Mountains and valleys

I've been trying to find this quote from Mao about leveling the mountains and filling in the valleys, but Google keeps giving me articles like "What is the clinical significance of an elevated platelet MAO level?" Anyway, it wasn't a very appropriate analogy, or at least not one that would bring a lot of converts to what I'm writing about... which is that I'm excited about Obama's proposed budget, or at least the way the NY Times describes it:

The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It would reduce taxes for everyone else, to a lower point than they were under either Mr. Clinton or George W. Bush. And it would lay the groundwork for sweeping changes in health care and education, among other areas.

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.

About time! That's what I've really been wanting all these years. Foreign policy and all that is important, but I really want someone to stick it to the rich people... and get things back to the WPA days.

UPDATE:

That's a bit rash, but my main thing is that Clinton never cared about inequality. He cared about the little guy, sure, but not inequality. If Obama does, then I'm more or less satisfied.

Clinton bungles it

I've gotta say... Clinton did fine in terms of setting up the right relationships in China, with the government and with ordinary people, but I don't get why she had to talk about human rights the way she did.

If she wanted to focus on global warming and treasury bonds, she should have done just that and not even mentioned rights. Instead, Clinton went out of her way to frame rights as a sort of dead-end and distraction, so that the next time they have to come up---such as in the event of more brutality in Tibet---they will be dismissed as the sort of chatter that only occurs when there's nothing else more important to talk about or as a formality demanded by narrow-sighted interest groups at home.

Instead, Clinton could have pushed rights out of the on-again, off-again US-China "human rights dialogue" (scrap the dialogue if need be) and made them a normal part of other discussions. Environmental discussions, for example, could include the rights of the poor to safe water or of environmental campaigners to freedom from intimidation. Economic discussions could include the plight of workers.

Of course, such an expanded conversation would inevitably touch on America's misdeeds. Which would be perfect. We need someone to say that closing Guantanmo is good but closing the Bagram air base would be better. One of the best things about the human rights reports that the U.S. produces about China is that they often draw a Chinese response criticizing the U.S. It's a healthy exchange. Now it needs to be expanded, not shunted off to the corner.

Bring in Barghouti

If they could get Barghouti back in there... from the Huffington Post:

Marwan Barghouti is the most popular Palestinian leader since Yasser Arafat. He has spent the last seven years in an Israeli prison after being convicted of playing a role in attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk.

A lifetime member of President Mahmoud Abbas' venerable and corruption-riddled Fatah movement, Barghouti is seen as perhaps the group's best chance to restore its eroded credibility. Many Palestinians _ and some Israelis _ see him as the only figure capable of bridging the myriad rifts among Palestinians and leading them toward their long elusive dream of statehood.

Barghouti is a secularist who works with Islamists. He supports negotiations with Israel, speaks fluent Hebrew and has Israeli friends, but he built his reputation through anti-Israel diatribes during the second Palestinian uprising.

I don't profess to being an expert on any of these things, but this man has always impressed me. It seems that Israel has kept him under lock and key precisely because he WOULD make a good negotiating partner. Israel will probably never come to an internal consensus that it is ready for a serious peace effort, but maybe having Barghouti on the scene will force things forward.

Charter 08

My main problem with Charter 08, beyond the stuff about privatizing SOEs (which won't win over many northeastern rustbelt workers) , is its fixation with settling on a single account of the past.

The Chinese constitution begins, "China is one of the countries with the longest histories in the world." It then dashes through imperial glory, humiliation at the hands of foreign powers and the partial triumphs of the Republican era before concluding:

After waging hard, protracted and tortuous struggles, armed and otherwise, the Chinese people of all nationalities led by the Communist Party of China with Chairman Mao Zedong as its leader ultimately, in 1949, overthrew the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, won the great victory of the new-democratic revolution and founded the People's Republic of China. Thereupon the Chinese people took state power into their own hands and became masters of the country.... The living standards of the people have improved considerably.

In an almost perfect reverse, Charter 08 lists the same historical episodes but concludes:

The Communist Party of China seized control of all organs of the state and all political, economic, and social resources, and, using these, has produced a long trail of human rights disasters, including, among many others, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966–1969), the June Fourth Massacre (1989), and the current repression of all unauthorized religions and the suppression of the weiquan rights movement. During all this, the Chinese people have paid a gargantuan price. Tens of millions have lost their lives, and several generations have seen their freedom, their happiness, and their human dignity cruelly trampled.

But in truth Chinese peoples' experiences run a wide gamut between the two narratives above. Why set the record straight and risk only setting it straight for a few people?

Of course, Charter 08 is important not because of its specifics, but because so many people felt comfortable signing it at all. Their courage speaks to a rising current of dissatisfaction among elite intellectuals (who have been bribed and coddled by the CCP since 1989), to the limits of technocratic authorities to inspire citizens, and to a changed balance of power between the Chinese government and its people.

The government's high-profile attacks on the document--Jia Qinglin's article in Qiushi, Hu's confusing statements about not "wavering" (bu zheteng), and Peking University's call for students to boycott Charter 08--have been combined with a curious reticence to hit the actual signatories, aside from a handful of people like Lu Xiaobo. The state simply can't do as much as it once could.

So, even if the broad masses of Chinese have not yet heard of Charter 08 and even if young nationalists are incensed by the document's mild references to a "federated republic," the document stands as a testimony to a changed environment.

For better takes on the document than mine, see Rebecca MacKinnon's post and Ronald Soong's response.

Victimizer complex

Several countries are routinely said to have a "victim complex." Top among these are Russia, Israel and China.

I wonder if the phrase is misplaced. A more accurate substitute might be "victimizer complex." Putting the emphasis on countries' overreactions to difficult circumstances (i.e. victimizing someone else) rather than their feelings about the past would, first of all, take away the snide undertone of the current expression, which dismisses Russia's suffering under market "shock therapy," China's century of foreign domination, and Israel's memories of the Holocaust with a curt "that's all in the past; get over it." Instead, old pains would be dealt with on their own terms, as real--but not as an excuse for the present.

Second, "victimizer complex" would draw into the same rubric a wide variety of countries that share key traits with the three mentioned above, but that are usually not cited in the same breath--Turkey and the United States, for example.

What traits exactly are we talking about? Basically, an attitude of, "Yes, I am taking tough measures with X, but I am against the wall and that's all X understands--wouldn't you do the same? Who are you to judge, anyway, as you didn't go through Y like I did? Get out of the way."

The frightening thing about this attitude is that it is gaining currency among young people.

Chinese barely old enough to remember June 4, 1989 are confident that the students and workers in Tiananmen Square (and elsewhere) were not only wrongheaded--they surely were about at least some things, as participants in any movement are--but required a full military clampdown. Tibetans are similarly seen to be resistant to reason: "Why do they stray from cute religiosity to messing with politics and questioning China's obvious generosity?" As a country that has long dealt with foreign interference, the reasoning goes, China must respond in a tough manner or fall apart... "Wouldn't you do the same? Didn't the U.S. do just this in [insert an inner city race riot or battle with Native Americans]? Don't judge us."

In Israel, the Palestinian resistance, in its many forms, is not just a reminder of Israelis' past victimhood. To say so is to cheapen a very real victimhood and to confuse the mentality behind the IDF's recent, bloody assault on Gaza. Palestinians are, rather, seen to require tough measures almost genetically. And the defense of this idea, the defense of the ability to be a righteous bully, has become something of a badge of pride for the country, at least in international relations. You hear it, again, not only from hardened generals but from otherwise optimistic liberals in their 20s who are excited about "change"--but supportive of Israel, whatever it does, maybe especially if it is bloody.

Youthful Russians rally to Putin, meanwhile, arguing for hard measures, extra-constitutional measures, to be taken against sinister civil society groups and against Jews and against those stubborn partisans of Chechnya. The same goes for Turkey and its treatment of the Kurds. Again, young people are at the forefront, waving Turkish flags in the streets, angry at a new Turkish leader who is judged to hold an insufficiently hardline attitude toward minorities. And, of course, we all witnessed a "victimizer complex" in the U.S. after 9/11, when sympathy for bombed Afghan villagers was regarded to be only a few shades distant from treason. It was a matter of faith--and one that more than a few college kids propounded to me--that a scorched earth campaign against bin Laden was a duty. And a duty that was almost relished.

The hopeful note in all this is that those with a victimizer complex feel the need to explain themselves. In fact, the whole thing is about explaining oneself.

This points, naturally, to a deeper discomfort. And it is better for someone to be right-wing, maybe, in their youth and to work through it, to turn around, than it is to settle into a satisfied nationalism at the age that a person normally enters policy-making.

Inauguration II

It's been easier for me to say I "love" other countries--I don't know how many times I've said "I love China" and meant it--than saying I love the United States. The phrase has always stuck in my throat because it has seemed to stand in for a denial of the deep problems in the country: its imperial role in the world and its contradictions of class and race at home.

But today, walking and waiting and listening for ten hours in the cold, I got a lot closer to that commitment. Obama has put things back on track, allowed caring about a place where I've grown up to be a struggle, not a done deal--and celebrated that struggle.

The sign in the crowd on the Mall that brought me closest to tears was one that read, "Martin!! We've made it to the top of the mountain."

We may not have quite made it there, but this campaign and the courteous, excited, open-hearted crowd that has descended on Washington, DC give me some hope. And make me think that while allegiance to one nation-state over another is, from a long view, ridiculous, investing in something local, in the ins and outs of making somewhere you, well, love what it should be is a pretty noble cause.

Inauguration

DC is once again filled with excitement--a wonderful rush of humanity that I associate more with New York than Washington. Buses from out of town are dropping off crowds of excited but solemn school kids. Older black women are taking in the city in small, talkative groups. MLK Day volunteers, inspired by Obama's call to service, fill care packages for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and hand out energy efficiency kits and install solar panels in struggling neighborhoods (I got to see Steven Chu that way!). Troops closer to home guard intersections around the Mall, drawing the most appreciation (and impromptu group photos) that a domestic deployment has probably ever felt.

I've been taking pictures of all the Obama images and slogans about the city. There are stencils of "No Drama Obama" with his face on telephone poles (probably dating from the campaign), invitations to a national "hip hop caucus" during the inauguration weekend, a neon "Obama '08" design on an old firehouse, an all-Obama souvenir store on U Street that is absolutely packed with people, an "OBAMA" ice sculpture in front of Uncle Ben's Chili Bowl, Obama flags hanging from some stores and cars, cardboard Obamas for picture poses everywhere, guys hawking blinking Obama gear out of vans, and, of course, thousands of people festooned with Obama buttons and with a certain design of Obama stocking caps in black with red, white and blue writing.

For a little bit, I was starting to feel uncomfortable with it all--personality cult, drifting away from policies, etc. But now I'm cool with it. On a practical level, this thing has to take on the feel of a national, historical event for the president to pull off all he needs to pull off in the next years. The big inaugural concert yesterday, with its sea of upbeat people laughing and dancing as easily to Garth Brooks as Usher felt like what it was: an American celebration. That Franklin Mint TV ad for an Obama commemorative plate seems like as good a campaign ad as any, with its waspy white father proudly adding the plate to a bookcase full of military histories and a model cannon (at least I think there's a model cannon in there).

And old blocs have to be broken and realigned. That's why I don't feel as angry about Rev. Warren speaking tomorrow as some. We have to mix up the Christian right, harness its redeeming qualities, restart discussion---OK, we don't agree on abortion, but how will we reduce teen pregnancies?---and let the diehard rightists skulk away. If we don't, our national discussions will forever be sidetracked.

But, more importantly, it's fine to celebrate. It was a long campaign and we pulled of something unexpected and incredibly good. Really, really good---a candidate we're actually excited about, who has brought out tremendous good in people.

P.S.

I do need some sort of understanding that progressivism lies behind all this. Biden gave as good of a reassurance on that front as anyone could give when he simply reminded the crowd at the inaugural concert that DC's architecture was built with the skill and sweat of workers and that work must be respected. That's it. He gave no context, no mushy stuff about all getting along. He just said that. It matched his pick of Jared Bernstein of EPI for his economic advisor. It also matched Hilda Solis for DOL, of course. It didn't match Larry Summers (though he has come a long ways on income inequality since the Clinton years) and I need a reassurance that Summers' outlook won't dominate that of the Bernsteins and Solises of the administration.

Labor will be where the Republicans, dazed by a total defeat, try to rally. They've already done so on the auto bailout and the confirmation of Solis. At their heart, Republicans agree with each other on employer-employee relations more than they do on just about any other issue. And they still think collective bargaining is, basically, foreign, sneaky, frustrating. Workers' rights seems like as good a place as any to tell them we're ready to talk, that we can hear them out on their values rhetoric, that we have an inclusive, forward-looking idea of America---but that they are no longer boss and that, for that matter, bosses are no longer boss. It should be where bipartisanship for its own sake ends.

But, for now, we can celebrate.

Cluster bombs

There is mounting evidence of cluster bombs being used by the IDF on Palestinians. This is far, far beyond the pale, especially in Gaza, one of the most crowded places in the world. As Gideon Levy writes, "Nobody is coming to the rescue - of Gaza or even of the remnants of humanity and Israeli democracy."

Gaza (updated)

Israel has crossed the line again.  Yes, every nation has a right to defend itself.  But the IDF's raining down of death upon an occupied people, besides being a blatant violation of the Geneva conventions and plenty of other international laws, is about as  effective a form of self-defense as the death rained on Sderot by Hamas on a much smaller scale.  There is a precedent for this brutal foolishness:  the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which only strengthened Hezbollah, by most accounts.  

Yet, there seem to be few options for reversing events in any permanent way.  The Palestinians have a right to resist, including by force, of course.   However, while miring down an Israeli ground invasion (should it come) with street fighting might end this particular assault, it won't stop future bombing raids.   If anything, it will just lock in a new pattern. Hamas will be practically bound to go on the offensive, as will, in turn, Israel and so on.

Appealing to Israel can only go so far, too---the country tuned out world public opinion long ago.  And now, in particular, it has turned inward, into its own politics, with an extraordinary degree of self-reflection and courage in some instances, but inward nonetheless.  Indeed, one explanation for the carnage of the last few days is the need of Olmert-Livni-Barak triumvirate to look tough before the upcoming Israeli elections (see Jonathan Cook's detailed analysis at Electronic Intifada).  

At the risk of sounding American-centric, peace with justice has to start in the United States. As Israel's main ally, America has the most leverage over Israel and, equally importantly, as the country furthest out of sync with the rest of the world on the Middle East conflict, it has the most room to grow---grow in its understanding of the situation, grow in its engagement, and grow in its generosity of heart.

Citing polls showing that an overwhelming majority of Americans already "favor taking neither side," Salon's Glenn Greenwald bemoans the fact that "no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70 percent of Americans support."  Greenwald goes on:

Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors.  That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans.  But that distinction -- between the U.S. and Israel -- barely exists because our political leaders have all but eliminated it, and have thus imposed on U.S. citizens responsibility for the acts of Israel.

But this is simplifying things.  There's a massive wellspring of support for Israel in the States at a popular level, whether it is reflected in a given poll or not.  Tracing images of Israel in American political discourse back to the early, post-revolutionary period (when, of course, Israel did not even exist as a state), Walter Russell Meade recently wrote in Foreign Affairs:

Both religious and nonreligious Americans have looked to the Hebrew Scriptures for an example of a people set apart by their mission and called to a world-changing destiny.... 

This mythic understanding of the United States' nature and destiny is one of the most powerful and enduring elements in American culture and thought. As the ancient Hebrews did, many Americans today believe that they bear a revelation that is ultimately not just for them but also for the whole world; they have often considered themselves God's new Israel. One of the many consequences of this presumed kinship is that many Americans think it is both right and proper for one chosen people to support another....

The United States and Israel also have in common their status as "settler states" -- countries formed by peoples who came to control their current lands after displacing the original populations.....

In the United States, a pro-Israel foreign policy does not represent the triumph of a small lobby over the public will. It represents the power of public opinion to shape foreign policy in the face of concerns by foreign policy professionals.

If we are to force Israel back from abusing its outsized military power and, ultimately, from its own self-destruction, we have to start among American citizens, not fighting AIPAC or persuading Harry Reid... or even Barack Obama.  

UPDATE: Haaretz has a good piece on rivalries within the Israeli leadership in regards to the atrocities of the past few days.

UPDATE II: Check out the Wikipedia entry for the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns treatment of occupied civilians.

What's wrong with rewarding physical labor?

There's something I've been trying to put my finger on in regards to the current outcry against the United Auto Workers.

I felt it back in 2005 during the transportation workers' strike in New York City. It has popped up again around discussions of labor market reforms in places like India and South Africa and France. It even hovers in some Chinese reactions to this fall's exodus of unemployed migrant workers from the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta to the country's rural interior---as it did around discussions of laid off state-owned enterprise employees in Liaoning and Heilongjiang a decade ago. I think I'm starting to get an idea of what it is...

There's a sense among an alarmingly large number of people---in the U.S., China, Europe and elsewhere---that it is not only impractical for an economy to allow people to make a great living (not just a decent living) through physical labor, but that it is in some way conniving, even disgusting when workers do so or, worse yet, that it is downright morally wrong. Call it Max Weber's "protestant ethic" in reverse. To NOT work hard, by the emerging logic, should be amply rewarded (see the quoted section of Krugman's column in my previous entry) and if you're poor, it's your own fault because you have been working too hard!

Obviously, this thinking is not entirely new. But at a time when a global financial crisis is in full swing, it is strange not to see more of a push back against this meme from more sectors of society.

The courageous factory occupation of Chicago UE workers (who have been supported by president-elect Obama) and the drawn-out but successful UFCW organizing drive at the Smithfield meat packing plant in North Carolina are encouraging for America.  So, too, in the Chinese context, are the innumerable strikes, protests and riots by Chinese taxi drivers, toy factory workers, suitcase manufacturers, teachers, cops and even small factory owners.  But I don't see a middle class cohort standing with these people in either country.

Do workers need a vanguard of intellectuals, of hipsters and company men?  No, of course not. But it seems like it would be healthy if there was a greater appreciation for work among these people, as they dominate popular culture and the levers of government.   And that appreciation should come in the form of support for high－sky high－salaries.

Good call

To quote someone at ridiculous length:

At the crudest level, Wall Street’s ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way. From Bush administration officials like Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who looked the other way as evidence of financial fraud mounted, to Democrats who still haven’t closed the outrageous tax loophole that benefits executives at hedge funds and private equity firms (hello, Senator Schumer), politicians have walked when money talked.

Meanwhile, how much has our nation’s future been damaged by the magnetic pull of quick personal wealth, which for years has drawn many of our best and brightest young people into investment banking, at the expense of science, public service and just about everything else?

Most of all, the vast riches being earned — or maybe that should be “earned” — in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.

Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing.

After all, that’s why so many people trusted Mr. Madoff.

Richardson

Governor Richardson would have made a better Secretary of State than Senator Clinton, at least in terms of his foreign policy experience (I'm fine with Clinton taking the job for other reasons). Richardson personally negotiated with North Korea, Iran and Sudan and was once ambassador to the United Nations. But Chinese-Americans are right to criticize his handling of the Wen Ho Lee case as energy secretary---and to still hold that ugly episode over his head.

Yes, Richardson and Bill Clinton were under intense pressure from conservatives back then, as they were for the whole of Clinton's presidency. And, yes, spying from China was and is a serious issue for America (just as, I imagine, spying from the U.S. is a serious issue for the Chinese). But Wen Ho Lee was the victim of a witch hunt that didn't need to happen if the people in charge, and Richardson in particular, had had a bit more of a spine.

Now that he's got a post at Commerce, Richardson may think this is all behind him. I hope he instead takes the opportunity to make a full apology.

Anti-racist action

I'm never sure of the best way of confronting the far right.  In Europe, marches against immigrants are typically met by large numbers of anti-racist counter-demonstrators, sometimes with violent results.  In Lund, Sweden, violence broke out yesterday when over a thousand anti-racists attempted to stop a protest by only 50 "högerextremister."  

In a way, violence seems appropriate.   Fascism has at its root a heavy dose of machismo and meeting it on its own macho grounds can take the wind out of its sails.  Right wingers become no longer the tough protectors of the fatherland / motherland, knightly or viking-ly looking out for their white sisters and mothers, but a cowed minority in need of protection from the police.  

But, of course,  aggressive marches and equally aggressive counter-marches have created a self-sustaining dynamic, with everyone playing out pre-ordained roles.  A peaceful, quiet but resolute response to racism could break the pattern in a positive way.

Lessons from the Pearl River Delta

I was in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) recently and the sky there was the bluest I've ever seen it. Maybe it was luck or maybe it was the fact that thousands of factories have shut down over the past months.  I'm inclined to believe the latter.  People have told me that the scenes at PRD train stations are now sometimes reminiscent of Spring Festival, with crowds of workers waiting to return home.  Laid off employees have rioted at a toy factory in Dongguan and elsewhere.  Taxi drivers in Guangzhou, like their colleagues in cities around the country, are on strike. 

As I've said before, my worry is that the government will take this as a sign that it should hold back on strengthening labor protections.  There are signs that this is exactly how authorities have read the situation.  Already, provincial and municipal minimum wage raises have been frozen. The recently released implementation guidelines for the Labor Contract Law are watering down the law's impact, as are local regulations.  

Beijing should realize that far from being a solution to economic difficulties, bad working conditions have made an already bad situation worse.  For example, because it did not ensure that wages were paid on time, the government is now forced to pick up the tab for Taiwanese companies that disappear in the night, leaving their workers months behind in wages.  Non-payment of social security fees (and the non-transferability of those payments to workers' home provinces) make the crowds returning to Hunan and Sichuan dangerously insecure---and threaten stability in the interior.  

This crisis should be seen as an opportunity for China to reaffirm its commitment to fairness and to creating higher value-added industries, rather than an excuse to retreat.

Obama wins

The victory really does change everything.  It'll require a more open heart and less distance.  This probably comes close to feeling the way a revolution does.   What gets me is how efforts by so many people really added up to something.  

Right now, people are passing my window on the way to the White House.  U Street is filled with crowds and singing and sign waving and taxis honking horns.  

Thoughts on a few topics

I haven't posted in ages.  So much has happened.  

I've been horrified, like everyone else, by the global financial crisis---but also delighted by headlines in major business journals about capitalism being at a turning point. This is crazy stuff! I remember how radical socialists in college would hand out papers with editorials demanding that the government nationalize the banking sector...  done, sort of.

How China rides this storm out will be interesting. I am worried that the country's belated efforts to strengthen implementation of its environmental and labor regulations and to reform its tattered social safety net will be pushed aside by short-term thinkers who advocate getting the worst parts of the export sector back online as a solution to slowing growth.   

In other words, rather than continue to lay the basis for more domestic consumption---and, ideally, lower Gini coefficients---southern manufacturers may get a boost in the form of tax benefits and lax labor law enforcement (the new implementation guidelines for the Labor Contract Law have been somewhat of a disappointment, watering down the original legislation).  Efforts at creating an integrated social security network, where migrant workers can bring their benefits back to their home provinces, will go on the back burner.  And the whole thing will have to start over.

China was a level-headed player during the previous East Asian financial crisis. But I think more than level-headed-ness is needed now.  These times require a comprehensive vision of what a fair, prosperous future will look like.  And, unfortunately, neither the U.S. nor China nor even the EU seem at the right place politically to conceive such a vision.

Tangentially---I'm trying to get caught up on topics, so I'm throwing them all together in one post---I've been going back and forth with myself about China's recent announcement of a semi-land-reform for farmers.  Perhaps readers can give me their opinions?  

On the one hand, as I have stated before, I am nervous about land being bought and sold before there's a strong rural (and, importantly, periurban) court system in place.   It just seems like a recipe for dispossesion and proletarianization possibly worse than the government land seizures of today.  

Yu Jianrong makes a typically nuanced but forceful argument for a balanced approach that is focused on farmers' agency in an interview translated by Danwei.  I'd like to hear more of what he has to say.

Finally, on an entirely unrelated topic, I'm glad to see that Americans have not been thrown off course by the McCain campaigns increasingly desperate attempts to make the election about race.  It shows that people can be serious when they want to.

On the mark

Obama on September 16:

"So let's be clear: what we've seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed."

Thailand and Bolivia

Like many people, I am naturally sympathetic to protest movements.  I like the speeches, the camaraderie, and, especially, the feeling of politics out in the open, not behind closed doors---the closed doors of power, but also the closed doors of our own homes, where we stew over newspapers and computers, not knowing who else shares our thoughts. 

However, in the past month I've been profoundly at odds with two protest movements in particular: the opposition movement in Thailand and the secessionist movement in Bolivia. 

The New York Times summed up the campaign of the Thai People's Alliance for Democracy (P.A.D.) against Prime Minister Samak Sundarajev well with the headline "Power of the People Fights Democracy in Thai Protests" (note the absence of the word "for").  The political camps in this latest flash point are contradictory to say the least, but one thing is clear: a powerful contingent of the opposition does not believe in one person, one vote, because such a system gives the rural majority "too much" of a voice.  

Why shouldn't Thailand's rural majority have a voice?  Why, indeed, shouldn't they have the biggest voice?  Their votes, it is said by P.A.D. supporters, can be bought.  What does that mean?  In at least one conversation I've had with an opposition supporter, at a discussion in New York organized around the last coup, "buying votes" was taken to include providing the rural masses with healthcare, as the deposed PM Thaksin Shinawatra did.  In other words, responding to the needs of the poor and then receiving the votes of the poor is sketchy, outside the natural order of things, inherently corrupt.

That's not to say that Thaksin couldn't be a thug when he wanted or that he wasn't, in fact, corrupt.  His anti-drug crackdown was unnecessarily brutal.  And anyone turned off by Berlusconi's marriage of media tycoon-ery and politics in Italy will see striking parallels with the Thaksin TV empire's fuzzy borders with his administration.  But the picture of, as the Times says, "haves and have-nots, with the haves rising up against the poorer classes" is disgusting.  

It reminds me of a nineteenth century book called Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants or Civilization and Barbarism By D.F. Sarmiento that I had to read for a Latin American history class in college.  In the book, the civilized capital of Argentina is contrasted by Sarmiento with the "barbaric" interior, from which "tyrants" and cowboys and Indians spring.  As in Thailand's case, the rural-based "tyrants" of the Argentine book are indeed less than admirable, trampling on the law with abandon. But the bankruptcy of Argentina's Europeanized elite, with whom Sarmiento proudly identifies, is even more apparent.

Which brings me to Bolivia.  There, in Santa Cruz but also elsewhere, we see a bourgeoisie remarkably similar to that of Chile before 1973: disdainful, fearful of change---and ready for the U.S. to intervene, practically begging for the Yankees to sweep in.  And it seems that America has done just that, if Evo Morales' recent expulsion of Ambassador Goldberg for meddling is any sign.    

Thankfully, Latin America seems to have rallied around Morales, a leader worthy not only of support but also real admiration.  Brazil in particular has shown courage in speaking up, shelving for now the benefits that have come with being Bush's "good" left-leaning government on the continent.  In fact, this is not the first time that Lula has stepped up for Bolivia when it has been in need.  In a February interview in Monthly Review, Bolivian VP Garcia said that support from Brazil, along with the support of other countries like Chile and Argentina, held back the tide of "extremists."

It is this sort of solidarity, but also sense of purpose, that Southeast Asia needs in order to preserve its democratic gains, put elites in their place (which by rights should be toward the back of the line), move beyond a superficial populism---like that epitomized by Thaksin---and begin to achieve real fairness.

Lying @!$*!

Please forgive me if my language is offensive or if you aren't particularly caught up in American politics right now.  But I was walking home today and the whole way I kept thinking of various talking points I could rail off should a reporter suddenly accost me and ask me for a "man on the street" perspective of the presidential race.  I thought of million snappy, snide, cutting things I could say, but all I really wanted to respond with was: "John McCain is a lying bastard and I hope this contest marks his exit from public life."  And even that was nicer than what I really, really wanted to say.  For more eloquent responses, see here and here and here and  here and here.

Asia Times article on reform

Following up on the previous post, Asia Times has an interesting article wondering if modest but still significant systemic (tizhi) reforms are around the corner for China. The piece puts a lot of weight on a speech by the current head of Hunan Province:

A pointer to the shape of future changes came recently in the form of explicit remarks about "political reforms" by Zhang Chunxian, the CCP head of Hunan province.

At a televised conference of Hunan officials on August 31 held to mobilize a province-wide campaign for further "emancipation of minds", Zhang said reforms in the past 30 years had focused on how "to return li [economic interests] to the people". The focus now would be on how "to return quan to the people" , with efforts devoted to "developing socialist democratic politics". The Chinese word quan has a double meaning and could refer to rights or (political) power or both.

Asia Times then rattles off various ways that the comments could be interpreted---land reform, "public opinion" surveys as effective votes on cadre promotion, as well as more ambitious stuff---and notes that Zhang appears to be in the process of being groomed for higher posts, so it is unlikely that he "made a slip of the tongue."

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I for one am extremely nervous about the prospect of premature land reform. The free market crowd loves the idea for all the usual reasons: farmers being given incentives to invest in the land, land being used as collateral for loans, bigger and more efficient farms, etc. But without courts that will actually protect farmers' rights, it seems likely that land reform would just yield more, not less heartless land grabs by officials and developers with no more push back than today.

Land grabs are serious. Any more of them and a critical social safety net, the ONLY social safety net in many areas, will be lost to hundreds of millions of rural people who would no longer have any "right" to a patch of (leased) property for their families. It is not hard imagining landlords returning. Worse yet, there is the possibility of a phenomenon that China has largely avoided but that other countries at its income level in Latin America and Southeast Asia endure: shantytowns.

Therefore, on top of all the reasons for political reform on its own merits, I hope elections and press freedoms and freedom of association (such as for farmers associations) will move ahead so that rural people can gain a stronger check on local authorities---before literally the ground beneath them is torn up.

Let's hope this is what Mr. Zhang has in mind. More importantly, let's hope this is what his superiors have in mind.