Germany’s biogas plants face bankruptcy as subsidies run out
In this newsletter:
1) How the media was misled about the UN’s disaster report
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 20 October 2020
2) A staggering rise in dishonesty
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 20 October 2020
2) A staggering rise in dishonesty
Climate Discussion Nexus, 21 October 2020
4) Andrew Montford: No warming in the UK?
GWPF Observatory, 20 October 2020
3) Climate experts fly more often than other scientists
The Times, 20 October 2020
The Times, 20 October 2020
4) Andrew Montford: No warming in the UK?
GWPF Observatory, 20 October 2020
5) U.S. to be Subject to UN “Climate Conciliation Commission” if Re-Joins Paris Climate Pact
Chris Horner, Government Accountability & Oversight, 19 October 2020
6) Germany’s biogas plants face bankruptcy as subsidies run out
Deutsche Welle, 19 October 2020
Chris Horner, Government Accountability & Oversight, 19 October 2020
6) Germany’s biogas plants face bankruptcy as subsidies run out
Deutsche Welle, 19 October 2020
7) Irish farmers revolt: Carbon Tax rises a ‘vicious attack on rural Ireland’
The Independent, 20 October 2020
The Independent, 20 October 2020
8) And Finally: Empire of Emperors: What Is China, and Why You Should Worry About It
David P Goldman, Tablet Magazine, October 2020
David P Goldman, Tablet Magazine, October 2020
Full details:
1) How the media was misled about the UN’s disaster report
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 20 October 2020
The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) should withdraw its false claims and admit that the UN disaster report is fatally flawed.
You will all recall the latest UN report, which claimed there had been a massive rise in “reported disasters” in the last two decades, compared to the previous two.
The Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, published an article in response complaining that the UN were not comparing like with like, because many smaller disasters were simply never recorded in the past. They also published this reply from Joris van Loenhout, researcher at the Belgian Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED):
"From about 1960-1970 onward, the completeness of the data is much greater, and the share of missing disasters much smaller. We are constantly working to improve completeness, and this is also happening for previous years and decades. For this reason, statements made in 2004 and 2006 are now somewhat outdated, as the completeness of the database has since improved.”
I have now had time to analyse CRED’s database, EM-DAT, and have the figures to show that Loenhout has not been telling the truth.
In their 2004 report, “Thirty Years of Natural Disasters”, CRED included this table of the number of natural disasters:
Note that between 1979 and 1998, there was a total of 3973 disasters.
EM-DAT’s database now provides a tool to filter data. I have downloaded all natural disasters for 1979 to 1998, but excluding biological and extra-terrestrial. The 2004 report confirms that the same criteria has been used for the table above:
Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 20 October 2020
The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) should withdraw its false claims and admit that the UN disaster report is fatally flawed.
You will all recall the latest UN report, which claimed there had been a massive rise in “reported disasters” in the last two decades, compared to the previous two.
The Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, published an article in response complaining that the UN were not comparing like with like, because many smaller disasters were simply never recorded in the past. They also published this reply from Joris van Loenhout, researcher at the Belgian Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED):
"From about 1960-1970 onward, the completeness of the data is much greater, and the share of missing disasters much smaller. We are constantly working to improve completeness, and this is also happening for previous years and decades. For this reason, statements made in 2004 and 2006 are now somewhat outdated, as the completeness of the database has since improved.”
I have now had time to analyse CRED’s database, EM-DAT, and have the figures to show that Loenhout has not been telling the truth.
In their 2004 report, “Thirty Years of Natural Disasters”, CRED included this table of the number of natural disasters:
Note that between 1979 and 1998, there was a total of 3973 disasters.
EM-DAT’s database now provides a tool to filter data. I have downloaded all natural disasters for 1979 to 1998, but excluding biological and extra-terrestrial. The 2004 report confirms that the same criteria has been used for the table above:
This makes a nonsense of van Loenhout’s claims. An extra 13 events, out of a total of over 4000 in twenty years, is nothing more than a tidying up, and can in no way be seen as “improving completeness”. Neither does it justify the assertion that CRED’s own statements in 2004, to the effect that data was far to incomplete then to make any meaningful comparison with now, “are now somewhat outdated, as the completeness of the database has since improved”.
Full story
2) A staggering rise in dishonesty
Climate Discussion Nexus, 21 October 2020
The UN did as only the UN can do, putting out a supposedly authoritative scientific report on “staggering” rise in climate disasters over the last 20 years that was seized upon with enthusiasm by the usual suspects.
Regrettably the report itself turned out to be a climate disaster when it was pointed out that according to the data in the report disasters have been declining globally over the past 20 years. Calls for the report’s retraction went unheeded, naturally, the fact that the conclusions were the exact opposite of the evidence being considered insufficient grounds for the UN to admit error.
If you’re wondering how they could be so stupid, it’s tempting to say lots and lots of practice. And to point to the undoubted fact that climate alarmists have become so accustomed to running the table in the media and politically by dismissing their opponents as moral and mental defectives that they’ve become lazy. But the technical answer is that they compared 2000-2019 with an earlier period, 1980-1999, in which data was known to be collected far less rigorously carefully, so the number of disasters in the earlier period was understated.
As Paul Homewood observed, after citing readily available and widely known details of the process, “Put simply, many more disasters are recorded nowadays because of better reporting systems. But this does not mean more are actually occurring.”
If you think the UN was cherry-picking, you’re right. If you think it was shamelessly cherry-picking, you’re completely right. As Homewood shows, the improved (and better-funded by USAID) data collection system kicked in right at the end of… well, you saw it coming, right? The 1990s.
Indeed, “there is a sharp jump in 1999/2000”. Exactly the break between the two data sets the UN compared. It’s not a subtle error; indeed it is hard to convince oneself it is innocent though as so often, people very sure of what they’re going to find often manage to find it in a process of unconscious self-deception rather than the deliberate deceit of others.
Homewood’s point is underlined by one category in which we do seem to have fairly reliable data, namely deaths from natural disasters or, as the UN prefers to call them, “climate-related disasters”. Deaths are more likely to be noticed and recorded than other less serious results even of very serious events. And, he says, “Note that despite the claimed increase in disasters, the death toll has nearly halved”, from 995,300 deaths due to “3,656 climate-related events” in the earlier period to 510,837 deaths due to a reported “6,681 climate-related disasters” in the latter.
It’s revealing that the report itself refers to “events” in the earlier period and “disasters” in the latter. Because it’s not science, it’s propaganda in the worst sense of that word.
Climate scientists take about five flights a year on average for work while other researchers take four. Climate professors catch nine flights a year compared with eight for all professors.
Even when trips for fieldwork were removed from the comparison, climate scientists still flew more than scientists from other disciplines.
The difference could be that climate scientists attend more international conferences, according to Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist and lead author of the study. […]
Academics at Cambridge face permanent restrictions on flying to conferences as the university tries to go carbon neutral.
Full story
Editor’s note: Climate scientists are clearly the favourites to win this year’s Emmas award, our annual celebration of achievement in world-leading eco-hypocrisy.
4) Andrew Montford: No warming in the UK?
GWPF Observatory, 20 October 2020
We are supposed to be in a climate emergency, you know.
The Central England Temperature Record is the Met Office’s preferred measure of UK temperature, at least as far as climatology is concerned. Although the number of sites underlying the record is tiny and all of them are situated in the Midlands, how these stations have changed over time is well understood. That means that any corrections applied to the record will be as reliable as they can be. And the series is very long, going right back to 1659 (although a pinch of salt is necessary if one is to take the early part of the record seriously).
It’s always interesting to see just how much global warming we are on the receiving end of here in the UK, according to this Rolls-Royce of temperature records. After all, climate change means that flowers are flowering earlier, birds are arriving earlier from their wintering grounds, and that all manner of ills are currently befalling us.
Doesn’t it?
Here’s the graph:
The UN did as only the UN can do, putting out a supposedly authoritative scientific report on “staggering” rise in climate disasters over the last 20 years that was seized upon with enthusiasm by the usual suspects.
Regrettably the report itself turned out to be a climate disaster when it was pointed out that according to the data in the report disasters have been declining globally over the past 20 years. Calls for the report’s retraction went unheeded, naturally, the fact that the conclusions were the exact opposite of the evidence being considered insufficient grounds for the UN to admit error.
If you’re wondering how they could be so stupid, it’s tempting to say lots and lots of practice. And to point to the undoubted fact that climate alarmists have become so accustomed to running the table in the media and politically by dismissing their opponents as moral and mental defectives that they’ve become lazy. But the technical answer is that they compared 2000-2019 with an earlier period, 1980-1999, in which data was known to be collected far less rigorously carefully, so the number of disasters in the earlier period was understated.
As Paul Homewood observed, after citing readily available and widely known details of the process, “Put simply, many more disasters are recorded nowadays because of better reporting systems. But this does not mean more are actually occurring.”
If you think the UN was cherry-picking, you’re right. If you think it was shamelessly cherry-picking, you’re completely right. As Homewood shows, the improved (and better-funded by USAID) data collection system kicked in right at the end of… well, you saw it coming, right? The 1990s.
Indeed, “there is a sharp jump in 1999/2000”. Exactly the break between the two data sets the UN compared. It’s not a subtle error; indeed it is hard to convince oneself it is innocent though as so often, people very sure of what they’re going to find often manage to find it in a process of unconscious self-deception rather than the deliberate deceit of others.
Homewood’s point is underlined by one category in which we do seem to have fairly reliable data, namely deaths from natural disasters or, as the UN prefers to call them, “climate-related disasters”. Deaths are more likely to be noticed and recorded than other less serious results even of very serious events. And, he says, “Note that despite the claimed increase in disasters, the death toll has nearly halved”, from 995,300 deaths due to “3,656 climate-related events” in the earlier period to 510,837 deaths due to a reported “6,681 climate-related disasters” in the latter.
It’s revealing that the report itself refers to “events” in the earlier period and “disasters” in the latter. Because it’s not science, it’s propaganda in the worst sense of that word.
3) Climate experts fly more often than other scientists
The Times, 20 October 2020
Scientists who specialise in climate change fly more than other researchers, according to a study by Cardiff University that has prompted calls for them “to look in the mirror” before demanding that others cut emissions.
The Times, 20 October 2020
Scientists who specialise in climate change fly more than other researchers, according to a study by Cardiff University that has prompted calls for them “to look in the mirror” before demanding that others cut emissions.
Climate professors take about nine flights a year on average
Climate scientists take about five flights a year on average for work while other researchers take four. Climate professors catch nine flights a year compared with eight for all professors.
Even when trips for fieldwork were removed from the comparison, climate scientists still flew more than scientists from other disciplines.
The difference could be that climate scientists attend more international conferences, according to Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist and lead author of the study. […]
Academics at Cambridge face permanent restrictions on flying to conferences as the university tries to go carbon neutral.
Full story
Editor’s note: Climate scientists are clearly the favourites to win this year’s Emmas award, our annual celebration of achievement in world-leading eco-hypocrisy.
GWPF Observatory, 20 October 2020
We are supposed to be in a climate emergency, you know.
The Central England Temperature Record is the Met Office’s preferred measure of UK temperature, at least as far as climatology is concerned. Although the number of sites underlying the record is tiny and all of them are situated in the Midlands, how these stations have changed over time is well understood. That means that any corrections applied to the record will be as reliable as they can be. And the series is very long, going right back to 1659 (although a pinch of salt is necessary if one is to take the early part of the record seriously).
It’s always interesting to see just how much global warming we are on the receiving end of here in the UK, according to this Rolls-Royce of temperature records. After all, climate change means that flowers are flowering earlier, birds are arriving earlier from their wintering grounds, and that all manner of ills are currently befalling us.
Doesn’t it?
Here’s the graph:
So it would be fair to say that there has been no warming at all in the Central England Temperature Record for 30 years. Thirty years! This is rather remarkable in my opinion. We are supposed to be in a climate emergency, you know.
But temperatures haven’t changed since I was a student.
But temperatures haven’t changed since I was a student.
5) U.S. to be Subject to UN “Climate Conciliation Commission” if Re-Joins Paris Climate Pact
Chris Horner, Government Accountability & Oversight, 19 October 2020
Paris Climate ‘Accord’ FOIA Case: State Dept. Releases, Withholds Parts of Memo to Sec. John Kerry Requesting Authority to Sign Paris Agreement
It appears possible that, come January, the United States will rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement, committing to adopt the “Green New Deal” agenda (now rebranded for political purposes as “Net Zero”). This will not be accomplished by Senate ratification, but by the ‘pen and a phone’ approach first used by President Obama to claim U.S. “ratification” of what is on its face and by its history a treaty, requiring approval instead by a two-thirds Senate vote.
A document released last week by the State Department, in Freedom of Information Act litigation by the transparency group Energy Policy Advocates, includes a reminder of one consequence of this for America, should it occur: claiming to “re-join” the Paris climate treaty will immediately subject U.S. energy policy — and thereby economic and to some extent trade policy — to a UN “climate conciliation commission”.
Already, as the United Kingdom has shown, developed nations’ courts can be expected to cite the Paris climate treaty in blocking infrastructure development. The UK’s Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Heathrow Airport cannot be expanded because that would violate the UK’s ‘net zero’ commitment under Paris.
Then, Canada offered a reminder how progressive politicians will raise taxes in the name of complying with Paris: In Ottawa, “The parliamentary budget officer says the federal carbon tax would have to rise over the coming years if the country is to meet emission-reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.”
Now we are reminded that the U.S. can also expect a forum for antagonistic nations to bring their complaints about U.S. policy and claims of non-compliance with Paris’s required “Net Zero” agenda for resolution.
This might be one of the reasons that avoiding a Senate vote on Paris was a key objective of the Obama administration, which stated in August 2015 before there ever was even Paris text, that it would not be a “treaty”.
This was the lesson learned from the U.S. Senate’s refusal to consider the 1997 Kyoto treaty: If the Senate votes on it, its details would be debated, and defeated.
That objective of an end-run around the U.S. Constitution’s process was shared by European nations: the French climate change ambassador to the U.N. and President of the Paris COP, Laurence Tubiana and Laurent Fabius, respectively, both openly admitted.
Yet, those same countries treated Paris as a treaty for their own ratification purposes. This cavalier approach to the Constitution in the Obama years makes it easy to forget the U.S. supposedly has the more stringent system for joining international entanglements.
Instead, the Obama team showed what one Senate Foreign Relations Committee lawyer decried as a “disturbing contempt for the Senate’s constitutional rights and responsibilities” by circumventing its constitutional treaty role on Paris. Unfortunately, the institution shrunk from a constitutional fight, and all parties spoke as if calling Paris an “accord” instead carried weight — though the the Kyoto Protocol was alternately called the “Kyoto Accord” and, yes, was still a treaty.
This brings us to the newly released (in part) memo — “Request for Authority to Sign and Join the Paris Agreement, Adopted under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” [UNFCCC] — reaffirming that Paris is the result of “a 2011 negotiating mandate (the “Durban Platform”)”. The Durban “mandate” was to “adopt…a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020”.
Full post
6) Germany’s biogas plants face bankruptcy as subsidies run out
Deutsche Welle, 19 October 2020
Electricity from biogas power plants in Germany can currently be fed into the grid at a guaranteed price. But the country’s renewable energy law faces revision that could end subsidies; operators fear for their business.
click on image to watch video
Chris Horner, Government Accountability & Oversight, 19 October 2020
Paris Climate ‘Accord’ FOIA Case: State Dept. Releases, Withholds Parts of Memo to Sec. John Kerry Requesting Authority to Sign Paris Agreement
It appears possible that, come January, the United States will rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement, committing to adopt the “Green New Deal” agenda (now rebranded for political purposes as “Net Zero”). This will not be accomplished by Senate ratification, but by the ‘pen and a phone’ approach first used by President Obama to claim U.S. “ratification” of what is on its face and by its history a treaty, requiring approval instead by a two-thirds Senate vote.
A document released last week by the State Department, in Freedom of Information Act litigation by the transparency group Energy Policy Advocates, includes a reminder of one consequence of this for America, should it occur: claiming to “re-join” the Paris climate treaty will immediately subject U.S. energy policy — and thereby economic and to some extent trade policy — to a UN “climate conciliation commission”.
Already, as the United Kingdom has shown, developed nations’ courts can be expected to cite the Paris climate treaty in blocking infrastructure development. The UK’s Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Heathrow Airport cannot be expanded because that would violate the UK’s ‘net zero’ commitment under Paris.
Then, Canada offered a reminder how progressive politicians will raise taxes in the name of complying with Paris: In Ottawa, “The parliamentary budget officer says the federal carbon tax would have to rise over the coming years if the country is to meet emission-reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.”
Now we are reminded that the U.S. can also expect a forum for antagonistic nations to bring their complaints about U.S. policy and claims of non-compliance with Paris’s required “Net Zero” agenda for resolution.
This might be one of the reasons that avoiding a Senate vote on Paris was a key objective of the Obama administration, which stated in August 2015 before there ever was even Paris text, that it would not be a “treaty”.
This was the lesson learned from the U.S. Senate’s refusal to consider the 1997 Kyoto treaty: If the Senate votes on it, its details would be debated, and defeated.
That objective of an end-run around the U.S. Constitution’s process was shared by European nations: the French climate change ambassador to the U.N. and President of the Paris COP, Laurence Tubiana and Laurent Fabius, respectively, both openly admitted.
Yet, those same countries treated Paris as a treaty for their own ratification purposes. This cavalier approach to the Constitution in the Obama years makes it easy to forget the U.S. supposedly has the more stringent system for joining international entanglements.
Instead, the Obama team showed what one Senate Foreign Relations Committee lawyer decried as a “disturbing contempt for the Senate’s constitutional rights and responsibilities” by circumventing its constitutional treaty role on Paris. Unfortunately, the institution shrunk from a constitutional fight, and all parties spoke as if calling Paris an “accord” instead carried weight — though the the Kyoto Protocol was alternately called the “Kyoto Accord” and, yes, was still a treaty.
This brings us to the newly released (in part) memo — “Request for Authority to Sign and Join the Paris Agreement, Adopted under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” [UNFCCC] — reaffirming that Paris is the result of “a 2011 negotiating mandate (the “Durban Platform”)”. The Durban “mandate” was to “adopt…a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020”.
Full post
6) Germany’s biogas plants face bankruptcy as subsidies run out
Deutsche Welle, 19 October 2020
Electricity from biogas power plants in Germany can currently be fed into the grid at a guaranteed price. But the country’s renewable energy law faces revision that could end subsidies; operators fear for their business.
click on image to watch video
7) Irish farmers revolt: Carbon Tax rises a ‘vicious attack on rural Ireland’
The Independent, 20 October 2020
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael face a rural backlash as rural voters are left counting the cost of the latest carbon tax hike in last week’s budget.
There has been intense criticism of the hike from farm organisations and rural TDs.
IFA farm business chair Rose Mary McDonagh said farmers do not have an alternative to fossil-fuelled tractors and machinery.
There is no viable alternative to agri-diesel. Therefore, she said, the carbon tax cannot achieve behavioural change and is unfair to farmers.
Full story (€)
The Independent, 20 October 2020
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael face a rural backlash as rural voters are left counting the cost of the latest carbon tax hike in last week’s budget.
There has been intense criticism of the hike from farm organisations and rural TDs.
IFA farm business chair Rose Mary McDonagh said farmers do not have an alternative to fossil-fuelled tractors and machinery.
There is no viable alternative to agri-diesel. Therefore, she said, the carbon tax cannot achieve behavioural change and is unfair to farmers.
Full story (€)
8) And Finally: Empire of Emperors: What Is China, and Why You Should Worry About It
David P Goldman, Tablet Magazine, October 2020
An excerpt from David Goldman’s new book: ‘You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World’
David P Goldman, Tablet Magazine, October 2020
An excerpt from David Goldman’s new book: ‘You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World’
Lyndon Johnson apocryphally told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that it was hard to be president of three hundred million Americans. She replied, “It’s harder to be prime minister of three million prime ministers.” Xi Jinping might add that it is even harder to be the emperor of 1.4 billion emperors. We tend to think of the West as individualistic and China as collectivist. In some ways that’s true, but the notion can also be misleading.
As individuals, the Chinese are the most ambitious people in the world. Ambition is the sinew that holds together the sprawling, multi-ethnic, polylingual empire that China has been since its founding. For 5,000 years, China’s ambition has been constrained by the limits of nature. The great flood plains of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers supported a larger population at higher living standards than any other part of the pre-modern world. But China’s riparian civilization was also fragile, subject to periodic drought, famine, and flood, leading to civil unrest, barbarian invasion, and prolonged periods of chaos.
All this compelled China to turn inward. Its forays into the broader world were brief and abortive. No more; China can feed itself and control natural disasters. It has turned outward to the world and is seeking its place in the sun. This is a grand turning point in world history. For most of the past five thousand years, China has been the world’s most populous and wealthiest civilization in the world, but largely indifferent to events outside its borders. Now its ambitions are turned outward.
Its 2,500-year-old system of elite formation now embraces the ten million students who take the annual college entrance exam. It has absorbed tens of thousands of the best Western scientists and engineers into its project for technological dominance, above all through Huawei, its bridgehead in the world market. And it proposes to extend its imperial principle of assimilation through infrastructure to the whole of the Eurasian continent, through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Western observers often attempt to draw a bright line between the good Chinese people and the nasty Chinese government. That is an unsubtle form of condescension, and wholly misguided. The character of China’s state is shaped by the ambitions of the Chinese people. Sadly, the distinction between “good people” and “bad state” is a misjudgment on which America’s China hawks and China doves agree.
Since the late Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms in 1979, the liberal foreign policy establishment has argued that economic liberalization inevitably would lead to political liberalization. That didn’t happen. The China hawks argue that the Chinese people will rise up and overthrow their Communist overlords if the United States applies sufficient pressure, by placing tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. That won’t happen, either.
The Liberal Illusion That Prosperity Promotes Political Reform
China doves promised that China’s economic success inevitably would lead to political reforms. Prominent among them is former Goldman Sachs President John L. Thornton, now a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and chairman of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution, Washington’s oldest and best-funded think tank. In 2009, Thornton told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that China was making progress towards democracy:
Premier Wen Jiabao consistently advocates for the universal values of democracy. He has defined democracy in largely the same way as many in the West would. “When we talk about democracy,” Premier Wen said, “We usually refer to the three most important components: elections, judicial independence, and supervision based on checks and balances.”Premier Wen’s emphasis on universal values of democracy reflects new thinking in the liberal wing of the Chinese political establishment. He likely represents a minority view in the Chinese leadership, but like many other ideas in China during the past three decades, what begins as a minority view may gradually and eventually be accepted by the majority.Now let me move to the second issue: New and far-reaching economic and socio-political forces in present-day China.
Let me briefly mention three such forces, the first is the new and ever-growing middle class, the second is the commercialization and increasing diversity of the media, and the third is the rise of civil society groups and lawyers. These new players are better equipped to seek political participation than the Chinese citizens of 30 years ago …Political participation through institutional means remains very limited. Yet, the ongoing political and intellectual discourse about democracy in the country, the existence of a middle class, commercialization of the media, the rise of civil society groups, the development of the legal profession, and checks and balances within the leadership are all important, contributing factors for democratic change in any society. In all these aspects, China is making significant progress.
China remains quite as authoritarian as ever it was, and technology has vastly increased the ability of its government to monitor and control the details of everyday life. The government of China knows where every smartphone is at all times, and can verify that it is carried by its registered owner through a vast network of facial recognition cameras. Soon it will require Chinese citizens to log on to the internet through facial recognition to police the online activity of the whole of society.
American hawks have argued that the Chinese political system is fragile and that the Communist Party can be toppled by outside pressure. Prominent among them is Gordon Chang, whose book The Coming Collapse of China appeared in its first edition in 2001. “The People’s Republic is a paper dragon,” Chang argued. “Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao’s death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.” That was 18 years ago. In the meantime China’s per capita GDP has quintupled. Chang continues to provide newspaper and television commentary predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese system.
Hawks and doves are both wrong because they share the same false premise: For a society to succeed, they both believe, it must look and act like the United States of America. The doves thought that China would evolve into something like a Western democracy and succeed, while the hawks thought China would remain authoritarian and collapse. In fact, China remained authoritarian and deepened its economic success. Hawks and doves suffer from a sort of narcissism. They cannot conceive that a society so radically different from ours can flourish.
China Is in a Golden Age
But China has flourished. As Francesco Sisci observes, China is in a Golden Age, the first time in history that no one need fear going hungry. Since 1986, household consumption in China has risen seventeen-fold—that is, 1,700%. That isn’t a fabrication of Communist Party statisticians. Chinese now in their thirties, spent their early childhood in homes with dirt floors and outhouses. They now live in newly built apartments with central heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. In 1986, just 3% of Chinese had access to universities or professional schools. That proportion grew to 50% by 2017. One-third of new labor force entrants have university degrees, and one-third of those are engineers. The Chinese buy 400 million smartphones a year and 25 million automobiles. Chinese commute to work in Shanghai on high-speed trains that reduce the distance from Wilmington to New York City to a 45-minute interval. We will take a closer look at China’s economy in another chapter.
We have to stop viewing China through a half-silvered mirror that reflects our own image back at us, and understand China on its own terms. It isn’t a pleasant picture, but we need to take a hard look at it.
Full essay
As individuals, the Chinese are the most ambitious people in the world. Ambition is the sinew that holds together the sprawling, multi-ethnic, polylingual empire that China has been since its founding. For 5,000 years, China’s ambition has been constrained by the limits of nature. The great flood plains of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers supported a larger population at higher living standards than any other part of the pre-modern world. But China’s riparian civilization was also fragile, subject to periodic drought, famine, and flood, leading to civil unrest, barbarian invasion, and prolonged periods of chaos.
All this compelled China to turn inward. Its forays into the broader world were brief and abortive. No more; China can feed itself and control natural disasters. It has turned outward to the world and is seeking its place in the sun. This is a grand turning point in world history. For most of the past five thousand years, China has been the world’s most populous and wealthiest civilization in the world, but largely indifferent to events outside its borders. Now its ambitions are turned outward.
Its 2,500-year-old system of elite formation now embraces the ten million students who take the annual college entrance exam. It has absorbed tens of thousands of the best Western scientists and engineers into its project for technological dominance, above all through Huawei, its bridgehead in the world market. And it proposes to extend its imperial principle of assimilation through infrastructure to the whole of the Eurasian continent, through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Western observers often attempt to draw a bright line between the good Chinese people and the nasty Chinese government. That is an unsubtle form of condescension, and wholly misguided. The character of China’s state is shaped by the ambitions of the Chinese people. Sadly, the distinction between “good people” and “bad state” is a misjudgment on which America’s China hawks and China doves agree.
Since the late Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms in 1979, the liberal foreign policy establishment has argued that economic liberalization inevitably would lead to political liberalization. That didn’t happen. The China hawks argue that the Chinese people will rise up and overthrow their Communist overlords if the United States applies sufficient pressure, by placing tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. That won’t happen, either.
The Liberal Illusion That Prosperity Promotes Political Reform
China doves promised that China’s economic success inevitably would lead to political reforms. Prominent among them is former Goldman Sachs President John L. Thornton, now a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and chairman of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution, Washington’s oldest and best-funded think tank. In 2009, Thornton told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that China was making progress towards democracy:
Premier Wen Jiabao consistently advocates for the universal values of democracy. He has defined democracy in largely the same way as many in the West would. “When we talk about democracy,” Premier Wen said, “We usually refer to the three most important components: elections, judicial independence, and supervision based on checks and balances.”Premier Wen’s emphasis on universal values of democracy reflects new thinking in the liberal wing of the Chinese political establishment. He likely represents a minority view in the Chinese leadership, but like many other ideas in China during the past three decades, what begins as a minority view may gradually and eventually be accepted by the majority.Now let me move to the second issue: New and far-reaching economic and socio-political forces in present-day China.
Let me briefly mention three such forces, the first is the new and ever-growing middle class, the second is the commercialization and increasing diversity of the media, and the third is the rise of civil society groups and lawyers. These new players are better equipped to seek political participation than the Chinese citizens of 30 years ago …Political participation through institutional means remains very limited. Yet, the ongoing political and intellectual discourse about democracy in the country, the existence of a middle class, commercialization of the media, the rise of civil society groups, the development of the legal profession, and checks and balances within the leadership are all important, contributing factors for democratic change in any society. In all these aspects, China is making significant progress.
China remains quite as authoritarian as ever it was, and technology has vastly increased the ability of its government to monitor and control the details of everyday life. The government of China knows where every smartphone is at all times, and can verify that it is carried by its registered owner through a vast network of facial recognition cameras. Soon it will require Chinese citizens to log on to the internet through facial recognition to police the online activity of the whole of society.
American hawks have argued that the Chinese political system is fragile and that the Communist Party can be toppled by outside pressure. Prominent among them is Gordon Chang, whose book The Coming Collapse of China appeared in its first edition in 2001. “The People’s Republic is a paper dragon,” Chang argued. “Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao’s death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.” That was 18 years ago. In the meantime China’s per capita GDP has quintupled. Chang continues to provide newspaper and television commentary predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese system.
Hawks and doves are both wrong because they share the same false premise: For a society to succeed, they both believe, it must look and act like the United States of America. The doves thought that China would evolve into something like a Western democracy and succeed, while the hawks thought China would remain authoritarian and collapse. In fact, China remained authoritarian and deepened its economic success. Hawks and doves suffer from a sort of narcissism. They cannot conceive that a society so radically different from ours can flourish.
China Is in a Golden Age
But China has flourished. As Francesco Sisci observes, China is in a Golden Age, the first time in history that no one need fear going hungry. Since 1986, household consumption in China has risen seventeen-fold—that is, 1,700%. That isn’t a fabrication of Communist Party statisticians. Chinese now in their thirties, spent their early childhood in homes with dirt floors and outhouses. They now live in newly built apartments with central heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. In 1986, just 3% of Chinese had access to universities or professional schools. That proportion grew to 50% by 2017. One-third of new labor force entrants have university degrees, and one-third of those are engineers. The Chinese buy 400 million smartphones a year and 25 million automobiles. Chinese commute to work in Shanghai on high-speed trains that reduce the distance from Wilmington to New York City to a 45-minute interval. We will take a closer look at China’s economy in another chapter.
We have to stop viewing China through a half-silvered mirror that reflects our own image back at us, and understand China on its own terms. It isn’t a pleasant picture, but we need to take a hard look at it.
Full essay
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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