CHINAwatch

New World, New Order How to reposition ourselves for a New Economy

Download New World New Order - How to reposition for a New Economy (A business dinner presentation) 

China's Role in a Multipolar World

PowerPoint presentation at the 10th Annual Conference on International Studies, Center for Strategic Research and Analysis, Lisbon, Portugal 14-15 September 2023. (CESRAN 2023) (An online presentation) 

Download China's Role in a Multipolar World - CESRAN 2023 (New) [Autosaved]                                                                                      

The Great Tech Rivalry - China v the US: How China will surpass USA in key 21st Century technologies by 2030

Drawing from the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Centre December 2021 Report - The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the US, a YouTube podcast dated 18 March  2023 summarizes the state of play in 21st Century technologies comprising Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G & 6G, Quantum Information Science, Semiconductors, Bitoechnoloy, and Green Energy, indicating that China is likely to surpass the US by 2030 in key domains in these fields. 

The full Belfer Centre Report may be accessed here.

What does China's massive African debt forgiveness tell us about so-called "debt trap diplomacy"?

Live exclusive TV interview with RT on 22 August, 2022. 

Download RT INTL LEUNG LIVE

How the Ukrainian Crisis Impacts on Eurasia Geopolitics and US-China Relations

A PowerPoint presentation to the EGN Founding Chairmen Group in  Hong Kong on 7 April, 2022.

Download How the Ukrainian Crisis Impacts on Eurasia Geopolitics US-China Relations including HK 

 

Building China 3.0 - Final Sprint toward the China Dream

The above named is a full lecture for the Ljubljana Confucius Institute, Slovenia, including Q & A, open to worldwide participation. The lecture (free of charge) was  simultaneously promoted by the World Strategic Insights based in Rome.

The Zoom lecture took place on Thursday, 17 February, 2022 at 0900 hours European time (1600 hours Beijing/Hong Kong time). The lecture attracted 135 applicants with 76 physically present, pandemics and other obstacles notwithstanding. 

Full details of the lecture's contents are here. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation in PDF format is as follows. Download Building China 3.0. A voice-over video recording of the PowerPoint lecture is here. Also re-published on World Strategic Insights based in Rome. 

Owing to time constraints, one question not given time to answer was on China's hukou (household registration) problem, which created a massive underclass of rural migrants. A podcast Caste aside: The future of China's peasants captures the conundrum. 

The ongoing hukou reform remains a huge, moving challenge. You can't flood the big cities with migrant, poorly-educated villagers. You can't leave them in limbo. Covered in the PowerPoint presentation is China's massive high-speed rail network expansion (doubling to 70,000 km), to connect ALL cities with a population of over 500,000 people, with modern motorways connecting ALL towns with population over 200,000 inhabitants, however remote, by 2035. Many fourth-tier cities and towns are in a largely rural region, including millions of villages. A great many are formed into inter-connected "urban clusters".(Slide 109 of 114) Along with the vibrant digital economy, this hopefully will provide many opportunities for the "rural" population. 

President Putin's virtual summit with President Xi - what's on the agenda - Russian TV channel

Pre-recorded TV interview on 15 December, 2021 with IZ, a most-watched Russian-language national TV channel.

What I said was that the crisis over Ukraine and rising US-China tensions (including the Taiwan question) brought the two leaders even closer together. Much coordination is needed to forestall catastrophe. Other issues to explore include Islamic terrorism and separatism as well as Climate Change, which would open up Russia's norther sea route for Pacific-Atlantic navigation, Arctic geopolitics, and Russia's agricultural potential thanks to global warming.

China's Sixth Party Plenum, the New Cold War, and the Contest for new Global Order

PowerPoint presentation to the EGN Founding Chairmen’ Group on 9 December, 2021. 

Download Sixth Party Plenum New Cold War and Contest for new Global Order

 

 

Xi's Plan to build PRC 3.0 - November Party Plenum

Multiple headwinds are emerging across the globe against a rapidly rising and resurgent China. Many of its perceived pitfalls are flagged up by some of the world's renowned China specialists and thinkers in the July/August 2021 edition of Foreign Policy, headlined Can China Keep Rising?  Beijing appears to be rising to the challenge. 

At a YouTube webcast seminar of Washington D.C.-based CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) on 28 October, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette and Andrew Polk, the co-founder and head of economic research at Trivium China, dissected President Xi's new policy framework for turning China into a "modern socialist nation" by 2035, including the New Development Concept, the Dual Circulation Strategy, Common Prosperity, and the 14th Five Year Plan. 

This is turning out to be a granular, and insightful take on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s 19th Central Committee Plenum from 8-11 November.

On the Plenum's likely focus on the Party's history, The Economist 's 4 November leader rightly intones that "To learn from the past, one must study it dispassionately", although its content busies itself with blackening President Xi as trying to "falsify history".

Fixating on party politics risks missing the big picture on the other side of the coin. According to the South China Morning Post of 7 November, "Xi may avoid altering or questioning past views of the party’s history and instead emphasize its achievements.". The Plenum is as much about the CCP's past as its future under his stewardship.  

The CSIS takeaways are that President Xi is NOT Mao 2.0 but the architect for PRC 3.0.(Mao/Deng/Xi), realizing the China Dream and the two Centenary Goals - (a) to become a moderately well-off (xiaokang) society by 2021, the centenary of the founding of the CCP; and (b) to become a "strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country" by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PRC.

All signs show that Xi is firmly in charge, rumors about local opposition aside. His Third Term seems assured. 

Already game-changing policies are emerging, including real estate deleveraging, a looming property tax , growth targets de-emphasized, and capital being steered away from monopolistic ''platform" behemoths.

On the cards are tax and fiscal reform, new data governance architecture, more aggressive policies to meet environmental challenges, possible opening of more sectors, or even some "nationalization".

Chances are that China would be able to overcome the Middle Income Trap through across-the-board technology and innovation. 

In face of herculean challenges, both domestic and external, China's trajectory is not straightforward and the final outcome not cast in stone. Partial success, or a mixture, cannot be ruled out. 

For example, the intense competition and demands of a "996" work culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week) have spawned a 'tang ping" ("lying flat") "passive" attitude amongst China's Generation Z.

However, the term is somewhat misleading. The vast majority of China's youth are positive-minded, wanting to strive for a better future for themselves, their families and their country. Many just want to take better charge of their own lives, to pursue what they are good at, and to chase their personal dreams, including volunteering, as manifest in this video. This augurs well for a more diversified and inclusive society. 

One final take is that to overcome challenges ahead, unless provoked and backed into a corner, China is unlikely to invade Taiwan, as such a drastic move could easily mean all bets are off for China's developmental trajectory.

During his Congress testimony of 3 November, 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley repeated his June 2021 testimony that China lacks full capability (or absolute confidence) to prevail over Taiwan by force before 2027. He thinks that the People's Liberation Amy (PLA) harbors no near-term intent to invade the Island, adding a caveat, however, that the unexpected could always happen! 

"China Is a Declining Power—and That’s the Problem" - A rebuttal

While the prevailing "China Threat" rhetoric is China's rapid ascendancy as a global power, a provocative piece in Foreign Policy dated 24 September, 2021 by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, two distinguished scholars of the American  Enterprise Institute, posits that China may soon reach its peak potential, and like Imperial Germany and Japan, could turn aggressive to seize its diminishing chances for dominance before it's too late. 

Their arguments about China's coming "decline" are familiar: "China would get old before getting rich" with worsening demographics, in addition to water and food insecurity, dropping productivity, mounting debt, ethnic unrest, plummeting global image, and across-the-board US pushback, including decoupling.

However, the argument suffers from a measure of denialism or blind spots:

(a) As China's population is four times larger, all it takes is reaching a quarter of America's per capita productivity to displace the United States as the world's largest economy. With much earlier economic recovery from the pandemics, China could become the largest economy as early as 2028, according to the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). Why should China become more aggressive now or after it has become the world's largest economy? 

(b) All these obstacles mentioned are real but not insurmountable. A host of new initiatives have been introduced, including "common prosperity", doubling the consumer middle class of 800 million by 2035, lowering the retirement age, digitization, robotics, innovation, and a nation-wide modern rail system connecting all towns, however remote, of 200,000 people and above. This includes doubling the world’s most extensive high-speed rail system to 70,000km over the next 15 years to link all cities of over half a million people. China has pledged reaching carbon emission peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. It is also holding party secretaries to account for ecology under their watch. 

(c) China is evidently energized to realize the China Dream of becoming a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and modern socialist country” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It doesn't include world dominance. Why should China become more aggressive before or after it realizes the China Dream? 

(d) The likely flashpoint of possible China's aggression is Taiwan, according to the two authors. The island is very much locked into Mainland China's supply and value chain. About a million Taiwanese live and work on the Mainland. While safeguarding their separate identity, many Taiwanese are wary of rocking, let alone  sinking the boat. Barring Taiwan's formal declaration of independence, time is on Beijing's side. Why should Beijing jeopardize its chances of realizing the China Dream by starting a war of uncertain consequences in the meantime?  

On the impact of decoupling from China, a Capital Economics report of 17 September 2021 by eminent economists Julian Evans-Pritchard and Mark Williams suggests that if the world is gradually bifurcated into a "US bloc" and a "China bloc", with supply chains rearranged rather than completely severed, China would stand to fare a lot worse than the US. According to the report, out of  217 global economies including Taiwan, a total of 114 are in the US bloc, while only 90 are in the China bloc.

This somehow contradicts with findings in many quarters that far more countries have China as the largest trading partner, compared with the United States.

As reported in India's Economic Times of 3 September, 2021, "According to Lowy Institute data, before 2000, the US was at the helm of global trade, as over 80 per cent of countries traded with the US more than they did with China. However, by 2018, the number had seen a steep decline to mere 30 per cent, as China had become the largest trading partner for 128 of 190 countries."

According to data released on 24 March, 2021 by China's International Import Expo Bureau hosted by the Ministry of Commerce, China has become a top trading partner of over 120 countries and regions including the United States, the European Union, as well as Japan, US robust decoupling measures notwithstanding. 

Moreover, the argument that the world's trading system could be artificially categorized into two separate blocs appears dubious at best. It ignores the huge complexity of global supply and value chains, of which China has become a central hub. That's why seven of the world's top ten container ports are in China, including Hong Kong. Click here.  

According to a piece in Foreign Affairs of 3 June, 2020 by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, distinguished scholars of Georgetown University, The Folly of Decoupling From China:  It Isn’t Just Perilous—It’s Impossible 

If anything, China is likely to become even more locked into the global and regional supply and value chain as a central hub of the recently launched Regional and Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest trading bloc consisting of all ASEAN member countries and their main trading partners, representing a third of the world's population and GDP.

It therefore appears that the "bifurcated blocs" theory of decoupling is theoretical at best, if not downright unrealistic.