“Taking Mines Seriously: Mine Warfare in China’s Near Seas” – Scott C. Truver via U.S. Naval War College | 2012 – Spring. Strategists focus heavily on the aerospace aspects of China’s “access denial” strategy, thinking about how ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and attack aircraft could effectively seal the US Navy out of the Western Pacific. But another weapon remains that could have a similar effect in a much lower intensity conflict: sea mines. Drop a few dozen cheap and low-technology magnetic mines around the Paracels or Spratleys, sit back, and watch the fireworks. It is an illustration that China has plenty of arrows in its quiver that could prove costly for Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and the U.S. to address, one that demands an equally asymmetric strategy.
How the USSR Won World War II
When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler
David M. Glantz & Jonathan House
University of Kansas
384 pages
The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin’s War with Germany, Volume I
John Erickson
Yale University Press
606 pages
The Road to Berlin: Stalin’s War with Germany, Volume II
John Erickson
Cassell Military Paperbacks
896 pages
Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945
Catherine Merridale
Picador Press
462 pages
For nearly three generations in the west, and in the Anglophone countries in particular, we have been given a narrative of World War II that focuses on the contributions of the United States and Great Britain to the defeat of Nazi Germany. After a lifetime of this narrative, it is not unreasonable to believe that the war was won by England and America. That belief tends to cast the Russian Front and the China-Burma-India Theater as little more than diversionary sideshows to the core campaigns of the conflict.
Little doubt this was reinforced by the prejudices laid upon our interpretation of history by the Cold War. It is, after all, impolitic to grant your enemies in your present conflict the credit for victory in the last. Since the fall of the Wall in 1989, we have been engaged in a celebration of the “Greatest Generation” of Americans, Britons, and Australians who fought that righteous conflict. The contributions of the Russians, largely ignored during the Cold War, was all but forgotten by the generation that came after.
I was a victim of this collective epidemic of amnesia. A lifetime study of the war my father’s generation fought has left me with a fair appreciation of the Pacific War from the perspective of the U.S. Navy; of the Battle of the Atlantic from the perspective of the Royal Navy; and the fight in Europe from the perspective of the U.S. Army (in particular, Patton’s Third Army.) I say this not to apologize, but to suggest that the scope of the war was so great and the literature so vast (including a trove of government documents declassified only recently) that it is possible to lose the wider perspective.
When the Cold War ended and the Iron Curtain fell, the time had come for the psychological curtain to come down on the history as well. The Russian Front has now emerged from the realm of the scholarly to the realm of popular history, allowing a wider, balanced reconsideration of the role played by the Soviet Union in Germany’s defeat.
The Basic Narrative
Unguided, the newcomer to the study of the Eastern Front will quickly fall into a deep rabbit hole. The story of Stalin’s war against Hitler, begun in hubris and betrayal and ended 46 months later in vengeful retribution is so vast and deep that it invites a lifetime of study. Fortunately for those of us unable to afford such a commitment, three authors have created a superb overview of the Russian theater that will either satisfy the casually curious or entice the serious scholar into deeper study.
The risk of trying to capture the conflict in a single volume of popular history is that important though seemingly peripheral events will be left out. But two of the U.S. Army’s most distinguished military historians, Colonel David M. Glantz and Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan House manage to offer a thorough and engrossing narrative that serves as the ideal primer on the war in the East. Experienced instructors of undergraduates, Glantz and House know their audience, readers who want an overview of the war and plenty of maps to put a litany of unfamiliar places into comfortable context. The authors break some new research ground, but perform yeomen’s service in delivering a history with enough detail to provide understanding without getting us immersed in detail.
The Authoritative History
Glantz and House leave the reader thirsty to know more, and the next (and best) step is John Erickson’s authoritative two-volume history, The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin. In what is perhaps the single best account of the Eastern Front, suited for popular readers and scholars alike, Erickson offers less a military blow-by-blow than a social history of the conflict from the Soviet point of view. Erickson’s achievement in research, conducted when the Cold War was at its height, would have been challenging to duplicate in today’s more open environment – it was a work of genius at the time. His greatest accomplishment, though, is in his restraint: Erickson manages to give the Red Army the credit it is due for its role in the war without creating a panegyric.
Cover via Amazon
At the core of Erickson’s telling is the man FDR called “Uncle Joe,” who emerges over the course of the books as a Machiavellian thug possessed of just enough intelligence and raw cunning to save the Soviet Union and himself after his hubris and ruthlessness placed both on the cusp of oblivion. Hitler, for his part, had co-opted the German officer corps and let them forge the Wehrmacht into the most powerful armed force the world had seen to that point, all in less than a decade of Germany’s repudiation of the Versailles Treaty. Stalin, by contrast, had by the time Germany turned on the USSR reduced the Red Army’s leadership to little more than a corps of incompetent sycophants who commanded an army utterly unprepared to fight a modern war.
Without belaboring Stalin’s error, Erickson shows us how a tiny handful of capable Red Army officers who had dodged the worst of the purges (led by G.K. Zhukov and I.S. Koniev) were joined by heretofore overlooked leaders who distinguished themselves in battle (including V.I. Chuikov, the savior of Stalingrad, and P.A. Rotmistrov, arguably the Red Army’s best tank commander) rallied demoralized, ill-equipped, and ideology-crippled Red Army after eighteen months of defeat and retreat. Their first victories were internal. With the Germans at the gates of Stalingrad, “The Boss” relented and allowed Zhukov to unify the Army’s command structure and relegate the military commissar’s role to that of an indoctrination officer. A seemingly small change, this opened the door for the Red Army to fight the war on military terms and make decisions on weapons and doctrine for purely military reasons. It was a very near thing.
Yet Stalin was the quintessential control freak, and his institutionalized tool for micromanaging every aspect of the war’s conduct, the Supreme High Command (Stavka), was proof that while Stalin would give his commanders some leeway, their ropes were short. Indeed, Stalin arguably involved himself as much with his battle conduct as Hitler did. But after a year-and-a-half and a swathe of blood and destruction from the Bug River to the Vistula, Stalin had learned to give his better generals the benefit of the doubt. Still, earning even that modicum of trust was not easy for Uncle Joe, and he delegated only when detail became too overwhelming.
Erickson does not venerate the Red Army marshals, even the best of them. To the very last, even when better weapons, hard-won lessons, and the preponderance of forces offered opportunities for tactical innovation, the leaders of the Red Army remained as careless with the lives of their own soldiers as they were with those of the enemy. Arguably Leningrad, Sevastapol, the Moscow campaign and the battle for Stalingrad were desperate battles where the only choice was to win by bloody attrition. To suggest that the Red Army was in such straits as it prepared to launch the final battle for Berlin in 1945, though, is ludicrous. Yet Zhukov, who remains the most venerated Soviet commander of the War, turned Seelow Heights between the Polish Frontier and Berlin into a meat grinder, and the last two weeks of the war cost the Red Army a quarter of a million lives. It is, perhaps, as much a testament to the heavy hand of the Stavka as to the hard-headedness of Soviet commanders that a revolution in battlefield doctrine would have been seen as a counterrevolutionary act. The average Soviet soldier paid the price for such orthodoxy in blood, right up to the moment of German capitulation.
The Average Ivan
The individual soldier of the Red Army and what he indured for Stalin’s ultimate victory is the subject of Catherine Merridale’s superb oral history Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army 1939-1945. Merridale has done historians a remarkable service capturing the memories and memoirs of Russia’s own Greatest Generation while at least a few of that generation remained. The story she assembles compliments Erickson’s in that she tells the story from the point of view of the average Ivan. She makes no apologies for the often atrocious extra-combat behavior of Soviet soldiers. Yet in describing their backgrounds, their hopes, and the psychological effects of living in the early years of the USSR, she offers us a chance to understand what turned these otherwise unassuming peasants into remorseless marauders.
What is more broadly relevant, though, is how so many of these (mostly young) soldiers believed that the end of the war would mean a better life than before. Somehow, reading into the promises of Party propaganda, most of them felt that greater freedom and prosperity would be their reward for the sacrifices they and their mates had made for Comrade Stalin and therodina.They certainly deserved as much. Without denigrating the contributions of the Yanks and the Tommies, it is fair to say that Ivan, his willingness to endure the worst possible conditions, the strongest imaginable enemy, and officers prepared to sacrifice him by the tens of thousands, was the single decisive factor in the war against Germany.
Birth of an Empire
Ivan may have achieved little more than a chance for survival via victory. Stalin, however, had every intention of exacting from Europe and the world the fullest possible payment for Russia’s blood and devastation. From the moment the Red Army turned Stalingrad into a German rout, Stalin began a campaign to permanently neuter Germany and turn the Soviet Union into a hegemonic power. Erickson in particular weaves into his account the story of how Stalin systematically undermined every government-in-exile in Europe (save Greece and France), how he crafted his own proxies, and how he bullied the rest of the Allies into accepting a fait accompli even as the NKVD “disappeared” entire delegations of exiled Polish leaders. With a 19 page summary of the Yalta conference, Erickson makes it clear that Roosevelt and Churchill were neither conspirators nor dupes. In war as in business, Erickson’s account suggests, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Short of taking Eastern Europe back by force, there was no way Stalin was going to give an inch more than suited him.
As much as in the diplomatic salons, Stalin made sure that every move on the battlefield reinforced the Soviet Union’s claim on postwar hegemony. Stalin insisted that the U.S. and British armies stop cold on the previously-agreed demarcation lines across Germany, even though the Allies were prepared to storm across Europe and could have met the Red Army much farther east (on the line Prague-Dresden-Berlin) and ended the war as much as a week sooner. Stalin preferred to bleed Germany – and the Red Army – for as long as it took to ensure he was not going to have to ask the Allies to give up anything that they had taken. General Patton, somewhat less in awe of Soviet ambitions than his superiors, let the forward reconnaissance elements of his force get all the way into the suburbs of Prague, two days before the Soviet 13th Army reached the same point. Stalin pressed the Allies, who pressed Eisenhower, who told Patton to withdraw.
U.S. soldiers returned home to 52 weeks of paid vacation and an opportunity to attend university at government expense. Ivan did not do near as well. Joseph Stalin, for his part, won an empire that just outlasted him and marked the high-water mark of Russian civilization. Whether the cost seemed dear to Stalin the world will likely never know.
A Lesson for China
If there is an enduring lesson in the course of Stalin’s war with Germany, it is that the cost in national treasure and blood of a politicized army is prohibitive. Ideology and military necessity are uncomfortable bedfellows in the best of times, and utterly incompatible in the crucible of combat command. The salvation of the Soviet Union was a very near thing, so much so that it is arguably an even more powerful legitimizing myth for Russia than the Revolution, much in the way the Civil War serves as an historic vindication of America. The price to Stalin of political conformity in the military was almost the existence of the USSR itself.
China will likely face no such existential moment, no matter how poorly its forces perform in the field: possession of nuclear arms guarantees as much. Whether a Chinese government could remain legitimate in the eyes of its own people after the rout of its conventional forces is another matter altogether. China is betting on force structure, diplomacy, and bluff to ensure against such an eventuality. But the politicization of the force and its doctrine remains a weakness that would inhibit battlefield performance at every level. It seems, though, that the PLA will be no more able to exercise this problem in advance of combat than the Red Army was seven decades ago.
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- Stalin buses criss-cross Eurasia: Nostalgia, patriotism or provocation? (links-dar.org)
- Friday Image: Targeting the USSR in August 1945 (nuclearsecrecy.com)
Insights on E-Books in China
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Most of us English speakers here in China focus on the debate over e-books and the future of publishing as it applies in a global context, but what is interesting is how the matter is unfolding here in China
Reading through an old article from the Beijing Review (not to be confused with this site, and whose website seems to be unresponsive now), I made notes on three insights that caught my eye.
Ebooks are just alright with me
First, that except for the most partisan ebook advocates, most of the folks in the publishing business are taking things rather calmly.
Print publishing’s dominance is set to wane, but is unlikely to perish. Chances are e-books will coexist with paper books in the very long term, and each form will enjoy comparable market shares. But the influence of e-books will grow and they will eventually play a dominant role.
This might have something to do with the rather parlous state of the publishing industry in China (it is something less than an industry but something more than a bunch of government printing houses where nobody is making very much money,) but it is a much more even-handed approach than some of the denial, anger, and resistance we often hear from voices in the western industry (take Jonathan Franzen‘s reactionary luddite screed as one extreme example).
The Bureaucrats will be the tough nuts
If there is one country that cannot afford to kill all of the trees necessary to put books in the hands of its people, it would be China. Yet perhaps the most conservative part of the Chinese government is the biggest gatekeeper to the widespread adoption of ebooks: the Ministry of Education. Tens of millions of students need textbooks each year, and rather than start distributing them on everything from tablets to phones, the government is standing in the way. According to one industry spokesman quoted in the article:
Technically, we will need five to 10 years to address security and stability concerns over e-books, in order to convince the Ministry of Education that e-books are right for students.
I suspect the Ministry will find itself left in the dust as its students adopt e-books with great speed. Eventually, they’ll be playing catch-up. On the other hand, the MOE’s first concern is ideological correctness of the population. Educating the masses remains secondary.
Books are Too Long
The last insight is particularly amusing. Apparently not realizing that its audience is both literate and (while young) getting older by the minute, publishers are operating under the impression that they’re going to have to change formats to get people to read e-books.
Readers of e-books are much younger than those of print publications, particularly in literature. As a result, we have first to address the age differences when working on e-editions, otherwise, the chances for success will be slim. For example, we can cut full-length novels into short stories, which are easier to read.
That’s it! To get more people reading e-books, we simply slice them into small edible bits! Except that a) readers are already taking the full books, b) many will see the slicing and dicing as a way to get more money for the same book, and c) they should be encouraging more short stories rather than slashing the length of novels.
Cutting novels down to fit a format reminds me of that great line in the movie Amadeus when Emperor Joseph II tells Mozart that his work has “too many notes.”
Takeaway: publishers don’t get what makes e-books work any more than the Ministry of Education. They still have much to learn.
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Where is Chinese Outbound Investment Going?
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Executives leading China’s state-owned and private companies are, for the most part, new to the foreign direct investment game, and are thus likely to be conservative in their initial investments. One would assume, therefore, that those executives are likely to invest in those countries where the Chinese government enjoys strong relationships, carries some influence, and perhaps the government is prepared to provide incentives to make that investment.
Yet at the same time, Chinese firms are making high profile investments in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States where the specter of political opposition looms over every deal. Are companies stepping abroad looking for an umbrella from Beijing, or are they simply following business?
This is the question that Quan Li of Texas A&M University and Guoyong Liang from UNCTAD set out to answer in “Political Relations and Chinese Outbound Direct Investment.” Reviewing 346 instances of outbound Chinese FDI along with statistics from other sources, the scholars paint a compelling picture about where Chinese money is likely to flow in global mergers and acquisitions.
The patterns are not surprising, but what was surprising to me was the number: that nearly 350 Chinese companies are already players in outbound direct investment suggests that the comfort with those investments is growing. As that happens, expect cash-rich firms to get bolder with their acquisitions, looking more into North America as well as Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
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China’s Aircraft Carrier in Perspective
Beijing’s “Starter Carrier” and Future Steps: Alternatives and Implications – Andrew S. Erickson, Abraham M. Denmark, and Gabriel Collins
via U.S. Naval War College | 2012 – Winter.
In this excellent review essay the Naval War College’s excellent team of China Watchers give offer a balanced view of the significance of China’s new aircraft carrier and, more important, what it portends.
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Are Chinese Intellectual Property Courts Fair?
The world is abuzz about how Chinese courts have found against Apple’s claims of the iPad trademark in the PRC, and what it will mean for both Apple and IPR in China in the future. Against what we see happening this week, it is useful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
In an empirical study of two courts in China, Lan Rongjie finds that for several reasons, you are more likely to get a fair trial in an IPR case in Chinese courts than in any other type of civil action.
Apparently, judges are more likely to defer to experts in such cases, and they are likely to be much more careful in rendering a verdict, especially when foreign parties are the plaintiffs.
The paper will be of scant comfort to Apple’s attorneys this week, but it does remind us that companies as varied as Louis Vuitton, Starbucks, and Lego have all won intellectual property cases against local Chinese businesses.
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- Chinese Video Streaming Site Gets Tiny Penalty After Pirating Ultraman (penn-olson.com)
- Op-Ed Contributor: To Understand China, Look Behind Its Laws (nytimes.com)
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Radio, Television, and Public Diplomacy
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BBG’s Strategic 5yr Plan: to inform, engage and connect.
In the darkest days of the Cold War, the United States focused considerable effort on bringing to the world what can either be described as “the truth,” or “the truth according to the United States government ” with services like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. We can argue about the value of these broadcasts to the people of Latin America, but it seems clear these broadcasts provided a critical information lifeline to the people of China and the countries locked behind the USSR’s Iron Curtain.
In the years since the opening of China and the end of the Cold War, however, these services have lacked the kind of clear mission they once had, and the rise of the Internet calls into question the value of broadcast services generally. I would argue, though, that America’s global broadcast assets remain a critical part of public diplomacy. Commercial enterprises like CNN and Fox News have their place, but they are not in the business of conducting information activities in support of US foreign policy.
The BBG spells out exactly why it should continue to receive funding over the next four years in its 2012 strategic plan. Admittedly awash in bureaucratese, the concrete steps it outlines take the organization a big step toward regaining the relevance it once had. Even given the glacial speed of governmental organizations, the plan is realistic and doable.
If the plan lacks anything it is a clearer vision of where the organizations need to be in 10 years. More needs to be done than what is outlined here, and both what and why need to be made clearer.
Nonetheless, even die-hard net-heads like myself cannot help but see the value of broadcast in America’s public diplomacy after reading this.
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- Historical Influences on US Public Diplomacy (battles2bridges.wordpress.com)
- “Public Diplomacy”: America’s Public Relations Campaign (ereleases.com)
- 5 Things You Didn’t Know About The Cold War (libraryindus.wordpress.com)
Getting Navies to Work Together
Flags of the home nations of the students of the Naval Command College (Photo credit: U.S. Naval War College RI)
“Networking the Global Maritime Partnership” – Stephanie Hszieh, George Galdorisi, Terry McKearney, and Darren Sutton, via U.S. Naval War College | 2012 – Spring.
This is a fascinating article that picks up on the concept first introduced by Chief of Naval Operations (later Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Admiral Mike Mullen, wherein we no longer see the U.S. Navy as operating in a strategic vacuum, but as a component of a “Thousand Ship Navy,” a multinational maritime force of nations who share the same priorities and can therefore be melded into a single, unified force.
I liked Mullen’s idea when he first introduced it six years ago, and I like it more now that the USN is fumbling its warship procurement efforts and other nations are expanding their naval forces (Look at the UK building two aircraft carriers as a part of a fleet renewal program as just one example.) Mullen may not have taken his ideas directly from Thomas P.M. Barnett‘s thinking about a multi-agency, multi-national response to global security challenges (as outlined in his seminal book The Pentagon’s New Map,) but the direction is the same. The U.S. may be sheriff, but it needs deputies to run the town.
The article offers some detailed ideas about the challenges and opportunities in making it happen.
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China’s Future: The World Bank Chimes In
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China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society.
That China’s economy and polity are at an historic crossroads is so often repeated these days that it has become a truism. The question that faces prognosticators is what China should do about it. Even if the lessons of economic development of one country could be applied to another, the scale, speed, and urgency of China’s economic challenges seem push the nation’s leaders onto an uncharted course.
So what to do?
In joint effort with the Development Research Center of the State Council, The World Bank has produced a China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society laying out a series of macro-level recommendations to address the issues China’s economy is facing over the next 20 years. What the framers of that report mean, of course, is that China faces these challenges today, but it is impolitic to suggest as much. (To suggest that the United States could also use such guidance would be similarly impolitic but no less accurate.)
What is compelling (read “different”) about this report is the participation of the Chinese government in the process. For that reason alone, the report is worth the read for the insights it should give into the kind of forward thinking that is “permissible” in the current policy environment.
The work has already been criticized for not addressing CCP politics and the role of the Party in the policy process. What I wonder about is the extent to which the World Bank was compelled to pull its punches on its recommendations
in order to retain the government’s participation. At a conference reported by Bob Davis ofThe Wall Street JournalWorld Bank Group President Robert Zoellick was fairly optimistic about both the resilience of the Chinese economy (“stress points will expand over time rather than turn into a crisis”) and about the possibility that some if not all of the reports recommendations would be carried out (“I think that in some form you’ll see this move ahead.”) That does not sound like a man doling out bitter medicine.
If the medium is the message, though, and this report does have legs, it may be as important as China’s own vaunted 12th Five Year Plan in helping to divine the future of China’s economic policy.
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Japanese Science: Anything but Foreigners
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“Revamp Math and Science Education, Kazuo Nishimura, AJISS-Commentary
The Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies, a conservative think-tank in Tokyo, has published this op-ed by Kazuo Nishimura, a Professor of Mathematical Economics at Kyoto University.
In the op-ed, Nishimura calls for starting science education earlier, changing the structure of elementary courses, and keeping high-school kids in compulsory science courses longer in High school. More controversially, he also calls for a complete overhaul of the nation’s grading system.
All of these are good proposals, especially the latter, but the one policy Nishimura shies form is the one most likely to make a difference in the near term: allowing greater numbers of foreign scientists to come into Japan to work and offer their efforts to Japanese companies. Indeed, he believes this is the problem.
A fascinating article.
Top Picks from AFRICOM Reading List
Maintaining up-to-date information and deep knowledge about Africa is critical to the team at the U.S. Africa Command. To that end, a reading list was compiled to provide suggestions. Here are some top picks. Check the blog next week for the full list.
Thanks to the AFRICOM Research Library for providing us with this list. Look for an upcoming story on the library, new to Kelley Barracks.
The PLA from a Japanese Viewpoint
China Security Report – The National Institute for Defense Studies.
The better-known analyses of China’s defense posture and its implications for the rest of the world tend to come from American, European, and Australian sources, but the developed country with the most immediate and pressing need to understand China’s intentions is Japan.
This year, for the second time, Japan has issued its China Security Report detailing its view of China’s spending, its strategic and military needs, and its near-term intentions. Being a public document and being from Japan, many of the conclusions are couched in language that is diplomatic and polite, framing its conclusions in terms of China’s concerns. This report is worth the read, both because it is pithy and because it offers a viewpoint that compliments the published assessments at the Pentagon.
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Understanding the Pattern of Growth and Equity in the People’s Republic of China
Understanding the Pattern of Growth and Equity in the People’s Republic of China. Liu Minquan of the ADBI explains why some of the factors that drove growth in China during the first 30 years of reform and opening cannot help the country in the long run.
The People’s Republic of China’s Currency and Product Fragmentation
The People’s Republic of China’s Currency and Product Fragmentation. Economist Nobuayuki Yamashita of the Asian Development Bank Institute makes a case that even if China unilaterally adjusted its exchange rates that there would be no major effect on trade deficits. An argument unlikely to make friends in Washington, but Yamashita backs up his contentions with numbers.
The Misty Poets: An introduction
This great guest post comes from my friend Hannah Lincoln. Over the next few days she’ll be introducing her research on the Misty Poets. If you are a grad student working on a China related topic please contact Tom about the possibility of introducing here.
“Misty”is the title conferred upon a group of poets known during the Democracy Movement （1976-1980）for their unique style.
Trends in China’s Oil Sector
“China’s Oil Sector: Trends and Uncertainties” is Dr. Alan Troner’s review of the misconceptions about how China uses oil and gas, and his effort to rectify those erroneous beliefs.
Asian Security in the Year of the Dragon
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Each year, Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies conducts an exchange program that invites national security scholars from around the world to take a collective look at the Asian security environment and offer their points of view on the issues the region faces. This year they have produced another excellent collection, and it is available at the link above.
What I enjoy about this series is the often unexpected perspectives thes authors offer. My favorites from this collection are H.J.S. Kraft’s chapter on “The Continuing Malaise of National Security in the Philippines,” which strikes me as particularly fascinating given the evolving situation in the South China Sea; You Ji’s perspective on how China’s defense posture is evolving in response to America’s “Strategic Shift” away from Europe, Iraq, and Pakistan and toward the Pacific; and, of course, Andrew Erickson’s superb review of U.S. security concerns in the region.
As we ease into Chinese New Year, this would be an excellent time to peruse this collection. The Year of the Dragon promises much change, but a read through these chapters should minimize the surprises.
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Indigenous Innovation and Globalization
Much ink has been spilled over the correct path to turn China from the world’s contract manufacturer into an innovator on a par with the United States. Indeed, there are those who suggest that such an evolution is probably impossible given the straightjacket of Chinese culture.
As tempting as it is to go with the skeptics, there is mounting evidence that Chinese can and do innovate, and that innovation can happen with the backing of the government. (If you disagree, it would be worthwhile to review the funding source for many of America’s storied postwar innovations: if you follow the money, you wind up on Capitol Hill or the Pentagon as often as Wall Street or Sand Hill Road.)
The authors of this short book, Liu Xielin and Peng Cheng, argue that China is indeed beginning to innovate in part because the government is underwriting China’s effort to close the technical gap between its enterprises and engineers and those of the west. If they stopped there, it would be easy to dismiss both as government stooges.
They are not: once they have acknowledged the merit of government involvement, they then assess its limitations. Specifically, they note that in addition to putting China into policy conflict with nations that should be customers for Chinese innovations, government involvement (read “micromanagement”) of the innovation process closes it off from the overseas markets that are the real target of the indigenous innovation policy in the first place.
Turning China into an innovation powerhouse is neither a matter of letting markets do their thing, nor of government control: it is a matter of striking a careful balance between the two. Ascribing the best possible motives to China’s policymakers, the Party and government are looking for the best way to strike that balance. But old habits die hard: the received myth in Beijing is that the government that has brought a half-dozen major industries to near-parity with their global counterparts through vigorous funding and protective policies. Why, then, should things be done differently going forward?
Liu and Cheng do an admirable job at answering that challenge, but the problem is in the received myth. China’s homegrown industries succeed in the marketplace (both at abroad and at home) in inverse proportion to government involvement, not as its result. It is only when the government alters the rules of the market that local companies in innovative industries achieve success. Such heresy may be too dangerous for the authors: Liu is at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Cheng at the Beijing University of Forestry. Nonetheless, their analysis hints in the right direction, and hopefully their thinking will enter the political discussion in Beijing.
Related articles
- U.S., China begin talks on innovation trade dispute (reuters.com)
- China launches its own indigenous satellite navigation system to end reliance on the US (itehaad.wordpress.com)
Holding Burma Together
Image via Wikipedia
Sitting as it does at the geographic crossroads between India, China, and Southeast Asia, Burma (Myanmar) plays a role in the stability of the region that goes overlooked outside of a small circle of Asia wonks. Most of us have forgotten that Burma broke the back of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, made up one corner of the infamous Golden Triangle in the opiate trade, and, as a relic of a colonial era, houses ethnic separatism that often erupts into violence. In some ways, Burma is the Iraq of Southeast Asia.
Most of us see the challenge of Burma as a a matter of easing the Military Junta from power and allowing free elections. It is, apparently, not that simple, and Beyond Armed Resistance gives us a glimpse into the complexities of Burma’s politics via a review of the aspirations of the Kachin, Karen, Mon, and Shan ethnic groups.
Deliberately setting aside armed ethnic uprising, including the Karen people‘s longstanding resistance to the Burmese government, Dr. Thawnghmung argues that the non-violent political activity of these groups is more important to the evolution of the Burmese state than civil conflict. Reading her book also offers an unintended insight into why the military feels obliged to keep such tight control over the country: dormant ethnic tensions could easily sunder the nation. What is more, we begin to see how Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy would face formidable challenges simply holding the country together if they were to come to power. No doubt, this prospect troubles the leaders of India, China, and Thailand: it should trouble Americans as well.
The junta has become the entire focus of western policy toward Burma. That focus, however correct, has masked the deeper challenges and rifts that plague the country. It must be no longer. Instead, our focus must become the fundamental challenges the country faces on its path to stability and development. Dr. Thawnghmung has argued in other venues that the first focus must be on establishing a national identity under-girded by a shared ideology and vision.
As Asia’s nations begin to expand their influence beyond their borders, weak states will become political and diplomatic (if not military) battlegrounds among the region’s powers. If Burma is to avoid this fate, it must emerge from its current transitional phase as a united, independent, and prosperous country. The well-meaning people around the world campaigning for the NLD would do well to heed the warning implicit in Dr. Thawnghmung’s writings: think beyond liberation, and do so now.
Related articles
- Historic Burma trip for Hillary Clinton: Enough focus on human rights? (csmonitor.com)
- “Burma’s New Hope” (ravcasleygera.wordpress.com)
- What will happen to China as Burma (Myanmar) gets closer with Vietnam, US? (csmonitor.com)
- Oppression, Torture and Gender-Based Violence against Karen Women in Burma (clockwards.wordpress.com)
Presentation – Skills Policy Framework for the Next Decade in PRC
Skills Policy Framework for the Next Decade in PRC. Where China sees the challenges in expanding its skilled workforce in over the next ten years. A presentation by Dong Jing of the China Association of Worker’s Education and Vocational Training.
Fixing Chinese Investment in the U.S.
Image by kevindean via Flickr
Over the last four months I’ve been involved in a research project that delves into the nature of one of China’s most important industries. What set off this somewhat Quixotic effort was the question of whether Chinese investment abroad, and in particular in the United States, was a good thing or a bad thing.
As I pursue the question on an industry-specific level, the authors of China’s Expanding Role in Global Mergers and Acquisitions Markets take a different approach to the question. Rather than evaluate Chinese outward foreign-direct investment through based on corporate merit, they propose a framework for evaluating the desirability and risk implicit in Chinese investment.
Whether you agree with their conclusions or not, their book comes at a propitious time. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), for all of its strengths, has some glaring weaknesses, not least that its processes are unnecessarily opaque. What Wolf, Chow et. al. offer the CFIUS and Congress is the first draft of a more transparent set of criterion by which to evaluate investment.
As close as RAND is to the US government, its conclusions are not a cipher for US policy. This book, therefore, should be seen as the starting point of a larger debate about where and how Chinese investment in the US should be welcomed, and where it should be restricted. As such, the book is a welcome and much-needed addition to the wider debate.
Related articles
- China Most Likely Country to Fund Renewables (cleantechies.com)
- Alibaba’s Jack Ma is no double agent (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
- Merger of U.S., Chinese firms is cautionary tale (usatoday.com)
- Cambodia: China is largest, Japan second largest Investor. (livinginpp.wordpress.com)
- Analysis: ‘We’re Not Going To See China Buying Europe’ (huffingtonpost.com)
What about Indonesia?
“Developing Trust in Asia Amidst New US Military Deployments: An Indonesian Perspective,” by Maria Monica Wihardja, Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 142, East-West Center, Washington, D.C., December 8, 2011. If we think the Chinese were upset about the announcement that 2,500 U.S. Marines would soon be station on Australia’s north coast, the Indonesians were much more upset. As the US makes more use of Australia as a part of its Pacific defense system, it will need to turn up the public diplomacy in Southeast Asia to counteract the Jihadist agitprop that is certain to be an unwelcome byproduct.
eBlame
In a provocative essay, Ting Xu makes the important point that both China and the US are turning cyber warfare into a lever to divide the two nations, a means to heighten tension and conflict. Ting thinks this is the wrong approach.
Rather than turn the internet into a new battlefield for superpowers, strategists on both sides should use the issue as a means to bring the two countries together in an effort to manage a species of violence that neither government truly controls. Ting suggests that it is time to end the mistrust and start chasing miscreants: neither side can afford for this issue to sunder the world’s most important relationship. Equally important, however, is that unless the world’s powers coordinate strategy, tools, and tactics to respond to cyber warfare, eventually it will be used as the ultimate asymmetric weapon against all human institutions.
You may not fully agree, but Ting’s viewpoint is an important addition to the discussion of both cyberwar and Sino-US relations.
Related articles
- US Congress Goes Offensive on Cyber Warfare, Authorizes “Military Activities in Cyberspace” (techie-buzz.com)
- Is China Feeling Contained? (pekingreview.com)
- Hidden Dragon: The Chinese cyber menace (go.theregister.com)
- Chinese Hackers and Cyber Realpolitik (circleid.com)
- Feds Cite Chinese Cyber Army Capability (informationweek.com)
Not Ready for World Domination
“China Still has a Long Way to Go” by Jonn Lee; Asia Pacific Bulletin No. 134; East-West Center, Washington, D.C. October 24, 2011
The University of Sydney’s Lee offers us a number of reasons why we should not be worried about China taking on America for the world…yet.
ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing | East-West Center | www.eastwestcenter.org
Amitav Acharya, “ASEAN’s Dilemma: Courting Washington without Hurting Beijing,” Washington, DC: East-West Center, October 18, 2011 Some good advice on how ASEAN needs to be careful to walk its precarious path between the two Pacific Superpowers, China and the US.
