Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
After all the smiles and handshakes in Phnom Penh, Bali, Bangkok and Sharm El-Sheik, has anything really changed?
UPDATE: Despite the smiles and handshakes at the G20, the US-led tech and trade war on China demonstrates the corporate and institutional rise of digital colonialism. A new book looks at the historic cycles of East and West to determine whether the last 500 years of Western expansion is just an aberration. China’s Digital Silk Road is shaping the development of the digital order and securing China a critical role in global internet governance that is upsetting the status-quo powers. Laos may be running out of Hydropower as grid integration projects in the region make it a key regional player, but this is not to say the market will not face droughts. Read about the Yuan’s internationalisation as a long-term process resulting from China’s comprehensive strength and financial market development. Finally, Winston Churchill’s grandson Spencer-Churchill attempts to explain the grand strategy of East and West, but ultimately just promotes Anglo-American imperial power - the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Several scholars and activists have characterized Big Tech’s global impact as a form of digital colonialism. On this view, primarily U.S.-based tech corporations function in many ways like former colonial powers. Driven by an expansionist ideology, these companies arrange digital infrastructures to fit their economic needs on a global scale. They contribute to the exploitation of low-wage, marginalized workers across the globe. They extract truly staggering profits with very little accountability and with harmful consequences for local communities. They institutionalize social practices designed by a small group of largely white, male, and American software engineers, undermining the self-determination of the societies they seek to expand into. And much like the colonizers of yore who tied all this to a so-called “civilizing” mission, they claim to do all this in the name of “progress,” “development,” “connecting people,” and “doing good.” Read the full article here.
Ian Morris, a professor of history at Stanford University, has written a fascinating book called “Why the West Rules — For Now” (and its methodological follow-up: “The Measure of Civilization”). It’s a dense, involved read full of archaeological evidence and detailed arguments. It’s the type of book you need to take notes on while reading, but it keeps throwing up gems, even on a second read-through. The unique point of the book is that it builds a development index for both the West and the East. Spanning 17,000 years! From 15,000 BC. Ian Morris puts numbers on history. In a way, that’s something crazy even to attempt to do. And yet, if you accept the evidence he sets forth, he manages to pull it off. We also get a chart out of it. Read the full article here.
China’s Digital Silk Road
Setting Standards, Powering Growth
By Gerald Chan, Professor of Politics and International Relations, School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
In recent years, China has become a world leader in e-commerce, e-currency, 5G and artificial intelligence, cementing itself as a major competitor to established powers. Gerald Chan poses the question: How has China pulled this off? Arguing that the answer lies in the country’s Digital Silk Road, a multi- faceted programme to connect the world via digital means, the book explores how China has shaped the development of the digital order, secured a critical role in internet governance and upset the status-quo powers.
Integrating empirical research with innovative theory, this forward-looking book is the first of its kind to unravel the complex web spun through China’s Digital Silk Road. Chapters offer a unique Chinese perspective on the evolution of the global digital economy and digital currencies, highlighting China’s growing influence in driving technological development and setting global industrial standards. Following on from Chan’s previous publications on the country’s high-speed rail networks and maritime infrastructure, China’s Digital Silk Road offers a timely look at China’s predominant role in shaping the global digital order.
Advancing a geo-developmental framework to analyse China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the book will be of unique interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and global development. Find the book here.
What could dry up Laos’ hydropower potential
The market is poised to be a key electricity exporter in Southeast Asia. Hydropower abundance in Laos puts it at the forefront of the electricity trade in Southeast Asia where it is poised to be a leading electricity exporter in the next decade. Grid integration projects in the region give Laos a stronger case to be a key player, but this is not to say the market will not face droughts. The market’s hydropower potential is currently at about 26.5 gigawatts (GW), according to the International Hydropower Association; but Fitch Solutions estimates Laos’ hydropower to stand only at 8GW, as of end-2021. “Just from this alone, you can see that there's much room for hydropower sector growth, and this is in addition to the increasing electricity demand from its neighbouring markets such as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Singapore,” David Thoo, Power & Renewables Analyst, told Asian Power.
The market is further supported by the Laos-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP), which integrates the power grids of these four countries. Laos is also exporting to Vietnam, on top of its existing two-way power trade with China. Reliability woes The reliability of hydropower could, however, hold back Laos as weather phenomena, such as drought, are increasingly intensifying which could lead to under delivery. Thoo cited, for instance, the recent drought in China that heavily impacted the Sichuan province, considering hydropower accounted for 80% of its power mix. This eventually led to a halt in manufacturing activities and a disruption in supply chains. “This may happen to Southeast Asia if it relies too much on hydropower for its electricity supply and [there is] no doubt that government authorities have already taken this into consideration, but the risk is still there.” Read the full article here.
Central bank report on yuan/RMB internationalization since 2017
Xinyi Zhang
Pekingnology presents a translation of 《坚持改革开放和互利共赢 人民币国际化稳步推进》Adhere to the Reform & Opening-up and Win-win, Steadily promote RMB Internationalization by the 宏观审慎管理局 macro-prudential policy department of the People’s Bank of China.
The article, via the central bank’s biweekly magazine《中国金融》 China Finance, is a de facto report of the progress in the Chinese yuan’s internationalization. It was published on October 9, 2022, before the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Together with some other de facto reports by various departments within the PBoC, the series of articles was, in essence, official summaries of their work for the past five years - since the 19th Party Congress in 2017. In that sense, the timing was not unusual.
One line from the report stands out because it signals the PBoC isn’t exactly in a rush on RMB internationalization or determined to meet a set of lofty, specific targets.
货币国际化是一个长期过程,是国家综合实力和金融市场发展的结果。
One currency’s internationalisation is a long-term process resulting from a country's comprehensive strength and financial market development. Read the full article here.
THE NEW COLD WAR WITH CHINA WILL BE VERY DIFFERENT
The scale and circumstances of world power have changed considerably since the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In 1945, in a war-devastated world of 2.3 billion people, the U.S. accounted for fifty percent of the world’s manufacturing GDP (Gross Domestic Product). In 2022, the U.S. and China account for 23 and 16 percent of world GDPrespectively, in a considerably more crowded world of 7.5 billion.
Although repeated triumphalist declarations of the arrival of multipolarity to displace U.S. power have proven to be mistaken, China’s rise coincides with the diffusion of industrialization and the emergence of new independent power centers. India has twice the arable land of China, a key measure of agricultural self-sufficiency, and a much younger population, important for sustained economic growth. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are entrenched astride China’s vulnerable trade route, with a combined population of 490 million persons. Africa’s population has expanded more than ten-fold from 120 million persons in 1945, to over 1.3 billion in 2022, and it is expected to have a population greater than twice that of China by 2070. Even if China’s nominal GDP exceeds that of the U.S., it will do so only as one among a number of re-established historical powers in the post-European world. The bipolar confrontation between China and democracy will be embedded in a complex multipolarity dominated by neutral powers. Read the full article here.