings in the areas of human rights, democracy, and Taiwan overlooked in favor of its relatively benign foreign policy driven by domestic economic development.
French President Chirac and German Chancellor Schroeder, while seeking to counter the US on Iraq, conducted ostentatiously pro-Chinese foreign policies.
The European multi-polar effort fell victim to the basic weakness of the EU system, exemplified by French rejection of the EU constitution, and assiduous divide and conquer efforts by Washington, typified by Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious Old Europe crack.
Nevertheless, it was only with the greatest of effort that the Bush administration and John Bolton were able to forestall the symbolically significant lifting of the EU arms embargo to China in 2004.
The EU arms embargo, whatever one thinks about the moral and political advisability of arming Beijing, is a diplomatic anachronism, dating back to the Tian An Men massacre of 1989.
In a world awash with arms—and the United States responsible for tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi deaths as a result of the botched occupation, and not only arming India but sanctioning (as in approving) its nuclear weapons program—it seems inconsistent for the European Union to harsh Beijing for the deaths of 3000 people 17 years ago—a massacre that has ushered in a period of unprecedented Chinese political stability and economic growth.
But the EU arms embargo looks stronger than ever.
Part of it has to do with the election of Angela Merkel as the German chancellor—and she probably owes her ascendancy to the fact that American weakness made it impossible for Gerhard Schroeder to replay the anti-Bush card effectively during the recent election.
Part of it has to do with the fact that France—in a development conspicuously underreported by the US press—bereft of a close German partnership and with its EU dream in tatters, has returned to a more productive bilateral relationship with Washington and has been backing American diplomatic moves, particularly in the Middle East.
But I think much of it has to do with the fact that the world is not dealing with American power. It is dealing with American impotence. And that makes a rise in Chinese economic, military, and diplomatic power more disturbing than it would otherwise be.
In the current circumstances, there’s no compelling reason for the Europeans to support the development of Chinese military strength.
Instead, there’s a desire in Europe to move beyond bilateral dealings between weaker individual states and China, and raise its collective profile, without the implication of anti-US confrontation inherent in the term “multipolar”.
The current term of art is an old word: “multilateralism”.
A piece of German thinktankery describes the current zeitgeist:
The European Union should concentrate on remultilateralizing its China policy and in the process seek the greatest possible agreement with the United States.
Gudrun Wacker, ed. China's Rise: The Return of Geopolitics?, SWP Research Paper, Berlin 2006
Rebuffing China on arms and human rights isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s the safe thing to do, and it’s good for relations with the United States.
Interestingly, the EU arms embargo can also play a useful role for Europe in its dealings with Washington, beyond serving as a demonstration of transatlantic solidarity.
It’s one of the few meaningful bargaining chips available to European diplomacy—and it works both ways.
As in: if the US attacks Iran—thereby announcing it has not renounced its dream of a unipolar, America-dominated world—the EU slides closer to China, lifts the arms embargo, and creates a greater deterrent to US adventurism in Asia.
But until then China can dangle in the wind.
So China—the world’s most populous and vibrant economic power, which hasn’t engaged in military aggression since its disastrous border dispute with Vietnam 25 years ago—must still content itself with second-class world citizenship; listen to the self-serving lectures about responsible global citizenship from the same group of nations whose sins of commission and omission created the geopolitical and human disaster in Iraq; and accept that the White Nations’ Club + Japan denies China has the right to arm itself and chart its military and foreign policy destiny without outside interference as befits a world power and Asian empire.
That’s gotta chafe!
But I’ve got to say anything that promotes the demilitarization of foreign policy and forces nations to promote their interests primarily through diplomacy and economics is a good thing.
So, in the realm of unexpected consequences, we can say Thank you to George Bush, for discrediting and destroying the terrifying vision of unipolar, unilateral, war-based American supremacy.
And if that means that China is unfairly excluded from the international arms bazaar as a result, well, that’s collateral damage I think China and the world can live with.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
New Blogroll: More Light, More Heat
There has been an explosion of good writing and reporting about China on the Internet. There’s more translation, research, and reportage that brings new information into the blog process, instead of simple recycling of links and themes. To commemorate this efflorescence, we’re expandin’ the blogroll:
China Law Blog
EastSouthWestNorth Blog
Simon World
RConversation
China Confidential
AsiaPundit
China Digital Times
They’re all down there, to the left.
China Law Blog
EastSouthWestNorth Blog
Simon World
RConversation
China Confidential
AsiaPundit
China Digital Times
They’re all down there, to the left.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
It's the End of the World as We Know It
And it's not just the dollar slipping below 8:1 against the RMB.
"If you asked me two years ago when [the] yuan could become fully convertible, I would have said it would be in [the] remote future - in 15 or 20 years. But today if you ask the same question again, I'll say this could happen well within 10 years, or even likely three years later," said Lee, who is known as the "godfather" of Hong Kong's financial sector.
Wu Zhong, The People’s Forex Liberation Army, Asia Times May 16, 2006
To me, the backstory of Chinese currency reform has been memories of the Asian financial crisis of 1999. China escaped unscathed because its currency was not freely convertible and therefore not vulnerable to revaluation, manipulation, or speculative attack.
Now, Wu Zhong’s story indicates a different imperative at work today: the Chinese government is finding the burden of being the virtually exclusive holder and manager of China’s vast foreign exchange reserves excessively onerous.
The result is an opening toward de-regulatation and decentralization--and covertibility, perhaps in a limited sense.
The new slogan is Forex for the People!
Individuals and entities will be permitted to hold foreign exchange reserves and invest them both in domestic markets and overseas.
For “qualified investors”, it’s already begun. Again from Asia Times:
With the approval of the State Council, the National Social Security Fund became the first qualified institutional investor to put money into overseas stock markets, with the Hong Kong market its top priority. The news drove Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index to its highest levels since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. This year, up to $6 billion is expected to flow out of China into overseas securities markets, which is likely to increase to up to $10 billion.
I see two drivers for the program:
First, in a Chinese world of consistently favorable trade balances, compulsory purchase of forex pours RMB into the local economy and stokes inflationary pressures. China can move to a more pro-active and rational macro-economic policy if it doesn’t have to buy every dollar that comes into the country.
Second, the Chinese government feels it already holds enough US dollars and US government debt. Maybe millions of Chinese forex holders will still keep their money in dollars and buy US Treasuries, but maybe they won’t. It’s not the Chinese government’s headache anymore.
It will probably turn out to be a headache for Chinese investors. I am anticipating a tsunami of money, followed by a tidal wave of fraud, and then an avalanche of losses.
It may be a bigger headache for us.
The implication for the US government, of course, is that it can’t rely as much as it did in the past on providing the primary, preferred destination for the overtaxed Chinese bureaucrats seeking to offload tens of billions of dollars of new forex reserves every month.
Weakening the symbiotic relationship between the US government and the Chinese government may modify the behavior of the US government: we may not feel we are hostage to China’s bankers, and may pursue more aggressive trade policies without worrying that the PRC will stay away from the next US Treasuries auction and plunge our economy into a tailspin.
It’s more likely we’ll miss that simpler world where Chinese bankers, trapped behind a wall of policy, regulation, and currency controls, had no choice but to dump their millions in the lap of the US Treasury.
With the US government notching up deficits of about $300 billion a year for the foreseeable future, it can’t be reassuring to see one of the biggest customers for our debt setting limits on the increase in its exposure.
Now we’ll have to compete with a larger spectrum of higher-yielding investment instruments available to smaller, less risk-averse forex holders, probably causing an increase in our borrowing costs and goosing US inflation as a result.
Whether the free flow of forex and a dynamic international currency market for the RMB symbolizes true convertibility—and China’s final mastery of its fears of currency manipulation—is, for me, still an open question.
The program described in the Asia Times looks to me like liberalized, privatized management of forex reserves accumulated under China’s current account—the trade surplus.
Allowing the price of that forex to fluctuate--and creating the financial markets and instruments to enable speculation in that forex--is a logical corollary. That's convertibility, at least in one sense of the word.
It does not look like China has plans for opening the capital account to speculative inflows. The Chinese government would presumably maintain the financial heft and privileged position needed to guide the value of the RMB against foreign currencies.
Hat tip to Simon World for pointing out the Asia Times piece.
"If you asked me two years ago when [the] yuan could become fully convertible, I would have said it would be in [the] remote future - in 15 or 20 years. But today if you ask the same question again, I'll say this could happen well within 10 years, or even likely three years later," said Lee, who is known as the "godfather" of Hong Kong's financial sector.
Wu Zhong, The People’s Forex Liberation Army, Asia Times May 16, 2006
To me, the backstory of Chinese currency reform has been memories of the Asian financial crisis of 1999. China escaped unscathed because its currency was not freely convertible and therefore not vulnerable to revaluation, manipulation, or speculative attack.
Now, Wu Zhong’s story indicates a different imperative at work today: the Chinese government is finding the burden of being the virtually exclusive holder and manager of China’s vast foreign exchange reserves excessively onerous.
The result is an opening toward de-regulatation and decentralization--and covertibility, perhaps in a limited sense.
The new slogan is Forex for the People!
Individuals and entities will be permitted to hold foreign exchange reserves and invest them both in domestic markets and overseas.
For “qualified investors”, it’s already begun. Again from Asia Times:
With the approval of the State Council, the National Social Security Fund became the first qualified institutional investor to put money into overseas stock markets, with the Hong Kong market its top priority. The news drove Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index to its highest levels since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. This year, up to $6 billion is expected to flow out of China into overseas securities markets, which is likely to increase to up to $10 billion.
I see two drivers for the program:
First, in a Chinese world of consistently favorable trade balances, compulsory purchase of forex pours RMB into the local economy and stokes inflationary pressures. China can move to a more pro-active and rational macro-economic policy if it doesn’t have to buy every dollar that comes into the country.
Second, the Chinese government feels it already holds enough US dollars and US government debt. Maybe millions of Chinese forex holders will still keep their money in dollars and buy US Treasuries, but maybe they won’t. It’s not the Chinese government’s headache anymore.
It will probably turn out to be a headache for Chinese investors. I am anticipating a tsunami of money, followed by a tidal wave of fraud, and then an avalanche of losses.
It may be a bigger headache for us.
The implication for the US government, of course, is that it can’t rely as much as it did in the past on providing the primary, preferred destination for the overtaxed Chinese bureaucrats seeking to offload tens of billions of dollars of new forex reserves every month.
Weakening the symbiotic relationship between the US government and the Chinese government may modify the behavior of the US government: we may not feel we are hostage to China’s bankers, and may pursue more aggressive trade policies without worrying that the PRC will stay away from the next US Treasuries auction and plunge our economy into a tailspin.
It’s more likely we’ll miss that simpler world where Chinese bankers, trapped behind a wall of policy, regulation, and currency controls, had no choice but to dump their millions in the lap of the US Treasury.
With the US government notching up deficits of about $300 billion a year for the foreseeable future, it can’t be reassuring to see one of the biggest customers for our debt setting limits on the increase in its exposure.
Now we’ll have to compete with a larger spectrum of higher-yielding investment instruments available to smaller, less risk-averse forex holders, probably causing an increase in our borrowing costs and goosing US inflation as a result.
Whether the free flow of forex and a dynamic international currency market for the RMB symbolizes true convertibility—and China’s final mastery of its fears of currency manipulation—is, for me, still an open question.
The program described in the Asia Times looks to me like liberalized, privatized management of forex reserves accumulated under China’s current account—the trade surplus.
Allowing the price of that forex to fluctuate--and creating the financial markets and instruments to enable speculation in that forex--is a logical corollary. That's convertibility, at least in one sense of the word.
It does not look like China has plans for opening the capital account to speculative inflows. The Chinese government would presumably maintain the financial heft and privileged position needed to guide the value of the RMB against foreign currencies.
Hat tip to Simon World for pointing out the Asia Times piece.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)