| | | | Why America and China Are On a Collision Course | | The Trump administration took a trade shot at China with its decision Monday to impose tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines. The move reflects two different views of the world that have placed the two countries on a collision course, suggests Andrew Browne in The Wall Street Journal. It wasn't meant to be this way, but it's probably going to get worse.
Many in the West used to believe that as China grew, "its commercial standards and political values would gradually converge with their own. Wasn't that the unspoken deal when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001?" Browne writes. "If it was, the bargain is dead."
"The state made an about-face; government enterprises are marching again to the drumbeat of industrial policy. Private enterprise is on the defensive. Foreign investors are treated with growing intolerance."
"The transformation has gathered pace under President Xi Jinping. From the vantage point of the Chinese leadership in Beijing, US capitalism and democracy are digging their own graves, while Donald Trump is trashing America's global reputation."
"Mr. Xi sees a historic opportunity to ditch the U.S. template and advance the Chinese development model as a credible alternative. His signature Belt and Road initiative to join East Asia and Europe with transport and energy infrastructure is a sign of confidence that China has the ability to reshape the global trade and investment environment." - Tit for tat? The Trump administration is set to learn an important lesson about China following its announcement on tariffs, Bloomberg reports: "Beijing can punch back."
"China's economic might gives President Xi Jinping's government the leverage it needs to strike back decisively, including scaling back purchases of American products and subjecting well-known US companies with large Chinese operations to tax or antitrust probes." - Meanwhile, in Tokyo…A year to the day after President Trump signed an executive action pulling the US out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 11 remaining countries announced they have reached an agreement, to be signed in March.
Per CNN: "The new deal is supposed to cut barriers on trade in goods and services between the 11 markets, which make up about 15% of the global economy. It also includes rules on environmental and labor standards."
| | Tillerson's Welcome Truth Telling | | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's suggestion of a long-term US presence in Syria prompted predictable complaints that America finds itself in another forever war, the Washington Post editorializes. Actually, it is a welcome nod to reality.
"The United States cannot prevent a resurgence of al Qaeda and the Islamic State, prevent Iran from building bases across Syria, or end a civil war that has sent millions of refugees toward Europe without maintaining control over forces and territory inside the country, just as Russia and Iran do," the Post argues. "Only by being a factor on the ground will Washington be taken seriously as it seeks the implementation of a U.N. peace plan for Syria — a road map calling for nationwide democratic elections — that Russia and the regime of Bashar al-Assad are trying to bury."
| | America's "Fortune Cookie" Strategy | | | The new National Defense Strategy outlined by Defense Secretary James Mattis is missing something important, writes Anthony Cordesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies: An actual strategy.
Neither the new defense strategy nor the National Security Strategy outlined last month give "any real specifics as to what changes are planned in any given aspect of national security, force levels and structure, mission capabilities, modernization and technology, alliances, nuclear forces, or any other aspect of defense," Cordesman writes.
"There are no time scales, no description of how the US will deal with its ongoing 'long wars,' no specifics about changes in any given strategic partnership or alliance, no new actions to deal with nuclear modernization or the problem of proliferation, and no specifics about changes in readiness, personnel, procurement, RDT&E, or any other aspect of US national security policy. If one cuts through all of the prose, no one can find the 'beef.' Instead, both the NSS and NDS are the equivalents of a very long strategic fortune cookie."
"Moreover, US military strategy does not live in a broader political vacuum that can ignore valid needs for other forms of federal spending. One of the key aspects of achieving a consensus around major changes in strategy, and in achieving a consistent and efficient build-up of given aspects of US forces and capabilities, is the need to realistically assess how US military spending impacts the overall US budget and competes with domestic entitlement and discretionary spending." | | Why China Isn't Getting the Baby Boom It Wants | | China's decision in 2015 to abandon its one-child rule in favor of a "one couple, two children" policy reflected growing concern among policymakers that the country is facing a demographic crisis as its population rapidly ages. So far, though, the policy isn't going according to plan, suggests Issaku Harada in the Nikkei Asian Review.
"Some 17.23 million children were born in China last year," Harada writes. But "first births dropped 2.49 million for an overall decline. Though the commission in 2015 predicted that the policy shift would push births above the 20 million mark, that total now seems far out of reach."
"The steep cost of education, including expensive after-school classes and private tutoring services, seems to have made many households in major cities think twice about having a second child. A shortage of affordable and reliable kindergarten and day care services could also be to blame, since both parents work in most Chinese households."
Meanwhile, the "working-age population -- those between 16 and 59 -- declined for the sixth year straight to 902 million. According to the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the number of people between the ages of 18 and 44 will decrease by 30 million from 2017 to 2022.
"These demographic changes threaten the finances of a host of social programs, including the health insurance and pension systems."
| | The Crises We're Not Talking Enough About | | Between President Trump's tweets, Pyongyang's missile tests and next month's Winter Olympics, North Korea has been an almost constant presence in the headlines. But a new study suggests that despite this, it's still the country we're not talking enough about.
"Although North Korea…has been in the news for nuclear and political tensions, little is known about the country's humanitarian situation," according to aid group CARE International, which has ranked the most under-reported humanitarian crises based on the number of media articles published last year.
"The UN estimates that 18 million people – 70 percent of the population – are food-insecure and rely on government food aid. Furthermore, two in five North Koreans are undernourished. The impacts of the country's political regime together with global warming and frequent natural hazards, such as floods, rising temperatures or prolonged droughts, exacerbate the dire humanitarian situation."
Rounding out the top five most under-reported crises are "drought and repression" in Eritrea, "persecution and violence fueling a humanitarian crisis" in Burundi, "13 years of war and hunger" in Sudan, and a "silent humanitarian tsunami" in the Democratic Republic of Congo. | | | | | | |
