Senate Asian Geopolitics

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India, right before elections, bombed what it claimed to be a terrorist camp in Pakistan and allegedly a ton of terrorists. This was, of course, done to shore up jingoistic support for Modi's re-election. So Pakistan let foreign media into the site....where there was one damaged house. India just bombed an empty forest and claimed it was terrorists in Pakistan to get Modi votes.

 

All these words to say "I have no idea what the South China Morning Post is." Cool, cool.

 

China isn't the emerging power in the region, it is the world's #1 power. Get used to it.

As to the earlier remarks, I was more alluding to both a very long history between China and the Indias on one end - a history in which China used to have dependencies in India, not a rival - and to how geography has its own implications on the other, considering how modern trade routes are laid.

I'm not saying that conflict is inevitable. But for both historic and geographic reasons, it would be logical.

 

Okay… I must have missed the day when China overthrew the US in terms of a) socio-political influence and b) GDP ranking.

 

China is #1 in GDP/PPP, has 150% the USA's industrial production, control of vital medical chemicals the USA doesn't produce, is supplying the rest of the world with PPE in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis where the USA are actually competing with the rest of the world for Chinese production, and China controls over 90% of the rare materials that bottleneck the world's entire electronics' production.

China is number one. Get used to it.

 

In terms of a single sovereign state, perhaps. But when you consider that the Western powers (including Japan and South Korea) are more predisposed to work together than China is with any other state, China does not have the weight (yet) to truly dominate the US and its allies.

 

Yes, so just some additional commentary. China isn't quite number one yet -- despite owning much(?) of the US-owned debt, which LB missed -- because the USD is still the world's backing currency.

You can look through a financial/capitalist lens at much of what China does to see it trying to position RMB/CNY and/or CNH as being ready to replace USD. I'm... not 100% certain how successful this will be whilst they still differentiate between CNY and CNH (I'm not sure of any other currency/country that occurs like this). This has been my fear in having Trump at the helm, because he's dumb enough to potentially let this happen, but the pandemic is doing a bunch on its own.

 

To what extent is that possible whilst the world is still distrustful of the lack of transparency regarding China's monetary manipulation and general corruption? Surely China would need to open up in certain ways before the world would be willing to transfer off the USD? I feel like the pandemic has done China no favours in how their transparency is perceived.

 

GDP

I'm not sure how relevant is the rest. PPE equipment? The US has the ability to produce it, and this pandemic showed that countries are more willing to reject defective China goods and kickstart their own production (or buy somewhere else) than depend on China.
China controls rare materials? Ok, I heard that one. I know that there are arguments against it. Magnetics magazine thinks that’s an overstatement. I confess I don't know much about it, but regardless, I don’t think that automatically puts them in #1.

There's been an intense pushback against China. Not only that, markets are aware that China's economy is rather fragile and semi-based on lies, where the production part seems to outweight the demand part (so, the same Soviet problem). So I wouldn't put my money on them being #1.

 

It has not, you're correct. But on the other hand, it has severely weakened the US which is "good" for them.

In terms of the monetary manipulation, this is why I'm not 100% sure what the long-term goal is -- CNY is the Yuan, but in China only. CNH is the Yuan, but... everywhere except China (including HK, btw). The Chinese Central Bank controls basically all aspects of CNY, but CNH (RMB) is market-controlled. So I honestly don't know how this shakes out all-in from a monetary instrument POV.

India, on the other hand, is "content" where it is -- with INR being a single-sided currency (i.e. rupees can't leave India -- you can only xfer into India, but not out of India).

 

Speaking of PPE equipement and supply chains, Japan has certainly made the boldest move in order to decouple its supply chains from mainland China recently. The Japanese government decided to pay its own firms and companies to help them bring back supply chains from China to Japan, after the Japanese realized (along with the rest of the world) that they were too dependent on manufacturing from China, especially for PPE during this pandemic. The Japanese government set aside a budget of ¥243.5 billion to help those companies coming back in Japan: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...lp-firms-shift-production-china/#.Xuo6dKhKiUk

Although, this plan from the Japanese government may be harder to realize than it looks, since China already has the existing technologies for research and developement, infrastructures for manufacturing and transportation for products, while Japan and Western countries, after moving their manufacturing in China for their cheap labor a decade or two ago, haven't developped those technologies and infrastructures as China did: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-up-supply-chains-is-hard-to-do-idUSKBN23F2ZO

However I would add this: while many politicians and businessmen say that producing goods in China is a win for consumers around the world because of the low costs of products, the rise of populism in western countries during the past few years has somehow showed that this model may no longer be sustainable: people, especialy those who used to work in manufacturing and no longer had the chance to change to another working area, care more about having a job, than trying to find the cheapest product to buy. How can those people, who no longer had their job, buy those cheap products made elsewhere?

And the coronavirus pandemic has showed to the entire world the fragility of such a system by becoming overdependent to one manufacturing place as China. Stragically such a model no longer makes any sense and would reinforce the feeling of economic nationalism by wanting to bring back supply chains and manufacturing locally, or try at least to diversify the locations for those production lines. The public debate has already started in the western world, especially after finding out the shortage of PPE around the world.

And among other news, Chinese high-tech companies are now starting to experience some pushback as well during this pandemic: locally, in my home country, in Canada, our major cellphone companies as Bell and Telus, which were very supportive of the idea of having Huawei as their main supplier for 5G technologies and equipement (especially Bell Canada), have now made a complete shift. Last week, it was announced that Bell Canada and Telus will rather make a deal with European firms such as Nokia and Ericsson for 5G technology and reject Huawei, even if the Canadian federal government hasn't made any decision regarding the use of Huawei 5G technology: https://globalnews.ca/news/7015656/bell-ericsson-equipment-5g-network/

In short: this global coronavirus crisis has certainly started to change how the rest of the world will deal with their relationship towards the Chinese government and its companies...

 

Some flashpoints between Japan and China over disputed islands in the Pacific, islands that are also claimed by Taiwan (ROC). The islands are administered by Japan and the recent growing dispute may be due to the fact that Japan recently decided to change their status and name, angering China which has been sending coast guard vessels near the islands.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...aim-dispute-china-taiwan-200622122724718.html

 

^ Wow, that news is so irrelevant it didn’t even pop in my Japan news feed. I actually had to look for it.

It seems that it was just some minor decision in the prefecture city council (that administrates the islands) to avoid further clerical errors and simplify administrative work, because there’s another region with the same registered name (in the same prefecture). The Japanese always called those islands Senkaku anyway, and they will always call it that way regardless of who owns them, because that’s just the Japanese name for it. China barked but dunno if they're serious or it's just routine barking. They on occasion send ships there to just… I don’t know, let them know they’re still mad I guess. Nothing ever happens.

What was in my feed, however, was South Korea asking UNESCO to remove certain Japanese sites from the World Heritage list because of connection to Japan war crimes. I actually visited one of these sites – Gunkanjima, aka “Battleship Island”, in Nagasaki – and I honestly had no idea that there was Korean forced labor there (well, the Japanese government was never good at making these facts clear). The site became a tourist attraction not because of what it was, but because of what it became: a ghost industrial town that just rot away and was forgotten for many years until some adventurous local tourists found it and thought it was great for photographs (it is quite fantastic if you’re into the industrial decadence aesthetic).

 

There's somehow anti-Japan sentiment (if I can call it this way) in both China and South Korea, althought it seems to me to be much stronger in China than in South Korea.

I remember that a lot of South-Koreans protested recently against the fact that Japan might be using its old flag reminding of the imperial Japanese army during the Olympic Games that were supposed to take place this year before Covid-19. It was the "rising sun" flag and for South Koreans it reminded of the brutality of the Japanese imperial army back when Japan occupied the entirety of Korea before and during WWII: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...g-sun-flag-to-swastika-as-olympic-row-deepens

But still, there's also an economical and trade war occuring between Japan and South Korea and the animosity as well as the passion of South-Koreans against Japan has also deep roots to what happened back in WWII, despite the fact that decades have passed since WWII.

In China as well, but it seems much stronger: I do remember that during my travel in Asia, when I passed by China a few years, some Chinese TV series and movies broadcasted on national TV kept reminding Chinese people of the brutality of the Japanese during the first and second sino-japanese war as well as during WWII. And when things can become difficult between Japan and China, whether it is regarding economics or politics, people in China can become very vocal and protest strongly against Japan with strong anti-Japan nationalism sentiment.

But in Japan as well, there has been growing nationalism sentiment and also some kind of nostalgia regarding the era before 1945. And Japan's government is also seriously thinking of rebuilding its own army despite the fact that the constitution forbids it since the end of WWII and the Japanese people may oppose the idea. But the Covid-19 pandemic has also somehow helped grow within some Japanese people and the Japanese government some resentment against China as well, especially since the Tokyo Olympic Games had to be postponed and the Japanese Government has invested a lot in the preparations of the Games.

In short, old wounds can sometimes never disappear, and can be reopened at any times...

 

They’ve been protesting about that flag for decades, actually. The Rising Sun flag is basically like the German Reich flag, except that unlike Germany, Japan never really disavowed its military actions nor admitted to many of its war crimes.

I do feel the Korea-Japan relation is more antagonistic than China-Japan, especially as of lately. Yes, decades have passed, but some survivor victims are still alive. Not to mention their family members. Try to imagine how the situation would be if Germany after the war attempted to sweep their war crimes under the rug, whitewash them from their history books, and continued to honor Nazi soldiers with political visits to German Yasukuni Shrine. Because that’s what Japan still does. And this wound will never heal while Japan continues to do it. Also, Korea is divided because of Japan. Yes, there was a civil war after WWII, but there wouldn’t be Soviet troops and US troops in Korea if it wasn’t for Japan’s invasion in the first place. So that’s an extra element of pain for them.

The economic trade war is still ongoing btw. It’s another chapter in this never-ending feud about reparations. I actually went to Seoul and Daejeon when it exploded. Quite an awkward experience, especially in Daejeon because I was with a Japanese group. In the Seoul metro, they even had anti-Japan ads. Well, it was just a “gib us back Dokdo” add with some passages about war crimes, but it was written in Korean and English. Clearly, they wanted tourists to know about it.

 

I met a South-Korean friend as well as a Taiwanese friend some years ago. What they told me may be applied to Japan as well: in appearance, Asian societies as South-Korea, Japan, and Taiwan look modern and opened from our Western perspective, unlike countries like North-Korea, China or Vietnam. But that's in appearance: in the inside, South-Korean, Japan and Taiwan are still conservative (or very conservative in the case of Japan and South-Korea) and attached to their old rules and traditions, despite being opened to the outside world since WWII. My South Korean friend told me that's why she preferred to stay and live in the U.S., than staying in South-Korea since she felt she had more opportunities to do wathever she wants regarding her career and life in the U.S., unlike in South-Korea, where she would feel more constrained by old customs and social pressure.

I may be wrong regarding that, and I would need to do some research, but I think Japan's conservative mindset may be part of the reason why they never really disavowed their military and brutal actions during the first and second Sino-Japanese war, the invasion of Korea as well as during WWII. Although, Japan's population nowadays, ever since their defeat in WWII, are now opposed to the military and imperialistic mindset they had before the end of WWII, which brings as well painful memories to them, especially after being humiliated and bombed by nuclear weapons in the hands of the U.S.. I think it's a bit complicated subject and Japanese people themselves may have a complicated relationship with their past as well.

EDIT: I found this small explanatory video about Japan's different versions of the flag, and in fact, it seems there were two different versions of the "rising sun" flag back in WWII, one for their navy (which is still use for their self-defense forces today) and another one for the land forces that invaded both China and Korea, which seems no longer in use since 1945:

 

@SW Saga Fan
It’s true that these are quite conservative societies. In a way, both countries industrialized faster than they changed their traditions.

But, at least when it comes to Japan, this ‘conservative mindset’ is mostly a result of the political dominance of conservative parties, that of course, always do their best to cockblock socio-cultural progress.

For instance, the reason why there is a denial of the past, and a certain widespread ignorance among the Japanese public, is because right-wing conservative politicians in the Ministry of Education have been actively censoring history textbooks for decades. There’s even a Japanese historian - Ienaga Saburō – who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for trying to fight against the Ministry of Education censorship (spoiler: he lost the fight).

That being said, I’m not sure if that’s much different than the ultra-patriotic way many Americans were taught their history and heritage though. Or many Europeans, too.

 

Beijing has now passed the national security law for Hong-Kong.

Article from The South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong...curity-law-chinese-president-xi-jinping-signs

 

China just signed the death knell for the 'special treatment' that Hong Kong has been getting from other nations - I sense a financial exodus from the city.

 

Well, according to China's state-run media, The Global Times, Beijing has plans to build another financial center at Hainan, or even Shenzen, located at the border with Hong-Kong, could become the new financial center, replacing Hong-Kong: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1190347.shtml

However, it would be a bit silly to think so, since Hainan and Shenzen, both located inside the mainland, don't have the same special status that Hong-Kong has ever since Britain gave the territory back to the PRC in 1997: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinio...top-financial-hub-cant-be-killed-macau-hainan

EDIT: and I don't think it's really the end of Hong-Kong's financial status, well maybe not immediately. Big banks and financial institution as HSBC, which has a big presence in Hong-Kong, have publicly supported Beijing's new security law despite many Hong-Kongers fears for their own freedoms, which is understandable since those institutions want to continue their businesses with China: https://business.financialpost.com/...-supports-chinas-security-law-for-hong-kong-2

 

Hypothetically there are rumors of employees being unhappy with this and raising concerns to the extremely senior leadership members...

 

Even if employees were raising concerns or complaining about this to the top leadership of those companies, I don't think it would matter to them. I mean, we've already seen what happened with the NBA in the U.S., last year, when one of the general managers of the Houston Rockets tweeted a message on twitter supporting Hong-Kong protesters when the events started last year, and the NBA had to retract itself in order not to lose the Chinese market.

Sometimes the power of money is more important than freedom of speech, whether it is in the U.S. or in China, especially when you have such a big market of 1,5 billion people.

 

Hypothetically, how did leadership respond?

 

For those who want to understand or to learn more about the context and the new National Security Law over H-K, this is a very good informative video with good explanations:

 

Trump's biggest failure

We might need a new thread for this one since it surpasses the Asian region and it regards the world's stage, but it may fit here for the moment. This essay in this video describes both America and Trump's failure regarding their recent policies in the Asian region and China, whether it is politics, economy, societal issues, etc. and how it is changing completely the World order and how it influences western nations and their structures and societies. This video was made last October, so the coronavirus pandemic may have changed the context of this video, or may have accelerated the events described in it, as we hear more and more people talking about a new Cold War taking place with the coronavirus pandemic.

The video is 1 hour long and is very illustrative, so you should sit back and relax while watching it. These are all the reasons why Trump is nothing more than a buffoon and an idiot regarding his economic and foreign policies and towards China, not just the U.S. domestic affairs.