Tag: China

Predictions 2012

It’s time to close out 2011 and ring in the New Year, 2012. And as I do every year, it’s time for some predictions for the new year. So here, in no particular order, are my predictions for 2012:

  • Mitt Romney will be nominated as the GOP’s candidate in 2012. He will defeat President Obama by a small margin, but by a large margin in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida will all shift to the GOP column on Election Night.
  • The GOP will retake the Senate as the Democrats lose seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. The GOP will hold their margin in the House.
  • Unemployment will remain between 7-8%, and the number of discouraged workers will continue to cause problems. Efforts to spin the economy as recovering by the Obama White House will sound painfully out of touch.
  • The Eurozone will collapse in 2012 as Greece is unable to maintain its austerity package. Greece will leave the Euro and redenominate its debts in drachmas. Following that Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will all threaten to leave the Euro, leaving the future of the currency in doubt.
  • Apple will release an iPad 3 with a Retina display as well as an iPhone 5 with a new form factor. They will sell like hotcakes. Apple will not sell a TV, however.
  • Iran will continue to threaten to close off the Strait of Hormuz, but will not actually try. Sanctions will serve to weaken Ahmadinejad and internal corruption will cause a new round of riots in Tehran and other major cities.
  • Iraq will fall into civil war, with the Shi’ites fighting the Kurds and the Sunnis. President Obama will do nothing to help the Iraqis, but will blame everything on Bush.
  • China will face a banking crisis that will spread throughout Asia. Along with the problems in Europe, the global economy will take yet another beating.
  • “The Avengers,” “Hunger Games,” and “Prometheus” will do well with both audiences and critics, but amount of total box office receipts will continue to decline as even more people discover that it’s cheaper and easy to stay home and watch Netflix.
  • SpaceX’s first resupply mission to the ISS will be a complete success, just as heads start rolling at Russia’s Roscosmos. As Russia’s Soyuz launcher starts having more and more technical issues, NASA will fast-track plans for private companies to lift astronauts to the ISS.
  • On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.

Kim Jong-Il: Death Of A Dictator

Kim Jong-Il, the tyrant that ruled over North Korea has finally died at the age of 69. He likely died from a heart attack or stroke, although the North Korean propaganda machine has claimed that he died from “overwork.” Under his leadership, North Korea continued to be a concentration camp writ on a nightmare scale. While Jong-Il dined on expensive Japanese sushi (imported directly from Japan through his personal chef) and drank French cognac, millions of North Koreans died of starvation and disease. On every measure of societal development, North Korea comes dead last, thanks to a regime that is the living embodiment of paranoia, xenophobia, and totalitarianism.

What is most frightening about the situation in North Korea is not that it’s so bad, it’s that it could be even worse. The Kim regime placed thousands of artillery pieces in the hills surrounding the Korean DMZ, and possesses chemical, biological, and crude nuclear weapons. The North Koreans have the means to devastate much of Seoul with a barrage of artillery, or even launch attacks against targets in Japan with medium-range missiles. The Kim regime may appear insane, but appearances are decieving: if anything, the Kim regime were coldly calculating, deftly weaving Korean legends and Marxist claptrap into a net that has kept 25 million people enmeshed in a living nightmare.

The scenes of North Koreans crying over the death of their persecutor mirrors the scenes of 1994 when Kim Il Sung died-—there too was a massive show of grief, staged or not. And what is even scarier to contemplate than these scenes being staged is that the Kim regime has so completely brainwashed the people of North Korea that the grief is real.

As terrible as the situation in North Korea is, it is made even more terrible by the fact that there is no acceptable endgame to this situation. Even if the regime were to collapse, it would be a humanitarian nightmare for the region and for the world. China has no interest in absorbing 25 million starving North Koreans. As much as the United States may wish to see a unified and democratic Korean Peninsula, that would be a project that could take decades, and the South Korean government may not be so willing to accept the cost of trying to lift the North out of its medieval state.

Heir to a Madman

But a collapse is all too possible. Kim Jong-Un has been designated by the Kim regime as the “Great Successor,” but he is not even 30, has never served in the military, and has only been groomed for leadership for a year. In contrast, the transition from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong-Il occurred only after Kim Jong-Il had 25 years of experience in taking on leadership tasks. The North Korean military is the only power in the country that could do anything to stop the Kim regime, and it’s not certain whether senior military officials are willing to be led by a 20-something with no military experience and little credibility.

Little is known about Kim Jong-Un, including his actual birthday, his background, his education, his outlook on affairs, or how he might choose to lead the DPRK. What we do know is that he was educated in Europe where his classmates observed a shy boy with a love for basketball. He was not interested in engaging in diatribes against the United States, but drew portraits of Michael Jordan and collected pictures of himself with NBA stars. What this means for his outlook on the world is unknown. But what is known does not paint a picture of someone who has the leadership abilities or cunning of his father or grandfather.

It may well be that Kim Jong-Un is little more than a placeholder—rumors are that the heir apparent to the madman’s throne is hardly up to the task. It may well be that his aunt, Kim Kyong-Hui may be secretly running things behind the scenes. There are a million rumors, and because North Korea is so secretive and isolated from the rest of the world, it’s impossible to know what is really going on.

No Good Options

The problem with North Korea is the same that it has ever been: there are simply no good outcomes at this point. If the Kim regime continues under the leadership of Kim Jong-Un, then the North Korean people will remain mired in a living nightmare for years more. If Kim Jong-Un falls, then the only power that could keep the country from sliding into anarchy is the military, and they could very well end up provoking World War III if given the chance. And if both fall, then there is nothing left in the country to hold it together. North Korea would fall into anarchy, and the human costs would be beyond comprehension. Not since World War II would the world have seen such a refugee crisis.

The best that anyone can do is prepare for the day when the regime finally collapses, and hope for the best. That is not a sound policy, but that’s the only remaining option left. The chances that Kim Jong-Un will set North Korea on a path of openness and moderation are slim to none, and even if he were to try, it’s not at all certain that the military would support him in that endeavor.

The fact is that we would like to think of the leadership of North Korea is being insane, but the reality is that it is sociopathic, but not crazy. Kim Jong-Il was a rational actor playing a rational game—bloody, intransigent, and evil, but rational all the same. Both he and his father knew that North Korea could not compete except by playing great powers against each other, which was accomplished by seemingly irrational actions like threatening war and shelling South Korean targets. So long as the DPRK could threaten the world, it could extract concessions that it would never have gotten by playing nice.

We simply do not know if Kim Jong-Un is smart enough to keep playing this game, or there’s some member of his inner circle that can. What is scarier than a coldly rational and insane-seeming North Korea is an irrational North Korea willing to risk it all on a dangerous whim. One of the best options may be that North Korea becomes a de facto Chinese protectorate, with Beijing keeping the country in line. As distasteful as that option may be, it is better than having an unstable North Korea with both an ongoing humanitarian crisis and plenty of weapons of mass destruction that could fall into terrorist hands.

Kim Jong-Il is dead, and roasting in a hell that he richly deserves. What we must hope for is that he doesn’t take the entire Korean peninsula down with him.

Andy Stern’s Liberal Fascism

Andy Stern, the head of the SEIU and one of President Obama’s biggest supporters has a shockingly honest piece in The Wall Street Journal calling for the United States to mimic China’s model of state-run economic development. Say what you will about Stern’s piece, it’s probably the most honest description of where the American left wants this country to go.

Let’s ignore the fact that China, while having improved its human rights record somewhat, is still a single-party totalitarian society that routinely arrests political dissenters, engages in torture of political prisoners, and censors the free exchange of information. Even beyond all those horribles, China is no model for the United States.

Here’s what Stern has to say about China:

. . .I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China’s 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.

Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: “I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America.” The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.

There are times when I think that it’s hyperbole to accuse the left of being closet socialists, when that attack is over the top. Then I see something like this. Here is the head of one of the Democratic Party’s most important constituency, a friend and informal advisor to President Barack Obama, saying that America should start adopting a five-year plan. Stern doesn’t even try to hide his arguments, or finesse them as does Sinophile Thomas Friedman. He goes right out and says that America should emulate a country that is 100% controlled by the Communist Party.

Liberal Fascism Is Right

Stern’s argument is the same argument that has been made time and time again about totalitarian states. The phrase “Mussolini made the trains run on time” came from somewhere—and as Jonah Goldberg demonstrated in his important and utterly misunderstood book Liberal Fascism, the statist intelligentsia of the 1920s and 1930s saw Fascist Italy as a model for the rest of the world. Stern’s love letter to Communist China is in the same vein.

In the 1930s, American journalist Walter Duranty of The New York Times covered for the crimes of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and held Stalinism as a model for the West to follow. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work. Stern is just following in Duranty’s footsteps.

Stern argues that free-market capitalism has failed, and that the state-run model as exemplified by China is superior. Anyone who believes that has some screws loose—China’s development is not a model for anyone, not even the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese have boosted their economy and are rapidly industrializing and becoming a 21st Century powerhouse. But their fortune is not due to their model of government. If anything, within my lifetime we are likely to see a catastrophic economic collapse unless China fundamentally reforms.

Clean energy vehicles? Look at China’s high speed rail system—the one held up as a model by Sinophiles like Andy Stern and Thomas Friedman. It is not only massively over-budget, but what has been completed is shoddily constructed and unsafe. This has already lead to fatal accidents and a reexamination of the whole project.

Environmental protection? The environmental ruin of China provides more evidence why the China model is not one to emulate. Beijing and other major Chinese cities are filled with smog, and the government has been attempting to hide the truth about how bad China’s air is from its own citizens. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam caused massive environmental and cultural damage, but the Chinese government steamrolled it through. There’s no Chinese equivalent of the Sierra Club to lobby against the government on projects, at least nothing with anywhere near the power of the American environmental lobby. Is that a model that Stern would like the U.S. to adopt?

Economic equality? China’s level of corruption is endemic, as Freedom House notes in its Index of Economic Freedom. Bribery is all too common in China at all levels. The Chinese system is a system where the politically well-connected receive the spoils, and the rest mire through. Now, for someone like Andy Stern, who is part of the politically well-connected set, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. But for those not part of the political elite, Chinese-style corruption is the antithesis of economic equality.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. China is rapidly industrializing in the way that the post-World War II Soviet Union rapidly industrialized. The Chinese government is not as totalitarian as the Soviets were, but the result will be the same. China can produce all the “five-year plans” that it wants—just as the Soviet Gosplan did for decades. But the 20th Century was filled with the littered husks of governments that tried and failed to execute state-run central planning and failed. Even the ones that didn’t practice Stalinism failed. They failed not because they weren’t good enough at central planning, they failed because central planning of an economy doesn’t work.

And let me make a bold prediction—within my lifetime the Chinese system will either substantially reform or end up in a messy collapse that sends ripple effects across the globe. In fact, I don’t think that prediction is particularly bold, because that is what has happened every time a state has embraced central economic planning.

This Is What They Actually Believe

All of this supports Jonah Goldberg’s thesis in Liberal Fascism—not that American liberals want to strap on jackboots and invade Poland, but that American liberals have an ideological blind spot that causes them to embrace state control of the economy, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. What liberals like Andy Stern miss is that the Chinese government has the power to implement “five-year plans” because it also has the power to arrest dissidents, attempt to culturally eradicate the Tibetan people, and censor the free expression of its citizens. Once you give the government virtually unfettered power to control the economic affairs of the people, you’ve given them virtually unfettered power to control everything else.

That’s the lesson of the 20th Century, the one that American liberals never seem to have grasped. You cannot get to Bismarck’s welfare state without eventually getting to Adolph Hitler. You cannot get a Mussolini that makes the trains run on time without getting a Mussolini that oppresses the people. You cannot have a Chinese economy without emulating the bad parts of China either. Political power in a controlled market is a zero-sum game—every bit of power and authority you give to the government has to be taken from somewhere else.

That’s why America should not emulate China. America should start emulating America. Our Founding Fathers figured out, centuries ago, that the best way to have a successful and prosperous country was to unleash the people and allow them to flourish. The Founding Fathers didn’t fully understand this concept at the time, but they got it right.

Stern argues that free-market capitalism is failing America. Bullshit. What is failing in America is the very model that Stern wants—a system where the government controls ever more functions of the economy. Over the last few decades the size and scope of government has grown at an almost exponential rate—but has life gotten better because of it? What parts of the economy are the biggest messes? We have an education system that’s a basket case and is harming the future of this country. The education system is controlled almost entirely by the government, either directly or indirectly. Our healthcare system is a mess. Who’s the biggest power in healthcare? It’s Uncle Sam, through Medicare and Medicaid and a whole host of other programs. Our financial system has lurched from one disaster to another. And contrary to the spin, the financial fatcats by and large supported President Obama and have been getting rich off of his largesse since he was elected.

No wonder Stern wants more of the same. His union has gotten fatter and more powerful under President Obama, and if the United States emulated China, Andy Stern would be even more powerful.

China is no model for the United States. China is no model for China. The fact that one of the most powerful figures in American liberalism in the Democratic Party would openly embrace central planning in such stark terms is shocking—even though it’s been clear for some time that’s what they believe in private.

China Invests In Pebble-Bed Technology

Next Big Future reports on a joint Chinese-South African project to advance pebble bed reactor technology. Pebble bed reactors are an advanced type of nuclear reactor design that promises to be significantly safer than conventional designs, for more details see here.

One of the reasons I’ve said that the future may well belong to the East is because the Chinese are willing to invest in this kind of technology while Western governments are too motivated by short-term political pressure to invest in projects such as these. The only way we will be able to meet the energy needs of the future and preserve the environment is to start moving towards nuclear energy. The truth is that wind, solar, geothermal, and other “green” technologies cannot produce enough power to meet our needs. They may be supplements to a nuclear infrastructure, but they will never supplant it.

If President Obama wished to be truly forward-looking, he would commission a similar program in the United States. For all the talk about the “Republican war on science,” the Democrats remain in thrall to an environmental lobby that wants to push for forms of alternative energy that will never be able to meet America’s needs. So instead, we keep our inefficient fossil fuels and push for stopgap solutions like “clean coal” rather than investing in an energy infrastructure that truly meets the needs of the 21st Century.

Pebble bed reactors promise a safer, cleaner, and more plentiful form of energy for America and for the world. If we are to remain a superpower into the 21st Century, we cannot turn our back to advances such as this. We cannot let the stigma of the word “nuclear”—and the irrational fear it engenders—stand in the way of our future.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

The Great American Brain Drain?

The Asia Times has an interesting, if disturbing look at how the world’s “intellectual capital” is making an unprecedented shift to the East:

Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos – making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans – a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course – some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.

Our language is shaped by the way we think, and we have an entire generation where the ability to think critically has withered. When we replace Homer with Homer Simpson, can we really expect people to be able to think deep thoughts?

Sadly, that analysis is likely correct. The United States is losing its competitive edge. We are not preparing our children for the future. We immerse then in Barney rather than Bach, and the results are a generation that simply can’t think. The Asia Times talks about the value of classical music in forming a strong and supple mind:

Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool. Music, contrary to a common misconception, does not foster mathematical ability, although individuals with a talent for one often show aptitude for the other.

The problem is that the concepts of “discipline” and “delayed gratification” are practically foreign to Americans these days. We’ve become a nation that has begun to systematically rout out the qualities that make us strong. Instead of allowing children to explore, we coddle them. Instead of teaching the classics, we teach drivel. We teach “self esteem” instead of formal logic. A classical education trained young minds to think critically, appreciate culture, and inculcated them with the values necessary for life in a democratic society. Now, thanks to the relentless dumbing-down of society, that sort of education has been cast out as being “patriarchal,” “ethnocentric” and even just plain “racist.” It is any irony that the Chinese seem to have a finer appreciation for our culture than we do.

Our pop culture hardly helps. As one former teacher finds, many American students are unable to express itself in any meaningful way. As the retired English teacher in the article noted: “When you read, you get to see the language used correctly, and you’re exposed to a range of vocabulary far beyond your own. I listen to students today, and the number of words they use is limited to slang and colloquialisms.” That dumbing-down will have a major effect on this nation’s ability to compete. Our language is shaped by the way we think, and we have an entire generation where the ability to think critically has withered. When we replace Homer with Homer Simpson, can we really expect people to be able to think deep thoughts? Because we never expose our children to culture, they never learn to truly appreciate it.

Not only that, but the values of hard work and diligence are not just values that enhance one’s own life. In his fascinating new book, author Malcom Gladwell notes it takes 10,000 hours of practice to excel at a given task. That’s three hours a day for a decade—which requires patience, determination, and a strong work ethic. But if we do not have a culture that supports patience, determination, and work ethic, then our chances of creating great artists, scientists, engineers, and scholars diminishes. Culture plays a major role in the success or failure of a nation, and we are losing the cultural basis for our success.

We can, and must, do better. We need to radically reform our educational system and reform our culture, or we will be unable to remain the superpower that we are today. Our competitiveness is based not as much on GNP or military power as it is in our ability to innovate and explore. We have the world’s greatest economy because we have the most innovative and entrepreneurial people on the globe. But it does not have to stay that way. We have to recognize that our education and our culture has to be about developing the skills needed to compete, and rewarding success while marginalizing failure. We cannot be a nation that has full self-esteem about our own decline.

It is time to dust off the Caesars and the sonatas, and push our children to be something more. Each generation has the potential to outshine the last, but only if we push them to do so. The United States can remain a superpower, but only if we are willing to keep it so.