Will there be a war?
Five years ago a war between US and China seemed more likely than not. Is it still?
For various reasons, the probability of a war is thankfully receding. China and USA economic power has been converging and this also resulted in convergence of their social and political systems (in operation if not in appearance). But the main reason we may be spared is Putin.
Please do the poll
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Only five years ago we worried that China and US were destined1 to fight in a “Thucydides Trap”. Today, it looks different.
We owe the peaceful change to:
Putin’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s folly raises a question unimaginable a few years ago: “Could Russia disintegrate? Then what?” Focussing on Russia, the warmongers do not have time for another war.
Destruction of Ukraine causes Taiwan be even more cautious and try hard to avoid provocation.
For the record, I do not believe Russia is likely to disintegrate but it will definitely end up with a diminished power when this debacle ends.
The pandemy showed how closely integrated the global economy is. While trying to create redundancies in the supply chains, US also realised how difficult it is to fully decouple from China.
As local manufacturing grows, people feel more sanguine about China.
Paradoxically, diminishing US-China trade removes the motivation for a complete collapse the trade.
There is also a realisation that China is not as strong as claimed by parts of the military-industrial establishment.
Even though a war is less likely, the confrontation between US and China is real and will continue to dominate the World Agenda.
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I believe that opposing sides in a prolonged confrontation gradually start resembling each other. I too become as obstinate as a pig when I enter into an argument with an obstinate and argumentative person. Two good teams bring the best in each other in competition and two bad teams the worst. Meshing gear teeth become mirror images as they keep pressing into one another.
The same is happening in US-China confrontation. If there is no war, the prolonged confrontation will gradually cause system convergence2.
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I will explain what I mean by convergence using a recent paper by the Beiing Tsinghua University Associate Professor Yan Yilong (鄢一龙) . He made this presentation in March. The full text is given on another Substack page.
Professor Yilong compares US3 and China systems. Incidentally, unlike me, he does not think they are converging and he is convinced that the Chinese system is superior. I recommend you read his paper and form your own judgement on that count.
I use his headings but will insert my thoughts.
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What is Democracy?
Yan Yilong says that competitive elections is democracy in procedure only. He continues that the Chinese have no competitive general elections but the people express their will through Party organs, National People’s Congress (parliament), and multiple government levels.
I believe that the critical test of democracy is whether and how people can influence government decisions. Two candidates (US) versus one (China) obviously offers the voters more choice but many European countries have several parties. Would three or more choices mean a better democracy?
About twenty years ago, in one of my many trips to China, our host took us to a neighboring town, where we were met by the Mayor. The Mayor took us to lunch. The restaurant was large and apparently quite popular. We were led to a dining room but the Mayor decided to first talk to the people before he joined us. I was curious and I watched him from the side. He went from one table to the next sometimes shaking their hands sometimes patting their backs. It demonstrated to me that even without competitive elections the politicians still needed people’s allegiance and had to work for it.
In US, the populace chooses the leader from two candidates nominated by their parties. In China, the leader is selected by the National People’s Congress (NPC). The NPC is a hierarchical body originally modelled on the old Soviets. The population elects the NPC members but only from a list of candidates determined by the Party. Candidates in both systems come from a narrow section of the society groomed for political power since their youth, although the grooming mechanics are different.
In a one party system, the competition is limited to within the party. In a two-party system the competition is both within and without parties. I think multiple competing parties offer better protection against slippage into a personal dictatorship.
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Who Does Democracy Belong to?
The question is ill-posed and cannot be answered. One should ask how the income equality compares between US and China; or whether leaders come from the whole society or narrow segments of it. Based on circumstantial evidence, I think, on both counts, US and China are more similar than one would think. For example, in terms of income inequality, Figure 1 charts the share of the pre-tax national income that goes to the top 1% of the population using WID data.
It is clear from Fig 1 that in both USA and China, the share of the national income that goes to top 1% of the population has been increasing at a similar rate. In other words, the top 1% is getting richer in both countries. The top 1% in USA is getting a higher share of the national income than the same cohort in China but rich in China are catching up.
As another measure of inequality, the Gini coefficients in both China and USA have significantly increased in the last 40 years. A higher Gini coefficient means worse inequality. Figure 2 (using data from Our World in Data) shows that both China and USA has become significanly more unequal in the last 40 years. I also plotted Turkey to provide context, which seemed to have become more equal from 1982 to 2018.
In answer to Yan Yilong’s headline question, it looks like the democracy belongs to the rich and powerful in both countries.
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Choosing Competent Leaders
US leaders are selected through media campaigns, says Yan Yilong, and the winner may have no prior governing experience. According to him, “government officials in China) are tested through practice, not through votes. [They must go through] multiple layers of practice, testing, and selection before [they can] become leaders of our country. “
I am actually not too fond of the idea of leaders coming through the ranks of the political system. Fresh blood is more likely to bring in new ideas.
Moreover, the government in US is not as variable as Yan Yilong claims. While the President is up for election every four years, the government bureaucracy remains the same. A new President replaces almost all of the Department Heads but the Deputy Heads stay. In the legislative arm, most of the Committee Chairs in the Congress and the Senate stay put too. These Chairs are important because the Presidents have to negotiate with them for every new law or change they propose. For example, the US Senate Finance Committee Chairs for the last 20 years were Baucus → Grassley → Baucus → Grassley → Baucus → Wyden → Hatch → Grassley → Wyden. You can see the persistence of the same names. As the majority in the Senate switches back and forth between the two parties, the Committee Chairs change but it is the same people who alternate.
Combining the Input with the Output
Yan Yilong argues that the Western democratic theory only emphasises the voting input but “whether or not the government actually does things for the common people is outside the scope of [Western] democratic theory”.
In reality, in both countries, the people have limited power to influence the operations of the government beyond signing petitions. In USA, once there used to be the media willing and able to expose incompetent and/or corrupt government. Alas, no more. The media credibility was one of the casualties of the polarisation and the culture wars. The reliance on intrepid social media channels instead of the mainstream media is another path of convergence for US and China.
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Procedural vs Substantive Democracy
Yilong claims that in US people goes through the motions of democracy but not the substance: ”… the people have almost no influence on policy and that competitive elections are little more than a psychological placebo. … politicians focus on short-term issues and the democratic system fails to address long-term, fundamental problems”.
Yilong does not address the question that, if voting is pointless in US democracy and if the people have no means to influence the government policies, why governments chase after short-term goals?
He keeps repeating references to high-speed rail as vindication for the Chinese system. This should be balanced against horribly failing policies such as the past one-child policy, the Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap Forward. Today, the lack of private ownership of land is the fundamental cause for Evergrande and other trillion-dollar real-estate company failures. In the West, the property taxes fund the local government activities. In China, local governments raise revenue by leasing public land to developers agressively. The developers built apartments and sold them to the middle class, who kept buying them because they lacked other investment opportunities. When I was in China, even I was able to see that this was a Ponzi scheme with people who should know better buying two or three apartments expecting their value to appreciate. To make it worst, they kept them vacant because the tenancy laws were not robust and owners were scared of destruction of their property.
In reality, in both countries, the governments work to keep the people docile while trying to reconcile the competing interests of the ruling elites.
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Stoking Divisions vs Consensus-building
Yan Yilong claims that, opposed to flip-flopping polarising US politics, China politics seek consensus. Even ignoring his hyperbole about the US political failures, I think there are indeed advantages, theoretically, of a single-party regime being able to seek consensus rather than multiple parties pushing for sectional interests.
I will give you an analogy from music broadcasting. Suppose, 70% of the population in a town likes jazz, 20% rock, and 10% classical music. If there is only one commercial station that needs to access maximum possible audience share to maximise advertisement revenue, it would be playing jazz all the time to capture the jazz-loving 70% of the population. Adding a second (or even a third) commercial station would not enhance the range of musical offerings because they would still be playing jazz each to access 35% (or 23.3% with three stations) of the population. Rock music lovers would have to wait for the fourth commercial station. Classical music listeners would have to wait even longer. On the other hand, in a non-commercial broadcasting regime, the state radio can timeshare to cater to the tastes of all three types of listeners. Of course, there is always the danger that the management of a non-commercial broadcasting regime may have a music taste not shared by any part of the population, say techno. Then the whole city would have no choice but listen to techno.
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Conclusions
At the time I was putting this post together, The US Secretary of State Blinken was receiving a warm welcome in China. I interpret this as China trying to reset its relations with US and the rest of the World to what they were when Xi became the president. Having said this, I do not think this is possible because 10 years ago China was only a subcontractor to Western high value-added manufacturing and both sides were satisfied. Nowadays, China is in competition with the West in selling high-value products.
China and USA economic power has been converging and this also resulted in convergence of their social and political systems (in deed if not in words). I tried to demonstrate this convergence above. Nations that are similar still may fight in competition for resources and market access. However, a new and different narrative would be needed to get popular support for such a war and, for the reasons I listed at the very top, I do not believe the current conditions are appropriate for developing such a narrative.
References
Sartori, Giovanni. "36. The Theory of Democracy Revisited". Democracy: A Reader, edited by Ricardo Blaug and John Schwarzmantel, New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2016, pp. 192-196. https://doi.org/10.7312/blau17412-044
Truex. (2016). Making autocracy work : representation and information in modern China. Cambridge University Press.
ICYMI
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Kahkovka Dam, Ukraine
The Kahkovka Dam is one of the six dams on Dnipro River. All were built in 1950s when Ukraine was a Soviet Republic. The Kahkovka Dam capacity was 18 km3 of water (for context, Turkish Ataturk Dam can hold 48 km3; US Hoover Dam 12 km3). The Kahkovka Dam collapsed on 6 June. The seismic recordings by an agency in Norway suggests that it was an explosion (a short and intense seismic pulse) as shown in the following chart:
The cause of the explosion is not known. The single short seismic pulse suggests to me that it is detonation of a placed set of explosives rather than a barrage of missiles. On the other hand, I think it is unlikely that the Russians would destroy the dam deliberately while they are still in possession of the east bank of the river. It is possible that the bombs were placed to be used during a possible future Russian retreat as part of a scorched earth strategy and exploded by accident. If this is true, then the other five dams may also be in risk. This is pure speculation on my part. We may get more evidence when the hostilities cease and an engineering post-mortem is conducted.
I noticed that the link for the chart no longer works. It did work a week ago. I am not sure what it means.
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Elizabeth Gilbert, Snow Forest
Elisabeth Gilbert is best known for her biography “Eat, Pray, Love”, which was filmed in 2010. Julia Roberts played the author. Elizabeth Gilbert made the news again last Monday because she removed her latest work, Snow Forest, from publication. The book that took place in Siberia in 1930s apparently was subjected to a campaign in Goodreads for romanticising Putin’s Russia, which it did not.
The publicity certainly brought the book to the agenda of people (like me) who probably would never read it. But cancelling books because the story takes place in a land that we do not approve of is absurd. What is next? Rewriting “War and Peace” with a new ending where Napoleon wins so that we will not be implying Russia can also win wars?
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Diary
You will see the prices of the items in the pictures. They are in Australian dollars. The exchange rate is 1A$=0.68 US$=16.41 Turkish Lira
Every Sunday morning I go to the Mt Gravatt Farmers Markets to buy fruits and veggies. There you can find seasonal fresher produce albeit more expensive than supermarkets.
I arrive at the market grounds at around 7am. Even then the car park was full and I had to do a few loops around the place to locate a spot just being vacated by a shopper who was there even earlier. The parking was always difficult but the situation got worse when they started using more parking rows for flea market stands.
Walking through the stalls selling bric-a-brac, I arrive at the entrance to the farmers market proper:
You can see the hand sanitizer behind the warning against pets. I have not seen anyone using the sanitizer lotion yet but I suppose this is why it is still there. They probably would not replace it when it is finished.
In May and early June, I had bought beautiful persimmons. They were real persimmons not the stuff they sell through the year at the supermarkets. I think the end of the season is here for the persimmons. These may be the last one until next year.
I did not buy any persimmons this time but I bought apples and some pears.
When I tried them home, the pears were hard but tasty. They were typical winter pears similar to Ankara pears I used to buy in Turkey.
Speaking of winter, the chestnuts were appealing but I did not succumb to the temptation:
I bought cucumbers, not from the above stall but from the seller I buy them every week. I love the cucumbers I buy from the market. They are fresh and smell fresh when you slice them.
I also bought some cherry tomatoes and Turkish peppers.
I also needed to buy some regular tomatoes but this stall only had what we call Roma tomatoes (long egg-shaped tomatoes).
Turkish peppers have thin skins, this is why they are so nice. But that is also why they are not common in this climate because they are not able to resist pests. All types of peppers you can buy in Brisbane have really thick skins. The Turkish peppers come to the market only for a couple of months every winter. I buy them then. They are good to slice into your salad to give some zest to it but also can be a good side to steak when lightly toasted in a pan or on the barbecue.
I buy a tray of mushrooms almost every week:
I do not like the stringy mushrooms (Enoki mushrooms) on the left. I bought one of the trays on the right. Mushrooms are good in the pan but also in a meat casserole.
I bought my tomatoes from an old lady (who is even older than I am).
Her tomatoes are probably not the best but she weighs them using a cool pair of scales, like of which you do not see any more.
I was also impressed with the way she mentally calculated the cost. She did not have a calculator. I bought some bananas to further check her. She used a pencil and a notepad and summed them up for tomatoes and bananas. Old school.
The scales were made in Birmingham early last century but she says she bought them in Brisbane in 1970s.
I buy my avocadoes always from the same guy. He grows them himself except for the summer months when he does not and gets them from interstate. I learn a lot about avocadoes by my weekly banter with him:
I also buy eggs from him.
I used to buy my eggs from a Dutch guy who had an organic farm. But he quit doing poultry because he said an organic chicken farm was too much effort for the price he can sell it for. I was willing to pay more for his eggs ($10.50/dozen was his price) but probably not many others would.
The eggs I buy now are probably not organic but they are fresh and only costs $7 per dozen.
Finally, I go to Ömer. Every week I buy simit from Ömer. If you do not know what simit is, it is a kind of Turkish bagel very common on Istanbul streets. In Brisbane, I buy them from Ömer:
Ömer and his wife bring in the dough in big containers and knead and bake the simits (and other stuff) every morning in the market using an electrical oven. They also do gozleme on a steel plate heated by a gas burner. You cannot see it in the picture.
This concludes my market shopping and with two big heavy bags in my hands I find my way back to my car and I drive home.
Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2017)
The Cold War with USSR was different because the two competing systems then were totally different with no common ground and the only resolution was the collapse of one, At that time we believed in peaceful co-existence but this was not possible. In the US-China conflict, there is substantial common ground shared by the opponents.
Yilong refers to “Western Democracies” in general but all his commentary and examples are only applicable to the US system.