China Castigates the E.U. on Taiwan

“Act prudently.” This was the warning addressed to the E.U. by China’s president Xi after the European Parliament voted 432 to 60 on October 24, 2024 on a resolution urging China to immediately cease its “continued military operations,” “economic coercion,” and “hostile disinformation” directed at Taiwan.[1] Whereas in the West, warning by shouting and slamming a fisted hand on a tabletop may be viewed as signaling vehement protest, the relative soft-spoken, be prudent connotes a very serious threat. The early twentieth-century U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt, would likely miss the force of Xi’s intent to retaliate against the E.U. should it interfere with China on Taiwan. If my reading of Xi is correct, (and this may seem a leap), then the world coming to grips with constructing a global order commensurate to address global risks, such as climate change, starvation, and war in a nuclear age will face entrenched resistance in departing from the noxious principle of absolutist national sovereignty that has stymied collective, multilateral action. How dare you even hint that you will encroach on China’s sovereignty! This is essentially what President Xi was saying. Even in the post World War II global order of sovereign nation states, China’s claim that its sovereignty includes Taiwan is dubious, which in turn can be taken as evidence that resting the global order on the sovereignty of nation-states is problematic. In short, that principle allows for over-reaching without accountability.

In reacting officially to the E.U.’s resolution, China got right to the point, “warning that ‘the Taiwan question concerns China’s sovereignty’ and ‘it is a red line that must not be crossed.’”[2] The pith in the determination alone suggests that China would fight “tooth and nail” to hold onto all of its sovereignty rather than delegate some portion of it to a multilateral entity on the global level even so carbon-emission targets could be enforced on otherwise self-aggrandizing economic nation-states.

In explaining its warning, China also stated that it “strongly deplores and opposes this egregious breach of the one-China principle and interference in China’s internal affairs.”[3] But at the time, did the China-Taiwan dispute fall under China’s internal affairs? On the one hand, the UN Resolution 2758, which had been adopted in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and removed the seat that had been assigned to the “representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (in other words, Taiwan).[4]  Even in 2024, “the E.U., the U.S. and most” of the unitary single-states in the world maintained diplomatic relations only with the government of mainland China, “leaving [Taiwan] without official recognition.”[5] The resolution does not imply, however, that China has the UN’s permission to invade Taiwan, as the resolution does not even mention Taiwan (or the Republic of China). The E.U.’s resolution says as much, as it recommends “Taiwan’s meaningful participation” in international organizations.[6] It would be silly to say Taiwan can participate, but not exist apart from mainland China.

A more fundamental problem with China’s internal affairs claim centers on the ethical conflict of interest in one party of a dispute claiming the unilateral or sole authority to decide the question. That whether Taiwan was at the time included in China’s internal affairs was not definitely answered can be immediately realized by recalling the statement of Taiwan’s president, William Lai, that Taiwan was already de facto independent and thus did not even need to declare independence from the mainland. China’s claim of internal affair thus represents an overreach in terms of China’s beliefs and perception regarding its own sovereignty, and, by implication the lack thereof of Taiwan’s own. In other words, a nation-state’s own view of its sovereignty is subject to expansiveness and this in itself can give rise to state conflict internationally. Basing a global order on an absolutist interpretation of the sovereignty of the nation-state unit of political organization is inherently problematic. The absolutist interpretation includes the conflict of interest such as the one that China was exploiting in presuming to have the sole authority to decide what constitutes its sovereignty even in respect to territory that is in dispute with another nation-state. This is like a corporation’s management declaring that it would take over the National Labor Relations Board’s authority in the U.S. and rule on complaints made by the company’s labor union unilaterally without even bothering to put of the façade of being an impartial intermediary. At the time, Starbucks’ management would have liked to assume such a role; it could have cited China on the Taiwan question.

So in addition to the national sovereignty basis of the extant global order making enforcement of UN resolutions and international law nearly impossible, absent a voluntary “coalition of the willing” among nation-states—which can no means be relied upon even on an occasional basis—the sovereignty of nation-states is itself a problematic doctrine. Interpreted to be absolutist, national sovereignty even contains an unethical conflict of interest. I have elsewhere argued that even unexploited conflicts of interest are unethical, given the foreseeable tendencies in human nature; exploited conflicts, as evinced by China, are most definitely unethical. A global order that allows for such a thing is inherently flawed; that global-scale threats to our species have both increased and become more severe in the twenty-first century just adds to the urgency in replacing the flawed system, even if China warns us to be prudent in doing so.

It would be most imprudent to let China hold the world back from catching up with the twenty-first century. It is precisely such absolutist opportunist nation-states that justify extending sovereignty beyond the regional, or “empire-scale,” historically compounded polities, such as Russia, India, the E.U., the U.S., and China to the global level.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “’Act Prudently’: China Slams E.U. Parliament over Taiwan Resolution, Warns of Red Lines,” Euronews.com, October 25, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, italics added.
4. Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

Chinese President Xi Exploits a Vulnerability of the E.U.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Europe in May, 2024 “amid concerns in Europe over Chinese support for Russia’s war in Ukraine and European markets being flooded with cheap Chinese electric vehicles.”[1] Although these matters were at the time properly matters for the E.U. rather than its states, Xi oriented his visit to the state level, and in particular to states including France and Hungary that had “special bilateral relationships” with China.[2] In other words, the Chinese leader sought to exploit the E.U.’s vulnerability wherein state governments have sufficient sovereignty to undermine the federal level. I contend that the state leaders should have refused to meet with Xi, redirecting him to meet with federal officials.

There were indeed “growing suspicions that China” was “seeking to take advantage of divisions in Europe,” which could weaken the E.U. even in its competencies (i.e., enumerated powers).[3] According to Bertram Lang, a research associate at Goethe University, China had “gradually divided Europe into two groups, ‘those friendly and unfriendly to China.’”[4] Accordingly, Xi began his trip in France to speak with that state’s president, Emmanuel Macron, even though discussions on trade imbalances with the E.U. should have taken place with E.U. officials. “Macron sought to demonstrate European unity by including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen,” as if the E.U. Commission were a guest or third party on the E.U.’s trade.[v] In other words, Macron’s accommodation could hardly count as deference.

It is not as if the E.U. were incompetent in one of its own competencies. Von der Leyen “took direct aim at what she called China’s ‘market distortion practices’ with massive subsidies for electric vehicle and steel industries.”[6] In fact, the Commission announced that “it would launch anti-subsidy probes into Chinese electronic vehicles and solar panels to determine whether to impose punitive tariffs on them.”[7] Neither Macron nor any other official at the state level pertained to the probe, and yet Macron agreed to meet with Xi.

The undermining of European unity and the E.U. itself by state officials agreeing to play into the divisive tactics of foreign governments is a good argument for E.U. institutions having the authority to limit the involvement of the state governments in foreign policy as concerns E.U. matters, or competencies. Especially as the E.U. was at the time looking at enlargement sometime in the future, the vulnerability of too much state power in federal matters, including the need for unanimity, was something that the E.U. strongly needed to address before enlargement. That Xi was able to exploit the weakness only adds to need to seek a more balanced dual sovereignty in the E.U. It runs against human nature to rely on the deference of state leaders to E.U. officials on federal matters when foreign leaders lure the limelight in front of the state politicians. Therefore, I contend that the E.U. Commission’s president should have had the power to redirect Xi from Macron and other state leaders on E.U. trade.

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1. Yuchen Li and Wesley Rahn, “Did China’s Xi Jinping Expose Disunity in Europe?” Deutsch Welle (DW.de), May 10, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

India on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: On the Flawed Hegemony of Political Realism

India took an equivocal position on Russia’s invasion. This is surprising at first glance because India has been so concerned to protect its sovereign territory from baleful encroachments from China. What explains India looking the other way as Russia unilaterally invaded a sovereign state? I contend that the explanation supports the assertion that the world could no longer afford its system based on national sovereignty if political realism is in the driver’s seat at the national level.

According to Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University, one of my alma maters, the USSR was a vital partner of India during the Cold War. The Soviet Union was willing to sell weapons to India for cheap in order to keep China from expanding. For spare parts, India still has to go to Russia and is thus dependent on that country and the good will of its government. No country could ween itself away from a provider of military hardware quickly.

Furthermore, Ganguly noted in a talk in 2024 that India had a history of buying oil from Russia, and this continued during Russia’s invasion in spite of the Western embargos of Russian oil. The U.S. is in part to blame because it would sanction India were it to buy oil from Iran or Venezuela. At the time of the Russian War, India was still a poor country even as its high tech industry was expanding. Russian oil was relatively cheap. Also, India could point to the American hypocrisy in having relations with some sordid, autocratic regimes. This can explain why the government of India was well-aware during Russia’s war in Ukraine that by buying Russian oil and selling it to the EU and US, India was undermining the embargoes. Saudi Arabia was doing likewise, and yet the Biden administration held that both countries were allies of the United States. Everyone was looking primarily or even solely at their own interests.

Ganguly has also pointed out that in Indian culture, there is an obsession for multipolarity: there should be several global powers rather than just one biggie. Therefore, there is a willingness to work with Russia, which could serve as a check on hegemonic American power. This is not to say that Indian culture had any affinity whatsoever, Ganguly insists, with internal Russian politics. Nevertheless, India has had China as its principal long-term threat, and India’s government has recognized for a long time that Russia could act as a check on China.

All of this goes to say, political realism was alive and well as the world adjusted to Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine. In realism, each government orients its foreign (and industrial) policy tightly to the national interest rather than also to cooperate with other governments in the interests of a global order in which international law can be more effectively enforced. The international system is just the aggregate of the self-interests of governments; aggregated parts make up the whole. With human rights suffering from a want of international enforcement in Ukraine as well as in Gaza, the want of international attention in a system of sovereign countries on tightening that system to enhance the enforcement of international law suggests that political realism has become insufficient. Climate change and the risk of nuclear war, which Russia has threatened in the context of Ukraine, only add to the argument that the world could no longer afford an international order that rests on national sovereignty to which political realism is the dominant operating system in governments.

The Tyranny of the Veto: Eviscerating the U.N.

Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on October 4, 2011, effectively tossing a life preserver, according to the New York Times, to Syria’s president. The toothless proposal would have condemned the Syrian government for its violent crackdown of popular protests in which more than 2,700 had been killed. The proposal’s language had been softened from targeted financial sanctions; the council would merely have been charged with considering unspecified measures after a 30-day period. Two reasons can be cited for the two vetoes: commercial ties and a vested interest in forestalling any more threats to the doctrine of national sovereignty.

The veto-provision itself of the Security Council can be questioned here, as it allows allies to protect even a government that has, in the words of Gérard Araund of the E.U., lost its legitimacy in the world. The New York Times reports that the arms contracts that Russia had with the Syrian government at the time of the vetoes were valued at $4 billion. “Beyond jet fighters and tanks, Russia has varied interests in Syria, like oil and gas and cement.” Russia is Syria’s fifth largest trading partner. Accordingly, Russia’s foreign minister issued a statement condemning extremists in Syria who were engaging in “open terror” through violence. Russia was betting on Assad. Aleksandr Shumilin, director of the Center for the Analysis of Middle East Conflicts, told the media that as “soon as it seems that the opposition has become comparable to [Assad] in strength and there appears a possibility they will win, Russia will change its behavior.” One could add that such a change would occur if and only if Russia’s commercial interests with Syria are threatened. This approach is known as realism in international relations. States pursue their own strategic interests internationally, taking for granted rather than challenging the system of sovereign nation-states that permits realism to be the driver even though it does not take into account the broader public good.

The continued hegemony of the nation-state system and the impact of realism are both evident from the fact that even such a weak proposal could successfully be blocked against a government that had killed over 2,700 unarmed protesters. The message being sent by the U.N. is that a government can use its claim to legitimate force pretty much any way it wants. Put another way, an implication from realism in a nation-state system is that the U.N. is merely a conference, or discussion, without much attention to the broader (i.e., international) system of governance, at least in so far as the Security Council is concerned. We are thus left in a Bodinian/Hobbesian world wherein every government is looking out for its own narrow interests, which allow for governments to turn against their people.

To be sure, opponents of the resolution did have a leg to stand on. They claimed that the no-fly-zone resolution on Libya had been abused by NATO bombing pro-Gadhafi positions even when no civilians were in danger. There was a sense in both Moscow and Beijing that the West had been using economic sanctions and military actions under U.N. auspices to further Western-friendly regime change. According to the New York Times, there “is a sense in both capitals that the West in general, and the United States in particular, is feeding the protest movements in the Arab world to further its own interests.” Both Russia and China are “determined to reassert their long opposition to anything that smacks of domestic meddling by outside powers.” Lest it be thought that this is for the protection of other governments or for national sovereignty as a virtue or ideal, Russia faced outside pressure concerning Chechnya and China has Tibet. In other words, the national sovereignty doctrine is a manifestation of realism, wherein international consensus is the result of narrow national interests rather than a view of the good of the whole.

In defending Assad with the doctrine that ultimately protects them, Russia and China must also deal with the inconsistency in letting Assad get away with his killing spree while Gadhafi had killed less yet been stopped. In other words, why does Gadhafi’s opposition deserve help while those against Assad are “extremists”? If abuse of the Libya resolution by NATO were really the problem, then Russia and China could have insisted that U.N. officials oversee any action to defend Syrian protesters and report regularly to the Council, wherein Russia and China could nullify the resolution by a veto if either government suspected any abuse taking place. In fact, the U.N. Secretary General could designate Russia and China as coordinating the operation. The U.N. should not have delegated the Libyan operation so much to NATO, but this does not mean that the same thing would have to be accepted in an operation against Assad.

Going beyond the strategic interests esteemed in realism, the question of international governance can be broached, particularly as there are several truly global issues (e.g., global warming). The development of communications technology means that wholesale human rights abuses occurring on the other side of the world can be instantly seen. Out of this greater awareness, a greater groundswell of opposition to unfettered national sovereignty can be expected, with implications for how international governance is structured.

Given the greater need for international governance, the U.N. should be reformed from a confederation to a modern federation such that a few friends do not have sufficient influence to block a resolution against an abusive government. The veto itself should be eliminated, though this might require that a new organization be formed in lieu of the U.N. Otherwise, we will be left with a world in which Hobbesian sovereigns are allowed to violate their citizens’ basic human right to life while friendly government officials attend to their countries’ respective financial and political interests at the expense of the system as a whole and the general good. I contend that enabling violent, abusive dictators is not in our good, so their friends ought not be allowed to prevent the international community from policing its basic standards. National sovereignty should be limited, just as international governance itself would be subject to constraints.

Sources:

Joe Lauria, “Russia, China Veto U.N.’s Syria Move,” Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2011. 

Neil MacFarquhar, “With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend,” New York Times, October 6, 2011. 

China's Population: Demographic Imbalances and the Climate Emergency

In his treatise on Understanding, David Hume posits that we don’t know as much about causation as we think we do. Often times, positive correlation (i.e., two or more things present at the same time) is confused with causation (i.e., one thing causing another). That umbrellas tend to be out when it is raining does not mean that umbrellas cause rain (or that rain causes umbrellas). Rain and umbrellas have their own distinct causes, which Hume would say we don’t understand as well as we think we do. It is very difficult, for example, to determine whether climate change caused by methane and CO2 emissions caused October 2019 to the hottest October globally on record; more data-points covering long stretches of time are needed to distinguish even a few outliers from being part of a broader trend. By October of 2019, not only had scientists obtained and analyzed enough samples over a long enough time-frame to be confident (99%) that climate change had been occurring due to human carbon emissions. Not since roughly 60 million years ago had the carbon parts per million in the atmosphere stood at 410 ppm. In having to repeatedly accelerate their forecasts regarding the various impacts, such as sea-level rise due to melting ice (on land, such as Greenland), scientists had demonstrated that our understanding of the causation on the various impacts was still far from perfect. Even so, 11,000 scientists knew enough by November 2019 to declare unequivocally that humanity was facing a climate-change emergency. That is to say, drastic changes in terms of carbon emissions (e.g., energy sources, lifestyles) would have to be quickly made to avoid the worst-case scenario (e.g., mass food shortages, mass migrations from coastal areas and the loss of cities, and disease). This scenario is in line with Mathias’ theory of population ecology wherein a population of a species increasing without reaching an equilibrium maximum faces an increased risk of war, disease, or starvation. Once a species’ population pierces the semi-permeable constraints of the wider ecosystem (i.e., natural environment), Nature has its own ways of arresting the schizogenic growth of a species if it fails to limit its increase. During the twentieth century, the global increase of our species’ population was expediential, going from 1.6 to 6.1 billion. Sadly, even many policy-makers were oblivious to the fact that such a huge change must surely have consequences, at least some day. China’s one-child policy was an exception, making the relatively unconstrained population growths in India and Africa more noticeable as potentially problematic. Why did China need its policy while India, also with a population of over a billion, did not? In fact, the growth mantra generally subscribed to by countries across the globe acted as an incentive to make matters worse! Even a population with a low birth rate was generally taken as a problem. The negative impacts on a labor force and economic growth more broadly gave governments an incentive to increase birth-rates and thus populations (even though immigration served as an alternative). I want to look further into the case of China as a means of assessing how seriously the world was taking the climate emergency.

China’s one-child policy, wherein a couple could only have one child, was instituted in 1980 and abandoned in 2015, when couples could have two children (but not more). With one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, China faced the “prospect of fewer and fewer workers to support retirees amid a rising median age.”[1] In other words, the pressure of a temporary demographic bind had come to outweigh concerns about the population level even though 1.3 billion people was a significant part of the species’ distended population level of 7.5 billion.

Considering that as living beings, humans must consume energy, 1.3 billion people cannot but have a considerable impact on how much energy humanity consumes. Even were fossil fuel sources entirely eliminated in China and abroad, food scarcity would still be strained, especially considering that India’s 1.3 billion people are also consuming energy. This goes back to the point that a huge increase in the species’ population must have significant repercussions concerning energy (including food). 

To their credit, even though China’s policy-makers in 2019 were “well aware that a rising crop of retirees threaten[ed] to drain household savings and derail [economic] growth” and that the population could start to decline in 2030, birth limits remained in effect in the two-child policy.[2] Policy-makers argued that technological advances and automation would increase productivity such that fewer young workers would be needed. I submit that the government could step in to increase funding to retirees to take the financial pressure off of their family members who are working. Even absent immigration, demographic tight-points can be managed such that the overall goal of a smaller population is not compromised. Therefore, it is irresponsible to say that China should abandon its two-child policy, even if China’s demographic pinch would turn out to be worse than expected in 2019 when the global population stood at 7.7 billion, heading in the wrong direction!

Given the climate emergency, the scientists strongly advised the world that drastic measures needed to be taken as soon as possible. Correcting for the incredible increase in our species’ population that occurred in the twentieth century can be considered a necessary part of the drastic measures. The world would be wise to offer China assistance (e.g., knowledge) such that the corrective is successful, and to pressure India to make a similar corrective. In the culture of growth, it is important to point out that an economy can be expected to contract as its population decreases significantly. Productivity advances, however, can mean that a lower quality of life does not go with the contraction. Indeed, economic contraction is itself part of the decreased demand for energy that goes with a smaller population. To sustain itself rather than be cut down by natural processes, our species must decrease its demand overall rather than only shift off fossil fuels. The planet contains limited resources, including habitable (and farmable) land. Overpopulation can trigger war, disease, and starvation, and even changes to the atmosphere that could render the planet itself very uncomfortable or even uninhabitable for humans.

Listening to a talk given by a NASA public-relations person, I was stunned that he admitted that in NASA’s view we can no longer rely “on this rock” for the survival of our species. Hence the plans to colonize the Moon and Mars.  My reaction was that those are artificial environments for us, and thus inherent unstable, whereas we are suited naturally to living on Earth—just not 8 billion of us! Getting back in sync with our natural environment seems to me to be vastly superior to relying on artificial environments. The twentieth century—the bloodiest century ever as of its close—can turn out to be a population bubble or a jump in terms of population. The bubble-effect requires our species to push itself back down, whereas a jump goes to a higher-population plateau. China deserves credit for resisting the temptation to see its population increase unabated in the false assumption that economic growth is most important.

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1. Liyan Qi and Fanfan Wang, “China Left One-Child Policy Behind, but It Still Struggles With a Falling Birth Rate,” The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2019.

2. Ibid.

A World Eschew: National Sovereignty Eclipsing Climate Change

U.S. President Obama announced after he left the UN global climate conference at Copenhagen in 2009 that five major nations—the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa—had together forged a climate deal. He called it “an unprecedented breakthrough” but acknowledged that the agreement was merely a political statement and not a legally binding treaty and might not need ratification by the entire conference.  Essentially, it was merely a statement of the five countries’ respective goals, as if someone had announced, “I want to lose ten pounds.”   The political statement did not meet even the modest expectations that leaders set for this meeting, notably by failing to set a 2010 goal for reaching a binding international treaty to seal the provisions of the accord.  Nor does the plan firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Claiming that the conference was a success was not to stop the spin. Obama, for example, said, “For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change.” To be sure, the accord does provide a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward those national pollution-reduction goals, a compromise on an issue over which China bargained hard, and it calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to those countries most vulnerable to a changing climate.  That is, the political statement is not a binding treaty, but the document does lay out a framework for verification of emissions commitments by developing countries and for establishing a “high-level panel” to assess financial contributions by rich nations to help poor countries adapt to climate change and limit their emissions. Lastly, it sets a goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2050, implying deep cuts in climate-altering emissions over the next four decades.

However, in a news conference, Obama said the accord was only a tentative start down a long road. The accord sets no goal for concluding a binding international treaty, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. In other words, any developing country can opt in or out of the monitored pot of money, and China may well still view the monitoring aspect as voluntary—meaning to be determined by the Chinese Government what can be examined.  The Chinese had been intransigent on the matter of verification by non-Chinese.  Citing national sovereignty, the Chinese had claimed that the rest of the world should take Chinese law as being a sufficient basis for verification.  This, I submit, is an extremely odd proposition—that people extrinsic to China should rely on Chinese law when the legitimacy of such law stops at the country’s borders.  The statement is telling because it demonstrates how antiquated the Bodinian notion of absolute national sovereignty is in the modern world.  The interdependence occasioned not only by global warming, but also nuclear proliferation and an increasingly global financial system, makes an insistence on the absoluteness of national sovereignty an extremely dangerous proposition.   The fecklessness of the Chinese approach to “verification” and the resulting diluted “political statement” (rather than a treaty) coming out of the conference suggest that we urgently need to thwart the historical insistence from our global vocabulary and institutions. 

The immediate implication is that the veto in the UN Security Council is no longer legitimate.  Further on, the binding nature of international law backed up by international governance structures that do not include vetoes needs to be developed and applied to the domains determined to be rightfully global.  Countries still insisting on the absoluteness of their national sovereignties, such as China on pollution-controls and the US on international criminal law, would have to bend or be boycotted by the rest of the world.   In other words, international relations and economic exchanges ought to be dependent on being subject to a governance structure beyond the nation-state.  If China is left as the only country insisting that nothing can supervene Chinese law, then no one in the world should have anything to do with that country.   In contrast, those subject to a governance structure that supervenes in particular enumerated powers (with sufficient safeguards against their encroachment…given the history of the US) should be able to enjoy benefits beyond the binding nature of such powers, such as privileged positions in trade and visas.   I would argue that governments that insist that their law is insurmountable deserve to be marginalized by the rest of the world.  I write this as an American knowing that the US may well be marginalized under this scenario unless there is some movement on international criminal law (i.e., being subject to the International Criminal Court, which in turn would be given the ability to go into any country and extract defendants).  

The technological development during the twentieth century means that political development is necessary in the twenty-first century.  We are so used to viewing change in terms of technology that we are perhaps unaccustomed to the sort of change that should ensue in order to obviate the new dangers from the technology.   In other words, we need to shift gears in terms of the domains wherein change is expected or thought to occur.   In some respects, we are still in the dark ages, and being in the dark when the planet could come to equilibrium unsuitable for human habitation—whether via carbon or radioactivity—represents a level of danger that ought to move us to action against the default of national sovereignty.  In some respects, we are so primitive; we tend not to see this because we identify change and development with technology.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/science/earth/19climate.html?_r=1&hp

China’s Strategy: Divide the Vulnerable E.U.

During the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates from the sovereign states feared that foreign states would seek to divide their American counterparts to the extent that the United States could split apart. So the delegates voted to move foreign policy from the state to the federal level. Unlike this case, government officials of the E.U. states held foreign policy closely rather than ceding it to the federal level. Whereas in the American case the delegates could adopt a federal perspective as distinguished from the immediate interests of the respective state governments, the state officials in the European Council can be taken even as personifications of their respective state interests. Foreign powers can take advantage of the state officials’ conflict of interest to the extent that the very functioning of the European Union is compromised.

China provides a case in point. Unlike his predecessors, President Xi had by 2017 demonstrated a strong inclination to have China assume a major geo-political role in the world. “Xi’s aggressive diplomacy largely comes from his own aspirations, beliefs and strategic requirements,” said Shi Yinhong, a scholar of international relations in China.[1] The interests of other countries are noticeably absent in Xi’s (or any president’s) considerations. In fact, Xi’s forceful diplomacy could be expected to be to the detriment of foreign powers, including the E.U.

In line with President Xi’s “global ambitions” at least through 2017, China may have been “trying to divide the European Union by cultivating poorer [states] like Hungary and Greece and using them to block policies supported by richer [states] that hurt Beijing.”[2] In pursuing this strategy, Xi could bank on the resentment of poor states such as Greece toward the largest state, Germany, for having been able to dominate federal policy on the debt crisis. In other words, the largest (and richest) state had enough power at the federal level to make sure that E.U. policy on Greece’s debt would reflect Germany’s interests. That a few large states might dominate was a concern of the American delegates at the convention—the result being that every state has the same number of votes in the U.S. Senate.

It seems that state as well as federal officials in the E.U. had not read Madison’s Notes to the Federal Convention, and thus could be unnecessarily blindsided by the efforts of China to divide the Union and of the state of Germany to forge E.U. policy in the state’s own interest. Xi could strategically use resentment among the other states against Germany to thwart not only the foreign policies of the large states, but also the very functioning of the Union. Put another way, the European Union has been ripe for an outside “divide and conquer” strategy.

European officials could counter China’s strategy by transferring more foreign-policy competencies to the federal level, addressing the conflict of interest that state officials have in the European Counsel (i.e., effectively reducing the interest of the Union to that of the specific state), and giving small states an institutional or procedural safeguard against a large/rich state being able to dominate federal policy.

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1. Jane Perlez, “Xi’s Global Ambitions Tempered by Leery Allies,” The New York Times, October 23, 2017.

2. Ibid.

China and Russia Protect Syria’s Assad on Chemical Weapons: A Matter of Priorities

All bets are off when it comes to regulating war. Such a condition is virtually by definition beyond the confines of law. Even international law is but an impotent dwarf next to the raw force of a governmental regime at war—whether with its own citizens or another country. To be sure, the International Criminal Court had by 2017 made a dent in holding some perpetrators of atrocities such as genocide accountable for their deeds. Such efforts were still the exception, unfortunately, when Russia, China, and Bolivia vetoes a resolution in the U.N. Security Council that would have penalize Syria’s Issad regime for having used chemical weapons on Syrians. The reasons for the vetoes—and the fact that Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kazakhstan all obstained—implies that holding perpetrators accountable by international means had not yet become a priority at the international level.

Russia’s envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, defended the veto by calling the resolution “politically biased.” He asserted, “This is railroading the draft by the Western troika.”[1] In other words, the Russian government put its rivalry with the West above holding a friend accountable. Only months earlier, the U.S. Government had refused to veto a resolution condemning its friend, Israel, for retroactively legalizing illegal Jewish settlements on private Palestinian land. So it was with some clout that the American ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, accused Russia and China of putting “their friends in the Assad regime ahead of our global security. . . . It is a sad day for the Security Council when members make excuses for other [members] killing their own people.”[2] What may not be noticed prime facie is the implication that a regime killing its own people is deprioritized when government officials prioritize friendly governments who commit such acts.

What would it take for the world as a whole to attach more importance in terms of other priorities to stopping and preventing crimes against humanity? Even intent to protect the precedent of national sovereignty—something China’s government has made a priority at the U.N.—is a deprioritizing of the crimes that a government commits against its own people and other peoples. The message is that such acts are normal, or at least tolerable. Perhaps it would take only a massive occurrence for the world as a whole to stop and admit that the usual international relations are themselves no longer viable because they are insufficient, given the priority suddenly put on the crimes themselves.  

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[1] Somini Sengupta, “Russia and China Veto Penalties on Syria Over Use of Chemical Arms,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Reforming Chinese Courts: A Fool’s Errand?

With Chinese courts revising more than 1,300 criminal decisions in 2014, the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, Zhou Qiang, told the national legislature in March 2015, “With regard to wrongful convictions, we feel a deep sense of self-blame and demand that courts at all levels draw a profound lesson.”[1] Six months earlier, President Xi Jinping had initiated legal reforms on the premise that the Communist Party needed a “better-functioning” legal system in order to be able to govern.[2] The question is whether this push will come to anything substantial.

According to The Wall Street Journal, political considerations are one reason why the courts have had so many wrongful convictions, including in capital crimes. “The police, prosecutors and the courts are often coordinated by the party based on interests other than determining the truth,” Joshua Rosenzweig, a human-rights researcher, explains.[3] This collusion is vulnerable to the human presumption of infallibility. The police or government officials presume that “they have their man,” and the prosecutors and even judges act as reinforcers (or enforcers). As a result, the defense attorneys can only put up defenses they know will not make any difference to the outcome of the cases.

In Western jurisprudence, the conventional wisdom is that only a judiciary independent from the government and police can resist “political considerations” and intimidation. Even when formally separate, a judiciary can still be subject to pressure, however. Chinese firewalls can fail when a power-gradient is sufficiently steep. A judge facing re-election, for example, may not want to “rock the boat” with “the powers that be” years before the election, lest other candidates be used to take the judge out.

Unfortunately for the Chinese people, President Xi continued the requirement that the legal system serve the interests of the Communist Party.[4] So for all the atoning for miscarriages of justice, the government’s efforts to reform the legal system in order to instill public confidence in it and thus in the party as well, the collusion—and thus the wrongful convictions—would likely continue. Put another way, without fundamentally altering the design of the system that includes the government, the Communist Party, the police, lawyers, and the courts, urging judges to be more careful can only be a fool’s errand.

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[1] Josh Chin, “Top Judge Apologizes for Wrongful Convictions,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

China’s Increasing International Role: A Historical Departure

Historically, China was isolationist. The Opium Wars in the mid-19^th century is a good illustration of why. From this context, China’s announcements of a series of international trade and finance initiatives by which China would assume a larger leadership role internationally are stunning. Doubtless the enhanced role is in line with China’s geopolitical and economic interests. After all, political realism is hardly a dead theory in the 21^st century. Even so, the impact of the reversal on the culture is significant, and thus worthy of study. Specifically, the traditional mistrust of foreigners is likely to diminish. As it does, the Chinese will be more likely to consider and even advocate for economic and political principles, such as liberty and rights, that are valued elsewhere in the world but not so much in China. The result could be increased political instability. In short, the initiatives timed to coincide with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November 2014 could eventually weaken the Chinese government’s grip on power.

In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), relations with non-Chinese peoples were conducted by “a variety of bureaus and agencies that, in different ways, implied or stated the cultural inferiority and geographical marginality of foreigners, while also defending the state against them.”[1] Even though countries such as Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam “shared many of the basic values of Chinese culture,” the emissaries “were expected to make a formal acknowledgement of China’s cultural and political prestige by [using] a language of subservience in diplomatic documents and by making the ritual prostrations (kowtow) before the Chinese emperor in royal audiences. In return, these countries were allowed to conduct a controlled volume of trade with China.”[2] Interestingly, a certain subservience and even inferiority may have been implied at the APEC meeting in Beijing in 2014 to the extent that China held huge quantities of foreign currencies in reserve (which could be used to invest in other economies) and foreign government debt (e.g., U.S. Treasuries). In this sense, China’s enhanced leadership role internationally is in line with the history. Even the taking on of a leadership role implies that the resulting increased trade and foreign economic relations more generally would be controlled in their contours, as the leadership was oriented to designing international economic infrastructure, and no system-design is perfectly neutral.

Just before the APEC meeting, the Chinese government announced a free-trade agreement with South Korea; both the timing of the announcement and the taking of initiative on the agreement imply significant—though not complete—control. Additionally, Chinese regulators “approved a plan to open Chinese stock markets wider to foreign investors by linking exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai.”[3] Simply in having a plan, the Chinese government was controlling how foreign investors would relate to the stock exchanges. Put another way, control is implied in having a plan, rather than alternatively watching foreign investors come in do as they will (e.g., speculate by selling-short, thereby trashing even some sound companies). Lastly, the Chinese government announced a $40 billion Chinese-financed fund to improve trade links between Asian economies. The money alone implies control. At the very least, the Chinese would have a big say in how the links are made.

The extent of the Chinese involvement in international economic relations is startling from a historical perspective, but the degree of control implied is not. Historically, the Chinese had good reason to distrust foreign governments. On August 29, 1842, the Chinese signed the British treaty of Nanjing in what is now known as the first opium war. Facing an epidemic of addiction, the Qing government had outlawed trade in the drug. In the treaty, British opium merchants could live and operate in five Chinese cities—Canton, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai. Although only the latter was a boom town, illegal opium would come into China at a rate of at least 20,000 chests a year.[4] Additionally, the island of Hong Kong was to possessed in perpetuity by the British.[5] The United States, France, and a host of other countries also extracted concessions. All told, the Qing “had lost control of vital elements of China’s commercial, social, and foreign policies.”[6] As if this were not enough, the Tianjin treaty in 1858 opened all Chinese ports to British opium traders in spite of the fact that the possession and sale of the narcotic was still illegal under Chinese law. To pressure the Qing into signing the treaty that implied deep disrespect for Chinese law within China, the British burnt down the Yuan Ming Yuan, the exquisite summer palace on October 18, 1860. The Chinese were humiliated at such a disgrace.[7]

Deep scares inexorably become etched in the subterranean contours of a society’s perspective of the world. An insistence or at least a proclivity to control relations with foreign powers naturally goes along with an inner sense of insecurity masked as an insistence to relate only from a position of power—whether it be militarily or in having massive reserves of foreign currencies or debt as assets. What has changed is the extent of China’s interaction with other countries, economically and politically. Ironically, from the controlled design of international economic regimes, increased exchange can be expected—not only of economic goods and services under free trade, but also of ideological principles. In this sense, the Chinese government risks opening China up beyond what that governing party can control.

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1. Jonathon Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2^nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 117.

2. Ibid, p. 118.

3. Joe McDonald and Youkyung Lee, “Asia-Pacific Leaders Agree to Work Toward Possible Adoption of Trade Deal,” The Associated Press, November 11, 2014.

4. Spence, Search for Modern China, p. 164.

5. Ibid., pp. 160-61.

6. Ibid., p. 163.

7. Ibid., p. 182.

The Internet Escapes China's Grasp

The “surprising escape” of Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist, from house arrest to the presumed custody of U.S. diplomats was “buoying China's embattled dissident community” even as the government lashed out, “detaining those who helped him and squelching mention of his name on the Internet.”[1] Two points bear further scrutiny.

Chen Guangcheng, after his escape, with Hu Jia.   

First, that Chinese security officials “reacted angrily” strikes me as strange. It is as if institutional interests naturally prompt strong human emotions as though an insult were taken personally. In other words, unless the dissident had insulted or otherwise directly harmed the particular officials, it does not make sense that they would angrily inflict pain on the dissident’s supporters who were taken into custody after the escape. An institutional loss is not a personal affront. To treat the former as if it were the latter is essentially to anthropomorphize a given organization.

Second, the “squelching mention” of Chen Guangcheng’s name on the internet must have been a mission of futility in 2012. “Anything vaguely related to Chen [was] blocked on Chinese social media sites, such as posts including or key word searches for Chen, Guangcheng, GC, or even the words ‘blind person’.”[2] The inclusion of the latter term is almost funny in its overkill; it certainly points to the futility of tracing millions of blog posts and emails on the incident. After savvy internet users used “Shawshank Redemption” to refer indirectly to Chen, that movie title became a banned search term. The Chinese government was definitely playing defensive ball at that point. My point is that the game of snuffing out communication on the internet had already been lost—assuming the Chinese government does not prohibit the internet itself in China.

The government officials’ antiquated responses—both in terms of emotion and technology—suggest that the Chinese regime was still holding onto the ways of another century. This could be an indication that that regime will not survive the twenty-first. As technology continues to widen and deepen, antiquated means of control will become less and less efficacious through the century. Given the habit of officials reacting in “anger,” we can expect the increased difficulty with control to lead to more pain being inflicted on citizens. This in turn should lead to more popular resentment. In other words, the antiquated responses of government officials could be the seed of the regime’s destruction.

1. Alexa Olesen, “Chen Guangcheng Escape: China Activists Inspired by Blind Dissident Lawyer,” The Huffington Post, April 29, 2012. 
2. Ibid.

Is Syria’s Sovereignty Absolute?

“Fundamentally, the argument over Syria reflects a deeper divide between those who would use the Security Council to confront nations over how their governments treat civilians, versus those who consider that it has no role whatsoever in settling domestic disputes.” On the one side, Sheik Hamad, the prime minister of Qatar, reported to the Security Council, “The government killing machine continues effectively unabated.”[1] The implication is that people running a government do not have legitimate authority to kill over 5,000 fellow citizens.

The Arab League taking on Syria at the Security Council.           (Mario Tami/Getty)

On the other side, the Russian envoy, Vitaly Churkin, adopted a “where will it all end” argument. The Council, he said, will start saying “what king or prime minister needs to step down. The Security Council cannot prescribe recipes for the outcome of a domestic political process.”  The Russian foreign minister added that the “Russian policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession.”[2] He might have well have said, It is none of our business whether Assad kills his people. He did say that “the decision should be made by Syrians, by the Syrians themselves.”[3] What he did not say is that, “Russia’s long ties to Syria generate billions of dollars in weapon sales, plus the relationship gives Moscow the entrée it needs to be at the table for Middle East peace talks. In addition, the Russian Navy deploys some ships from the Syrian port of Tartous, widening Russia’s sphere of influence into the Mediterranean.”[4] Of course, the West has a strategic interest in toppling Assad to weaken his ally, Iran, as well as Hezbollah, which backs Assad.

Strategic interests, regardless of which side they happen to be on, should not be determinative, even as the existence of the veto in the Security Council allows them to be. The fundamental issues go beyond what fascinates an analyst, and thus should not be cut short by momentary concerns. The basic question has to do with whether “the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity” of a country, including Syria, is absolute. Can human rights legitimately counter the claim of absolutism? In other words, does a ruler have the right, internationally-speaking, to use a government’s monopoly (or at the very least, advantage) of force to kill non-violent citizens? If not, should the U.N. have the right to intercede?  These were the questions before the world in 2011, and they were no closer to being resolved as 2012 got underway at the U.N.’s Security Council.

Perhaps compromise can be found, such as having the International Criminal Court, rather than the Security Council, decide whether a ruler has violated human rights. An international code of human rights violations sufficient for a ruler to be vacated by the court would need to be formulated. Contributing forces to the enforcement effort would be required of any country that has signed onto the Court’s jurisdiction, so the U.N. need not be the instrument. However, as this compromise will have kept the Security Council from being in the regime change profession in terms of making the decision, perhaps Russia and China would agree to the U.N. serving in some capacity following the Court’s verdict.

Absent such a compromise, the question may be whether the U.N. or a new organization should limit national sovereignty where human rights of citizens are being sufficiently violated. The self-interest of rulers sitting on the Security Council may dictate that a precedent applying an international check on the power of current office-holders is undesirable. As with strategic interests, such a conflict of interest should not be allowed to interfere with, or obstruct, a decision on the fundamental question: Is national sovereignty absolute, and, if not, should the U.N. play a role in limiting it?

I suspect that “we’ll just have to agree to disagree” would be as far as discussions between the E.U. and Russia would get on the question. If so, then—and Europeans should recognize this from their own differences on the Union-level—members of the U.N. who are no longer willing to recognize national sovereignty as an absolute could form a separate “track” from the U.N. that would include a new United Nations. Members of it would of course be subject to that organization as a check. Additionally, that organization could decide to support efforts to defend human rights with military force in a country that is not a member.

I do not believe that the philosophical difference between the “absolutists” and the “human rights” camps in the Security Council is such that anything short of a split can answer the question. Lest this appear too pessimistic, a wider time-perspective could allow for a different perspective in both Moscow and Beijing. In the meantime, a coalition of the willing should not lose any time in setting up a new U.N. that includes “human rights-justified regime change” in its mission, because the existence of the veto means that the existing U.N. will remain stuck—which essentially means led by the few holdouts rather than the majority of the members. Rather than being stymied by a few members of the Security Council, each of whom retain a veto-right, the forces willing to act against peers who are systematically violating human rights should step up to the plate—assuming there really is an interest in putting human rights before absolute national sovereignty.

1. Neil MacFarquhar, “At U.N., Pressure Ison Russia For Refusal to Condemn Syria,” The New York Times, February 1, 2012. 
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.