Pei writes:

One may be tempted to blame leadership failure for the premature demise of China’s reform. While this is certainly a cause, a far more critical factor is more responsible: the CCP’s political objective of reform is fundamentally incompatible with a market economy.

No one understood why China needed to reform its economy better than Deng himself. In 1992, as in 1978, He knew that only market-oriented reforms could save the CCP. Although Deng was sure about the political objective of his reforms, he never explicitly endorsed a capitalist market economy as the end goal. Here lies the fundamental flaw of China’s reform project: as long as pro-market reforms are used as a means to preserve the political monopoly of the CCP, such reforms are doomed to fail.

He argues that the party has low incentive to reform past the point that makes them rich: “The moment the CCP’s rule is more secure due to improved economic performance, its ruling elites would lose incentives for further reform.”

This brand of “crony capitalism,” he writes, is only possible “post-communist autocracy is in charge of a half-reformed economy.” Not an optimistic column for those who hope for reform.

Second, via Angel Hsu, this image depicting what is most likely a huge cloud of noxious firecracker emissions as Beijing celebrated the new year (which, being lunar, coincided with the new moon). Beijing has promised to provide real-time data on PM-2.5 (particle matter under 2.5 microns), thought to be a category of pollution that acutely threatens human health.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing has for years offered live data from a sensor in its compound, and the addition of the Chinese data is welcomed. Just look at that spike!

Click for full size.

(To see for yourself, visit http://zx.bjmemc.com.cn/ and click on the PM2.5 tab.)

First a caveat: I am not a specialist in Chinese–African relations, and I have only a passing familiarity with the issues and personalities involved here. Nonetheless, there are a few things I can say based on Brautigam’s report.

The original commentary speculated (in the headline) that the Zambezi Valley in Mozambique might be “China’s first agricultural colony,” and Brautigam notes that the report became influential in China–Africa discussions. “The problem,” she writes: “very little of what was written in this sensational commentary appears to be real” (emphasis original). Indeed, she argues that many of the most prominent claims in the commentary either conflict with data or seem to be based on rumors. In some cases, interviews in Mozambique even failed to turn up people familiar with the rumors.

The full post is worth a read, but two things jump out at me.

The role of peer review. Brautigam notes that the CSIS piece was not subject to peer review, but what caught my attention was the sense that peer review is not necessarily effective in this situation. Indeed, a reviewer told Brautigam to better account for the “research” by Loro Horta that she finds so lacking. This is a reminder that peer review can sustain misguided ideas as well as quash them.

Now just who are we talking about? The assumptions of agency built in to the Horta piece, as excerpted by Brautigam, could potentially be their own red flag. “China” is framed as an actor, often a unitary one, in discussing the supposed involvement of Chinese interests in Mozambique:

China has been requesting large land leases to establish Chinese-run mega-farms and cattle ranches. … China is committed to transforming Mozambique into one of its main food suppliers …An analysis of China’s activities in the valley in the past two years provides some strong indication of China’s long term intentions.

When commentary lacks precision regarding who’s doing what among the roughly one-fifth of the world that lives in China, and instead frames the country as a unitary actor with “intentions” or “activities,” it’s unclear to me how much actual information can be communicated. At best, the reader is supposed to trust the writer to simplify with understanding and integrity. Explaining the specific mechanics is a far more persuasive way to go, and if the specifics are unclear, the honest move is to explain what is left uncertain.

Creative Commons photo by saucy_pan

Noted, from ChinaSolved (emphasis mine):

When Huntsman says, “America First” he means “and not China”.

His message is that he’s seen what can happen if the global status quo doesn’t shift – and that this is scary to the US.  Moreover, he’s in a position to do something about it.  He has seen the enemy – or at least the rival – and it’s China.

This is the new expat message.  In the 2000s,  China pros said “I can open that China opportunity”.  In the coming decade, their  line will be, “I can help you keep the Chinese at bay.”

I don’t have time to evaluate this, but such a shift would be interesting, if unsettling. My initial sense is that there have always been “China experts” who said they would defend the United States and others “against” China. The difference now may be that those people are being drawn from the ranks of individuals who actually speak Chinese and have actually been there.

This kind of stance is only possible if you have a very dark strategic view or if you never spent enough time speaking with people to lose the fear narrative. Expat enclaves can only encourage this us–them viewpoint.

In January 2010, a Google executive announced “a new approach to China” in a blog post, revealing that the firm had “detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack… originating from China” and that it would reconsider business operations there. In the ensuing two years, US rhetoric about China and cyber security has become ever more breathless.

“China is waging a quiet, mostly invisible but massive cyberwar against the United States,” wrote the Washington Post editorial board earlier this month. A Bloomberg News headline summed up concerns about attacks on corporate targets by conjuring an “undeclared cyber cold war.”

Computer systems in government and the private sector are indeed vulnerable to unauthorised access, as seen in the recent report of an allegedly China-based incursion at the US Chamber of Commerce. People who gain access can exfiltrate data, insert false information, or further tamper with systems for a variety of purposes. But the notion of a cyber cold war with China is inaccurate and irresponsible. [more]

Yet the government’s decision to curb majors is facing resistance. Many university professors in China are unhappy with the Ministry of Education’s move, as it will likely shrink the talent pool needed for various subjects, such as biology, that are critical to the country’s aim of becoming a leader in science and technology but do not currently have a strong market demand, a report in the state-run China Daily report said.

An op-ed in the Beijing News criticizes the approach for a different reason, saying that it will only spur false reporting of employment rates from schools that are looking for greater autonomy to produce more diversified, higher qualified students.

These seem like pretty good critiques of a policy aimed at reducing the number of unhappy, unemployed, college-educated young people in China.

Could it be that these drawbacks are considered “worth it” by officials concerned about the size of a disenfrancised bourgeoisie, or is it just that such a narrative is so deeply ingrained in my Western-social-science-educated skull that I can’t spot the good intentions?

Or, could it be that the government is accomodating actual people rather than development goals or the ephemeral goal of gathering accurate statistics?

Ma Jun, 7 November 2011, New York City

Ma is a key figure in the movement for environmental protection, protection of humans from contaminated materials, and open information as a means to an end. He argues for a pragmatic mode of working in China that prioritizes outcomes over ideal processes.

That is to say, the democracy-oriented idealists in the crowd were at times unhappy with the approach that Ma describes as using “leverage” from areas where NGOs can operate to bring pressure to bear on areas where they might otherwise have little power. Asked by an audience member whether more direct challenges to the government might be more productive, he said, “We could better engage the government working in this way [i.e. by gathering and publishing information] than by some other channels.”

Other channels, such as direct litigation against polluters (or even the government), are not unheard of. Zhang Jingjing‘s work with the Center for Legal Assistance for Pollution Victims and other clients shows that litigation can work in some cases. But even more direct challenges, such as protesting outside factories, Ma said, are just not “sustainable.”

That’s what Ma described as the goal, and the progress seems significant. Ma and his colleagues do several kinds of work. In several areas, they collect and aggregate government data about environmental violations, then make it available online. This information empowers consumers and firms elsewhere in the supply chain to use government-produced data to make decisions.

Another kind of work is the aggregation and publication of public data on water quality and other environmental factors. This data is then added to a map-based database, and Google Earth is used to pinpoint polluters.

A third kind of work is perhaps the most interesting to systemic thinkers. This team’s work depends heavily on the availability of government statistics. As any China researcher knows, there are endless volumes of official statistics—if only you can get your hands on them. Luckily, Chinese law over the last three years or so has begun to require open information in a variety of circumstances, but adherence to the open information policies varies.

Ma’s group and a team from the Natural Resources Defense Council (Disclosure: I was a consultant to NRDC in 2008) have developed a Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI). It’s exactly what it sounds like. Researchers request environmental information and rate the openness with which localities respond. After a few years, the ratings are generally rising, Ma said. This is progress measured, and it’s another decision making tool for businesspeople seeking out localities or individual firms to do business with.

All of this activity falls under what Ma called the need for “motivation” among polluters to improve. Information is thought to help decrease environmental and human costs by: (1) getting information about the problem out in the open; (2) providing information that allows newly informed decision makers discriminate based on environmental performance; thereby (3) bringing the market to bear on costs that would otherwise be externalized. This “boomerang” effect, one hopes, could be quite effective.

It’s not all so easy, you might say.

Andrew J. Nathan, the Columbia political scientist famous for, among other things, helping get the Tiananmen Papers published, asked a seminar discussant’s battery of questions. The most interesting for me, given the trials of doing social science using Chinese government data, was whether the data Ma and his team base their work on is any good.

“The quality, I would say, is troublesome,” Ma answered. Local authorities have all kinds of incentives to fudge numbers. But for the purposes of the motivation-producing boomerang effect above, accuracy takes a back seat to impact. Who cares if the numbers are half as bad as reality when even the falsified numbers can shake people into action and greater awareness?

This is the sort of pragmatic advocacy that one really has to admire. Direct challenges to authority or powerful interests in China are often futile and sometimes dangerous. As much as some people would like to institute a liberal democratic regime, someone should meanwhile be working on making things better in the actually existing world.

Ma previewed yet another information-based lever that could help investors with an ethical motivation put their money where their mind is. In several months, he said, IPE and a collaborator will release a website that allows anyone to look up a stock symbol listed in China or Hong Kong and immediately receive a report about environmental performance. Ethical investors, however uncertain their numbers, need information to make ethical decisions.

Chinese environmental advocacy will certainly require a diversity of tactics, but after an evening hearing Ma Jun describe his, I think it’s a particularly contemporary and strategic mode of work. While discontented with the status quo, these efforts nonetheless avoid the identity of the protester. In social movement theoretical terms, it’s hard even to say that the strategy is fully a form of “claims making” or “contention.” Instead, it’s an effort to tweak half-baked processes before they set and channel already existing incentives toward new goals.

* The event was put on by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, an organization that appears to work for “corporate social responsibility,” but that particular phrase was notably absent from the evening’s discussion.

Another side note: I was delighted to hear NRDC President Frances Beineke say on China: “I often think when I go there that we have outsourced our pollution there.” This is a turn of phrase I’ve been interested in for a long time.

[Edited for typos Jan 2, 2012.]

Reuters reports that Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin made an uncharacteristically forward statement at an Istanbul conference, compared with what the reporters call China’s “wait-and-see stance” with regard to Afghanistan.

“The international community must support an Afghanistan run by the Afghans,” Liu said.

“We must pledge to respect Afghanistan’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, to respect the dignity and rights of its government and people to be masters of their own country.”

This note of sovereignty and territorial integrity is familiar, and resonates with Amitai Etzioni’s recent argument in Foreign Affairs (paywall) that China has become a champion of Westphalian sovereignty in an era when many other countries are pushing a liberal international order that could be said to compromise sovereignty.

I find it interesting that, despite the strong note of national self-determination and strong sovereignty, anonymous “senior Western diplomats” welcome a more active Chinese role in the discussion over Afghanistan. Some of their comments from the Reuters article:

• “They realize that a policy of further being on the wings, watching what goes on and ready to pick up things, isn’t good enough.”
• “They were very vocal and raised several issues during the drafting. We weren’t even allowed to begin the final version until the Chinese delegation had arrived.”
• “Before, you would attend meetings on Afghanistan and the neighbours would be silent, and here you have them taking a lead and that’s what it is all about.” … ”The Chinese for the first time were very comprehensive and constructive, you could really see an elevated role of China in the region and more outspoken than ever before.”

That last quote, of course, manages to be happy about China’s “constructive” role while still sounding the note of a Chinese rise: “more outspoken than ever.”

The world is going to have to deal with this combination in every area. If you want a “responsible stakeholder” out of a country with unique interests and great influence, you’re going to have to deal with an “outspoken” colleague.

Bruce Gilley argues Xi could end the reform era:

It may be time to concede that China’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, is not the moderate that many have assumed. Indeed, evidence from his past suggests that Xi is going to steer China in a more aggressive direction, both domestically and internationally. As his time in office nears, Xi is evincing signs of being a narrow nationalist on foreign policy and of having a penchant for police actions in dealing with domestic frictions. Hence, his rise could signify that the long struggle between Maoists and reformers that characterized China’s “reform era” is now ending.

Daniel Drezner proposes that the opposite might be true:

The phrase “only Nixon could go to China” refers to the idea that only someone who sounded as rabidly anti-communist as Richard Nixon in the past would be able to have the dometic political clout to meet with Mao Zedong and cut a deal with the People’s Republic of China.  Could it be that Xi is simply buttering up his base before taking power in order to make it easier to do business with the United States?

I don’t know the answer, but I suspect even hardcore China-watchers don’t know either.

I’m with Drezner, not because I think Xi Jinping is a Chinese Nixon, but because I think these arguments are rooted in nothing but speculation. Sure, it’s fun to speculate, and we’d be delighted to know more. But the personality of a leader is hard to interpret.

If you’re from the United States, consider less “exotic” leaders such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The former was supposed to be an isolationist and started two big wars. The latter was supposed to bring the wars to an end but has escalated the conflict in Afghanistan while participating in a new intervention in Libya. There’s no sense in arguing about these events, but there’s also no way we could have known how these events would unfold.

Put another way, consider the “only Nixon could go to China” aphorism. It may be true, but then, we never would have known that when Vice President Nixon was assigned to make the most strident anti-communist statements by President Eisenhower. Nor did Americans know in 1968 that Nixon was such a complex and conflicted figure, an anti-Semite one moment and a great proponent of Henry Kissinger the next, a leader who desperately wanted the United States out of Vietnam but decided the best way to do so was to enter Cambodia.

My point is that we don’t get to predict these sorts of things, and that there is nothing special about “Pekinology” in this sense. Intuiting the future by interpreting public statements and speculative psychology of leaders is a fool’s errand. Our effort would be better spent working on concrete problems and preparing for the actual negotiations and dilemmas the United States and China are likely to face: environmental regulation, cybersecurity, sovereign debt and currencies, and the like.

Here’s hoping that future leaders in the United States as well as China are motivated to work together and able to overcome domestic resistance to cooperative outcomes.

Leave aside the irony of claiming debt will continue to rise while the same party is engaging in “hostage-taking” and brinksmanship in raising the debt ceiling. And even forget the presence of Hu Jintao, who is widely expected to be succeeded by Xi Jinping long before 2017, appearing before a large assembly of some kind in the ad.

This and the “Chinese Professor” ad from the 2010 midterm elections and seems to signal that at least some politicians will continue to use scare tactics about a rise of China to score domestic points.

I think it’s worth bearing in mind the humanist implications of demonizing a country that is home to about a fifth of the world population for nothing more than economic success. There are absolutely reasons to criticize China, but when the message is so simple as “they’re beating us, and that’s bad,” the humanity of those living across the Pacific can be forgotten.

Obama’s message of hope, change, and compassion has been criticized recently in light of what many see as an ineffectual middle-road approach to several significant national issues. I doubt any candidate in the near future will get far on a message that underlines the humanity of non-Americans, but that, I suppose, is the compassionate change I would hope for.