Governance
Why Chinese democracy is better, G+ Governance for a Multiplex world, US wars and debt crises, de-dollarization is unstoppable, who started Australia's trade war with China?
UPDATE: "Let the light of Chinese democracy shine even brighter, so that China can ... contribute to the building of a better, higher quality [form of] democracy for humanity in the 21st century."
G-Plus means “Governments Plus”. It reflects the increasingly pluralistic, hybrid and decentered nature of global governance.
The U.S. debt is soaring, hence America’s current debt crisis. Yet both Republicans and Democrats are missing the solution: stopping America’s wars of choice and slashing military outlays.
Countries, particularly those in the Global South, are reducing their U.S. dollar reserves, settling cross border transactions in non-dollar currencies, and exploring the formation of new multilateral settlement mechanisms.
There is a sharp contradiction at the heart of the Albanese government’s attempt to stabilise trade with China, whilst at the same time preparing for war with China in support of the United States.
Why Chinese Democracy is Better
By Thomas des Garets Geddes and Daniel Crain in Sinification
"Let the light of Chinese democracy shine even brighter, so that China can ... contribute to the building of a better, higher quality [form of] democracy for humanity in the 21st century."
Democracy is yet another field in which Beijing is competing with Washington and, more generally, with the West. China’s aim may not be to convince others to adopt its political system per se, but it certainly appears intent on demonstrating that Chinese “democracy” is superior to what the West has to offer.
This was once again evident at an event organised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in March, just days before U.S. President Joe Biden co-hosted his second virtual “Summit for Democracy” alongside the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea and Zambia. The Beijing-based event, entitled “The Second International Forum on Democracy: Shared Human Values”, was attended by Li Shulei (李书磊), a politburo member and the current head of China’s Central Propaganda Department, and featured keynote speeches by a number of Chinese and foreign politicians and academics. Tsinghua University’s Yan Yilong (鄢一龙 ) was one of those taking part in this forum. His address is the focus of today’s post.
A big thank you to Daniel Crain for his parsing and translation of Yan’s speech.
Although the West will not admit it, China’s “whole-process people's democracy” is not only true democracy at play, but is also a more functional type of democracy than that practised in Western countries.
Chinese democracy outclasses Western democratic electoral systems because of the complex processes it has developed which have allowed it “to move closer towards ‘the people being the masters of their own house’.” Unlike in China, procedural rather than substantive democracy best defines what is now practised in the West.
Chinese democracy recognises the existence of “the people” in its holistic sense. Only by doing so can one ensure the people’s “overall, long-term and fundamental interests”.
Chinese democracy belongs to the majority, not to a minority as in the West. Unlike in America, China is not “owned by the 1%, governed by the 1% and for the benefit of the 1%”. Low voter turnout in election-based political systems is another reason why, unlike in China, electoral democracies are not able to represent the people as a whole.
Western elections have become a “talent show”, where people vote for the best performer rather than for those who are best suited to govern.
The general population does not have the specialist knowledge nor the long-term perspective required to elect competent representatives who have their nation’s best interests at heart.
Chinese leaders are “tested through practice, not through votes”. Democracy in China thus ensures that “political amateurs with no experience or qualifications” cannot become its leaders.
Unlike in the West, China’s political system allows democracy to be practised “at both the input and output levels.” It is a system in which people are able to “participate fully” and one in which officials serve the people and actually get things done.
Western democracy encourages competition, confrontation and the fragmentation of interests, which leads to constant political bickering and deadlocks. Chinese democracy, in contrast, is a “consensus-finding process” that ensures that policymaking is always moving forwards with the country’s core objectives firmly in sight.
Yan concludes: “Let the flower of democracy in China bloom even more colourfully, let the light of Chinese democracy shine even brighter, so that China can help mankind transcend its narrow, superficial and inferior view of democracy and contribute to the building of a better, higher quality [form of] democracy for humanity in the 21st century.”
Read more here.
G-Plus Governance for a Multiplex World
The concept of G-Plus governance describes the increasingly pluralistic, hybrid and decentered nature of global governance. G-Plus means “Governments Plus”. It reflects changes such as the proliferation of non-governmental actors, including NGOs, social movements, corporations, and various forms of partnership between governments and private entities, in global governance.
Global governance is not the monopoly of inter-governmental organizations. On the other hand, G-Plus governance in most cases complements, rather than supplants, the role of governments in international cooperation. It challenges the familiar notions of “multipolarity”, “unipolarity” or “G-zero”, as well as the tendency to think of global leadership in terms of exclusive power groups such as G-2 (US-China), G-7, and G-20. The role of new actors and configurations in G-Plus governance is leading to what could be termed a Multiplex World Order and new ways of organizing cooperation in areas such as poverty alleviation, climate change, global health, social media, and conflict management.
Amitav Acharya is the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance and Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC. Previously he was a Professor at York University, Toronto and University of Bristol, U.K. and taught at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University. He was the inaugural Boeing Company Chair at the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, Fellow the Asia Center and John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Christensen Fellow at Oxford. His books include Constructing Global Order (Cambridge 2018); The End of American World Order(Polity 2014, 2018); Why Govern? Rethinking Demand and Progress in Global Governance (editor, Cambridge 2016); and The Making of Southeast Asia (Cornell 2013). He has written op-eds for Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, Straits Times and other newspapers. The first non-Western scholar to be elected (for 2014-15) as the President of the International Studies Association (ISA), the largest and most influential global network in international studies, he received two Distinguished Scholar Awards from the ISA, for his contribution to non-Western international relations and international organizations.
Watch the video here.
America’s Wars and the US Debt Crisis
To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex, the most powerful lobby in Washington. In the year 2000, the U.S. government debt was $3.5 trillion, equal to 35% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2022, the debt was $24 trillion, equal to 95% of GDP. The U.S. debt is soaring, hence America’s current debt crisis. Yet both Republicans and Democrats are missing the solution: stopping America’s wars of choice and slashing military outlays.
Suppose the government’s debt had remained at a modest 35% of GDP, as in 2000. Today’s debt would be $9 trillion, as opposed to $24 trillion. Why did the U.S. government incur the excess $15 trillion in debt?
The single biggest answer is the U.S. government’s addiction to war and military spending. According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, the cost of U.S. wars from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2022 amounted to a whopping $8 trillion, more than half of the extra $15 trillion in debt. The other $7 trillion arose roughly equally from budget deficits caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Facing down the military-industrial lobby is the vital first step to putting America’s fiscal house in order
To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), the most powerful lobby in Washington. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned on January 17, 1961, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Since 2000, the MIC led the U.S. into disastrous wars of choice in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine.
The Military-Industrial Complex long ago adopted a winning political strategy by ensuring that the military budget reaches into every Congressional district. The Congressional Research Service recently reminded Congress that, “Defense spending touches every Member of Congress’s district through pay and benefits for military servicemembers and retirees, economic and environmental impact of installations, and procurement of weapons systems and parts from local industry, among other activities.” Only a brave member of Congress would vote against the military-industry lobby, yet bravery is certainly no hallmark of Congress.
America’s annual military spending is now around $900 billion, roughly 40% of the world's total, and greater than the next 10 countries combined. U.S. military spending in 2022 was triple that of China. According to Congressional Budget Office, the military outlays for 2024-2033 will be a staggering $10.3 trillion on current baseline. A quarter or more of that could be avoided by ending America’s wars of choice, closing down many of America’s 800 or so military bases around the world, and negotiating new arms control agreements with China and Russia.
Yet instead of peace through diplomacy, and fiscal responsibility, the MIC regularly scares the American people with a comic-book style depictions of villains whom the U.S. must stop at all costs. The post-2000 list has included Afghanistan’s Taliban, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and recently, China’s Xi Jinping. War, we are repeatedly told, is necessary for America’s survival.
A peace-oriented foreign policy would be opposed strenuously by the military-industrial lobby but not by the public. Significant public pluralities already want less, not more, U.S. involvement in other countries’ affairs, and less, not more, US troop deployments overseas. Regarding Ukraine, Americans overwhelminglywant a “minor role” (52%) rather than a “major role” (26%) in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This is why neither Biden nor any recent president has dared to ask Congress for any tax increase to pay for America’s wars. The public’s response would be a resounding “No!”
While America’s wars of choice have been awful for America, they have been far greater disasters for countries that America purports to be saving. As Henry Kissinger famously quipped, “To be an enemy of the United States can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” Afghanistan was America’s cause from 2001 to 2021, until the U.S. left it broken, bankrupt, and hungry. Ukraine is now in America’s embrace, with the same likely results: ongoing war, death, and destruction.
The military budget could be cut prudently and deeply if the U.S. replaced its wars of choice and arms races with real diplomacy and arms agreements. If presidents and members of congress had only heeded the warnings of top American diplomats such as William Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia in 2008, and now CIA Director, the U.S. would have protected Ukraine’s security through diplomacy, agreeing with Russia that the U.S. would not expand NATO into Ukraine if Russia also kept its military out of Ukraine. Yet relentless NATO expansion is a favorite cause of the MIC; new NATO members are major customers of U.S. armaments.
The U.S. has also unilaterally abandoned key arms control agreements. In 2002, the U.S. unilaterally walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And rather than promote nuclear disarmament—as the U.S. and other nuclear powers are required to do under Article VI the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—the Military-Industrial Complex has sold Congress on plans to spend more than $600 billionby 2030 to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Now the MIC is talking up the prospect of war with China over Taiwan. The drumbeats of war with China are stoking the military budget, yet war with China is easily avoidable if the U.S. adheres to the One-China policy that properly underpins U.S.-China relations. Such a war should be unthinkable. More than bankrupting the U.S., it could end the world.
Military spending is not the only budget challenge. Aging and rising healthcare costs add to the fiscal woes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, debt will reach 185 percent of GDP by 2052 if current policies remain unchanged. Healthcare costs should be capped while taxes on the rich should be raised. Yet facing down the military-industrial lobby is the vital first step to putting America’s fiscal house in order, needed to save the U.S., and possibly the world, from America’s perverse lobby-driven politics.
Read more here.
Dedollarization is unstoppable
Countries, particularly those in the Global South, are reducing their U.S. dollar reserves, settling cross border transactions in non-dollar currencies, and exploring the formation of new multilateral settlement mechanisms. A major driver of this trend is Washington’s weaponization of the dollar via expansive sanctions that currently cover 29 percent of the global economy and 40 percent of global oil reserves.
Two recent Responsible Statecraft articles, one authored by International Crisis Group co-chair Frank Giustra and another by Quincy Institute Non-Resident Fellow Amir Handjani, began the process of explaining the drivers of this economic trend, as well as the geopolitical pitfalls facing the U.S. as much of the world reduces its dependence on the dollar, especially if the U.S. fails to engage other countries in the process of forming a multilateral monetary system.
In this video, Giustra and Handjani make the case for the U.S. acknowledging the trend of dedollarization and for Washington to address the national security dangers, as well as global economic and political instability, associated with this unmanaged decline of U.S. economic hegemony.
Watch the video here.
Read more here.
Who started the trade war with China?
By John Menadue
There is a sharp contradiction at the heart of the Albanese government’s attempt to stabilise trade with China, whilst at the same time preparing for war with China in support of the United States.
Trade Minister Don Farrell has just returned from a visit to China. He described his visit as ‘a step in the process of stabilising our relationship with China’, a $300b two way trade relationship which underwrites our economic prosperity.
As the minister suggested and as we are seeing there are clear signs of improvement in trade relations that were so damaged by the Morrison Government.
One particular matter that is outstanding is Australian and Chinese membership of the trade agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Eleven countries, mainly in our region have signed the Agreement. Unfortunately, the Agreement has not been ratified because Donald Trump withdrew from the Agreement. That resulted in vassal states like Australia and Japan deciding not to proceed.
At his press conference in China Don Farrell gave a yes/no answer about the CPTPP:
Journalist: “Minister did you discuss the CPTPP?”
Minister for Trade: “Yes, we did. We discussed that. The Chinese Minister indicated that they would like to be considered for accession to the CPTPP. I indicated that we still hadn’t finally resolved the issue of the United Kingdom’s accession. We do believe that that’s imminent, but it still hasn’t been finally resolved. Of course, accession to that agreement requires the consent of all the parties.”
But the main discussion in China was of course about how to repair the trade relationship that was blown off course, which Our media, with their anti-China paranoia, blame China for.
Our White Man’s Media (WMM), ever so keen to join the anti-China band wagon, will not do some easy research and homework with a few examples about how the problem started.
The anti-China drive was led first by Malcolm Turnbull and his advisor John Garnaut.
Australia began with anti-dumping tariffs in 2017 on Chinese steel and aluminium products that the WTO later found illegal.
When Turnbull banned Huawei operating in Australia in August 2018, we were the first government in the world to do so.
We then banned Chinese foreign investments in 2017/2018, including China Mengniu Dairy Co’s proposed $600 million acquisition of Lion Dairy & Drinks, despite the Foreign Investment Review Board’s agreement to the deal. There was hardly a security risk here with a dairy company!
We introduced foreign influence laws in 2018 directed against China that proved so wide that Turnbull himself had to declare that he was an agent of foreign influence after participating in a South Korean forum.
On April 17 2020 Peter Dutton urged China to ‘come clean’ on the virus. He was followed by Foreign Minister Marise Payne, trying to ingratiate the Morrison Government with Donald Trump, who announced on ABC Insiders Program that she wanted a non-WHO investigation unit (from many countries) to investigate origins of Covid in China. To join the anti-China psychosis Labor Opposition backed her. This was despite President Xi telling the World Health Assembly that China would support a ‘Comprehensive Review’.
This was the final straw and China later in 2020 started imposing quotas, quarantine and other restrictions on selective Australian exports (coal, beef, barley, timber logs, wine, lobster, etc).
The political and media establishment in their ignorance and prejudice were surprised by the Chinese reaction. Our WMM thought the Chinese would as usual be a push over. How dare an Asian country do such a thing to us!
Together with the US we squawked about Chinese ‘coercion’ but our ally the US proceeded to grab as much of our lost sales in China that it could. Our WMM was silent.
In fact, the US should be the last country in the world to complain about coercion and sanctions. The US is the country above all others that imposes sanctions.
According to the Centre for Economic Policy in the US only four per cent of countries were subject to sanctions in the 1960s. Imposed mainly by the US and to a much lesser extent by the EU and the UN. Today 27 per cent of countries are subject to sanctions.
We have seen the result in widespread death and suffering caused by US sanctions in Iraq, Iran (the most sanctioned country in the world), Afghanistan, Venezuela and now Russia. The unintended consequences result in death and starvation. But the US in desperation and belief in its own ‘exceptionalism’ tries to impose more and more sanctions and coercion on countries that don’t follow its rules.
China should not have imposed sanctions on us even though Australian actions triggered the Chinese response. Sanctions and coercion have unintended consequences.
Hopefully we can now get Australia/China trade back on track.
But there is an elephant in the room we want to avoid and not talk about.
We have a whole raft of policies and programs that assume that China may invade us and the best way to avoid that is to support the US in a whole range of ways. In becoming an enthusiastic US proxy for war on China we make ourselves very vulnerable from our major trading partner.
The Minister for Defence and our embedded media warn us every day about the China threat – the Chinese military build up – despite the fact that the US spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined.
We are at the same time supporting more and more US bases like Darwin and Tindal to develop the capacity to attack China, and have entered into the AUKUS agreement, which is not to defend Australia, but to assist the US in a first strike nuclear capacity against China.
We have a long history of fighting in other people’s wars – at great cost to Australia. But there is now a big difference. IF we are drawn into a US war with China the results for us would be catastrophic.
There is a massive contradiction between stabilising our trade relations with China and our casting of it as a mortal military threat.
That position is not sustainable. We are planning to support an American war on China yet expect China to remain a loyal trading partner.
Penny Wong and Don Farrell can hardly keep saying they are stabilising the relationship with China when Richard Marles is out there almost every day dog whistling about the China threat. But perhaps he has been on the Washington drip feed for so long he doesn’t understand the immense contradiction in our relations with China and the enormous risks we are running.
We want improved trade relations with China whilst acting to support a US war with China. Something has to give.
Hopefully the Chinese are smarter than we are and take a longer view.
Read more here.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.