The Economist has a timely, and very sobre assessment, of the state of the Chinese company (or should that be the Chinese state company, in any event Howard French has posted the entire piece, just in case we get link-rot), Brad Setser has a very well argued post on how China effectively seems to be continuing to operate a dollar peg (“Rather than pegging at 8.28, China is now seems to peg at 8.095-8.11”), and Asia Pundit Myrick has an excellent round-up of the general state of the argument in the ongoing ‘China Soft or Hard Landing’ debate.
Monthly Archives: September 2005
Troubled Waters And No Bridge
Global Voices has a story (Hat Tip Financial Times and Simon World) about how China dissident Shi Tao has more than a little cause to be angry with Yahoo. Reporters Sans Frontiers, on analysing the text of the verdict in Shi Tao’s case (he was sentenced to 10 years in April for “divulging state secrets abroad”) , found that details supplied by Yahoo Holdings (Hong King) Ltd helped identify and convict him.
As Global Voices indicates Yahoo “provided the Chinese investigating organs with detailed information that apparently enabled them to link Shi’s personal e-mail account (on the Chinese Yahoo! service at yahoo.com.cn) and the specific message containing information treated as a “state secret” to the IP address of his computer”.
Now this raises a number of interesting issues.
Continue reading
The Nuclear Option
Don’t blame me, blame Alex for this, since he’s the one who started me thinking about all those other issues associated with the German elections – apart that is from the economic ones. Like this in today’s FT:
“It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. ….Last week, she (Angela Merkel) named Heinrich von Pierer, a former Siemens chief executive, her chief economic advisor. The fresh faces, it was thought, would add energy and credibility to her bid for the top job….(but)…Mr von Pierer sparked his own media firestorm when he called for an extension of the life of nuclear power stations by 60 years.”
I may be slow, but the implications of this didn’t really sink-in till I read in the EU observer that:
“Brussels predicts that oil prices will stay high in the foreseeable future and that the EU will need to build more nuclear reactors..”I expect investments in the nuclear sector in Europe, and in the rest of the world, will grow”, the commissioner (Andris Piebalgs) said.
Well, no wonder the greens are fuming.
Vlad Says That’s Bad, Lads!
The Guardian today carries yet another article by Jonathan Steele on how badly the Ukrainians have hurt Vladimir Putin’s feelings, here. Putin, at a “two-and-a-half hour meeting with academics and journalists in the Kremlin” apparently had this to say:
” One of the parties cannot be cornered by means of unconstitutional activities. Otherwise other people in the region can say ‘Why don’t we act against the constitution?'”
Indeed. But can someone please remind the man that there is nothing at all constitutional in rigging the elections, poisoning the opposition and murdering annoying journalists? It also stretches credibility that he seems to think he’s responsible for upholding the constitutions of states in “the region” (which is presumably a rebranded variant of “the near abroad”), or rather, upholding their governments against their constitutions. If that wasn’t enough, though, what about his next line?
“He said corruption was blooming there and people around the next president have started to enrich themselves. We said this before and no-one wanted to listen to us.”
Ye gods, Russia as the stalwart defender of probity in public office. I think that probably qualifies him for this week’s Orwell nomination back on my own blog. But can anyone make sense of this paragraph?
He spoke with repeated anger about what has been happening in the former Soviet republics. “We cannot go back to the Russian empire. Only an idiot can imagine we’re striving for that.”
Well, those two lines are entirely mutually incompatible, no? The point of all this is, of course, that first of all he doesn’t care at all about anybody’s constitution, and secondly he still sees himself as being in a position to lecture his ex-colonies, although he has learned to deny it. After all, what does all this stuff about other countries’ constitutions mean practically? What does he think would have happened if “we” had listened to him?
Either that “we” would have pressed the OFF switch and all the people on the Kiev Maidan would have gone away, or, I suppose, that we would have supported a Tiananmen solution. Fantastic, and more evidence that the EU’s Nachbarschaftspolitik needs very great care. (Don’t forget, either, that Steele has previous for being feted at the Kremlin.)
…And The German Election Posts Just Keep Coming
Naturally enough, following the US model, the really important thing in the (quasi-)presidential debate isn’t what happens during the debate, but the post-debate exploitation of whatever happens then. So no surprise to find that the SPD and the Greens are jumping all over a claim that Angela Merkel, as well as quoting Reagan, was being a little economical with the truth regarding her own past position on childcare and abortion.
The story is thin, but the meat seems to be that Merkel allegedly claimed that as Minister for Women she introduced a right to childcare from the age of three onwards – in fact she abstained when the legislation went through the Bundestag, because the provision was included in the same bill that established a unified law on abortion for united Germany. It’s not much, but you’ve got to try…
(In the light of the post below, isn’t it strange that squeezing completely unconnected provisions into bills is itself a rather Capitol Hill practice?)
Germany’s American Campaign
Well, it seems my guest stint is going to be along the lines of “All German Election, All The Time”, but some more things have come up! In last night’s TV debate between Schröder and Merkel, it seems, the CDU leader used some words that weren’t entirely her own. According to Der Standard (or should that be “the Austrian newspaper whose website could be better organised”?), her peroration was very similar to another peroration delivered in the same sort of circumstances. Not Bismarck this time…but Ronald Reagan, in his debate with Jimmy Carter on the 28th of October 1980. (You can compare the texts at the link above.) Now, that is of minor interest in itself, but it does point up a curious feature of modern German politics.
It’s all so American.
As I pointed out in my last AFOE contribution, Germany has a curious combination of a parliamentary constitution and a presidential political culture, which gives rise to the notion of a Spitzenkandidat separate from the party leader. Not only that, but yesterday saw all national TV networks cleared for a one-to-one debate between the top two candidates…something that doesn’t happen even in supposedly presidential Britain. Slogans have something oddly transatlantic about them, too – Edmund Stoiber ran last time under the line “Kantig. Echt. Erfolgreich.”, which reminded me at least far more of “A Reformer With Results” than anything European.
It’s always said that TV is crucial in Britain, but there is so little political coverage that I’ve always doubted its importance relative to the press, which covers elections exhaustively and addresses a readership more likely than the average to vote. But German elections seem far more televisual…
Just as in last year’s US presidential election, the whole debate was accompanied by a spin storm whipped up by both sides’ pet bloggers (the CDU cunningly grabbed the domain name wahlfakten.de for theirs whilst the SPD had to content themselves with roteblogs). However, wahlblog05.de seems to be channelling the spirit of our dear departed generalelection05, scrupulously balanced and perhaps even a tad too serious.
WB05 informs us that another US political tradition has even taken hold, too – destroying your opponents’ campaign materials. What on earth is going on?
Not sentimental, and no France
Until a couple of days ago, I was very nearly incommunicado for two weeks. We took the kids to Italy on holiday, you see, and found ourselves in a place with no television, no internets, not even mobile-phone reception. The tiny shop at the site doesn’t even stock English-language (or any other non-Italian) newspapers, and my Italian is, if that is possible, even viler and more vestigial than my Spanish. I found this isolation very pleasant altogether, and in some ways regret having to come back into the connected world.
This Is Fascinating
While the debate rages about who are what has been ultimately responsible for the plight of all those poor, largely black, people who got left behind when New Orleans went ‘under water’, this reuters article raises some fascinating points.
“If refugees end up building new lives away from New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina may prompt the largest U.S. black resettlement since the 20th century’s Great Migration lured southern blacks to the North in a search for jobs and better lives.”
“Interviews with refugees in Houston, which is expecting many thousands of evacuees to remain, suggest that thousands of blacks who lost everything and had no insurance will end up living in Texas or other U.S. states.”
“Officials say it will take many months and maybe even years before the birthplace of jazz is rebuilt.”
Dynamic systems, steady state stable bad equilibria and shocks. Fascinating.
“New Orleans did not always follow the trend. Historically, far fewer residents have moved from New Orleans than from most American cities, despite its high poverty and crime rates.”
In other words many people had become simply ‘stuck’ there. Actually, maybe the writer should have said because of the “high poverty and crime rates”, in chaos theory terms that’s precisely how things like ‘strange attractors’ and ‘sinks’ operate.
The possibility of this outcome had in fact been going through my mind. Obviously I’m in Europe, so I don’t really know at first hand, but I have the impression that this would be the best thing that could happen.
Mind you, I agree with Nicholas Lemann, author of “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America,” who is quoted as saying it is too early to tell. Quite. But here I think is one area where policy really could make a difference. Get these people into stable temporary housing, get them into jobs, get their children into schools. Then they won’t be going back.
Another Ripple
From the AP via CNN:
Anti-flood measures will be reviewed in all Dutch regions below sea level in light of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath to ensure they would be adequate in an emergency, the government said Sunday. …
The government is planning to spend $3.7 billion over the next ten years on new projects against the threat from river floods, in addition to the $620 million spent annually on maintaining the current system in the country.
Can’t remember where I read this, but one report said that until the mid-20th century, Dutch dikes were built to withstand a 100-year flood. After a serious event, they decided to raise the standard to a 10,000-year flood. I don’t know if that’s even possible to calculate, but it sure sounds good.
Going Up, But Not Going Down
AP reports that the Russian navy does not have the funds this year to buy underwater rescue vessels of the type Britain sent to Russia to save the lives of seven men trapped in a mini-sub in the Pacific last month:
“We do not have the money at the moment,” but the navy expected to obtain the money next year, Adm. Vladimir Masorin was quoted as saying by the RIA-Novosti news agency.
Russian naval authorities said after the crisis that they would buy two Scorpio underwater robotic vehicles. Each vessel costs between $1 million and $5 million, depending on the configuration.