Category: China

Domestic Emissions Targets for Greenhouse Gases and China

This week, we begin to address the politics of climate change. In the chapter from the Stevenson text, the author addresses the rise of two international norms that are related to mitigating the impact of global warming: 1) common but differentiated responsibilities (CBRD) and, 2) mitigation in the form of domestic emissions’ targets.

Stevenson argues that international negotiations regarding mitigation have slowly transitioned from a focus on domestic to global emissions’ targets. Correspondingly, the institutional framework for implementing these goals has moved from regulatory (domestic governments) to market-oriented.  China and the United States have been the main promoters (and would also be the main beneficiaries of ) the market-oriented approach to GHG mitigation. We’ll discuss why during this week’s seminar, but in short, high level emitters can use carbon trading schemes to offload their emissions to low-emitting countries, resulting in no drop in emissions of GHGs globally.

In an interesting story on China’s setting up of a domestic carbon market, which is set to begin trading in 2016, we find something interesting. First, here’s a description of the proposed Chines carbon market:

China plans to roll out its national market for carbon permit trading in 2016, an official said Sunday, adding that the government is close to finalising rules for what will be the world’s biggest emissions trading scheme.

The world’s biggest-emitting nation, accounting for nearly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, plans to use the market to slow its rapid growth in climate-changing emissions.

What caught my eye, however, was the next line:

China has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon it emits per unit of GDP to 40-45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

In an informal (convenience sample) survey of some friends and acquaintances, it is obvious that the impression (almost unanimously shared) of the reader was that China would be cutting its GHG emissions dramatically by 2020. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

The key words in the excerpt quoted above are “per unit of GDP.” Because China’s GDP is expected to at least double by 2020 (based on the base year 2005), China could conceivably meet their target of a 40-45-per cent cut in emissions per unit of GDP even with as much as a doubling of actual (absolute) GHG emissions!

Joseph Chan on Confucianism and Democracy

In IS210 today, we viewed a short clip from this interesting lecture by Professor Joseph Chan given at Cornell University. Professor Chan of the University of Hong Kong talks about the shared moral basis of contemporary Chinese society. With Leninism/Marxism/Maoism being discredited amongst most Chinese, the search begins for a new moral basis/foundation for society.

As Professor Dick Miller says in his introductory remarks:

In China, as in the United States, people feel a great need for an adequate, shared, ethical basis for public life. There, as here, people don’t think that freedom to get as rich as you can is an adequate basis.

So, what is that basis, if the official ruling ideology of the political regime no longer seems legitimate. Liberal democracy? Confucianism. There are adherents in China of both of these as the proper ethical foundation. What does Professor Chan have to say about the compatibility of Confucian ideals with democracy? Watch and find out. It’s a very informative lecture.

PM Harper’s Foreign Policy Shift Towards China

In the National Post, Peter Godspeed argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s pending visit to China represents somewhat of a foreign policy pivot for the Conservative government.

Like the United States, Canada is in the midst of a foreign policy pivot in Asia…

…Tuesday, Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, arrives in the Chinese capital for what almost amounts to a traditional “Team Canada” trade mission, seeking to strengthen economic ties with Canada’s second-largest trading partner.

With four cabinet ministers — John Baird, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ed Fast, the International Trade Minister, Gerry Ritz, the Agriculture Minister, and Joe Oliver, the Natural Resources Minister — and seven MPs and 40 business executives and academics, he hopes to build on rapidly expanding ties that have pushed bilateral trade to US$57.7-billion a year in 2010.

“China’s growth as an emerging market is very significant for Canada’s business community, and it is an economic relationship that requires the attention of the highest political level,” said Peter Harder, president of the Canada-China Business Council.

From the perspective of foreign-policy decision-making in IR theory, the makeup of the Team Canada mission to China would indicate the importance of the pluralist and organizational/bureaucratic models. The pluralist model notes the impact of powerful interest groups, such as the Canada-China Business Council, and business executives and academics. Radicals, especially Marxists, would note the absence of any environmental or union groups amongst the mission’s members.

About the tone of the trip, NDTV reports that

The visit can be seen as a change in attitude for Canada, which has a record of taking a hard stance on the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses, as it looks as if economic ties between the two nations are warming.

Joseph Nye on Shifts on Smart Power

One of the leading scholars of IR theory is Joseph Nye, who teaches at Harvard University. He, along with co-author Robert Keohane, wrote one of the seminal works in IR theory–Power and Interdependence. Here is a short, but interesting TED talk in which Nye explains, amongst other things, the distinction between power transition and power diffusion, the “rise of China” and what “smart” power is.

Chapter 1 or Chapter 2 Post–Global Military Expenditures

As I noted in POLI 1140 today, your blog assignment for this week is to write a post related to anything in Chapters 1 or 2 of the Mingst and Arreguin-Toft textbook. You have until midnight, Friday January 20 to publish your post. Here is an example of what I would consider to be a good post–format, content, and length.

Military Expenditures as percentage of GDP

On p. 3 of Chapter 1 of the text (in the Thinking Theoretically section), the authors write:

In brief, realism posits that states exist in an anarchic international system. Each state bases its policies on an interpretation of national interest defined in terms of power.

While there are many types of power–economic, political, prestige, etc.,–the most important source of power and the one which states generally seek to increase as much as possible, is military power. Because of anarchy, realists believe that states are constantly concerned about their security. States that feel more insecure seek to increase their power, thereby increasing the sizes of their military, all else being equal. It would be interesting to find out which states spend a lot on their military, and which states spend less. Fortunately, Globalsecurity.org has compiled the data for us. In their most recent summary of global military expenditures (from 2011), we find some interesting data. I have copied the top 20 (in terms of absolute dollars spent) in the table below. For a list of all countries, click on the link above.

WORLD Gross Domestic Product Military Spending
State GDP rank % GDP
mil		 rank Military spending
WORLD $70,155,374,950,000.00


$2,157,172,000,000.00
United States $14,120,000,000,000.00 2 5.20% 25 $741,200,000,000.00
China $8,818,000,000,000.00 3 4.30% 23 $380,000,000,000.00
India $3,680,000,000,000.00 5 2.50% 62 $92,000,000,000.00
Russia $2,116,000,000,000.00 8 3.90% 27 $82,500,000,000.00
Saudi Arabia $590,900,000,000.00 23 10.00% 3 $59,090,000,000.00
France $2,094,000,000,000.00 9 2.60% 57 $54,444,000,000.00
United Kingdom $2,123,000,000,000.00 7 2.40% 63 $50,952,000,000.00
Turkey $879,900,000,000.00 17 5.30% 16 $46,634,700,000.00
Germany $2,815,000,000,000.00 6 1.50% 102 $42,225,000,000.00
Korea, South $1,362,000,000,000.00 13 2.70% 53 $36,774,000,000.00
Brazil $2,010,000,000,000.00 10 1.70% 89 $34,170,000,000.00
Japan $4,149,000,000,000.00 4 0.80% 150 $33,192,000,000.00
Italy $1,737,000,000,000.00 11 1.80% 86 $31,266,000,000.00
Indonesia $960,200,000,000.00 16 3.00% 47 $28,806,000,000.00
Iran $825,900,000,000.00 19 2.50% 60 $20,647,500,000.00
Spain $1,359,000,000,000.00 14 1.20% 122 $16,308,000,000.00
Taiwan $734,300,000,000.00 20 2.20% 68 $16,154,600,000.00
Israel $206,900,000,000.00 51 7.30% 6 $15,103,700,000.00
Greece $332,900,000,000.00 35 4.30% 24 $14,314,700,000.00
Canada $1,277,000,000,000.00 15 1.10% 127 $14,047,000,000.00

Continue reading “Chapter 1 or Chapter 2 Post–Global Military Expenditures”

China and Civil Society

This week in IS 210 we addressed the concept of civil society–its institutions, and the relationships thereof with the state and market sectors. As part of today’s lecture, we viewed an excerpt of a video recording of a roundtable discussion about China and civil society. In a highly informative presentation, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA) research professor, Carol Lee Hamrin, assessed the changes in Chinese civil society over the last few decades. As the power and reach of the Chinese party-state recedes it has opened up room for the increasing independence of civil society institutions and (especially) the commercialisation of the Chinese economy.

You can view the whole video here.

The Age of Global (In)equality?

Many of the readings from Chapter 9 of O’Neil’s Essential Readings address the issue of global divergence/convergence in economic growth and/or inequality over the last few decades (and even further back than that–i.e., the Pritchett reading). The question comes down to whether there has been more or less inequality over time. Which is it? Well, the answer depends to a large extent on how one chooses to measure inequality. I’ll begin my response to this by quoting a student’s e-mail I received earlier today:

Hello, below is a link to a video showing one aspect or area of convergence.

I don’t know if I agree that countries are converging in regards to wealth and health; after all, Africa still seems very far behind.  I general, yes, countries today are healthier (longer life spans) and wealthier (not looking at inequality) than they were 200 years ago…

…For our purposes, what is the meaning of convergence and divergence?  From Pritchett, he seems to be measuring growth in terms of GDP and concluding that there is divergence between developed and developing nations (i.e. the levels of growth are not coming together, but separating).  What about China and India, who experienced faster or “larger growth” than some developed nations in the 80’s to mid 90’s?  Then with Milanovic, he is talking about inequality – how it is decreasing at the world level (when Indian and China are included) and this shows convergence.  To me, O’Neil seems to be trying to present two sides of an issue; however, I see two separate issues.  One is divergence in economic growth and the other is convergence in equality. I suppose that China’s and India’s economic growth can explain or at least correlate to lower inequality at the world level, but is that the correct way of interpreting Milanovic?  Is he saying that there’s a convergence of equality (or lower inequality gap worldwide), because countries (when including China and India) are converging in regards to economic growth?

Thank you.

This student is essentially correct in his reading of the respective arguments. As I mentioned earlier, which view one takes on the question of the recent direction of inequality convergence/divergence depends upon how one chooses to measure inequality. To put it differently, it depends upon whether your unit-of-analysis is the country or the individual. A Gini Index score that is calculated on the basis of mean levels of national income (or wealth) may not be the same as one calculated on the basis of comparing the wealth of individuals worldwide. In fact, Milanovic tells us that the values are indeed different, and the difference is due mainly to what has happened in China and India over the last two decades or so.

 

Excellent blog on Chinese Politics/Political Economy

Victor Shih, currently an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University, keeps a blog at which he addresses issues related to Chinese politics. The blog deals mainly with topics related to Chinese political economy (an increasingly important topic as the rate for your car/home/student loan is intimately connected to the amount of US Treasury bonds purchased by the Chinese Central Bank) and elite politics in China.

Washington Post Reports that China no longer as Attractive an “Outsourcing” Target

The average person may not know the difference between “offshoring” and “outsourcing”, but one would think that it would be a condition of employment for someone who writes for the business section of the Washington Post. In an otherwise informative story on the decreasing attractiveness of China as an “outsourcing” location for US companies, we are witness to another example of a member of the traditional media seemingly uninformed of basic facts.

Outsourcing is simply the idea that a company chooses to have another company produce a good or service rather than produce that same good or service in-house.  Outsourcing has been happening for a long time, and an example is when the Ford Motor Company decided that it would be better to use their productive capacity to produce engines, and outsource the task of making tires to a different company rather than make tires itself.  This helped increase productivity by allowing Ford to concentrate on the making of engines, and have the other company (Goodyear, Bridgestone) focus on making better tires.

Offshoring simply means sending work beyond one’s national boundaries.  Notice that not all offshoring is also outsourcing.  In fact, I have previously read (but I can’t find the source) that most offshoring is, in fact, not also outsourcing.  How can this be?  Well, what happens when General Motors decides to close down a car factory in Flint and make begin producing vehicles in Windsor, Ontario instead?  That production (and the jobs accopanying it) has been offshored (moved to a different country–Canada) but it hasn’t been outsourced, since GM is still producing the vehicles.  Here’s a little chart that will help you understand the difference.

As for the article itself, it demonstrates that rising fuel costs have increased the cost of shipping to such an extent that the potential savings for a US company of producing in China are completely eliminated.  One such company has repatriated production to the US from China (I suppose that’s called “onshoring”?)   We read:

SHANGHAI — Harry Kazazian built his business on sleeping bags that are made in China and shipped across the ocean to the United States, but he realized recently that the math doesn’t work anymore.

With fuel prices at record highs, the cost of sending a standard 40-foot container of goods has gone from $3,000 in 2000 to about $8,000 today, squeezing profit.

So this summer Kazazian, chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a Los Angeles-based maker of recreational equipment, did something radical: He moved the manufacturing back to Haleyville, Ala.

Soaring energy costs, the falling dollar and inflation are cutting into what U.S. manufacturers call the “China price”– the 40 to 50 percent cost advantage once offered by Chinese producers.

The export model that has powered China and other Asian countries for three decades will be compromised if fuel prices continue to rise, said Stephen Jen, a managing director for Morgan Stanley.

“Globalization has gone a little bit too far. It has overshot,” Jen said. “We’re not saying Asia is going to crumble, but we are saying Asia enjoyed extraordinary conditions in the past. Now the conditions are changing very quickly because of the energy shock, and Asia is coming under pressure.”

The ripple effects have been far-reaching. The trade imbalance between the United States and China — a source of political tension for years — is beginning to right itself as Chinese exports fall and U.S. exports rise. Global trade routes are being transformed, suggesting a possible return to a less integrated world economy.

What are the Fundamental Tenets of Confucianism…Culture as Destiny?

Over the past few weeks, we have addressed the debate regarding the relative explanatory power of cultural versus institutional and rational choice approaches to the analysis of political phenomena.  In the book excerpt, “A Brief History of Human Liberty,” Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria analyzes the cultural argument regarding economic growth and democracy. He quotes the former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew:

“…if you want to see how culture works, compare the performance of German workers and Zambian workers anywhere in the world.  You will quickly come to the conclusion that there is something very different in the two cultures that explains the results.”

Zakaria has some sympathy for this argument, but then argues that it is strange that Lee Kuan Yew is such a strong proponent of cultural arguments* given that while Singapore is culturally very similar to its neighbor, Malaysia, Singapore has been much more effective in its economic policies than has its neighbor.  In fact, I would add that a strong argument against cultural explanations of democracy and economic development are the differences between East Germany and West Germany (in the post-WWII-era until unification) and the present difference between North and South Korea.

The 38th parallel may be just a line on a map, and the division of the nation of Korea into two separate states may be a historically contingent act, but it demonstrates the tremendously powerful impact of institutions on a society.  South Korea was able to develop good political and economic institutions, while North Korea has not.  The cultural foundation of each state was similar (although I’m not an expert on Korea, so maybe there was a cultural difference between the “north” and the “south” that can account for the vast differences in the two states today–although I’m highly skeptical) before the division and we know, in a methodological sense, that a constant can not explain an outcome that varies.

Getting back to Zakaria and Lee Yuan Kew, Zakaria writes that

“the key to Singapore’s success…is Lee Kuan Yew, not Confucius.  The point is not that culture is unimportant; on the contrary it matters greatly…But culture can change…A hundred years ago, when East Asia seemed immutably poor, many scholars–most famously Max Weber [we’ve read his Protestant Ethic argument]–argued that Confucian-based cultures discouraged all the attributes necessary for success in capitalism…A decade ago, when East Asia was booming, scholars had turned this explanation on its head, arguing that Confucianism actually emphasized the traits essential for economic dynamism. Today the wheel has turned again and many see in ‘Asian values’ all the ingredients of crony capitalism.”‘

What are these Confucian and ‘Asian values’ about which there has been so much discussion.  Well, needless to say Asia is a vast land mass, with exceedingly high levels of diversity–culturally, linguistically, religiously, racially, etc.  So the concept of ‘Asian values’ may be so amorphous as to http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/08/15/china-and-confucian-democracy http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/08/http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/08/15/china-and-confucian-democracy/china-and-confucian-democracy.  Confucianism, however, is a distinct and compact body of ideas that has a comprehensive philosophical foundation.  What are Confucian values, then and do they help or hinder China’s precarious journey towards democracy and economic development?  Well, here’s an answer from political philosopher Daniel Bell, who insists that ultimately, Confucianism is about three core values.  What are these?  Listen to the first ten minutes of the audio podcast from this episode of “On Point.”  Here’s a link to the URL on which you can find an archived version of the show.

**Here, it should be noted that a reason Lee Kuan Yew is strongly predisposed to arguing on the basis of culture is his contempt for the licentiousness of Western values and his desire to prevent demands for those kinds of freedoms (as long as political liberty) to take root in the strongly authoritarian state of Singapore.  Just read his statements during the infamous Michael Fay incident.

It wasn’t long before Singapore patriarch Lee Kuan Yew weighed in. He reckoned the whole affair revealed America’s moral decay. “The U.S. government, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. media took the opportunity to ridicule us, saying the sentence was too severe,” he said in a television interview. “[The U.S.] does not restrain or punish individuals, forgiving them for whatever they have done. That’s why the whole country is in chaos: drugs, violence, unemployment and homelessness. The American society is the richest and most prosperous in the world but it is hardly safe and peaceful.”

Here’s another story on the incident.