Archive for the 'China' Category

The Hukou system

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 weeks ago
in China
. 6 Comments

Until I visited China in 2008, I’d never heard of the Hukou system. But it’s a massive deal in China, with hundreds of millions of migrant workers in the larger cities treated as second-class citizens, with little access to basic government services like schooling and health care. In terms of the sheer number of people it effects, it’s probably the single biggest human rights issue in that country.

So it’s a massive deal if the Hukou system is to be reformed; something that has been predicted for some time but hasn’t seemed to go anywhere. But Kam Wing Chan has a post at the East Asia Forum suggesting that there may be some gradual change in the wings:

Yes it’s true – hukou (household registration) reform is again back in vogue in China’s ‘post-crisis’ conversations. Premier Wen Jiabao has been talking about it and, unusually the catch phrase has also been placed in the first ‘Central Document’ of 2010. Following the lead of these two sources, hundreds of newspaper articles and commentaries have opined on it in the last few weeks. On March 1, 13 big-city newspapers from 11 provinces in China also made a rare joint appeal for accelerating reform of the hukou system in a co-signed editorial. In sum, the issue is firmly in the spotlight, and hopes have been raised for some real hukou reform.

I’m no expert, but it seems straightforward to me that substantial reform of the Hukou system will result in massive social expenditures for the Chinese government (which is obviously a good thing for those currently not receiving such basic services); funding this, without reducing the incomes of Chinese city elites, is going to require continued economic growth. It does tend to explain some of the Chinese reluctance to commit to any kind of emissions reduction that might restrict economic growth, even as their cities choke on their own pollution.

Google v. Australian government

Published
by
Mark
2 months ago
in Authoritarianism, China, Politics and The Web
. 7 Comments

In the wake of Google’s changed stance toward the Chinese government, the company has now raised concerns about the Rudd government’s internet filter.

In a piece in Crikey today, Jason Whittaker reported: Continue reading ‘Google v. Australian government’

Google grows a pair?

Published
by
Phil
2 months, 1 week ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, China, Economics, Ethics, Foreign policy, Government, Law, Markets, Media, Nationalism, Policy, Politics, Security, Technology and Trade
. 22 Comments

Google.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Continue reading ‘Google grows a pair?’

Is Copenhagen’s failure our fault?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months ago
in China, Climate change, Developing world, International and USA
. 113 Comments

Whether the Copenhagen Accord is half full or half empty is still being debated. Joe Romm takes says the glass is actually 2/3rds full. But as to why the glass isn’t completely full, George Monbiot makes the provocative claim that in part, we are responsible:

So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people – the kind who read the Guardian – have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn’t do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you.

Is this music not to your taste, sir, or madam? Perhaps you would like our little orchestra to play something louder, to drown out that horrible grinding noise.

Continue reading ‘Is Copenhagen’s failure our fault?’

We’re all kleptomaniacs now

Published
by
Mark
5 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, China, International, Media and The Web
. 21 Comments

Rupert Murdoch has stepped up his rhetoric about the evils of new media at a shindig in that bastion of press freedom, China. You can read all about it at Derek Barry’s Woolly Days.

The sheer onion-ness of President Obama’s Nobel win yesterday has deflected international attention from the fact that a conference of media Canutes had just declared war on the Interwebs. The announcement came at a three day “world media summit” between Western media elites and Communist cadres that Japanese Kyodo News dubbed “Beijing’s Media Olympics”. Among others, Associated Press’s CEO Tom Curley and News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch joined Chinese leader Hu Jintao on stage in the Great Hall of the People to denounce the people for the way they used media content.

Elsewhere: Spinopsys and Jeff Jarvis (link rich post).

The irony is just too obvious. At the summit, Chinese leaders tell media leaders to create just ”’true, correct, comprehensive and objective’ news coverage.” As we say online: Heh.

Stern Hu open thread

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 1 week ago
in China, Crime, Law and Trade
. 104 Comments

The obvious point to be made in the case of Stern Hu, the Rio Tinto executive detained in China for alleged bribery and espionage, is that it’s unacceptable for Australian citizens (or anyone else, for that matter) to be locked up indefinitely without a proper legal process. That said, as An Onymous Lefty points out, at least the Australian government has finally raised formal objections, unlike a certain former government when an Australian citizen spent five years in detention without any semblance of due legal process…

Beyond that, it’s hard to figure out what the hell kind of game is being played here. However much Australia, and the developed nations, may “need” China, they “need” us too. And throwing citizens of Western countries into what is going to be perceived as arbitrary detention, which could theoretically go on for years is going to have rather a chilling effect on business ties. That’s in no-one’s interest, least of all the Communist Party leadership’s. So what’s really going on here?

Troubles at the frontier

Published
by
Robert Merkel
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in China and Race
. 38 Comments

Urumqi must be one of the most obscure cities of its size anywhere on Earth. Google Maps shows its location in the far north-western corner of China. It’s the capital of Xinjiang Province, whose indigenous population was mainly Muslim Uighurs. But over the past few decades, increasing numbers of Han Chinese have moved there, particularly to Urumqi, and these days Uighurs are a minority group in Urumqi.

Figuring out exactly what went on there over the past few days is rather difficult, but Wikipedia’s summary of the news reports suggests that the trouble initially started after a brawl at a workplace saw two Uighur workers killed by Han Chinese. A protest by Uighurs demanding further investigation of these killings was then subject to heavy-handed policing, which saw it turn into a riot. Further violence has apparently ensued with groups of Han Chinese committing revenge attacks.

Some useful context is provided by this piece at opendemocracy.net, which notes Uighur groups in China and elsewhere, and their – largely peaceful – attempts to achieve more autonomy and self-determination. This New York Times article also notes Chinese government policies towards the Uighurs, including a gradual erosion of the use of their language in the school system, and the fact that most of the economic spoils from growth seem to be going to Han Chinese.

While China remains a totalitarian state, it seems likely that minority rights will continue to be trampled on. But if and when the current political system changes, it will be interesting to see how China’s relationship with the ethnic minorities in its border provinces sort themselves out.

Tiananmen Square, 4 June 1989 – 20th anniversary open thread

Published
by
Paul Norton
9 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, China, Film, TV, Video etc and Media
. 46 Comments

It was twenty years ago today that events occurred in China which caused me as much anger and grief as any political event that I can recall, and which had a similar effect on virtually everyone I knew who was old enough to know what was going on.

Plese feel welcome to post your thoughts about the Tiananmen Square massacre and related issues, your recollections of that time, and anything else which is relevant to this theme.

An account of the massacre, the preceding protests and the aftermath is provided on Wikipedia. A report on the extraordinary steps being taken by the Chinese government to prevent its citizens knowing about or discussing those events is provided in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. Video imagery of the protests and the massacre can be viewed here and here.

Update: Sinclair Davidson has posted, with links, at Catallaxy. Stephen McDonnell is reporting from Beijing for the ABC, under difficult conditions.

Detainees and protestors

Published
by
Robert Merkel
9 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Crime, Law, Security and Terrorism
. 28 Comments

Australia has been asked to take 17 Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Held for the past 7 years, they were declassified as “economy combatants” back in 2005. They can’t go back to their home, in north-western China, because of the well-founded belief that they would be persecuted by the Chinese government. Malcolm Turnbull, of course, is terribly concerned about the risks they pose.

Well, here’s an idea. Let’s take these poor sods – who’ve been sitting in Gitmo for seven years for no good reason – as a simple matter of humanity. To keep the nervous Nellies amongst the Tories happy, let’s use some of the 1500 ASIO agents Australia now employs – to be 1800 by next year, triple what it was back in 1996 – to keep an eye on them in the unlikely event one of them does pose a threat. Perhaps they could could spare some of the agents who clearly don’t have enough to do, given their interest in chatting to people holding up banners outside coal-fired power stations (as discussed by Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates recently)?

China-US deal on emissions a possibility?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
10 months ago
in China, Climate change, Developing world, Environment and USA
. 14 Comments

The long-term future of our technological civilization depends on China and the USA participating in a serious global deal to cut CO2 emissions. But there’s long been skepticism whether either will be prepared to act. Now, there’s reports that China and the US have been holding quiet talks on a bilateral deal – and it appears to be good news. Joe Romm follows up the story. The key point – China may agree to big cuts in emissions intensity by 2020, and hard, absolute caps in carbon emissions cutting in a few years later:

China is almost certainly not going to agree to a hard cap this year. And it is not news that China has been contemplating a strong carbon intensity (CO2 per GDP) target (see 2007 China Post story). But it would be news if, as Bill says, they are willing to publicly agree to aggressive and enforceable energy efficiency and carbon intensity targets, including the 50% carbon intensity cut by 2020.

Bill also believes that “a hard cap in emissions is possible” by China for 2025 with a major inflection point around 2020. He points out that Jiang Kejun, director of the Energy Research Institute, one of China’s leading policy thinktanks, has been delivering a very strong presentation about how China could quickly move toward a low-carbon economy.

If this pans out, it would be excellent news. Of course, whatever the Chinese and the USA agree, Australia will be virtually forced to fit in with, CPRS targets or not.

Why swine flu and why now?

Published
by
Mark
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in Apocalypse, China, Developing world, Disasters, Health, International, Medicine, Politics, Science and USA
. 54 Comments

Is it a sign of the apocalypse? Or even a new phenomenon? Mike Davis thinks not:

But what matters more (especially given the continued threat of H5N1) is the larger configuration: the WHO’s failed pandemic strategy, the further decline of world public health, the stranglehold of big pharma over lifeline medicines, and the planetary catastrophe of industrialised and ecologically unhinged livestock production.

G20: historic?

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Consumerism, Economics, Europe, Foreign policy, International, Markets, Media, Sociology and USA
. 27 Comments

It seems as if the G20 Summit did enough to give equity markets a rare moment of euphoria – as has become common during the Global Financial Crisis, “markets” get all excited whenever there’s more regulation and government takes on more responsibility for facilitating trade and the provision of finance for credit markets. Bankers and hedge fund types aren’t over the moon, though, reports The Guardian, which has a useful section full of extensive coverage of the summit and its outcomes.

Domestically, The Australian appears to have reverted to its previous incarnation as the Government Gazette, printing oodles of stuff which appears to be Rudd government spin – the corner has been turned, a recovery budget is being framed, Rudd has established himself on the world stage, etc, etc.

Whether or not we’re looking at an early recovery is somewhat questionable, but it appears to be the current orthodoxy. The turnaround on the stimulus question at the G20 does enable the Australian government to square the policy circle and eschew pressure for more stimulus packages, as well as outline a “medium term fiscal strategy” in next month’s budget which will enable a narrative of “economic conservatism” to be revived. Thus the Opposition will be further marginalised, with even the skerrick of an economic story they have taken away from them.

But, while the G20 has done some tinkering around the edges in terms of restraining “excesses”, claims that an era of “moral capitalism” has been inaugurated appear somewhat hyperbolic. The presumption behind moves such as the use of the IMF to provide trade financing is that we can get back to business as usual soonish. Continue reading ‘G20: historic?’

Kevin Rudd, Gordon Brown, Adam Smith and free markets

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Economics, Europe, History, International, Markets, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and USA
. 95 Comments

As Kevin Rudd joined Gordon Brown in decrying “the false god” of “unfettered free markets” in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Janet Albrechtsen got her apoplexy in early, lamenting the fact that Kevin Rudd doesn’t read Hayek (apparently Ayaan Hirsi Ali has offered to tutor the Prime Minister in the guru of “economics and the rule of law”).

Albrechtsen tied herself in a series of knots trying to find the “gotcha” moment in Rudd’s ideological discourse. In point of fact, it’s quite possible to reconcile fiscal conservatism with being a social democrat, but the Hayek worshippers seem stuck in an age when there was supposedly a slippery slope between any view that markets are social institutions and socialism itself.

Here, it’s perhaps interesting that Gordon Brown chose to invoke Adam Smith on several occasions, a thinker to whom the authors of Hayekian dribble pay only occasional and meaningless obeisance:

Now, let me put markets in context. They can create unrivalled widening of choices and chances, harnessing self-interest to produce results transcending self-interest. When they work, they will fulfil the promise of Adam Smith that individual gain leads to collective gain, that even when people are pursuing private interests and private wishes they can nevertheless deliver public good.

But as we are discovering to our considerable cost, the problem is that, without transparent rules to guide them, free markets can reduce all relationships to transactions, all motivations to self-interest; as Jonathan Sacks has said, they can reduce all sense of value to consumer choice, all sense of worth to a price tag. So, unbridled and untrammelled, they can become the enemy of the good society.

And we can now see also that markets cannot self-regulate, but they can self-destruct and, again, if untrammelled and unbridled, they can become not just the enemy of the good society; they can become the enemy of the good economy. Markets are in the public interest but they are not synonymous with it.

Gordon Brown, a former university lecturer with a History PhD from Edinburgh, perhaps has a better claim to public intellectual status than Kevin Rudd. His whole speech is worth a read, and the full text is here (as is Rudd’s). Continue reading ‘Kevin Rudd, Gordon Brown, Adam Smith and free markets’

Open G20 thread

Published
by
Kim
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Economics, Europe, International, Markets, Media, Poverty, Sociology and USA
. 17 Comments

As I’ve been implying, coverage of the preliminaries of the G20 summit has been distorted through the lens of domestic politics – of the most trivial kind. ABC tv news, tonight, for instance, was obsessed by whether Kevin Rudd’s decision to try to sit next to David Miliband rather than the Chinese Ambassador to the UK at the recording of a BBC talk show was significant.

Yet “jobs” and the other mantras which pollies like to chant are very much at stake in London this week – a global crisis obviously requires global action. Part of the context for the stoush going on with European governments – and of the maneouvrings regarding China I alluded to in my previous post – is the relative decline in US influence. The IMF itself is being touted as a vehicle for global coordination because the power of exhortation from the United States is much weakened – despite the fact that the chief spokesperson for American influence is now Barack Obama.

There’s also that small matter of where the Global Financial Crisis originated. Continue reading ‘Open G20 thread’

More on the Yellow Peril

Published
by
Kim
11 months, 3 weeks ago
in China, Developing world, Economics, Ethics, International, Media and Politics
. 79 Comments

In the wake of the Joel Fitzgibbon brouhaha, the “investigative journalists” of the press are now hot on the heels of any vague link between an ALP figure and China, working themselves up into an illogical lather of meaningless connection hyperbole, accompanied by the drumbeat of dumb soundbeats from Opposition frontbenchers. Julie Bishop’s claim that Kevin Rudd is “the Manchurian candidate” probably takes the cake.

There’s a bit of a case study here in how political opportunism and media ZOMG!-ism combine to obscure some real (and really important) issues which should be the subject of public debate.

Among those are the legitimate question of whether China’s financial heft should be reflected by a shift in its voting status in the IMF – now that China is more or less expected to continue to finance the voracious sovereign debt of Western nations seeking to stimulate their way out of the GFC. There are also issues around investments by Chinese entities which are effectively sovereign wealth funds in Australia… And the whole story about Joel Fitzgibbon and what’s actually going on with the governance of an arrogant and unwieldy defence empire is completely obscured rather than enlightened by all of this.

Crikey put it well in today’s editorial, which has been reproduced (with permission) over the fold.

Continue reading ‘More on the Yellow Peril’