To Counter China’s Rise, the U.S. Should Focus on Xi

“Because of the scale of China’s economy and its military, the speed of its technological advancement and its radically different worldview from that of the United States, China’s rise now profoundly impacts every major U.S. national interest. This is a structural challenge that, to some extent, has been gradually emerging over the last two decades. The rise to power of Xi has greatly accentuated this challenge and accelerated its timetable.

At home, Xi has returned China to classical Marxism-Leninism and fostered a quasi-Maoist personality cult, pursuing the systematic elimination of his political opponents. China’s market reforms have stalled and its private sector is now under increasingly direct forms of party control. Xi has also used ethnonationalism to unite his country against any challenges to his authority, internal or external. His treatment of recalcitrant ethnic minorities within China borders on genocide. Xi’s China increasingly resembles a new form of authoritarian police state. And in a fundamental departure from his risk-averse post-Mao predecessors, Xi has demonstrated that he intends to project China’s authoritarian system, coercive foreign policy and military presence well beyond his country’s own borders to the world at large.

China under Xi, unlike under previous leaders Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, is no longer a status quo power. It has become what the international-relations world calls a revisionist power, a state bent on changing the world around it. For the United States, its allies and the US-led liberal international order, this represents a fundamental shift. Xi is no longer just a problem for U.S. primacy. He now presents a serious challenge to the whole of the democratic world.”

“while the Trump administration did well to sound the alarm on China, its efforts at implementation have been chaotic and at times contradictory. At root, the issue is that “strategic competition” is a declaration of doctrinal attitude, not a comprehensive strategy that has been put into practice.

The uncomfortable truth is that China has long had an integrated internal strategy for handling the United States, and so far its strategy has largely worked. By contrast, the United States, which once articulated and then operationalized a clear, unified strategy to deal with the challenge of the Soviet Union, in the form of George Kennan’s strategy of containment, so far has none in relation to China. This has been a dereliction of national responsibility.

Washington’s difficulty in developing an effective China strategy lies in the absence of a clearly understood strategic objective. At present, objectives articulated by various officials range from inducing Chinese economic reform through a limited trade war to full-blown regime change that focuses on overthrowing the Communist Party. So what should this objective be—and what understanding of China is it based on?”

“a strategy that focuses more narrowly on Xi, rather than the CCP as a whole, presents a more achievable objective—and also points to policies that serve to weaken rather than embolden his autocratic leadership in the process.”

“The political reality is that the CCP is significantly divided on Xi’s leadership and his vast ambitions. Senior party members have been greatly troubled by Xi’s policy direction and angered by his endless demands for absolute loyalty. They fear for their own lives and the future livelihoods of their families. There are countless examples that point to this deep and abiding skepticism towards Xi. Of particular importance in this mix are the reports unearthed by international media of the wealth amassed by Xi’s family and members of his political inner circle, despite the vigor with which Xi has conducted the anti-corruption campaign. It is simply unsophisticated strategy to treat the entire Communist Party as a single monolithic target when such internal fault lines should be clear to the analyst’s eye—and in the intelligent policy maker’s pen.

Any strategy that focuses on the party rather than on Xi himself also ignores the fact that China, under all five of its post-Mao leaders prior to Xi, was able to work with the United States. Under them, China aimed to join the existing international order, not to remake it in China’s own image. That suggests the mission for America’s China strategy should be to see China return to its pre-2013 path—i.e., the pre-Xi strategic status quo. There were, of course, many challenges to U.S. interests during Hu Jintao’s second term, but they were manageable and did not represent a fundamental violation of the liberal international order.”

” It might be helpful to keep in mind one overriding political objective: To cause China’s elite leadership to conclude that it is in the country’s best interests to operate as a status-quo power again. This means that the party needs to see a clearer route to success by staying within the existing US-led liberal international order than by building a rival order; and it should clearly be in the party’s best interests, if it wishes to remain in power at home, not to attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores. In other words, China can become a different type of global great power than that envisaged by Xi.”

“A successful U.S. strategy must be based on its existing strengths, which means the four fundamental pillars of American power: the power of the nation’s military; the status of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency and mainstay of the international financial system; global technological leadership, given that technology has become the major determinant of future national power; and the values of individual freedom, fairness and the rule of law for which the nation continues to stand, despite its recent political divisions and difficulties.

This last point is important. Any effective U.S. China strategy will be anchored in both national values and national interests. This is what has long distinguished the nation from China in the eyes of the world. The defense of universal liberal values and the liberal international order, as well as the maintenance of U.S. global power, must be the twin pillars of America’s global call to arms.

U.S. strategy must also be fully coordinated with major allies. This has nothing to do with making allies feel good; it’s because the United States now needs them to win.”

New Bill Would Empower Trolls, Make It Easier for States To Sue Tech Companies

“The biggest problem with the PACT Act involves Section 230, the federal law that shields internet platforms from some liability for user-created content. An existing exception to this applies when federal criminal laws are concerned. Under the PACT Act’s proposed changes, however, federal civil laws would also be exempted, too. This means federal regulatory agencies could sue online entities when things their users post allegedly violate civil laws, including anti-discrimination and accessibility statutes.

Even more significantly, the PACT Act would let state attorneys general get in on the action—”allowing state attorneys general to enforce federal civil laws against online platforms,” as Schatz’s press release puts it. That means that for the same alleged violation, a company could face the wrath of the federal government and dozens of state prosecutors at the same time.”

“The required process for allowing people to report, question, contest, and appeal all content moderation decisions would be an even bigger burden—and one that allowed for targeted harassment and censorship campaigns by groups intent on punishing certain platforms or silencing certain groups.

“This bill basically empowers trolls to harass companies,” Masnick writes. “All it will do is harm smaller companies, like ours, by putting a massive compliance burden on us, accomplishing nothing but…helping trolls annoy us.””

“Sponsored by Sens. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) and John Thune (R–S.D.), the PACT Act was first introduced last summer”

A New Frontier in the War on Meth: A 40 Percent Tax on Bongs You Can’t Use To Smoke Meth

“Unlike smokers of weed or tobacco, a meth smoker doesn’t apply flame directly to the drug; one heats up the outside of the paraphernalia. Traditional pipes, bongs, or bubblers wouldn’t get the job done. Only a narrow range of glassware, such as test-tube-looking devices or “bubble” pipes, are good for meth consumption.

Yet Dawson’s bill applies the same heavy tax to all smoking implements, regardless of whether they could be used to smoke meth. Meanwhile, meth users still have ways to smoke without buying devices subject to that 40 percent tax. The glass tubes that cigars come in can work in a pinch. So can aluminum foil and a plastic straw.

Dawson, who also works as an investigator with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, candidly acknowledges that home-made paraphernalia exists, but seemingly argues that pushing people toward using them would be a virtue.

Using aluminum foil to smoke meth would “create a residue on there, so that would be drug paraphernalia,” he told Radio Iowa. “But what people are doing now is they are buying these glass pipes because if they encounter law enforcement, they can throw it on the ground and smash it right away and destroy the evidence.””

“Having passed the state senate, Dawson’s bill is currently working its way through the committee process in the Iowa House.”

Japan’s surging electricity prices are a warning for Asian countries

” Households across Japan are likely to get hit by massive electric bills this month, after the price of wholesale electricity there spiked from about 13 cents per kilowatt-hour in December to an unprecedented peak of more than $1 on Jan. 7. ”

“The spike was partially a pandemic-related anomaly. But it was also an ominous sign of things to come for Asian countries working to curb their carbon footprints.

The immediate cause of the spike was bad weather. Japan was hit by an unseasonable cold spell, sending electricity demand in some regions to 10-year highs as homes and businesses cranked up electric heating systems. That in turn caused a sudden shortage of natural gas, which provides 20% of the country’s power and is entirely imported in liquid form (LNG) on ships. Despite the demand, several of Japan’s biggest utilities were forced to roll back power plant production, as the price of gas more than quadrupled from the beginning of December, hitting levels 1,000% higher than the record lows seen during pandemic lockdowns in May. A similar story played out in China and South Korea, turning the gas crunch into a regional issue.

The timing couldn’t have been worse: LNG was already tight as export facilities in several of the countries that normally supply it to Asia—particularly Australia, Qatar, Malaysia, and Indonesia—had experienced an unusual cluster of concurring outages in the preceding months.”

“as more Asian economies put more of their eggs in the LNG basket, they become increasingly exposed to sudden wild price swings. Supply disruptions in LNG exporting countries appear likely to continue in the near future as the global economy recovers from the pandemic”

“Part of the solution, Tsafos said, is for the Asian LNG market to embrace more steady, long-term contracts rather than the on-demand purchases that are the norm today. Delivering gas by ship on demand, instead of by a fixed pipeline, allows buyers and sellers more flexibility in theory, but becomes a problem when too many buyers are clamoring for the same shipment. Asian countries also need a better network for managing the regional flow of LNG, and will have to continue investing in alternative clean energy systems, including renewables and grid-scale energy storage, he said.
“There’s no real point, if you’re aiming for decarbonization, to go for an expensive, volatile fuel like gas,” Robertson said. “You’re better off looking at alternatives, and that’s the conclusion a lot of these countries will come to.””

Tesla Wouldn’t Be Tesla Without Stimulus Spending

“About a month after Barack Obama won the presidency, a cash-strapped Elon Musk made it clear that Tesla Inc.—then a boutique maker of a $109,000 sports car—would have to delay the rollout of a less expensive electric sedan unless it got government support. It was the middle of what was then the worst American financial collapse since the Great Depression, and the markets had just taken too much of a beating. “We can’t move forward with that without a major amount of capital,” the chief executive officer said in an interview in December 2008.

Musk’s plea was well-timed: The incoming president was keen to use part of the approximately $800 billion stimulus package his team was preparing to create a new green energy economy. One year after Obama took office, Tesla got a $465 million federal loan to design electric vehicles and build them at a manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif. The company went public shortly thereafter, repaid the loan early, mainstreamed the electric vehicle, and now employs about 20,000 people in the Bay Area alone. It has the second-largest market capitalization of any automaker worldwide.

More than a decade after the financing came through, former heads of the office that approved it—a division of the U.S. Department of Energy known as the Loan Programs Office—point to the Tesla story as a best-case scenario for federal energy investment.”

Biden, Democrats Are Locking in Trump’s Tariffs

“The Trump administration was able to reshape America’s trade policy in large part because it simply decided to ignore anything that punctured its manufactured reality about how tariffs work.

Economic data show that American businesses and consumers—not China—are overwhelmingly paying the cost of the tariffs? Send Peter Navarro out to do some television hits where he baselessly claims otherwise.

Thousands of American companies are lining up at hearings to explain why the tariffs would hurt their bottom line? Give Wilbur Ross a can of tomato soup and let him explain that those added costs are actually no big deal.

Farmers are getting gutted by the trade war? Send them fat checks, deny that your policies were to blame, and inadvertently create a new, expensive aid program that will be politically difficult to unwind.”

“the Biden administration seems determined to keep the circus going a while longer. Take, for example, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo doing her best Navarro impression during an interview earlier this month with MSNBC. Asked about whether the Biden administration would roll back the Trump tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other goods from China, Raimondo argued that “the data shows that those tariffs have been effective.”

Have they? Raimondo was careful to avoid saying exactly what the tariffs have been “effective” at accomplishing, but the actual data would suggest the answer is not much—except, of course, raising prices for American businesses and consumers.”

“The fundamental problem is the same one that Trump, Navarro, Ross, and others spent the past few years trying to hand-wave away: Tariffs simply create more losers than winners. The U.S. steel industry, for example, employs about 141,000 workers. But there are more than 6 million workers in manufacturing businesses that consume steel. The tariffs are meant to protect the former group by imposing higher costs on the latter, much larger group.”

“Through its first 50 days in office, the Biden administration has given no indication that it is interested in providing relief to American businesses beset by Trump’s tariffs. If anything, Democrats in the White House and Congress appear to be entrenching those policies.”

Sidney Powell Says She’s Not Guilty of Defamation Because ‘No Reasonable Person’ Would Have Believed Her ‘Outlandish’ Election Conspiracy Theory

“After passionately and persistently telling her tall tale of a stolen election last year, Powell is now arguing that only a fool would have taken her at her word.”

“Powell claimed over and over again that Dominion rigged voting machines to manufacture “millions” of votes for Joe Biden. She fingered a specific Dominion executive as largely responsible for the scheme, claimed the plot had its roots in fraud-facilitating software that had helped keep Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez in power, and said China, Cuba, and George Soros were also in on it. But “no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” Powell says in her motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Powell thus implies that Trump and the millions of supporters who still believe he actually won the election, thanks in no small part to the fantasy she concocted, do not count as reasonable people. Fair enough, I suppose, although one might question the wisdom of throwing them all under the bus if Powell hopes to continue profiting from their credulity. But why does Powell purport to be surprised by the fact that so many Trump followers believed her?”

“Since Powell was making political statements, she implies, she had a license to lie. After all, political rhetoric “is often vituperative, abusive and inexact,” and “political statements are inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.” Here she is quoting the Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit, respectively, although I’m not sure those observations can be stretched to cover a baroque conspiracy theory that includes many specific factual claims. When someone says Biden stole the election with help from a voting technology company that was determined to deny Trump a second term no matter how many laws it broke in the process, she has ventured far beyond hyperbole and inexactitude.
Powell also argues that the preposterousness of her allegations should protect her from civil liability for damaging Dominion’s reputation. “Plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements at issue as ‘wild accusations’ and ‘outlandish claims,'” she notes. “They are repeatedly labelled ‘inherently improbable’ and even ‘impossible.’ Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.””

Migrants are heading north because Central America never recovered from last year’s hurricanes

“the current wave of migration at the southern border is the result of a humanitarian crisis in Central America that has been years in the making.

Citizens of the “Northern Triangle” region — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — have long suffered from gang-related violence, frequent extortion, government corruption, and high levels of poverty. Over the past few months, though, another factor has added an additional push to make the dangerous journey north: continuing devastation from back-to-back hurricanes.

Hurricanes Eta and Iota, both super-powerful Category 4 hurricanes, made landfall in November 2020 within a two-week span, ripping through Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. The storms brought torrential rain and resulting flash flooding and landslides. They left more than 200 people dead and another 5.3 million people in need of assistance, including more than 1.8 million children, according to Unicef’s estimates. Many families lost their homes, their belongings, and access to water and livelihoods.

The hurricanes delivered yet another shock to a region that already experienced the highest levels of violence and poverty in the world and was facing an economic downturn from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“In the four months since the hurricanes, recovery has been slow. Most families have left official shelters to return to their communities where rehabilitation work has started but living conditions and access to services and income have heavily deteriorated. More families continue to be pushed into poverty and, absent urgent action, more children are likely to become malnourished and drop out of school. Agricultural communities hit by the storm are also only beginning to see the impacts of last season’s crop failures.

All of this, experts say, is helping push migrants out of their home countries and toward the US.”