Quotulatiousness

August 22, 2013

Chinese government philosophy in the headlines

Filed under: China, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:57

Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link and said “Does this sort of thing really matter any more? Aren’t all governments doing this?”

Under Tocqueville’s Influence, China Chooses Despotism
Paul A. Rahe

In the last few days, the national press has been full of reports suggesting that China’s new President, Xi Jinping, is orchestrating a revival of Maoism and a crackdown on those in China who would like to introduce within that country the procedures, practices, and institutions that distinguish the West: the rule of law, constitutionalism, freedom of the press, judicial independence, civil associations, and “universal values” – which is to say, a respect for human rights. The Wall Street Journal, which broke the story on Saturday, claims that Xi is receiving strong support from former President Jiang Zemin; and on Monday The New York Times filled in some of the details:

    Communist Party cadres have filled meeting halls around China to hear a somber, secretive warning issued by senior leaders. Power could escape their grip, they have been told, unless the party eradicates seven subversive currents coursing through Chinese society.

    These seven perils were enumerated in a memo, referred to as Document No. 9, that bears the unmistakable imprimatur of Xi Jinping, China’s new top leader. The first was “Western constitutional democracy”; others included promoting “universal values” of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market “neo-liberalism,” and “nihilist” criticisms of the party’s traumatic past.

    Even as Mr. Xi has sought to prepare some reforms to expose China’s economy to stronger market forces, he has undertaken a “mass line” campaign to enforce party authority that goes beyond the party’s periodic calls for discipline. The internal warnings to cadres show that Mr. Xi’s confident public face has been accompanied by fears that the party is vulnerable to an economic slowdown, public anger about corruption and challenges from liberals impatient for political change.

[…]

The evidence now suggests the contrary — that Wang Qishan is by no means alone in his convictions, that Xi Jingpin and his lieutenants take quite seriously the possibility that China is in a pre-revolutionary situation, and that they are intent on putting a lid on everything. Where Tocqueville might have suggested that the way forward was for the country’s leaders to embrace the “seven subversive currents,” to carry out a revolution from above, and to gradually introduce into the country the rule of law, constitutionalism, freedom of the press, judicial independence, civil associations, and a respect for human rights, they have decided in this year — the 120th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s birth — to return to the path he charted more than 60 years ago.

August 17, 2013

Delays in India’s submarine program

Filed under: India, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

In the Times of India, Rajat Pandit reviews the state of the Indian Navy’s submarine fleet:

Is India’s aging fleet of conventional submarines threatening to go the MiG-21 way? The Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA), already 30 years in the making, was slated to replace the obsolete MiG-21 in the 1990s but is still at least two years away from becoming fully-operational.

Similarly, the Navy too was to induct 12 new diesel-electric submarines by last year, with another dozen to follow in the 2012-2030 timeframe. This was the 30-year submarine building plan approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) way back in July, 1999. But the Navy has not inducted even one of the 24 planned submarines till now, and is forced to soldier on with just 14 aging conventional vessels.

“The Navy is steadily modernizing in the surface warship and aircraft arenas. But our aging and depleting underwater combat arm is a big worry. But it also must be kept in mind that INS Sindhurakshak‘s accident is the first such incident we have had in over four decades of operating submarines,” said a senior officer.

Sources said INS Sindhurakshak, after Wednesday’s accident, is “a clear write-off”. Of the 13 submarines left now, as many as 11 are over 20 years old. The setback comes when China and Pakistan are systematically bolstering their underwater combat capabilities, with the former being armed with over 55 submarines.

Update: MarineLink reports on the investigation into the INS Sindhurakshak explosion.

The Indian Navy diving teams have been working nonstop to reach into the compartments of the submarine since rescue operations commenced early noon of August 14. The boiling waters inside the submarine prevented any entry until noon that day. Access to the inner compartments of the submarine was made almost impossible due to jammed doors and hatches, distorted ladders, oily and muddy waters inside the submerged submarine resulting in total darkness and nil visibility within the submarine even with high power underwater lamps. Distorted and twisted metal within very restricted space due extensive internal damage caused by the explosion further worsened conditions for the divers. This resulted in very slow and labored progress. Only one diver could work at a time to clear the path to gain access. After 36 hours of continuous diving effort in these conditions, Navy divers have finally reached the second compartment behind the conning tower in the early hours of August 16.

Three bodies have been located and extricated from the submarine from this compartment. The bodies are severely disfigured and not identifiable due to severe burns. The bodies have been sent to INHS Asvini, the naval hospital, for possible DNA identification which is likely to take some more time.

The state of these two bodies and conditions within the submarine leads to firm conclusion that finding any surviving personnel within the submarine is unlikely.

August 14, 2013

Fatal explosion on Indian submarine

Filed under: India, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:21

A report from FirstPost.India on the worst naval disaster in Indian history:

The Indian Navy suffered a huge blow Wednesday when a frontline submarine exploded and sank here at dawn with 18 sailors after two explosions turned it into a deadly ball of fire.

The deep sea attack vessel INS Sindhurakshak, recently refurbished in Russia, suffered an unexplained explosion just after Tuesday midnight and an immediate deafening blast heard almost in the whole of south Mumbai.

Naval officials said the rapid spread of the blaze and the intensity of the explosions left the trapped 18 sailors, including three officers, with apparently no chance of escaping.

“We cannot rule out sabotage,” navy chief Admiral D.K. Joshi told the media after Defence Minister A.K. Antony visited the disaster site at the Mumbai naval dock.

“But indications at this point do not support the (sabotage) theory,” he said. “At this point of time we are unable to put a finger on what exactly could have gone wrong.”

An inquiry set up to probe the disaster will submit its report within four weeks.

The Indian Navy submarine INS Sindhurakshak (S 63) at anchorage off the port city of Mumbai, India

The Indian Navy submarine INS Sindhurakshak (S 63) at anchorage off the port city of Mumbai, India

The most recent update to the Wikipedia page says:

On 14 August 2013, the Sindhurakshak sank after explosions caused by a fire took place onboard when the submarine was docked at Mumbai. The fire, followed by a series of ordnance blasts on the armed submarine, occurred shortly after midnight. The fire was put out within two hours. It is unclear exactly what caused the fire. Due to damage from the explosions, the submarine sank at its berth with only a portion visible above the water surface.[10][14][15] Sailors on board reportedly jumped off to safety. Navy divers were also brought in as there was a possibility that 18 personnel were trapped inside. India’s defence minister confirmed that there were fatalities.[6]

Due to the explosion, the front section of the submarine was twisted, bent and crumpled, and water had entered the forward compartment. Another submarine, INS Sindhuratna, also sustained minor damage when the fire on Sindhurakshak caused its torpedoes to explode.[14][16] Defence minister A. K. Antony briefed the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the submarine incident, and would leave for Mumbai to visit the accident site.[17][18]

Official sources said it was “highly unlikely” the submarine could be returned to service.[19]

Ignore the inconsistencies in official Chinese statistics at your peril

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

It’s been a while since I reminded everyone that the official Chinese government statistics can’t be trusted. Here’s Zero Hedge on the same topic:

How Badly Flawed Is Chinese Economic Data? The Opening Bid is $1 Trillion

Baseline Chinese economic data is unreliable. Taking published National Bureau of Statistics China data on the components of consumer price inflation, I attempt to reconcile the official data to third party data. Three problems are apparent in official NBSC data on inflation.

    First, the base data on housing price inflation is manipulated. According to the NBSC, urban private housing occupants enjoyed a total price increase of only 6% between 2000 and 2011.

    Second, while renters faced cumulative price increases in excess of 50% during the same period, the NBSC classifies most Chinese households has private housing occupants making them subject to the significantly lower inflation rate.

    Third, despite beginning in the year 2000 with nearly two-thirds of Chinese households in rural areas, the NSBC applies a straight 80/20 urban/rural private housing weighting throughout our time sample. This further skews the accuracy of the final data.

To correct for these manipulative practices, I use third party and related NBSC data to better estimate the change in consumer prices in China between 2000 and 2011.

I find that using conservative assumptions about price increases the annual CPI in China by approximately 1%.

This reduces real Chinese GDP by 8-12% or more than $1 trillion in PPP terms.

Regular visitors to the blog know that I’ve been rather skeptical about the official statistics reported by Chinese government and media sources.

August 12, 2013

The controversy over Japan’s latest “destroyer”

Filed under: China, Japan, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Apparently our eyes can deceive us. For most people looking at this image — at least if they know much about naval vessels — the description that comes to mind is “aircraft carrier”:

JS Izumo DDH-183

JS Izumo DDH-183

However, for constitutional reasons she is officially classified as a “destroyer”. In the South China Morning Post, Stefan Soesanto explains why this classification matters:

The Izumo‘s distinctive features certainly do not resemble anything one would typically classify as a destroyer. Indeed the warship currently under construction in Yokohama harbour is an aircraft carrier in anything but in name. Its size, tonnage and speed are closer to the US Essex aircraft carrier class, than to any of the two previous helicopter destroyers Japan has built so far.

At a cost of US$1.14 billion, the Izumo is officially conceptualised to host up to 14 helicopters whose missions would range from anti-submarine warfare and maritime border surveillance to humanitarian relief operations. In this regard, the Izumo‘s objectives are identical to the two Hyuga-class helicopter destroyers that were put into service in 2009 and 2011.

The current discussion among analysts and military brass as to whether Japan’s helicopter destroyers are considered aircraft carriers is not new. According to The Japan Times, Maritime Self-Defence Force chief of staff Admiral Keiji Akahoshi stated in 2009 that the Hyuga-class falls outside the conventional definition of an aircraft carrier because it lacks a fair degree of offensive functions. This argumentation has been notably employed by the Japanese government to circumvent Article 9 of the peace constitution to portray its helicopter destroyers as purely defensive military assets.

While Beijing’s criticism towards the Hyuga-class has been largely used as a means to support its own aircraft carrier expansion plans, the unveiling of the much larger Izumo has prompted widespread fears in China. Major Chinese media outlets went to great lengths to link Japan’s militaristic past to plans by the Japanese government towards constitutional revision. Indeed, the Chinese defence ministry even put out a statement saying that it is “concerned over Japan’s constant expansion of its military equipment”.

Reflecting on its own aircraft carrier plans, however, Chinese experts such as Li Daguang, professor at the National Defence University of the People’s Liberation Army, seem to make a simple leap of faith by suggesting that “the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning was mainly built for training purposes while the Izumo was built for real war”.

Of course, this isn’t a new thing, as a quick glance at the JS Hyūga also shouts “aircraft carrier” rather than “destroyer”:

JS Hyūga

JS Hyūga

August 6, 2013

Second Chinese aircraft carrier appears to be under construction

Filed under: China, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:40

Strategy Page has the details:

Recent photos from a Chinese shipyard appear to show a section of a new Chinese aircraft carrier under construction. This appears to be a carrier similar to the American Nimitz class ships (100,000 ton vessels using a catapult rather than a ski jump flight deck for launching aircraft). Large ships, including warships, are often built in sections than the sections are welded and bolted together. The section of what appears to be a carrier does not indicate the exact size of the new carrier other than that it appears larger than the new carrier China commissioned at the end of 2012.

Last September China commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. At the time China was believed to be building the first of several locally designed aircraft carriers but the Chinese officially denied this. The only official announcements have alluded to the need for two or three aircraft carriers, in addition to the Liaoning. Construction of such large ships had not yet been seen in any shipyard. That has changed with the appearance of these new shipyard pictures.

[…]

The new Chinese “larger carrier” apparently means something like the recently decommissioned American USS Enterprise (CVN 65). This was the first nuclear powered carrier and it served as the prototype for the subsequent Nimitz class. It’s unclear if the new Chinese carrier will be nuclear powered. The Enterprise was an expensive design, and only one was built (instead of a class of six). While a bit longer than the later Nimitz class, it was lighter (92,000 tons displacement, versus 100,000 tons). The Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, almost 40 years after the first U.S. carrier (the Langley) entered service in 1923. In the two decades after the Langley there were tremendous changes in carrier aviation. While the innovation slowed after World War II, major changes continued into the 1950s (jet aircraft, nuclear propelled carriers, SAMs). But in the ensuing half century there has been no major innovation in basic carrier design. This has not been a problem because the carriers have proven useful, at least for the U.S. Navy (the only fleet to use such large carriers) and no one else has maintained a force of these large carriers. Only the U.S. has felt a constant need to get air power to any corner of the planet in a hurry. More importantly, no navy has been able to give battle to the U.S. carrier force since 1945. The Soviets built new anti-carrier weapons and made plans to use them but that war never occurred. China is building carriers but is not committed to having a lot of them to confront the U.S. but to intimidate its neighbors.

BBC News has a series of photos of the Liaoning from purchase to commissioning:


Click to see full-size images at the BBC website

Earlier reports on the progress of the Liaoning (under the name Shi Lang) can be found here.

Update: James R. Holmes on why China might be interested in becoming a 21st century naval power.

A couple of years back, when Beijing made its aircraft-carrier aspirations official, the fine folks at Foreign Policy asked me to explain why a historic land power like China cared about flattops. Being a bear of small brain, I reached into my mental bag of tricks and came up with Thucydides’ claim that fear, honor, and interest are three of the prime movers for human actions. Beijing feared U.S. containment, a relic of the Cold War; saw an opportunity to recoup honor lost during the century of humiliation at the hands of the imperial powers; and hoped to add to the naval power it was amassing to advance China’s interests in maritime Asia.

What’s changed since then? Fear and honor are emotional needs. It may be that sending the carrier Liaoning (formerly the Soviet Varyag) to sea helped satisfy China’s need to banish bad cultural memories. But who knows when fear will be at bay? The United States and its allies have ruled the sea in East Asia long enough that their navies may inspire fears disproportionate to their actual margin of supremacy. Or, the Chinese leadership may see value in protesting too loudly, and thus making Western powers fearful of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, namely Sino-American antagonism.

Most importantly, it may be that having ameliorated anxieties arising from honor and fear grants Beijing the luxury of operating mostly from calculations of interest. Simply deploying a carrier, Liaoning, may forestall fears while satisfying Chinese society’s desire for a capability that every other great power enjoys.

August 5, 2013

Nepotism … you’re soaking in it

Filed under: Government, Japan, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

Steve Chapman makes a case against nepotism in the modern world:

It would be silly to make Caroline Kennedy the White House science adviser: She’s not a scientist. It would be silly to name her fire commissioner of New York City: She has no background in public safety.

The standards are different in other fields. Kennedy has no previous known interest in Japan, Asia or international relations and is not a diplomat. But Barack Obama has chosen her to be the next ambassador to Japan.

Liz Cheney, likewise, is not inhibited by anything she lacks. She went to high school in northern Virginia, college in Colorado and law school in Chicago, before taking up residence in the Washington, D.C. area. Under George W. Bush, she held a couple of State Department jobs for which she had no obvious qualifications. But now she’s running for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming.

You could pick a name out of the phone book and find someone with better credentials. But these names are not random. They are household names, made famous by their fathers: John F. Kennedy and Dick Cheney. So the daughters carry an aura of expertise and gravity.

They benefit from “branding” — their association with the genuine accomplishments of famous relatives. But the logic behind that appeal only goes so far. Just because you wear Nike shoes doesn’t mean you’d buy a can of Nike beans. A Cheney’s virtues, if any, may not be present in another Cheney.

July 27, 2013

Jiangsu might as well be the Chinese name for Detroit

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

The South China Morning Post on the economic troubles of the provincial, municipal and local authorities in Jiangsu:

The nightmare scenario for China’s leaders as they try to wean the country off a diet of easy credit and breakneck expansion is a local government buckling under the weight of its own debt. Few provinces fit that bill quite like Jiangsu, home to China’s most indebted local government.

Hefty borrowings through banks, investment trusts and the bond market by Jiangsu’s provincial, city and county governments have saddled the province north of Shanghai with debt far higher than its peers, public records show.

Many of the province’s mainstay industries, including shipbuilding and the manufacturer of solar panels, are drowning in overcapacity. Profits are dwindling, and the government’s tax growth is braking hard.

[…]

Little public information is available on the total debt of Chinese local governments. Indeed, earlier this month China’s Vice-Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said Beijing did not know the precise level of their debts either.

But from what ratings agencies and think-tanks can piece together, Jiangsu may be the standout debt risk among China’s 31 provinces.

Looking at bank loan books, they can see that China’s eastern provinces including Jiangsu have the highest concentration of government debt. Jiangsu then looms large because of its reliance on costlier and alternative forms of financing, which they said suggested that cheaper bank loans and land sales are not giving the authorities the funding they need.

The risk that Jiangsu might pose to the Chinese economy in a crisis is clear. On its own, the province would be a top 20 global economy with GDP greater than G20 member Turkey. Its 79 million population tops that of most European countries.

July 24, 2013

A visit to North Korea

Filed under: Asia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

In this month’s Reason, Michael Malice recounts his tourist trip to the Hermit Kingdom:

As background reading for my trip, I devoured several books about the nation (though Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader by Bradley K. Martin and Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick should be sufficient for anyone planning a visit). Like most other don’t-call-me-a-hipster New Yorkers, I also watched The Vice Guide to North Korea on YouTube, in which Vice honcho Shane Smith claimed that in North Korea, “there’s nothing normal that happens ever.”

My experience ended up being completely different from Smith’s — about the only thing we shared in common was that we coincidentally ended up staying in the same hotel room. I witnessed vast amounts of human normalcy in the most abnormal society on Earth. When I waved to teenage girls, they giggled. When I smiled at toddlers, their grandmothers beamed with pride. The people on the streets of Pyongyang are often alleged to be actors staffed for the benefit of tourists, but there is no amount of training in the world possible for a theater production of that scale.

The first step to entering North Korea is getting debriefed by the Western tour agency that acts as your liaison. I expected a long litany of do’s and don’ts from Phil, our Western guide in Beijing, but his advice was actually quite relaxed. “The North Koreans really like and admire their leaders, so we need to respect that. We will be laying flowers at the statue of Kim Il Sung and bowing before it. Does anyone have a problem with that?” No one did. “That’s about it. Just don’t be a jerk and everything will be fine.”

[…]

We tend to think of North Korea as being stuck in time, but that is an incoherent description. One can get stuck in traffic or in line at the airport, but “time” is a very big place. In the parking lot encounter, for example, the soldier was dressed in a 1950s military uniform. The woman wore the sort of cringeworthy 1980s pantsuit that a fresh-off-the-boat Soviet immigrant might view as the acme of style back home. Both were “stuck in time,” in different times, like a flapper talking to a hippie.

So while the contemporary Internet might be forbidden in North Korea, there’s a thriving black market in VCRs — the better to watch foreign videotapes on. Though I didn’t think of it at the time, the woman and the solider provided a perfect metaphor for where the modern dynamism in North Korea lies. The army is stuck in a Cold War rut, while the black marketeers — more often than not female — become “wealthy” and powerful by flouting the laws and bribing whoever they need to bribe. It’s capitalism de facto, not de jure. And it’s growing, as the poverty-stricken government becomes increasingly unable to feed its enforcers.

Although North Koreans are kept ignorant of much that happens outside the state — and just as much that happens inside it — they’re not completely isolated:

I couldn’t figure out how to ask Kim about world events or history. I knew this would be a touchy subject leaving for little back-and-forth. Picking her brain would easily come off as arguing, and would cause her native paranoia to kick in. I wanted to ask about the Holocaust, but knew World War II was an extremely sensitive area. I thought of the most world-famous event I could that would have little bearing on North Korea, and so at one point simply asked Kim if she had heard of 9/11.

“Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes at my obtuseness. “We saw it on the television.”

Her reaction was telling. She clearly felt that, though the media might be biased, it wasn’t particularly censored. In her view, the state media wouldn’t keep such major world events a secret.

I still remain quite surprised that they played the actual video. Despite the obvious reveling in America taking a hit, one can’t show 9/11 footage without showing something that most of us no longer register in those shots: the New York City skyline. The closest thing in Pyongyang is the 100-plus story Ryugyong Hotel (“The Hotel of Doom”) a never-finished monstrosity that’s been dubbed the worst building in the world and usually excluded from official photos. The comparisons between the wicked New York of their propaganda and the glowing skyscrapers, calling to immigrants like sirens of myth, could not be any greater.

July 18, 2013

Chinese museum woes – “80 of the museum’s 40,000 objects had been confirmed as authentic”

Filed under: China, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:22

Tom Phillips on the sudden closure of the Jibaozhai Museum:

The museum’s public humiliation began earlier this month when Ma Boyong, a Chinese writer, noticed a series of inexplicable discrepancies during a visit and posted his findings online.

Among the most striking errors were artifacts engraved with writing purportedly showing that they dated back more than 4,000 years to the times of China’s Yellow Emperor. However, according to a report in the Shanghai Daily the writing appeared in simplified Chinese characters, which only came into widespread use in the 20th century.

The collection also contained a “Tang Dynasty” five-colour porcelain vase despite the fact that this technique was only invented hundreds of years later, during the Ming Dynasty.

Museum staff tried to play down the scandal.

Wei Yingjun, the museum’s chief consultant, conceded the museum did not have the proper provincial authorizations to operate but said he was “quite positive” that at least 80 of the museum’s 40,000 objects had been confirmed as authentic.

“I’m positive that we do have authentic items in the museum. There might be fake items too but we would need [to carry out] identification and verification [to confirm that],” he told The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Wei said that objects of “dubious” origin had been “marked very clearly” so as not to mislead visitors and vowed to sue Mr Ma, the whistle-blowing writer, for blackening the museum’s name.

July 1, 2013

The rise and fall of economic powers

Filed under: China, Economics, History, Japan — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Charles Hugh Smith has a guest post at Zero Hedge, talking about the theme of economic decline of great powers:

Our collective interest in the rise and fall of empires is not academic. The meteoric rise of China and the financialization rotting out global capitalism are just two developments that suggest we are entering an era where some great powers will collapse, others will remake themselves and others will gain ascendancy.

[. . .]

In 1987, pundits were predicting that Japan’s “5th generation” computing would soon dominate what was left of America’s technological edge. They were spectacularly wrong, as the 5th generation fizzled and Japan became an also-ran in web technology, a position it still holds despite its many global electronic corporations and vast university research system.

Japan’s modern economy was set up in the late 1940s and early 1950s to exploit the world of that time. Sixty years later, Japan is still a wealthy nation, but its relative wealth and power have declined for 20 years, as its political-financial power structure clings to a model that worked splendidly for 40 years but has not worked effectively for 20 years.

The decline is not just the result of debt and political sclerosis; Japan’s vaunted electronics industry has been superseded by rivals in the U.S. and Korea. It is astonishing that there are virtually no Japanese brand smart phones with global sales, and only marginal Japanese-brand sales in the PC/notebook/tablet markets.

The key dynamic here is once the low-hanging fruit have all been plucked, it becomes much more difficult to achieve high growth rates. That cycle is speeding up, it seems; western nations took 100 years to rapidly industrialize and then slip into failed models of stagnation; Japan took only 40 years to cycle through to stagnation, and now China has picked the low-hanging fruit and reverted to financialization, diminishing returns and rapidly rising debt after a mere 30 years of rapid growth.

There is certainly evidence that China’s leadership knows deep reform is necessary but the incentives to take that risk are low. Perhaps that is a key dynamic in this cycle of rapid growth leading to stagnation: the leadership, like everyone else, cannot quite believe the model no longer works. There are huge risks to reform, while staying the course seems to offer the hope of a renewal of past growth rates. But alas, the low hanging fruit have all been picked long ago, and as a result the leadership pursues the apparently lower-risk strategy that I call “doing more of what has failed spectacularly.”

Though none of the historians listed above mention it, there is another dangerous dynamic in any systemic reform: the very attempt to reform an unstable, diminishing-return system often precipitates its collapse. The leadership recognizes the need for systemic reform, but changing anything causes the house of cards to collapse in a heap. This seems to describe the endgame in the USSR, where Gorbachev’s relatively modest reforms unraveled the entire empire.

June 30, 2013

“It’s very difficult to regulate greed”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, China, Law, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:30

Icewine is what originally put Canadian wine on the international map. Icewine is an expensive thing to produce, and therefore has drawn a lot of cheaters into the market:

Canada is tightening the rules for producing its popular icewine, a sweet dessert wine that is only made in cold climates, to crack down on fraudsters who sell mislabeled bottles that don’t make the grade.

In regulations published this week, the Canadian government said any bottle labeled and sold as icewine must be made only from grapes that have frozen on the vine.

[. . .]

Because the frozen grapes only yield a tiny amounts of sweet liquid, the dessert wine has a high cost and a high price. Grapes are left on the vine until the temperature falls to -8C (18F) over a prolonged period, and usually harvested overnight.

“It’s liquid gold,” said Paszkowski.

In China, where icewine has become hugely popular, a thriving counterfeit industry is flooding the market with wines that don’t live up to the label, he said.

“It’s very difficult to regulate greed,” said Paszkowski. “We’ve identified counterfeit icewines even in five-star restaurants and hotels.”

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

June 23, 2013

Two remarkable press releases on the Snowden case

Filed under: China, Government, Law, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:46

First, here’s the official Hong Kong government’s statement:

Mr Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today (June 23) on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel.

The US Government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR Government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden. Since the documents provided by the US Government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR Government has requested the US Government to provide additional information so that the Department of Justice could consider whether the US Government’s request can meet the relevant legal conditions. As the HKSAR Government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.

The HKSAR Government has already informed the US Government of Mr Snowden’s departure.

Meanwhile, the HKSAR Government has formally written to the US Government requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies. The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.

And here’s a statement from Wikileaks:

Mr Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who exposed evidence of a global surveillance regime conducted by US and UK intelligence agencies, has left Hong Kong legally. He is bound for a democratic nation via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.

Mr Snowden requested that WikiLeaks use its legal expertise and experience to secure his safety. Once Mr Snowden arrives at his final destination his request will be formally processed.

Former Spanish Judge Mr Baltasar Garzon, legal director of Wikileaks and lawyer for Julian Assange has made the following statement:

“The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person. What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange — for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest — is an assault against the people”.

To the vast amusement of many commentators, the reported route out of Hong Kong leads to Russia, with other stopping points including Cuba and Venezuela. It’s like a free press/civil liberties tour of the planet!

June 22, 2013

US charges against Snowden were filed on June 14th

Filed under: China, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

It apparently takes a week for the US government to publicize that it has laid charges…

Federal prosecutors filed espionage charges against alleged National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, officials familiar with the process said. Authorities have also begun the process of getting Snowden back to the United States to stand trial.

The charges were filed June 14 under seal in federal court in Alexandria, Va. — and only disclosed Friday.

Snowden has been charged with three violations: theft of government property and two offenses under the espionage statutes, specifically giving national defense information to someone without a security clearance and revealing classified information about “communications intelligence.”

Each of the charges carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Snowden, who is a former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked details about far-reaching Internet and phone surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month. He revealed his identity while in Hong Kong, where it is believed he is still hiding.

It’s not clear whether the extradition will be straightforward:

Andy Tsang, Hong Kong’s police commissioner, said that if an extradition request was sent from a country that had a “mutual legal assistance agreement” with Hong Kong, its government would “handle it in accordance with current Hong Kong laws and systems.”

Simon Young, a professor at Hong Kong University’s faculty of law, suggested it was unclear whether Snowden would win or lose any attempt to fight extradition.

He said theft was listed in the U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty. “There is an offence listed in the treaty of unlawful handling of property, but this raises the question as to whether information is property and the answer is not clear,” he said in an email.

June 20, 2013

The world map of modern slavery

Filed under: China, Law, Liberty, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:05

In The Atlantic, Olga Khazan talks about the countries that appear on this US State Department map of human trafficking:

World Map of Slavery, 2013

China, Russia, and Uzbekistan have been named among the worst offenders when it comes to human trafficking, according to a State Department report released Wednesday, joining Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, and Zimbabwe on the bottom “tier” of the U.S. human trafficking rank.

Their lower designation means the U.S. may sanction those countries with measures like cancelling non-humanitarian and military assistance, ending exchange visits for government officials, and voting against any IMF or World Bank loans.

China, Russia, and Uzbekistan had previously been on the “Tier 2 Watch List,” a middling designation for countries that show little progress in making strides in preventing forced labor. Because they had been on the “Watch List” for four years, the State Department was obligated to either promote or downgrade them.

In China, the one-child policy and a cultural preference for male children perpetuates the trafficking of brides and prostitutes.

“During the year, Chinese sex trafficking victims were reported on all of the inhabited continents,” the report found. “Traffickers recruited girls and young women, often from rural areas of China, using a combination of fraudulent job offers, imposition of large travel fees, and threats of physical or financial harm, to obtain and maintain their service in prostitution.”

However, the State Department also singled out the country’s epidemic of forced labor, in which both internal and external migrants are conscripted to work in coal mines or factories without pay, as well as its continued use of re-education hard labor camps for political dissidents.

However, it’s also worth keeping in mind that there are two common definitions of human trafficking in use, one of which is an outrage to common decency while the other is an attempt to conflate sex work with slavery:

1) The transport of unwilling people (usually women, but of course can at times be either men or children) into forced prostitution. This is of course illegal everywhere: it’s repeated rape just as a very start. It is also vile and we should indeed be doing everything possible to stamp it out.

2) The illegal movement of willing people across borders to enter the sex trade. Strange as it may seem there really are people who desire to be prostitutes. People would, other things being equal, similarly like to be in a country where they get a lot of money for their trade rather than very little. Given these two we wouldn’t be surprised if people from poorer countries, who wish to be in the sex trade, will move from those poorer countries to richer countries. And such is the system of immigration laws that many of them will be unable to do this legally: just as with so many who wish to enter other trades and professions in the rich world. You can make your own mind up about the morality of this but it is obviously entirely different from definition 1).

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