This Side Of The Blue: 26 October 2022
The CCP shuns women, Australia's undiplomatic disinterest in design, and the global threat of the U.S midterms. Plus this week's essential reading and listening.
A Women-Free CCP
With the conclusion of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), there was one glaring feature of the party’s new positions of power – a lack of women. The new 24 member Politburo does not include a woman for the first time in 25 years. Yet its previous iteration only had a single woman, and the most women appointed to the body was two, during the 18th Politburo. No woman has ever been included in the seven member Politburo Standing Committee – the CCP’s top decision making group.
Mao’s maxim that “women hold up half the sky” is often cited to claim that the CCP has historically viewed women as equal to men, but this has mostly been a smokescreen. Both the patriarchal nature of Chinese society and the cartoon masculine nature of authoritarianism itself has made it difficult for women to achieve any genuine power within the system.
As the party becomes more authoritarian under President Xi Jinping it looks as if there is little space for women at all, either politically or socially. During Xi’s presidency the CCP has prompted socially conservative and hierarchical ideas about the family, and has seen feminist activists as a threat, often censoring or prosecuting them. Issues like the gender pay gap, sexual harassment and domestic violence are not given any great importance by the party. China has slid in its ranking on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index from 69th to 102nd since 2012, the year Xi came to power.
Despite a perspective that authoritarianism is rational and calculating, it is instead driven by a chaotic emotionalism. It is the frightened psychological response to humans being able to interact freely with one another. In particular it has a difficult time coping with the agency of women. This makes authoritarianism – regardless of the ideas it claims to endorse – deeply bound to the perceived “natural authority” of men, whether it be in the home, the workplace, or in the senior positions of government.
A Bad Look For Good Friends
Last week Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida visited Australia in order to sign a significantly enhanced joint security declaration. In recent years the two countries have become each other’s most important security partners outside of their respective relationships with the United States. The agreement institutionalises a consulting process should each country face a security threat. Moving the two countries closer to a mutual defence agreement.
This is a positive development. But what caught my eye was the optics of the two prime ministers signing the agreement, with Australia seemingly making no real effort to give the occasion the gravity it deserves – selecting a random office, with a wheeled out table and chairs. The look didn’t fit the occasion.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the general demeanour within Australia to favour practicality over polish – how this leads us to not value design and aesthetics. I theorised that this could be one of the reasons for the country’s lack of economic complexity. Australia ranks 74th on the Index of Economic Complexity – the measure of the knowledge in a society as expressed in the products it makes. Japan is the world’s most economically complex economy and a society that takes design seriously. Aesthetics are a form of respect.
I suspect those who organised the location and the furniture for the signing didn’t think too much about how it would look. The Australian mindset would be to just get any room, grab a table and chairs, throw a few flags up to make it look official and that would be it. Yet even if Australia itself doesn’t feel that design is important, it is the job of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to be aware of the mindsets and values of other countries. This is especially the kind of respect that should be shown to an increasingly intimate friend.
Midterm Madness
It is now less than two weeks until the midterm elections in the United States and we are not as concerned as we should be. Polls indicate that the Republican Party may secure majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This will have serious consequences for the way the U.S behaves internationally, and it should be considered Australia’s primary foreign policy dilemma.
There are elements within the Republican Party who are not just instinctive isolationists, but who are actively hostile to the current liberal international order – particularly hostile to the rule of law, multilateralism, NATO and free trade. Strangely, despite American hegemony these actors are revisionist in the same way as China and Russia are, sharing the same authoritarian impulses that wish to enforce a might-is-right world, but one where the U.S becomes much weaker. Many are deeply sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, seeing him as the ideal of masculinity – despite his obvious weakness – and someone who upsets “the right people.” Which is now the most important thing to the Republican Party and its media ecosystem.
All 57 votes in Congress that opposed the $40 billion assistance package to Ukraine came from Republicans, and this group may grow as more radical candidates have won primaries to contest the midterms. Analysis from FiveThirtyEight highlights that there are 199 Republican candidates who blatantly refuse to accept the 2020 presidential election result (with many others who are on the fence). This can provide a good indication of candidate radicalism and their susceptibility to disinformation.
If Russia is a disinformation state, where truth and rationality have no power, then this is the model that many within the Republican Party are aiming for with the U.S. This means that elections in the U.S are no longer normal affairs of little consequence to Australia. Broad bipartisan objectives no longer exist. There is now simply a party of continuity and a party of chaos, and Canberra should be very wary of the latter. It is time for Australia to confront what it means to have U.S that cannot be trusted.
This Week’s Essential Reading and Listening
Cricket Brings Out Melbourne’s Vibrant South Asian Community
Grant Wyeth
For my article this week in The Diplomat I made the claim that Sunday’s India vs Pakistan cricket game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground could symbolically be seen as the marker of Melbourne becoming one of the great South Asian cities outside South Asia. The crowd of 90,293 was the second largest attendance for a cricket game in Australia and it was driven by recent migration trends that have dramatically increased the city’s South Asian population. Melbourne will soon overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city and the story of this growth will be migration from India. I also make the broader point that South Asian migration has enhanced civil society in the city, particularly reviving previously ailing local cricket clubs and the community groups around them.
For Xi Jinping, The Economy Is No Longer The Priority
Guoguang Wu, Journal of Democracy
“China will “struggle” to control, harness, and contain market mechanisms, which were introduced and promoted by the CCP after Mao, and their ramifications in all spheres of social life. This effort has already begun, as evidenced by increasing state repression of the private sector, and will unquestionably continue. The intention is clear: Although China depends on the market economy in order to prosper, certain social, legal, and political requirements of market activities may challenge the one-party dictatorship. From Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, CCP party leaders have always tried to contain those elements while promoting the market. Xi believes that the regime has now reached the critical juncture at which the party-state must establish thorough and absolute command of the market.”
Cai Xia, Foreign Affairs
Cai Xia was a professor at the Central Party School for fifteen years before being expelled from the party and now lives in exile in the United States.
“Outsiders may find it helpful to think of the CCP as more of a mafia organisation than a political party. The head of the party is the don, and below him sit the underbosses, or the Standing Committee. These men traditionally parcel out power, with each responsible for certain areas—foreign policy, the economy, personnel, anti-corruption, and so on. They are also supposed to serve as the big boss’s consiglieres, advising him on their areas of responsibility. Outside the Standing Committee are the other 18 members of the Politburo, who are next in the line of succession for the Standing Committee. They can be thought of as the mafia’s capos, carrying out Xi’s orders to eliminate perceived threats in the hope of staying in the good graces of the don. As a perk of their position, they are allowed to enrich themselves as they see fit, seizing property and businesses without penalty. And like the mafia, the party uses blunt tools to get what it wants: bribery, extortion, even violence.”
Xi Jinping’s Personality Cult Expands To Cover Up China’s Failures
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Lucid, Substack.
“Authoritarian states puff up personality cults for two main reasons. When they fear a destabilisation of the social order due to an economic downturn and/or growing discontent, and when there are ongoing or planned domestic crackdowns and/or foreign aggressions. At such moments, illiberal states saturate the public sphere with images of the leader, so he will appear both omnipotent and omnipresent.”
Xi Jinping Has Purged China Of Hope – But He Can’t Stamp Out Small Acts of Resistance
Yangyang Cheng, The Guardian
“I remind myself that for a Chinese woman, learning how to read and moving to a foreign country were once revolutionary acts conceived in fugitive spaces. No control is absolute. Power at its most menacing and totalising is also insecure and unsustainable. I hold no illusions about the long night ahead, but each refusal of injustice preserves an opening. Every act of rebellion, however spectacular or humble, is a reclamation of the self and a love letter to a stranger. Across the darkness, another searching gaze catches the flicker, and a sacred bond is cast: I see you. I feel you. We are still here.”
China Accused Of Illegal Police Stations In The Netherlands
Anna Holligan, BBC
“Dutch media found evidence that the "overseas service stations", which promise to provide diplomatic services, are being used to try to silence Chinese dissidents in Europe…
The investigation was sparked by a report entitled Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild, by the Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders.According to the organisation, the public security bureaus from two Chinese provinces had established 54 "overseas police service centres" across five continents and 21 countries. Most of them are in Europe, including nine in Spain and four in Italy. In the UK, it found two in London and one in Glasgow.”
This is another indication of the extraterritorial authority that the Chinese Communist Party believes that it has over all ethnic Chinese. This is an extraordinary position of the party, and one that doesn’t get enough scrutiny.
Why Is Today’s World So Dangerous (Audio)
A conversation with Richard Haass, Foreign Affairs.
“The United States’ unipolar moment appears to be ending—but it’s unclear what will replace it. Will China continue to rise? Will the war in Ukraine undo Russia? Will the United States move past the political divisions that are tearing it apart?
As Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, sees it, this is shaping up to be a very dangerous decade.”
Why Putin Hopes For A GOP Victory, As Explained By A Top Russia Expert
Greg Sargent, Washington Post
“We are actually on the verge of winning in Ukraine. We’re also on the verge of a tipping point back toward democratic institutions, and I don’t mean just in the West; I mean around the world. An awful lot hinges on Russia losing and Ukraine winning.
The tipping point can also go the other way. If the Ukrainians hadn’t fought — or if they had already lost — we would have already seen a tipping point where authoritarianism and Putin-style nihilism would be much more popular. Right now, we have an opportunity for a positive tipping point. We could throw it all away if we do the wrong thing after November. Things could go either extremely well or extremely poorly.”
The Neocons Are Losing. Why Aren’t We Happy?
Jordan Michael Smith, The New Republic
“In Congress, the GOP’s traditional bias in favour of Reagan- and Bush-era policies remains. But the Republican leadership can only resist the pressure for so long. Sooner or later, the impulses spreading around the party will prevail. And the result may be the most significant transformation of U.S. foreign policy in decades. GOP support for multilateral organisations such as the United Nations and NATO may finally collapse, long-established relationships with allies and diplomatic agreements may crumble irrevocably, and support for any global action outside of confronting China may disappear. The era of bipartisan liberal internationalism that has remained intact since the onset of the Cold War will finally end.”
The Global South Is Done Playing Mr. Nice Guy
Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy
“For years now, the poor countries of the Global South have sought compensation, sometimes referred to as reparations or “losses and damages,” for the humanitarian and physical fallout of climate change. They have laboured to have redress recognised as a third pillar of the negotiations next to mitigation and adaptation, but thus far, to naught. In moral terms, their logic is airtight: They have contributed minimally to the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, yet they are bearing the brunt of its wrath. Climate justice dictates that the historical emitters should be liable for the damages.”
Michael Ignatieff, Journal of Democracy
“What this story about the vexed relation between democracy and violence tells us, in our anguished search for policy solutions to the ills of polarisation, enmity, and violence in contemporary democracy, is that while there are plenty of reforms that would make politics more civil, including some that would take certain issues out of politics altogether—such as giving judges or panels of citizens the job of redrawing electoral districts—there are no institutional reforms, no new sets of rules, that can guarantee civility, comity, and social peace.”
How To Strangle Democracy While Pretending To Engage In It
Carlos Lozada, New York Times
“Published in 1991, Hirschman’s “The Rhetoric of Reaction” may have once read like thoughtful musings on conservative responses to the French Revolution, the Great Society and much in between…Today it is a siren blast for a U.S. political system that has lost the ability to reconcile differences and the desire to even try.
Hirschman devoted the bulk of the book to the rhetoric of the right, a prescient choice. When conservatives decry calls for progressive reform, he wrote, they often deploy one of three theses: perversity, futility and jeopardy. The first warns of unintended consequences: You may think a new social welfare program will mitigate economic inequality, for instance, but perversely, it will only entrench disparity. The second is even more pessimistic: Your policy proposal cannot make a dent in the status quo, and your repeated, futile efforts only make me question your motives. The third is most ominous: Your agenda will have devastating effects on many other arenas that you may have not even considered and is therefore too dangerous or foolish to carry out.”
There’s A Global War For Young Talent. And The Winners Will Shape The Future
Parag Khanna, Time
“The domestic economic stakes couldn’t be higher. Without an influx of new talent replacing the ageing workforce, countries will be left with low economic output, elderly populations, and no youth to care for them. For all the world’s complexity, success and failure in the 21st century will boil down to capturing mobile youth as they vote with their feet. The winning societies of the future century will be those that stay young and populous while others—such as Russia or Italy—age and depopulate. Nationalist and populist politics only make matters worse.”
Nationalism Reimagined (Audio)
Emily Tankin, The New Statesman
A new podcast series exploring the ideas around nationalism, and whether the concept can be moved away from its tendency towards group exclusivity. The first episode features Ivan Krastev of the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna.
Britain’s Guilty Men and Women
Tom McTague, The Atlantic
“Perhaps a similar revisionism will emerge about the years of Tory misrule. Cameron inherited an economy battered by the great financial crisis and an unmanageable tension with Europe. May was squeezed into an impossible position by domestic and European intransigence. And Johnson did the best he could to rescue a bad situation. Even Truss might be explained away as a symptom of a deeper malaise.
Perhaps. But each, unquestionably, left their country poorer, weaker, angrier, and more divided. Over the past 12 years, Britain has degraded. A sense of decay fills the air, and so, too, a feeling of genuine public fury.”
Francisco Toro, Persuasion
“A prodigious body of literature in political science deals with the role of parties within democracy. A leading hypothesis appeared in Responsible Parties, Saving Democracy from Itself by Yale’s Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro, published in 2018. In exhaustive detail, Rosenbluth and Shapiro chronicle how reforms that weaken parties in the name of grassroots involvement fail. Such reforms, they argue, “feed political dysfunction and produce policies that are self-defeating for most voters, even those who advocate the decentralising reforms.” They end up leaving voters more dissatisfied with the political system, and less able to hold their leaders to account.”
How the U.K Became One Of The Poorest Countries in Europe
Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
“The U.K., the first nation to industrialise, was also the first to deindustrialise. Britain gave rise to the productivity revolution that changed the world, and now it has some of the worst productivity statistics of any major economy. What was once the world’s most powerful globalised empire has now voted to explicitly reduce global access to trade and talent.
London’s financial prowess has concealed the overall economy’s weakness in innovation and manufacturing. Or, as the economic analyst Matt Klein puts it, “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
The Heavy Price of Longtermism
Alexander Zaitchik, The New Republic
“Émile Torres, a philosopher, science writer, and one-time longtermist turned apostate, describes longtermism as “an immensely dangerous ideology [that] goes far beyond a simple shift away from myopic, short-term thinking.” By prioritising the creation of “value” in the far future, Torres notes, longtermists are building a philosophical foundation for rationalising far worse things than indifference. He sees parallels between longtermism and apocalyptic religion, observing that longtermists believe that “we stand at the most pivotal moment in human history that will determine whether the future is filled with near-infinite amounts of goodness or an empty vacuum of unforgivable moral ruination.”
This week’s playlist is themed Modernity