The splendid fireworks of the Beijing Olympics are seen as marking China’s ascendance to world power status. Chatham House, Wilton Park, the Financial Times and The Economist, together with many American publications, are all talking about China as a power. An international consensus is emerging that China is a world power. There is, therefore, a lot of scrutiny about the rights and wrongs in China and what China should and should not do. Fred Bergsten, Director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, first suggested the idea of the G2. [Zbigniew] Brzezinski stated that China is second only to the United States. A survey in Europe at the end of 2007 echoed his view, as 80 percent of respondents believed China has become the No. 2 world power. Clearly China is moving from the margins to the center of world politics. There are some loudly expressed concerns about what kind of power China will become. I am often asked during speech occasions: As it grows stronger, would China impose its will on others? But is China a power? The response of the Chinese people is very different. Most of them still see China still as a developing country. A popular saying in Chinese is huyou, meaning to sweep China off its feet. Last January, I hosted a debate at my embassy. The topic was “China’s international status.” About 140 people came, including embassy diplomats, businesspeople and journalists stationed in London. It was the most heated debate I’ve had with my fellow Chinese. A young man kicked off the debate by saying that China is a world power second only to the United States. He was challenged by almost the whole crowd. People spoke one after another, citing statistics and problems in China to argue that we are just another developing country. I then asked, “Who would agree with the him?” I saw only four hands. That means only five people, including the gentleman himself, were of the view, or less than 4 percent of the participants shared Brzezinski’s perception. Then I asked the crowd, “Which country do you think is the No. 2 power in the world?” They answered almost without hesitation, “Russia.” “Which is the third?” “Germany.” “The fourth?” “Great Britain.” When it came to the fifth, some said France, and some said it could be China. Though such generalized way of ranking cannot be an accurate reflection of the complex positions and circumstances of different countries. Yet this discussion can reflect the general thinking of the Chinese people. Are we right, and is the world wrong? There are clearly facts to support both arguments. Many years ago, when Mr. Deng Xiaoping was summarizing China for a foreign visitor, he said China was both “big and small, strong and weak.” This remains true of today’s China. People outside China tend to see the big and strong aspects of China, while inside China, we are more aware of its weaknesses and challenges. Let me compare some statistics about China and the UK to illustrate the two dimensions of China. —China’s gross domestic product (GDP) ascended to third place in the world in 2008, and is expected to rise to No. 2 in the near future. The UK’s ranking fell to No. 6. However, in per-capita terms, China has only $3,000, making it No. 104 in the world, while the UK has about $46,000, 15 times higher, ranking 20th. This means UK citizens have a much higher standard of living. —In terms of trade, China is the third largest in the world, the UK No. 8. However, the UK’s services trade is No. 2 in the world and China is just developing the services sector. —By the end of March, China’s foreign currency reserves were 30 times that of the UK. Among the 10 biggest banks in the world, four are from China and one is from the UK. The market value of ICBC [Industrial and Commercial Bank of China] can buy two HSBCs, still with a bit of surplus. However, London is a global financial center with about 550 foreign banks and 170 international securities firms. Among the top 500 companies in Europe, 100 have their headquarters in London. —The UK is a post-industrial society and urban residents make up 90 percent of the population. China is in the early phase of industrialization and urbanization. Sixty percent of its population is rural, and 135 million people still live on less than $1 a day. The list could go on and on. The Chinese premier once remarked: Any small problem in China can grow into a huge one if multiplied by 1.3 billion. A big achievement can become too tiny to notice once divided by that number. What is China’s target, then? What are we trying to achieve? It is hard to generalize. To put it in simple terms, we are hoping to develop China into a country with prosperity, democracy and rule of law and a country that works for peace and cooperation in the world. The Chinese pursuit of prosperity is to enable everyone to have a roof over his head, every child to be in school, the sick to have access to medical care and the elderly to be taken care of. That is now within our grasp. For the first time in history, people are not dying of hunger in China. Even when I was in college, the greeting words for people meeting each other on the street were not “How are you?” but “Have you had your meal?” Food was the biggest concern for families and the government. Now if you ask young people like my daughter, “Have you had your meal?” they would think you have a problem. I met an American couple who just came back from Shanghai and they think the Shanghai skyline is surreal. But the most significant changes in China are not only in big cities like Shanghai, but also in the vast rural areas. I wonder how many people noticed that on the first day of 2006 China abolished the agricultural tax. For 2,600 years, successive governments in the Middle Kingdom mainly depended on taxing the farmers. This move marked China’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. In 2007, with the implementation of the program to extend power supply to every village, many people saw electric light for the first time in their lives. About half of the rural population in China has never gone to hospital for economic reasons. A cooperative medical care scheme now covers 90 percent of rural China. Though small, starting at 50 yuan ($7.35) per person and now 100 yuan ($14.7), it has enabled many farmers to be cared for during times of sickness. Although prosperity is not evenly shared and there is still poverty in the countryside, we are confident that the trend of prosperity is going to continue and the people will be better off with each passing year. I can’t talk about China without mentioning the political and democratic development. The world tends to overestimate the economic progress in China and overlook China’s progress in political reform and socialist democratic development. Before coming here, I searched through Baidu, a Chinese search engine, for “China’s democratic political reform.” I got 1.39 million results in less than a second. There are very different opinions on this subject and some interesting analyses and suggestions. For me, having seen the anarchy of the “cultural revolution” of the 1960s and having witnessed the progress of reform, I can see China has come a long way in the development of democratic decision-making and the rule of law. Take the role of the National People’s Congress, for example. It has assumed a very important role in China’s political life. Of the 231 laws in China, 223 were promulgated in the past 30 years. The National People’s Congress is covering huge legislative work that in many countries was done over hundreds of years. The Property Law took a record seven years of debate throughout the country. When the Labor Law was debated, the National People’s Congress received 200,000 suggestions, 65 percent of which came from the grassroots level. I remember the first time international journalists appeared during the National People’s Congress, the delegates were quite surprised. Now they come in larger numbers, 800 this year. They even sat in on some of the meetings and asked questions. President Hu Jintao said at the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), “Power should operate in the sunshine.” At the center of the democratic reform is the decision-making process. Both the Party and the government have set up a structure under which major decisions are made only after full consultations. Transparency in the personnel system has also been a focus of constant reform measures. I once visited the Ministry of Science and Technology and saw in the entrance hall some large posters about who was going to be promoted and soliciting opinions. This is done at all levels and for all important posts. Elections were introduced at the rural level 10 years ago. Some 64,000 villagers’ committees had been set up as of the end of 2004, all of them being directly elected. Eighty-five percent of villages have set up mechanisms for making important decisions. However, I am not saying that China has a perfect democratic system. The reason the President used the term democracy about 60 times [in his report to the 17th CPC National Congress] is precisely because, as the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, he wanted to emphasize its importance and was calling for greater effort to develop democracy in the Party and the government. We are halfway through the reform program and everything is still in transition. Just as you can see new buildings in Beijing every year, you will also see new political development in China every year. The direction is toward greater openness, transparency and accountability. On the international front, the role China wants to play is to encourage dialogue and cooperation. We do not believe in imposing our will on others, or interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. We see our role in the world as to contribute to peace. China’s interests have never been so closely linked with those of the world and vice versa. The financial crisis has brought home the fact that we are sharing one boat. As the Chinese President remarked at the London summit, only by working together can we steer the boat to its desired destination. Now coming back to the question with which I started the speech, is China a power? I firmly believe that China, a country with 1.3 billion people, smart, hardworking and happy, is destined to be a strong country in the world. But China will not become a hegemony. China has come this far not through war, but through hard work by its vast number of people and through fair trade with the world. The source of China’s strength is its economy. China’s diplomatic objective is to promote peace and cooperation in the world, in which China can continue to prosper and its people can achieve a better life. Source: www.bjreview.com.cn, May-8-2009 |
Category: China
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Is China a Power?
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Barack Obama Is No Jimmy Carter. He’s Richard Nixon.
THE NEW REALISM
By Michael Freedman | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 25, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009Republicans have been trying to link Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter ever since he started his presidential campaign, and they’re still at it. After Obama recently shook hands with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, GOP ideologue Newt Gingrich said the president looked just like Carter—showing the kind of “weakness” that keeps the “aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators” licking their chops.
But Obama is no Carter. Carter made human rights the cornerstone of his foreign policy, while the Obama team has put that issue on the back burner. In fact, Obama sounds more like another 1970s president: Richard Nixon. Both men inherited the White House from swaggering Texans, whose overriding sense of mission fueled disastrous wars that tarnished America’s image. Obama is a staunch realist, like Nixon, eschewing fuzzy democracy-building and focusing on advancing national interests. “Obama is cutting back on the idea that we’re going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else,” says Robert Dallek, author of the 2007 book, “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power.”
Nixon met the enemy (Mao) to advance U.S. interests, and now Obama is reaching out to rivals like Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the same reason. “The willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran is very compatible with the approach Nixon would have conducted,” says Henry Kissinger, the architect of Nixon’s foreign policy. “But we’ll have to see how it plays out.” Hillary Clinton has assured Beijing that human rights won’t derail talks on pressing issues like the economic crisis, another sign of Nixonian hard-headedness. And echoing Nixon’s pursuit of détente, Obama has engaged Russia, using a mutual interest in containing nuclear proliferation as a stepping stone to discuss other matters, rather than pressing Moscow on democracy at home, or needlessly provoking it on issues like missile defense and NATO expansion, which have little near-term chance of coming to fruition and do little to promote U.S. security. Thomas Graham, a Kissinger associate who oversaw Russia policy at the National Security Council during much of the younger Bush’s second term, says this approach by Obama, a Democrat, resembles a Republican foreign-policy tradition that dates back to the elder George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, and then even further to Nixon and Kissinger.
It’s hard to know if such tactics will work, of course. But Obama has made clear he understands America’s limitations and its strengths, revealing a penchant for Nixonian pragmatism—not Carter-inspired weakness.
© 2009
Source: Newsweek, Apr 25, 2009
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Global Commitments vs. Regional Balances
Deglobalizing U.S. military commitments will require the “civilianization” of defense policy.
Judah Grunstein | Bio | 09 Apr 2009
WPR BlogMore smart stuff from Sam Roggeveen, who points out that alert is not the same thing as alarmed, but nevertheless admits to a case of nerves:
The thing to remember is that China does not have to match the U.S. in global capability terms for U.S. allies in the Pacific to start getting nervous about the strategic balance. All China has to do is be a credible competitor in the region, and that is already the case.Roggeveen goes on to argue that “. . . we have already passed the point at which the U.S. could militarily intervene in a Taiwan conflict at acceptable risk,” and that the coming years/decades will witness an inexorable expansion of that perimeter.
Click through to see what he’s got to say about whether the budget priorities as signaled by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, compared to the alternatives, are a good thing or not for Australia. You might be surprised.
The broader point here is that while the “American unipolar moment” might be drawing to a close, we’re still the only country that is forced to calculate in terms of global, as opposed to regional, military capability. That reflects the magnitude of our power, influence and interests. But while an advantage in a scenario of geologic resource scarcity, it becomes potentially problematic in a scenario of political resource scarcity and a distinct disadvantage in times of financial resource scarcity.
This reinforces the need for scaling down our commitments by involving regional powers more prominently in advancing our foreign policy objectives, what I call Middle Power Mojo™. France and Turkey were my illustrative examples before they both started acting out. But part of the initial concept was the idea of identifying regional players that have got their mojo working, so that’s inevitably going to evolve with time.
Perhaps most significantly, this provides a political context for U.S. defense policy. The limitations of discussing the U.S. defense budget without the context of a strategic vision have been pointed out elsewhere. But so far, that’s mainly been shorthand for, “Wait until the Quadrennial Defense Review comes out next year,” and reinforces the militarization of foreign policy. Deglobalizing America’s defense commitments, on the other hand, will require filling gaps with both friendly capability and stable regional security architectures. And that’s more of a long-term interagency project that will “civilianize” defense policy.
Source: www.worldpoliticsreview.com, 09 Apr 2009
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A New World Order
An end of hubris
Nov 19th 2008
From The World in 2009 print editionAmerica will be less powerful, but still the essential nation in creating a new world order, argues Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state and founder of Kissinger Associates
Reuters
The most significant event of 2009 will be the transformation of the Washington consensus that market principles trumped national boundaries. The WTO, the IMF and the World Bank defended that system globally. Periodic financial crises were interpreted not as warning signals of what could befall the industrial nations but as aberrations of the developing world to be remedied by domestic stringency—a policy which the advanced countries were not, in the event, prepared to apply to themselves.
The absence of restraint encouraged a speculation whose growing sophistication matched its mounting lack of transparency. An unparalleled period of growth followed, but also the delusion that an economic system could sustain itself via debt indefinitely. In reality, a country could live in such a profligate manner only so long as the rest of the world retained confidence in its economic prescriptions. That period has now ended.
Any economic system, but especially a market economy, produces winners and losers. If the gap between them becomes too great, the losers will organise themselves politically and seek to recast the existing system—within nations and between them. This will be a major theme of 2009.
America’s unique military and political power produced a comparable psychological distortion. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union tempted the United States to proclaim universal political goals in a world of seeming unipolarity—but objectives were defined by slogans rather than strategic feasibility.
Now that the clay feet of the economic system have been exposed, the gap between a global system for economics and the global political system based on the state must be addressed as a dominant task in 2009. The economy must be put on a sound footing, entitlement programmes reviewed and the national dependence on debt overcome. Hopefully, in the process, past lessons of excessive state control will not be forgotten.
The debate will be over priorities, transcending the longstanding debate between idealism and realism. Economic constraints will oblige America to define its global objectives in terms of a mature concept of the national interest. Of course, a country that has always prided itself on its exceptionalism will not abandon the moral convictions by which it defined its greatness. But America needs to learn to discipline itself into a strategy of gradualism that seeks greatness in the accumulation of the attainable. By the same token, our allies must be prepared to face the necessary rather than confining foreign policy to so-called soft power.
Every major country will be driven by the constraints of the fiscal crisis to re-examine its relationship to America. All—and especially those holding American debt—will be assessing the decisions that brought them to this point. As America narrows its horizons, what is a plausible security system and aimed at what threats? What is the future of capitalism? How, in such circumstances, does the world deal with global challenges, such as nuclear proliferation or climate change?
America will remain the most powerful country, but will not retain the position of self-proclaimed tutor. As it learns the limits of hegemony, it should define implementing consultation beyond largely American conceptions. The G8 will need a new role to embrace China, India, Brazil and perhaps South Africa.
The immediate challenge
In Iraq, if the surge strategy holds, there must be a diplomatic conference in 2009 to establish principles of non-intervention and define the country’s international responsibilities.
The dilatory diplomacy towards Iran must be brought to a focus. The time available to forestall an Iranian nuclear programme is shrinking and American involvement is essential in defining what we and our allies are prepared to seek and concede and, above all, the penalty to invoke if negotiations reach a stalemate. Failing that, we will have opted to live in a world of an accelerating nuclear arms race and altered parameters of security.
In 2009 the realities of Afghanistan will impose themselves. No outside power has ever prevailed by establishing central rule, as Britain learnt in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th. The collection of nearly autonomous provinces which define Afghanistan coalesce in opposition to outside attempts to impose central rule. Decentralisation of the current effort is essential.
All this requires a new dialogue between America and the rest of the world. Other countries, while asserting their growing roles, are likely to conclude that a less powerful America still remains indispensable. America will have to learn that world order depends on a structure that participants support because they helped bring it about. If progress is made on these enterprises, 2009 will mark the beginning of a new world order.
Source: www.economist.com, Nov 19th 2008
“New World Order” transmutes into “Age of Compatible Interest”
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POOR RICHARD’S REPORT
Poor Richard’s Report
Over 300,000 readers
My Mission: God has uniquely designed me to seek, write, and speak the truth as I see it. Preservation of one’s wealth while providing needful income is my primary goal in these unsettled times. I have been given the ability to evaluate, study, and interpret world and national events and their influence on the future of the financial markets. This gift allows me to meet the needs of individual and institution clients.
March 10, 2000 the stock market topped out.
March 10, 2009 the stock market bottomed.
This does not mean it is going to run back up. The leaders of past bull markets do not lead the charge in new bull markets. This bear market has been the second worst in our history and probably the worst ever in other countries. It will be 5, 10, maybe 15 years before the averages make new highs- that is, if they do not change the components too much. Stocks bottom when the future looks the bleakest. So I believe we are near or at the bottom of a major cycle. It is a market of stocks not a stock market.
I have written that the market has bottomed, but the recovery is going to be long and painful for some. We have to institute new global regulations and retrain ourselves to be more frugal. We buy a home because we love it and want to live in it, not to turn a quick profit. We buy a stock because the company has a good product, provides a necessary function for the good of the community, and over a period of time will grow.
Countries and consumers are tapped out. The ratio of household debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose from 66% in 1997 to 100% in 2007. We are not alone. In the United Kingdom it was an even bigger jump.
In the US the overall debt reached 350% of GDP. Only 85% is private. This figure was 180% in 1980. The next bubble to burst will be credit cards and then, if we are unlucky, we will have a debt implosion. Individuals and corporations will do their best to reduce debt. They will be shut out from borrowing because of the massive borrowing the US Government will have to do. This will be true for many other countries also.
Today there is a debate between Socialists and their foes that want less government intervention in their daily lives. I believe the truth lies in the middle. We can not be all things to all people. In the past we have borrowed on the future and it is now pay back time. We have to downsize our dreams and expectations or we could find ourselves in the same straight jacket that the Germans found themselves in 1930’s. The American spirit is that of a “can do will try for it” attitude. Today, while you are reading this letter, there is someone trying to figure out a cheaper source of energy. Until the discovery is achieved we will have a slow recovery. I believe that day will come from an area we least expect. Have faith.
With a slow recovery major corporations will wallow in the mud. Medium size companies that can move and change quickly and do not have a built in bureaucracy will become the new leaders. It has been my observation that the pinnacle of leadership lasts about 10 years. That leadership is attained because the new hires believe in the company. Later hires join because of the name and it’s safety. Competitors multiply and the growth rate slows down. As Andrew Carnegie was fond of saying “shirt sleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” can apply to this corporate sequence.
If you want to participate in this new bull market you must change your thinking. The averages mean nothing today. The market is made up of individual securities. You will want to know how your stock is doing. Not the market. Some stocks are going to drift lower because they are still over priced or because they have had a good run in the past and accounts are now overloaded with a past leader. These stocks should be sold. Taking a loss is really a good deal. First you limit your loss and you have given yourself liquidity. Liquidity means you have constant funds for your next purchase. The losses you accumulate can be used to reduce your taxes by $3,000 per year. This applies, as of 3/10/2009, before Obama changes the system.
Now lets say you have taken $25,000 in losses. Smile! You have just set yourself for the future. I am not referring to the next 8 years of $3,000 worth of deductions. Let’s say two years from now that you have taken $20,000 gains in various trades and you face a monster tax bite. You can now use the remainder of your tax loss carried forward, which could be $19,000. Now your tax bite is only $1,000. This is why taking a loss is smart. More money has been lost by investors not doing a trade because of “taxes”.
Now initially in this new market preferred stocks that have the 85% tax credit should do well, especially if it is selling below its call price. If they call it from you, you stand to make a gain. Corporate debt that is selling below par of strong companies will represent good value. Companies that hired a key person for the future while others have been downsizing is a big tip off.
Gold is an investment for caution. The President’s strategy is to have a little inflation to support the housing market. Incidentally, the European Union and world leaders are debating over what should happen. Some of the foreign politicians that carry a big stick are as follows: Wen Jiabao, 66, the Chinese prime minister who is under fire at home because he “put the brakes on too fast”. Angela Merkel, 54, the Chancellor of Germany who favors a “new global constitution” for financial markets. Nicolas Sarkozy, 54, President of France who regards himself as de facto leader of Europe given Gordon Brown’s domestic, political, and economic woes and Angela Merkel’s cumbersome coalition. Gordon Brown, 58, UK prime minister who was the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and believes he is ideally equipped to tackle the crisis. He will host the Group of 20 summit of industrial and developing nations in London on April 2.
Central bankers include the following: Jean-Claude Trichet, 66, President, European Central Bank who believes politicians and central bankers must do their utmost to shore up economic confidence. Zhou Xiaochuan, 61, Governor, Peoples Bank of China who has held that position since 2002 and is considered a principal supporter of faster market reforms. Fluent in English he can hold his own among economists. A sleeper is Mario Draghi, 61, Chairman, Financial Stability Forum and governor, Bank of Italy who is a US educated economist, former Goldman Sachs executive, and a respected transatlanticist.
Regulators of note are: Adair Turner, 53 of the UK. Sheila Blair, 54 Chairman of the FDIC. Mary Shapiro, 53, Chairman of the SEC.
Economists include: Robert Shiller of Yale. Montek Singh Ahuwalia, 65, Deputy Chairman, Indian Planning Commission. Robert Zoellick, 55, President, World Bank. Pascal Lamy, 61, who is Director General of the WTO. Paul Volcker, 81, Chairman, Economic Advisory Board. Fed Chairman in 1979-1987. He warned early and powerfully about subprime mortgages. Paul Krugman, Professor at Princeton University and columnist, NY Times. He has carved out a niche as the democrats’ liberal conscience. Then we have Leszek Balcerowicxz, 62, Professor of economics, Warsaw School of Economics.
Bankers to watch are: Lloyd Blankfein, 54, Goldman Sachs chief executive. Jamie Dimon, 52, Chairman of JP Morgan. Stephen Green, 60, Chairman of HSBC since 1962. He has voiced strong views about the need for reform of banking. A lay preacher and author of a book about reconciling religion with free markets, he has criticized the industry’s excesses during the boom along with Peyton Patterson, Chairman, President, and Chief Financial Officer of NewAlliance Bank.
At the top of the list is President Barack Obama, 47, the revues on his economic rescue plan are mixed, but much detail is awaited. In the meantime, the president is pressing ahead with radical domestic reform agenda encompassing healthcare, the environment, and education. As promised, it has a strong whiff of both audacity and hope. Then we have Ben Bernanke, 55, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve who is a scholar of the Great Depression. He has knowledge of measures that the central banks can use at times of great crisis and he has had ample opportunity to put his theories into effect, using an expanding range of tools too try to arrest the slide.”
With this list of partial names one can see that this is a global problem; global problems need global answers. This will take time and patience. This is why I recommend the sales mentioned above and a hefty cash position. Sure, the market is trying to bottom, but the prudent way in the 21st century is to wade in step by step. One should also check in with a professional – like me.
Cheerio !!!
Richard C De Graff
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This report has been prepared from original sources and data which we believe reliable but we make no representation to its accuracy or completeness. Coburn & Meredith Inc. its subsidiaries and or officers may from time to time acquire, hold, sell a position discussed in this publications, and we may act as principal for our own account or as agent for both the buyer and seller.
