Asia
A Chinese research group reports that 338 million Chinese are now using the Internet — some 26% of the population.
Despite its restricted state in China, the Internet is still an important driver of expanding freedom. Information circulates much more freely than in the past, and sensitive stories often travel widely before the government clamps down. And those who are determined to get around the so-called Great Firewall can do so.
Though 26% is much lower than rates in developed countries, it still means that the Internet is now well beyond the upper-middle class. The report indicates that usage is spreading in the rural population, driven by rising mobile Internet use.
(Image courtesy openDemocracy — Creative Commons license)
At a USAID seminar today, Dr. Deborah Brautigam of American University said that Chinese companies are beginning to be interested in conditionality standards — benchmarks such as the Equator Principles that are meant to guide global companies toward better handling of social and environment issues in emerging markets.
Chinese companies are often seen as unconcerned with such environmental and social matters in their operations in Africa, potentially undercutting progress toward getting other actors to operate responsibly.
Brautigam said that Chinese companies are beginning to study such principles; publicly traded companies are aware of the reputational risk of being seen as bad actors, and of their potential vulnerability to activism.
Meanwhile, today’s news suggests how far Chinese business has to go. A graft query in Namibia has brought up the name of the son of China’s president, Hu Jintao. The Chinese government has reportedly responded by blocking access to news coverage of the affair — directly contradicting the kind of openness and transparency which global markets will ultimately demand from Chinese business, and which Chinese companies will themselves need to be fully competitive.
(Image courtesy Social Technologies)
Speaking to the Washington Post, Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur leader, declined to be labeled a “separatist.”
“What my people want is what I want, and they want freedom,” she told the Post, which observed that she “speaks carefully around the question of full independence for Uighurs” — this is also the position of the World Uyghur Congress, though Uighur demonstrations sometimes have a more direct message.
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Resentment and hostility toward Han Chinese seem to be common among the largely Muslim, Turkic Uighurs, who make up a diminishing percentage of Xinjiang’s population as Han move in in growing numbers, with the encouragement of the Chinese government. Whether a majority of Uighurs favor independence is not known.
In any case, China is not going to willingly consider any kind of real autonomy for the Uighurs anytime soon, both on general principle and due to Xinjiang’s immense size and strategic location. With the Uighurs unable to compel any Chinese action, little is likely to change for years to come.
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Al Qaeda has been unusually clear about its interest in nuclear weapons, and in particular those held by Pakistan, recently.
On June 21st, al Qaeda’s leader in Afghanistan said this about Pakistan’s arsenal: “God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans.”
And within the last month Osama bin Laden “said the jihadists must gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of America, India and Israel,” analyst Bruce Riedel noted. Writes Riedel, “Al Qaeda has told us clearly what the consequences of defeat are – nuclear Armageddon.”
(Image courtesy Nevada Division of Environmental Protection)
International system
Pei suggested that there will not be an “Asian century” in the same way that the 20th century was the American century: Asia will lack the capabilities and skills to remake the world in the way the United States did. Moreover, the region is too divided, and intraregional rivalries will cancel the individual powers out, for no net effect.
Martinez agreed that, in the short term, the narrative of American decline due to the financial crisis was overblown. He emphasized that the US and China are now in a position of mutual dependence, a relationship could actually help the US perpetuate the American century. He does not see any innovative ideological worldview motivating China: no great ideological challenge is coming out of Asia.
Japan does not want to be second to China in Asia, Pei noted.
Asian economies
Continued growth in the 7-9% range should not be assumed, Pei asserted, given the challenges countries face in as little as 10-15 years. He suggested that Asia lacks an ecosystem for innovation, and that such a system is obstructed by the entire Asian “way of life.”
China’s domestic evolution
China will become a democracy at some point, Pei said. It will come from the top down, when members of the political elite choose to use popular discontent to further their personal goals. This could actually undercut its economic performance, he added.
He said that the Communist Party has successfully whitewashed history, and Chinese know little of the repressions from the 1950s to Tiananmen. As a result, the Party’s legitimacy could be threatened when it all comes out, as happened to the Party in Russia during glasnost.
Martinez forecast that, if economic growth falters, the Party would need an alternative rationale for its continued dominance, and might turn to nationalism, for instance on the Taiwan issue. He noted that even young, educated, cosmopolitan Chinese are in full agreement with the government on nationalistic issues such as Tibet and Taiwan.
Pei said that the financial crisis has not disillusioned Chinese about Western capitalism, but it has provided an “aha” moment, as they have watched the US make serious mistakes.
The discussion is at the NAF site on video.
Image copyright FutureAtlas.com — usable with attribution and link.
The New York Times reported this week on another potential driver of instability in Pakistan: the Taliban are harnessing the country’s severe social inequities to advance their Islamist cause.
Given that Pakistan is “largely feudal,” the authors write, this “carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.”
Pakistan has the classic conditions for social revolution. After independence, notes the article, Pakistan maintained a narrow landed upper class that kept its vast holdings while its workers remained subservient…. Successive Pakistani governments have since failed to provide land reform and even the most basic forms of education and health care. Avenues to advancement for the vast majority of rural poor do not exist.
Poor government and corruption are key aspects of this; Pakistan is rated highly corrupt in Transparency International’s surveys — in 2008, it was 134th out of 180 countries, scoring only a 2.5 out of 10.
Such a revolution could be a disaster for anti-Taliban forces. Instead of chipping away at the state’s control piece by piece, the whole society could shift at once, and everything, including the armed forces and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, would fall into the hands of the radicals.
This would greatly tempt both India and the US to intervene in some fashion, if only to destroy or seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
The Washington Post provided further evidence that North Korea is so out of step with the South — and the rest of the world — that dealing with a regime collapse might require something like cult deprogramming.
On top of the North Korean claims that they have a satellite orbiting the Earth (when the actual payload fell into the Pacific after launch on April 5th), the Post details how bewildered North Korean defectors are by life in South Korea:
- Life in the Stalinist North has left them paranoid and unable to trust anyone.
- They have learning problems, and are often weak in basic reading and math.
- The Korean of the South is puzzling, as it is infused with hundreds of words borrowed from English.
- They are often unwell, with health problems such as hepatitis and drug-resistant tuberculosis.
- They do not understand basics of consumer life such as credit cards.
These recent arrivals may be unrepresentative of the North in some respects, as they come from a particularly isolated and abject part of North Korea, but they still offer hints of what might come after change comes to the North.
This is also, it might be noted, an example of dyschronicity: in wealth, culture, and technology, the North is now 50 years or more out of sync with the South.
The website Treehugger suggests eight places — low-lying islands, more specifically — that will “soon” be uninhabitable due to climate change.
They are:
- the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean
- Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Carteret Islands (off PNG), and Majuro Atoll (Marshall Islands) in the Pacific
- Lamu and Pate, Kenyan coastal islands
- Bhola, in southern Bangladesh
- Key West, off southern Florida
“Soon” is a relative term here–many of these places would still be inhabitable for decades, under current sea-level rise forecasts.
The Pacific islands involve relatively small numbers of people; they could actually be moved, though this would involve irreparable cultural destruction.
Bangladesh illustrates another level of impact: millions of people live on these low-lying islands, and tens of millions in vulnerable coastal areas. Significant sea-level rise could dislocate so many people that the stability of countries like Bangladesh, and their neighbors, could be undermined.
(Thanks to Stu Gagnon for the tip.)
Image: Maldives from space, courtesy NASA
The Taliban insurgency continues to hold the momentum in Afghanistan.
The AP reports that they are setting up shadow governmental structures within 30 miles of Kabul, increasingly replacing those of the official, Western-backed government.
US officials quotes in the article downplay this and ascribe Taliban success to intimidation, but a tribal elder in one province asserts that 90% of the population of the region support the insurgents.
To counter the Taliban, the US and the Afghan government are planning to arm local militias, in hopes of replicating some of the success of that strategy in Iraq.
But, the New York Times notes, “the plan is causing deep unease among many Afghans, who fear that Pashtun-dominated militias could get out of control, terrorize local populations and turn against the government.”
And a Taliban commander suggested to the Times “that the government militias would find it hard to put down roots in the area, if only because the Taliban had already done so. ‘We are living in the districts, in the villages — we are not living in the mountains. The people are with us.’”
The upshot is that the neglect of Afghanistan by the Bush administration may have set up Obama to be LBJ: firmly pledged to get deeper into a deteriorating situation.