The timing of the Noda visit may well have been designed to set the stage for the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, to occur this week in Beijing with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner leading a 200-strong U.S. delegation.

The U.S. “pivot” or “rebalancing” to Asia is a major concern in China, and U.S. leaders may have sought to reassure Japan that it is still a centerpiece of U.S. strategy in Asia and the Pacific.

If all had gone as planned, the administration could have enjoyed an Asia-focused news cycle all week, as the Japanese leader visited, followed by the meetings in Beijing.

But in the last days of preparation for the Japan summit, the U.S. government was confronted by a much more high-profile challenge: the escape of Chen Guangcheng a well known blind activist from extrajudicial house arrest, and his apparent flight to the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

As it happens, the first question for Obama in the Noda–Obama press conference was about Chen, not about Japan (though the reporter also asked Noda about Japan’s response to a potential North Korean nuclear test).

[Obama acknowledged he's aware of "press reports" on the Chen case, but wouldn't make a statement except to say the U.S. government always brings up human rights in its meetings with China.]

A lesser-known disappointment for some about the U.S.–Japan meeting is that it did not include an announcement that Japan would join the eight countries (including the United States) currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement that does not include China but does include other East Asian countries.

There is significant opposition to the TPP overall, mostly over its intellectual property measures that some view as a rehash of the SOPA/PIPA fight and over a perceived lack of transparency in the negotiations. But the greater opposition to the specific question of Japanese participation comes from sectors in Japan that would lose some existing trade protections, and from the U.S. auto industry.

In their White House statement, both leaders mentioned that TPP talks would continue, but the issue lies largely unresolved. Meanwhile, the U.S.–Japan relationship still spends time on the disposition of the U.S. base at Futenma, the challenge of North Korea, and rather generalized concerns about China.

The mere fact that the Wen argument is self-serving, however, doesn’t invalidate the point:

Lastly, while there are unmistakable signs that the CCP legitimacy is weakening and that the people are becoming more intolerant of secrecy in personnel arrangements and manipulation of the press, the top is still driving the political process and can make and enforce decisions on personnel and other issues.  Any talk of an imminent meltdown of the CCP control is wishful and unfounded.  Nonetheless, politics as usual has been riddled with bullets.  One of the shooters is Wen Jiabao himself.  His admission of helplessness and lack of achievements in the political reform sector and his attribution of these failures to being constrained by the special interest groups, unreasonable governance system, and Cultural Revolution mentality has sounded the death knell for those who champion the Beijing Consensus.  His declaration that China’s economic reform cannot be sustained without political reform may force the Party to pay more attention to the timetable and action plan of political reform.

The podcast is available Sunday now (yesterday it said it would be held; now the link is here). Notes will accumulate below:

• My original review of the monologue as performed on stage in Seattle about a year ago.
• “The most powerful and memorable moments in the story all seem to be fabricated.” –Ira Glass
• Fact checking 101: If the best part of your story can’t be verified, and if there’s a lot of material there, and your “reporter” can’t help verify—kill the story.
• Daisey admits that he misled TAL on the name of “Cathy” to prevent them from finding her, Glass says.
• The Marketplace reporter Rob Schmitz’s first clues were things I chalked up to storytelling exaggeration: the guns. But the question of laborers at Starbucks did bother me. Where was the money coming from?
• From the transcript: “Cathy Lee: I think that if she said she was 13 or 12, then I would be surprised. I would be very surprised. And I would remember for sure. But there is no such thing.
”
• Another falsehood/exaggeration I caught immediately: When Daisey said “There are no iPads in China.” This doesn’t really minimize the power of the scene in the full narrative (beyond the TAL excerpt). This mixed purpose seems to be the real trouble.
• Nice that Schmitz notes Cathy’s memory wouldn’t necessarily be fully clear.
• Daisey bears down on the girl who said she was 13; that exchange is pretty damning:
  

  Mike Daisey: I don’t know. I do know when doing interviews a lot of people were speaking in English. They enjoyed using English with me and I don’t know if she was paying attention at that particular point. I don’t know. There was a lot of wrangling that Cathy was doing, talking to people and sort of pre-interviewing.

  Rob Schmitz: So Mike, according to what you’re saying, these are migrant workers who are preteen, 13 or 14 years old, there English isn’t going to be very good. You’re telling me that they were speaking English to you, in a way that you could understand? [This resonates with me, especially for a worker so young. -gw]

  Mike Daisey: Well, I only know – only one of them was really talkative and that was the main girl I was talking to.

  Rob Schmitz: So you have a clear recollection of meeting somebody who was 13 years old?

  Mike Daisey: Yes.

  Rob Schmitz: And twelve years old?

  Mike Daisey: Yes of the girl who was thirteen and her friends who represented themselves as being around her age and so the spread there is just an effort to cover the ages that I suspect they are around that age.

• “I really do believe that stories should be subordinate to the truth.” –Daisey. Definition of truth seems important.

Act II, in which Ira Glass speaks directly with Daisey:

• Glass, citing n-hexane, asks why Daisey didn’t take the opportunity of their queries to acknowledge that some of the details were dramatized. “I think I was terified,” Daisey says. Glass: “Of what?” Daisey: “I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work, that I know is really good, and tells a story, that does these really great things for making people care, that it would come apart in a way where, where it would ruin everything.”
• Daisey acknowledges he did think about the fact that others—TAL—were vouching for him.

• KEY QUOTE from Daisey: “My mistake, the mistake that I truly regret is that I had it on your show as journalism and it’s not journalism. It’s theater. I use the tools of theater and memoir to achieve its dramatic arc and of that arc and of that work I am very proud because I think it made you care, Ira, and I think it made you want to delve. And my hope is that it makes – has made- other people delve.”

Ira says out loud what any editor should have said before running this story as journalism:

Ira Glass: I guess I thought that you were going to come in and say that more if it wasn’t true because, um, there are parts of it I just don’t buy based on what you’ve said. I don’t believe you when it comes to the underage worker. Like, it seems credible that your translator if she saw an underage worker, it seems credible that she says that she would remember that kind of thing because it’d be so unusual. That seems credible. And I don’t believe you when it comes to the guy with the twisted hand because your translator who was there doesn’t remember that he said he worked for Foxconn and doesn’t remember the incident with the iPad. And I might be more inclined to believe you but you admit to lying about so many little things – the number of people who you spoke to, the number of factories that you visited – you admit to making up an entire group of characters who didn’t exist, who were poisoned by hexane and the only person who was with you said these things didn’t happen. So when it comes to underage workers and the man with the claw-hand it’s like – I don’t believe that that happened.

…

Mike Daisey: Yes. And I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation that’s happening there. I stand by it in the theater. And I regret, deeply, that it was put into this context on your show.

My comment here, after Glass says he thought it was literally true on stage, is that Glass is not as clever as I thought he was.

More to come from another outlet.

Tricia Wang, being silly, Beijing, 2009.

This entrepreneurship is tough, and the family’s living conditions and lack of urban citizenship status pose challenges. Tricia’s account is required reading for those interested in migrants, if only because it shows the kind of ideas, opportunities, and challenges the migrants face.

Read the piece at That’s Shanghai.

Among the several great passages is this one, describing the scarcity of water in the urban enclave:

At 8am I start washing vegetables. Anything involving water takes a long time because there is one faucet for every four homes and every five faucets are connected to one main pipe. So when any one of the 20 families uses their faucet, none of the other 19 can. Someone is always washing vegetables, dishes, hair or clothes. Each family pays RMB10 per person, per month. Peer pressure and faucet scarcity prevents anyone from using too much.

Sometimes we aren’t able to arrive at the construction site in time to sell food because we’re waiting to use the faucet. I’ve learned to stand in the water line and not move until I’ve filled the basin. Since it’s so hard to get water, most food isn’t washed well, it’s soaked. The same water is then used to soak other vegetables. Then the same water is used to scrub the pot. The same bowl is used to wash hair, clothes and Li Jie’s child.

Li, who is currently vice premier, comes across as a careful—if reformist-leaning—politician. Indeed, the extent of his ties to the Tiananmen movement is part of the story.

Lim also includes reference to one of my favorite Wikileaks cables, one that endeared Li Keqiang to me during an academic project, for his insight if nothing else.

People like to quote Li’s assertion that Chinese GDP figures are “man-made.” This is notable only in that Li said it as Party Secretary of Liaoning Province, a large northeastern economy bordering North Korea. But what he supposedly said next is far more interesting for people who, despite bad GDP figures, want to understand the magnitude of Chinese economic activity. Li offered three proxies for economic output that he looked at to keep an eye on Liaoning’s heavy industry–dominated economy.

The full excerpt from the cable:

4. (C) GDP figures are “man-made” and therefore unreliable, Li said. When evaluating Liaoning’s economy, he focuses on three figures:
1) electricity consumption, which was up 10 percent in Liaoning last year;
2) volume of rail cargo, which is fairly accurate because fees are charged for each unit of weight; and
3) amount of loans disbursed, which also tends to be accurate given the interest fees charged. By looking at these three figures, Li said he can measure with relative accuracy the speed of economic growth. All other figures, especially GDP statistics, are “for reference only,” he said smiling.

The scholarly community had already thought of electricity consumption, and economists are creative when looking for proxies. But this is a vote of confidence in the idea of proxies over primary indicators, even when the indicator is “known.” The message is that closely watched numbers are also closely controlled; reality may be hiding in less scrutinized places.

It’s also worth noting that this frank discussion with someone who got the information into a U.S. diplomatic cable suggests that Li is perhaps more comfortable than usual working internationally. His English, for one thing, sounds great in the radio report.

Xi Jinping

In written answers to questions from the Washington Post editorial board, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to take power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party in November, implies that anti-China economic rhetoric is based in ignorance.

As economic globalization gathers momentum, China and the United States have become highly interdependent economically. Such economic relations would not enjoy sustained, rapid growth if they were not based on mutual benefit or if they failed to deliver great benefits to the United States. The Americans who know the real picture of China-U.S. economic relations, including those in the business community, will echo this point.

This to me was the most pointed of the comments the Post published. It also so happens that I largely agree.

Image credit: Creative Commons photo via nznationalparty on Flickr.

White House Photo

James Fallows has published the capstone to his blog’s meditation on whether U.S. President Barack Obama is a chess master or a pawn—a long-game strategist with high tolerance for disappointment along the way, or a hapless newb whose ability to inspire was never matched by political mettle.

Despite Fallows’ continued exhortations to subscribe, I encourage you not to wait and to read the article now at The Atlantic.

Among Obama’s achievements, he lists:

• putting U.S. relations with China on a better footing than in many years, a task that has to be among the very most important for any president of the early 21st century.

In particular, Fallows describes Obama’s 2009 visit to Beijing, amid a period of increased international bluster on the part of some in the Chinese government:

Yet even as Obama was politely listening to lectures about China’s new superiority, members of his administration were executing an elaborate pincer movement to reestablish American influence, real and perceived, among the growing economies of Asia. In practically every formal statement by U.S. officials, from President Obama to Secretaries Clinton, Geithner, and Gates, U.S. representatives hammered home a single message. The message was that America welcomed rather than feared China’s continued rise.

That “pincer” policy included doubling down on U.S. relations with other East Asian countries during a period when China’s diplomatic stance was less than diplomatic. It culminated, Fallows writes, in the establishment of a permanent U.S. base on Australia’s north coast.

I find this account largely convincing, but I do question the “better footing” characterization of U.S.–China relations under these conditions. If the improvement is in the U.S. influence in the region and a perceived retrenchment of Chinese regional power, I’m not sure that puts the relationship on great footing. (I don’t ascribe this tradeoff to Fallows’s account; that’s my own interpretation.)

The relationship between the two countries is complex and, in my assessment, largely stable. Tossing aside abstract international relations debates between those who believe great powers must balance one another and those who believe 21st century economic integration makes Cold War rivalry untenable, I like to argue that the United States and China are so deeply tied that an alignment of interests is inevitable.

Given that integration, a better footing for the relationship would be manifested in each population’s increased understanding of the others’ needs. This means U.S. voters learning about the needs and priorities of Chinese—and about the forbidding diversity of those priorities. And it means Chinese learning about the living standards and unwillingness to compromise among many in the United States. Both sides, in my dream land, would start building policies based on enlightened mutual interest, which by the way should not be limited to these two countries.

As Fallows tells us, a U.S. president only has so much power, and national identity is hard to shake. But what metric should we use to judge the development of one country’s relationship with another? Perhaps we need something more people-based and less focused on diplomatic victories.

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.