Commentary on Political Economy

Sunday 31 October 2021

 Why Meta should have been Facebook’s name from the beginning

John Davidson

There’s a lot to joke about in Facebook’s laughable attempt to escape its reputation as the internet’s most toxic company, by renaming itself to Meta and reshaping itself around the futuristic metaverse.


“Mark Zuckerberg has legally changed his name to Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa confirmed today,” joked The New Yorker magazine.


“Meta as in ‘we are a cancer to democracy metastasising into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit,’ ” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat congresswoman, also from New York.


But one joke, in particular, got to the heart of the matter. It was one of the many memes going around the internet last week, about what Meta might stand for if it were an acronym:


Meta: Monetise Everything Through Advertising.


Everything that is toxic about Facebook, from the way it promotes eating disorders in children, to the way it helps undermine elections and promotes the spread of genocidal hate speech, comes down to advertising.


To sell more advertising, Facebook created algorithms that are indifferent to the content they promote, but that are expert at keeping people swiping on their Facebook and Instagram apps longer.


As the social scientist Shoshana Zuboff points out, the algorithms don’t care what emotions the content provokes – it could be the joy of reconnecting with a loved one, or it could be suicidal thoughts, or genocidal anger – so long as they provoke some emotion that keeps people engaged on the platform so they can be monetised through advertising.


In that sense, Meta should have been Facebook’s name from the beginning. Changing the name is Mother Teresa’s way of saying, “OK, I stuffed up, and the new name will make sure I never forget that fact.”


But, of course, Meta isn’t about Facebook leaning into its inherently toxic nature. Meta doesn’t actually stand for Monetise Everything Through Advertising, just as Mark Zuckerberg didn’t actually change his name to Mother Teresa. Those were just jokes.


Meta stands for a new version of the internet, one that will no longer resemble an addictive Instagram app running on a phone screen, and will be more like a video game running on a cryptocurrency platform.


And in this metaverse, the role of advertising companies such as Meta/Facebook and Alphabet/Google is very much up for grabs, presenting lawmakers, regulators and civil society activists with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step in before harm is done, rather than try to regulate the harms away after the fact.


In the metaverse, though, the role of regulators is very much up for grabs, too. Depending on how it emerges, the metaverse might be so decentralised that no one company can ever control more than a small (virtual) island of it, neatly solving the Big Tech competition concerns that have troubled regulators such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission these last several years.


Indeed, the role of anything in the metaverse is up for grabs because the metaverse itself is far from an inevitability. And even if it does come about in a way that’s coherent enough to describe it as a “place”, it’s still far from clear what that place will look like.


It’s entirely possible, for instance, that some of the concepts that underpin current thinking about the metaverse – virtual-reality and non-fungible tokens in particular – will never get beyond curio status, much less become so fundamental to our lives that we all find ourselves living in a virtual world, buying digital simulacrums with cryptocurrency.


Virtual reality, which the metaverse is closely linked to but not completely wedded to, has had the air of “a solution looking for a problem” ever since Telstra did a VR version of the phone directory back in the 1990s.


It certainly was nifty, using your mouse to steer your way through the phone book as if it were a physical space, but could anyone really be bothered?


Having to move through data as if it’s three-dimensional brings into play the fourth dimension – time – and who wants to spend more of that when you can look up a phone number in a 2D search engine much more easily, in a fraction of the time, as Google later proved?


Of course video games and virtual-reality headsets have advanced VR enormously since the days when VRML (Virtual-Reality Modelling Language) was being hyped as the next frontier after HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), but the fact remains that, almost three decades of progress later, it’s still an index.html file that lies at the heart of every major site on the internet.


Nevertheless, it’s fair to say that Mr Zuckerberg’s embrace of the metaverse makes it more likely to come into focus in a coherent way, not less likely.


So now is the time for regulators and lawmakers and activists and voters to turn their minds to the metaverse, and ask themselves what sort of virtual world we want to live in.


Do we want it run by someone like Mark Zuckerberg, or by someone more like Mother Teresa?

Saturday 30 October 2021

Le sfide del G20: democrazie alla prova, i vantaggi dei regimi

di Angelo Panebianco

30 ottobre 2021

Ciò che più conta è avere mostrato all’opinione pubblica mondiale che certi Paesi, le democrazie occidentali in particolare, sono ancora in grado di cooperare fra loro


Troppi e aggrovigliati problemi per un summit solo? Nell’incontro del G20 che si conclude oggi a Roma, tra colloqui ufficiali e riservati, si è discusso di Covid, di clima, di energia, ma anche di Afghanistan, di Mediterraneo, di nucleare iraniano, di Africa.


Al di là delle dichiarazioni e di qualche accordo (global minimum tax) ciò che più conta è avere mostrato all’opinione pubblica mondiale che certi Paesi, le democrazie occidentali in particolare, sono ancora in grado di cooperare fra loro. Anche se le divisioni restano. Molto di più non si poteva pretendere. Basti pensare che il presidente Joe Biden è arrivato a Roma con un piano di investimenti su welfare e transizione ecologica su cui non dispone ancora dell’approvazione del Congresso. O si pensi a come, in tutti i temi, a cominciare da clima e energia, siano in gioco conflitti di interesse anche aspri. E su quanto pesi la competizione fra le grandi potenze.


Il summit è però anche un’occasione per riflettere sul rapporto fra le democrazie e le potenze autoritarie, grandi (Cina, Russia) o medie che siano. Al tempo della Guerra fredda le democrazie occidentali vivevano in un mondo «semplice»: noi di qua, loro di là. Allora gli occidentali, per contrapporsi all’Urss, potevano appoggiare (e lo fecero, eccome) governi autoritari in America Latina, in Asia o in Africa ma quell’appoggio, ai loro occhi, era giustificato, sia pure a malincuore, dalla Realpolitik, ossia dal fatto che occorreva costruire dighe per impedire al comunismo sovietico di dilagare. Oggi il mondo, per gli occidentali, è molto più complicato. Come dimostrano i rapporti difficili e ambigui che tanto gli Stati Uniti quanto gli europei intrattengono con le potenze autoritarie. Con le quali devono cooperare pur cercando di tenerle a bada. Liaisons dangereuses, legami pericolosi.


Le differenze, istituzionali, politiche e sociali, mostrano i punti di forza ma anche di debolezza delle democrazie rispetto alle potenze autocratiche. Le democrazie sono vincolate al rispetto dei diritti dei loro cittadini. Le autocrazie devono soprattutto guardarsi dalle periodiche rivolte popolari. I governi delle democrazie sono condizionati dagli umori e dalla volontà degli elettori. I regimi autocratici hanno i mezzi per manipolare le elezioni (quando e se ci sono). Le democrazie si innestano su società relativamente aperte, ove imprese e associazioni di ogni tipo agiscono, dentro e fuori i confini nazionali , subendo solo un blando controllo governativo. I regimi autocratici esercitano il controllo politico, almeno in linea di principio, su ogni aspetto della vita economica e sociale dei propri Paesi. Queste differenze si riflettono nei rapporti internazionali.


Le democrazie hanno due grandi punti di forza. Quando una democrazia è in pericolo, quando si trova in guerra con potenze autoritarie, e a rischio di invasione, essa mostra una capacità di mobilitare i cittadini per la difesa del Paese superiore a quella che sono in grado di esibire le suddette potenze autoritarie: nelle prove drammatiche i cittadini (della democrazia) sono pronti a sopportare spontaneamente maggiori sacrifici di quelli che sopportano, per pura coercizione, i sudditi, spesso demoralizzati, delle autocrazie. Il secondo punto di forza è che le società aperte (democratiche e occidentali) hanno mostrato una capacità di creare legami transnazionali — la cosiddetta globalizzazione — che le chiuse società autocratiche non avrebbero mai potuto generare (anche se possono, vedi Cina, sfruttarne i vantaggi). Anche il G20 è figlio dell’Occidente e della sua vocazione aperta e includente, rappresenta un’evoluzione dell’originario G7. Forse non è un caso se le due massime potenze autocratiche (Cina e Russia) abbiano partecipato all’incontro di Roma solo in videoconferenza.


Ma ci sono anche i punti di debolezza. Le democrazie, come diceva un osservatore dell’Ottocento, Alexis de Tocqueville, sono meno attrezzate dei regimi autoritari per condurre con efficacia i loro affari esteri. Sono perennemente in bilico fra le esigenze imposte dalla competizione di potenza e i vincoli interni, la necessità di rispondere a elettorati volubili. Gli autocrati, privi di forti vincoli interni, possono pianificare le loro mosse di politica estera anche nel medio termine. I governi democratici si muovono in un orizzonte temporale ristretto, definito dai tempi delle scadenze elettorali (e dagli umori popolari rilevati dai sondaggi). Da qui le tante incertezze e ambiguità. Come mostrato dalla disastrosa ritirata americana da Kabul e dalla più generale incapacità, di americani e europei, di definire chiare linee di azione quando devono fronteggiare l’aggressività dei regimi autoritari. Si pensi alla difficoltà di stabilire come neutralizzare certe mosse del despota turco Erdogan, capo di un Paese membro della Nato ma anche ostile all’Occidente. O come mantenere l’alleanza strategica, essenziale in Medio Oriente, con l’Arabia Saudita senza provocare il rigetto delle proprie opinioni pubbliche, se chi oggi la governa decidesse di nuovo di ammazzare in modo spettacolare — magari proprio in Occidente — qualche altro dissidente (come fece, in un consolato a Istanbul, vittima il giornalista Jamal Khashoggi). O come fare fronte comune davanti alla nuova politica di potenza cinese che ormai si esercita in molti modi e su tutti i tavoli. O come arginare il neo-imperialismo russo. Giusto a proposito: Putin conosce la storia e il suo modello è lo zar Pietro il Grande(vissuto a cavallo fra XVII e XVIII secolo) con i suoi disegni imperiali. L’Occidente ha abolito la storia, vive solo nel presente e non ne sa nulla.


Nel breve termine gli autocrati sono avvantaggiati. Si pensi alla rapidità con cui Cina e Russia hanno accresciuto la loro influenza in Africa. Dopo quella europea dell’0ttocento, la prossima «spartizione» dell’Africa sarà fra russi e cinesi? Nel medio-lungo termine, però, i punti di forza delle democrazie potrebbero favorirle. Soprattutto, potrebbe favorirle la loro vocazione all’apertura (che pure, al momento, le espone a continue, malevoli interferenze) e alla inclusione. Apertura e inclusione che anche il G20 dimostra. Ipotizzarlo può essere, a scelta, il frutto di un eccesso di ottimismo oppure di un realismo non del tutto infondato. 

 ‘People are starting to wane’: China’s zero-Covid policy takes toll

Medical workers arrive at a residential community where people are under Covid lockdown in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia

Medical workers arrive at a residential community where people are under Covid lockdown in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images

Latest Delta variant outbreak is testing the limits of people’s patience with aggressive containment measures


Sat 30 Oct 2021 10.00 BST

Last modified on Sat 30 Oct 2021 10.25 BST


On Friday, the Beijing Daily published an intricate graphic identifying two people sick with Covid-19 and everyone they had infected, detailing the spread of the latest Delta outbreak in the country. The map came amid growing frustration, some panic, and rare protests over the ramifications of China’s effort to remain a “zero Covid” country.


Since the first coronavirus cases were reported nearly two years ago, China has run a zero-tolerance Covid policy. Its success in preventing the virus from spreading across the vast country serves as a stark contrast to the situations in many western countries. Since last year, fewer than 100,000 cases have been officially recorded, among a population of about 1.4 billion. At least 4,634 have died.


By comparison, the US has reported nearly 46m cases and more than 740,000 deaths. The UK has reported nearly 9m cases and more than 140,000 deaths.


But the policy is intense. For just a handful of cases, measures have included strict border closures, localised lockdowns, travel restrictions, and the mass testing of tens of millions of people. Homebound flights booked by Chinese citizens who live abroad are often cancelled at the last minute.


On Thursday, a high-speed train from Shanghai was ordered to halt midway before arriving in Beijing, after an attendant was identified as a close contact of a Covid-positive patient. All the other 211 passengers onboard were immediately quarantined in designated places.


But as the world begins to slowly open up, having decided to live with the virus mitigated by vaccinations, China is one of the few still clinging to a strategy of elimination. Analysts and health experts are starting to ask how long it can last, and the latest outbreak – which began early this month – is again testing the limits.


As of Friday the latest Delta outbreak had infected more than 300 people across 12 provinces, including the capital, Beijing, in little more than a week. The outbreak is centred on the province of Inner Mongolia but was linked to travellers.


In response authorities again launched mass testing, halted transportation and enacted local lockdowns.


Tourists stranded due to Covid in Ejin Banner, Inner Mongolia, leave on a charter train on Thursday

Tourists stranded due to Covid in Ejin Banner, Inner Mongolia, leave on a charter train on Thursday. Photograph: VCG/Getty Images

“Such scenes have become a norm in recent months,” said Yanzhong Huang, a China public health policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “It’ll get more and more difficult over time. But costs are getting higher, and returns are diminishing quickly.”


On Chinese social media, while the majority of commenters support the government’s approach, frustration is also being voiced in Beijing, where one resident said fear had returned to their daily life, while another described people “panicking” as the situation there gets more tense.


“There is banning of dining and lockdowns everywhere. It is too difficult to even just eat normally,” said another resident.


There is also frustration in Ejina Banner in Inner Mongolia, where trapped tourists have posted on social media in recent days.


On Saturday, one tour leader said his guests had been stranded for six days and some elderly participants were running out of medicine. One alleged some guests were showing symptoms but there was no medical institution nearby. “It seems Ejina Banner doesn’t care about people’s life or death,” they said.


“People are starting to wane,” said Prof Chunhuei Chi, the director of Oregon State University’s centre for global health. “As with anywhere in the world we can see dragged into this pandemic for nearly two years, and everywhere we observe pandemic fatigue. That would surely also be affecting Chinese people.”


The current crisis is the second major outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta variant this year; both spread to multiple cities. The first reportedly sparked rare social unrest in Yangzhou this summer, over a government failure to deliver food to residents who had been locked down for three weeks.


People queue up for Covid testing in Yinchuan, in north-west China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region

People queue up for Covid testing in Yinchuan, in north-west China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

At the time, some high-profile Chinese public health experts began to suggest that China should consider moving towards a policy of coexisting with the virus. Their comments received some support from citizens and scientific colleagues, but were drowned out by government censure.


Chi said China’s government was sticking to the strategy because it had little other choice, politically. Citing energy shortages and the housing industry crisis, he said ensuring there was no major outbreak of Covid was “possibly their last stronghold of credibility and legitimacy” domestically.


But there is another motivation, stemming from the international blame directed at China for the pandemic itself, Chi said.


“From the beginning China has persistently wanted to show the world both its capability and credibility in terms of controlling this pandemic. They want to demonstrate how successful China has been in containing the outbreak and its ability to mobilise all available resources.


“They want to be seen as not the cause but as the saviour.”


There is still support for the government’s efforts.


“Personal freedom, personal work, privacy, dignity, and mental health can all be sacrificed,” said one social media user, urging others to look at the bigger picture.


Beijing has admitted the pandemic is the biggest challenge to the forthcoming Winter Olympics in February and Winter Paralympics in March. Recently released guidelines showed entrants will quarantine before entering the “closed loop” of the competition world, completely separated from the rest of China to avoid cross-infection.


Chi said China may be able to use accumulated wealth to sustain the country and itself through another year – crucially, past the date Xi Jinping will probably be seeking a third presidential term – but it is a different story for the people.


“The people are already suffering, particularly the sizeable proportion who are in low to middle income,” he said. “They can’t sustain it. The limit to their mobility and economic activity will worsen their livelihood.”


Both big Delta outbreaks were sourced to domestic tourism – the only remaining market for the industry with no sign of international visitors returning soon, even with Olympic events around the corner.


Huang said that, to some extent, Beijing was also in a dilemma. “We’ve already seen flareups in the countries that adopt a ‘coexistence with Covid’ approach, such as Singapore. If this happens to China too, then people will turn to the government and ask: ‘Why did you not manage to protect us?’


“This is the last thing China wants to see, especially in the run-up to the Winter Olympics early next year.”

 Global activists gather at Rome G20 to demand tougher action on China

Beijing must not be let off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation, say legislators


The Uyghur human rights activist Rahima Mahmut, left, and the Hong Kong activist and politician Nathan Law stand outside the Chinese embassy in Rome.

The Uyghur human rights activist Rahima Mahmut, left, and the Hong Kong activist and politician Nathan Law protest outside the Chinese embassy in Rome. Photograph: Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty

Fri 29 Oct 2021 09.26 BST

First published on Fri 29 Oct 2021 09.24 BST


Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.


Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.


They were addressed remotely by the Taiwanese foreign minister, Joseph Wu, who said Taiwan was on the frontline of an ideological war against expansionist authoritarianism. He urged the west to carry out more freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and at a higher level of intensity.


Wu is on his first trip to Europe since 2019 and had been expected in Rome, but the Italian leg of his journey was cancelled amid speculation that Italy was unwilling to give him a visa at such a sensitive time.


“China is trying to destroy democracy in Taiwan,” Wu said. “Over the past two years we have experienced almost daily and rising incursions into our air defence identification zone and surrounding waters by Chinese military aircraft and vessels. This comes on top of infiltration attempts, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns and hybrid warfare.


“The experience of Hong Kong has shown us how the People’s Republic of China is capable of wrestling away rights that people used to take for granted.”


The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, was not attending the G20 summit in person. He has recently reaffirmed the reunification of Taiwan as a Chinese goal and increased military activity close to the island. China has described the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) counter-meeting as a gathering of secessionists.


Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown urges rich countries to airlift surplus Covid vaccines to world’s poorest Read more

Joe Biden, in an apparent breach of previous US policy, has pledged to protect Taiwan, but there has been ambivalence inside some western governments on how far to hold back from criticism of China in order to gain its cooperation before the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow.


Some Chinese diplomats have said there will be consequences for China’s cooperation on climate if the country’s human rights record is singled out.


The gathering in Rome of Ipac – a body of about 200 global parliamentarians from different political perspectives – is the kind of event that will infuriate China. The group is due to hear from Penpa Tsering, the Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration, from the Hong Kong activist and former politician Nathan Law, and the Uyghur artist and activist Rahima Mahmut.


Dovilė Šakalienė, a Lithuanian MP who was placed under sanctions by China in 2020, said: “We are here to ensure that the People’s Republic of China does not get a free pass at this G20. The leaders of the summit must realise very clearly what is at risk when they treat the PRC as an equal member of the club and what is the cost of making Uyghur genocide, Hong Kong and Taiwan bargaining chips. Let us not fool ourselves into trusting the PRC as a reliable partner in fighting the climate crisis, a state that sanctions human rights defenders and is currently imposing draconian population control measures.”


The former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, also in Rome, described the Ipac bipartisan meeting as “utterly unprecedented”. He said: “Our collective purpose is to demand of the G20 governments that they publicly recognise the enormous threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.


“Whether it is debauching the financial system, disregarding global trading rules, committing genocide against the Uyghurs, trashing the international treaty on Hong Kong or threatening to invade Taiwan – the time has come to call the PRC out.”


How to handle China is a live issue among some of the G20 leaders, with Biden due to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for the first time since the US formed a strategic Indo-Pacific alliance with the UK and Australia, Aukus, which excluded France.


The US was partly motivated by a belief that France was not prepared to take a sufficiently confrontational approach to China. Aukus scuppered an Australian $66bn deal to buy French-made diesel-powered submarines. The French government responded by recalling its ambassadors to the US and Australia. Macron has subsequently spoken to Biden twice by phone, and is likely to use his private meeting in Rome to demand that the US give a strong signal of support for a stronger European defence cooperation, a long-term French demand.


In Germany, China is also a live issue, with the likely new German chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, under pressure from the Green party, his potential coalition partner, to take a tougher line on Taiwan.


Scholz is due to attend the G20 summit alongside the outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel. Germany has been one of the leading European voices backing economic ties with China.


Scholz is negotiating with the German Greens on whether or how to make Taiwan feature in any coalition program. Last week the EU parliament voted by an overwhelming majority in favour of a comprehensive strengthening of relations with Taiwan.


The EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy released last month calls for pursuing “deep trade and investment relationships” with Taiwan, particularly in semiconductors.

Friday 29 October 2021

THIS IS YOUR FUTURE, UNLESS YOU KILL OFF THESE PEOPLE FIRST...

 

Vigilante surveillance: the rise of Beijing’s neighbourhood patrols

Red-armbanded ‘Chaoyang masses’ likened to KGB and MI6 have become a common sight on streets of China’s capital


A Chinese cyclist passes four women from neigbourhood watch committees in Beijing in 2004.

Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent

Sat 30 Oct 2021 05.00 BST

They are often seen wearing a red armband patrolling residential neighbourhoods of Chaoyang, the biggest district of Beijing, which is home to nearly 3.5 million people. On a sunny late autumn afternoon, they will sit with a group of retirees in the sun and chat away. But when an individual of interest turns up, their attention quickly diverts to them.


In Chinese media and official police statements, these vigilante neighbourhood watchers are called the “Chaoyang masses”. Last week, the state-owned Global Times went a step further, quoting internet users as saying the mysterious group “could match four famous intelligence [agencies], the CIA, MI6, KGB and Mossad”. Some jokingly called it “the fifth largest intelligence agency in the world”.


For years, volunteers in the Chinese capital have become a part of its daily social fabric. They help run their neighbourhoods by picking up litter and guiding those who are lost. They also observe, listen and follow every clue that might lead to a potential legal case. The rise of the Chaoyang masses exemplifies the extraordinary ability of the ruling Communist party to mobilise grassroots forces to keep the vast country running, but also to keep its populace in check.


Last week, when the “piano prince” Li Yundi was detained for allegedly hiring a sex worker, Beijing police credited the “masses” in Chaoyang for tipping them off. Internet users were once again fascinated by the role of these vigilant citizens in bringing down yet another celebrity. Discussions about them quickly erupted on social media.


Pianist Li Yundi pictured in 2019. The official China Musicians Association also said that it was expelling him from the organisation.

China’s ‘piano prince’ Li Yundi detained for allegedly hiring sex worker

Read more

So far, the hashtag: #Who exactly are Chaoyang masses? has been viewed at least 310 million times on the Chinese social media site Weibo. “Bravo, Chaoyang masses, you are unsung heroes!” wrote one commenter. “How did people know that it’s a prostitute and her customer? Why not a married couple, friends, hookup buddies?” questioned another.


To longtime Beijingers, the name Chaoyang masses is not unfamiliar, even though they are not the only force running the city’s neighbourhoods, said Ka-ming Wu, an anthropologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who studies the rise of these volunteers. “They are often retirees and female. Many would call them grassroots governing agents for the party state, but grannies themselves speak of their service in terms of contribution and honour.”


Ling Li, an expert in Chinese politics and law at the University of Vienna, said the hyperactivity of these neighbourhood watchers is primarily the result of the expansion of state-sponsored public procurements of social services from private individuals or entities.


“Although such services may be procured also for the provision of social aids, they are predominantly used to help maintain social stability: for instance, intelligence collection, neighbourhood surveillance, post-incarceration monitoring and other crime prevention activities,” Li said.


According to state media, more than 850,000 such volunteers were registered across Beijing in the summer of 2017. In different districts, they have tailor-made names, too. For example, in Xicheng distract, the western part of Beijing with nearly 1.3 million people, they are called “Westside Mamas”. And in Tongzhou in the east, they are called “The common people of Tongzhou”.


But the Chaoyang masses are the best known. So much so that in 2017, Beijing police developed a mobile phone app with the same name, offering citizens a tool with which to provide tipoffs. By then, Chaoyang district officials had claimed that about 130,000 names had already been registered with them – 277 people per square kilometre. On average they provided close to 20,000 tipoffs every month, for sins ranging from terrorism to drug use and theft.


Earlier this year, a Beijing community police officer told a Chinese newspaper that if neighbourhood watchers on the lookout for prostitution find a girl who always goes home in high heels and short skirts at 2am-3 am with different men, “then it’s time for us to step in and check what exactly she does”.


According to the same newspaper report, Chaoyang volunteers are paid 300 yuan to 500 yuan (£35-£60) a month. And if accidents happen in the line of duty, volunteers receive up to 1.2m yuan (£136,000) insurance compensation as well as an additional subsidy.


In recent years, neighbourhood watchers have often been credited with turning in prominent artists and celebrities. These include the Hollywood actor Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee, who was arrested on drug-related charges in 2014. The Chaoyang masses have also been praised for keeping an eye on foreign agents, with news reports from as early as 1974 detailing the way they assisted the police in the arrest of Soviet spies.


Actor Jaycee Chan walks into court in Beijing on Friday.

Jackie Chan's son Jaycee jailed for six months in China on drugs charge

Read more

But not every volunteer is happy at the association with spying, or the claims of financial reward, said Wu. “The state wanted to create an impression that there are gender, class and ethnic internal enemies and emphasise the securitisation of urban life, but most volunteers I spoke to were just there to kill time and keep the community clean and nice.”


Nevertheless, the authorities began to promote them, releasing a set of cartoons for them in 2015. In 2017, China’s president, Xi Jinping, spoke fondly of them when inspecting Beijing. “Where there are more red armbands, there is extra safety and peace of mind,” he said.


“[The Chaoyang masses] have three magic weapons,” declared Xia Ke Dao, a Wechat account under the official People’s Daily, last week after the arrest of the now disgraced pianist Li. “They come in large numbers, they are hard to discern, and they are good at reasoning.”

 DAVID BROOKS


The Self-Isolation of the American Left

Oct. 28, 2021


Credit...Lindsey Wasson/Reuters


946

David Brooks

By David Brooks


Opinion Columnist


Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr. were among the great champions of progressive ideas in the 20th century. But they didn’t exist within an insular, self-validating community whose values and assumptions were often at odds with those of the rest of society.


Increasingly, that cannot be said of modern progressivism.


Modern progressivism is in danger of becoming dominated by a relatively small group of people who went to the same colleges, live in the same neighborhoods and have trouble seeing beyond their subculture’s point of view.


If you want a simple way to see the gap between this subculture and the rest of the country, look at Rotten Tomatoes. People who write critically about movies and shows often have different tastes than the audiences around them, especially when politics is involved.


“Hillbilly Elegy” was a movie in which the hero was widely known, in real life, to be a Republican. Audiences liked the movie fine. It has an 83 percent positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Culture writers frequently loathed it. It has a 25 percent positive critics’ score. That’s a 58-point gap.


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Dave Chappelle recently released a comedy special that took comic potshots at almost everyone. Audiences adored it. It has a 96 percent positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes (though admittedly it’s unclear how many of the raters actually watched it). A small group of people found it a moral atrocity and the current critic score is 44 percent positive. That’s a 52-point gap.


A more significant example of the subculture gap recently occurred at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seventy-three percent of American adults believe race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions decisions, including 62 percent of Black adults, according to a 2019 Pew survey. And yet Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist, was recently disinvited from giving a lecture at M.I.T. about climate science because he’s publicly defended this majority point of view. In other words, the views of the large majority of Americans are not even utterable within certain academic parts of the progressive subculture.


Recent school board wars have been a battle of subcultures.


American educators have been gradually finding ways to teach American history that both honor the nation’s achievements and detail the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism. For example, Georgia’s “Standards of Excellence” for social studies explicitly refers to the suppression of Reconstruction-era Black office-holding. Mississippi’s standards devote a section to civil rights.


On behalf of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Jeremy Stern reviewed the 50 state history standards in 2011 and then again in 2021. To his pleasant surprise, he found that the standards were growing more honest. States were doing a better job at noting America’s sins along with its achievements. The states that had the best civics and history standards were as likely to be red as blue: Alabama, California, Massachusetts and Tennessee (D.C. scored equally well).


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In my experience, most teachers find ways to teach American history in this way, and most parents support it — 78 percent of Americans support teaching high schoolers about slavery, according to a 2021 Reuters/Ipsos poll.


But the progressive subculture has promoted ideas that go far beyond this and often divide the races into crude, essentialist categories.


A training for Loudoun County, Va., public school administrators taught that “fostering independence and individual achievement” is a hallmark of “white individualism.”


A Williams College professor told The Times last week, “This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated.”


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If you want to stage a radical critique of individualism and intellectual rigor, be my guest, but things get problematic when you assign the “good” side of this tension to one racial category and the “bad” side to another racial category.


It is also becoming more common to staple a highly controversial ideological superstructure onto the quest for racial justice. We’re all by now familiar with some of the ideas that constitute this ideological superstructure: History is mainly the story of power struggles between oppressor and oppressed groups; the history of Western civilization involves a uniquely brutal pattern of oppression; language is frequently a weapon in this oppression and must sometimes be regulated to ensure safety; actions and statements that do not explicitly challenge systems of oppression are racist; the way to address racism is to heighten white people’s awareness of their own toxic whiteness, so they can purge it.


Today a lot of parents have trouble knowing what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms. Is it a balanced telling of history or the gospel according to Robin DiAngelo?


When they challenge what they sense is happening they meet a few common responses. They are told, as by Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, that parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach. They are told they are racist. Or they are blithely assured that there is nothing radical going on — when in fact there might be.


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Parents and legislators often respond with a lot of nonsense about critical race theory and sometimes by legalizing their own forms of ideological censorship. But their core intuition is not crazy: One subculture is sometimes using its cultural power to try to make its views dominant, often through intimidation.


When people sense that those with cultural power are imposing ideologies on their own families, you can expect the reaction will be swift and fierce.

 Metaverse stokes meta-anger

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg interacts with an avatar of himself during the virtual Facebook Connect event, where the company announced its rebranding as Meta. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg interacts with an avatar of himself during the virtual Facebook Connect event, where the company announced its rebranding as Meta. Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Facebook is being urged to concentrate on its real world problems rather than divert its energies into the virtual world through its rebranding as Meta.


Not everyone is on board with Facebook‘s parent name change and associated plan to draw in corporations to the economy it generates in virtual reality.


The division of Facebook into two businesses has led to criticism, with some saying it should concentrate on repairing the mess it has created in the real world. There is concern that the metaverse could become a haven for crime and financial and consumer rip-offs, if no effective regulation is in place.


Reset Australia director of tech policy Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran says Facebook’s inability to provide a safe environment for users in the real world won’t be any different in its virtual world. The problem in fact could be amplified. “This is clearly an action of a company in crisis,” says Ms Sooriyakumaran.


“It’s certainly clear that they’re diverting attention away from this publicity crisis that they’re in and they’re avoiding major reform.”


She says the scope for harms in virtual reality are exponential compared with how social media functions now. “If they can‘t even deal with the extensive harms that they are perpetuating in standard social media platforms, the idea that they can now expand to virtual reality without better oversight and regulation is ridiculous, and it’s a terrible development.”


Ms Sooriyakumaran said she fears every cyber harm imaginable such as teenage body issues, cyber-bullying, electoral interference, and enabling slavery would be replicated in the metaverse. There are also the issues of financial regulation and consumer protection if Facebook’s metaverse becomes a huge virtualised economy.


“They‘ve proven they can’t deal with that right now on social media, and now they’re looking to expand their remit broader without proving to its users that they have the checks and balances.”


Others vented concerns about the Facebook platform in general, including civil rights groups warning that Facebook can‘t wish away the harm it has caused.


“The name change from Facebook to Meta may make sense from a commercial marketing perspective, but it‘s also a blatant attempt to distance Mark Zuckerberg’s company from growing outrage over the harm it is causing to democracy in the US and around the world,“ says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the NYU Stern Centre for Business and Human Rights.


“Zuckerberg and his lieutenants can‘t shed the Facebook albatross with a clever brand adjustment. It’s past time for meaningful self-regulation combined with carefully designed government oversight.”


“Facebook thinks everyone’s going to be in the metaverse. It just doesn’t work like that,” says Rolf Illenberger, managing director of VRdirect. He says the Facebook strategy is doomed.


“Facebook says it’s going to rename itself Meta … and spend at least $US10bn this year on Facebook Reality Labs, its metaverse division tasked with creating AR and VR hardware, software, and content,” he says. ”But what is the company missing and where is it doomed to fail?


“Whereas corporate users are looking at the metaverse as a means of conducting global business, enhancing our own personal global footprints, streamlining HR training and a number of different activities that make a positive impact on the bottom line. Facebook isn’t talking about that.“


Communications director Eric Naing of the US based Muslim Advocates says a name change “won’t change the fact that Facebook, or Meta or whatever the company calls itself after its next public relations crisis is still harming the public by allowing hate and misinformation to run rampant”.


“This branding change is straight out of the Facebook playbook. Every time Mark Zuckerberg gets exposed and faces real scrutiny, he throws out some shiny distraction to try and survive the news cycle without having to be held accountable. Today is no different.


“As Muslim Advocates’ advocacy and the advocacy of so many others have shown, Facebook is hurting people all over the world by allowing hate and threats to spread unchecked on their platforms. And as the numerous leaks over the past few weeks have shown, Facebook knows this and keeps doing next to nothing to stop it.


“Instead of worrying about a virtual reality, Facebook needs to actually do something about the hate, violence and even genocide that it continues to enable in our reality.”


A poll by research firm Forrester found that 88 per cent wanted Facebook to first address its core reputation issues before changing its company name. Some 86 per cent of those polled agreed that changing the company name won’t change Facebook’s reputation.


Forrester polled 745 adults in its CommunityVoices Market Research Online Community (MROC) across the US, Canada, and the UK about their attitudes on a possible Facebook parent company name change.


Forrester VP and research director Mike Proulx says that while the name change to Meta will help alleviate confusion by distinguishing Facebook’s parent company from its founding app, a name change doesn’t suddenly erase the systemic issues plaguing the company.

Thursday 28 October 2021

PUT A ROCKET UP XI'S ASS!

 India’s Missile Test Seen as Warning to China After Breakdown in Border Talks

The long-range Agni-5 is country’s only missile capable of reaching Beijing


The Agni-5 missile, on display in New Delhi in 2013, has the power to hit a target up to 3,100 miles away. PHOTO: MANISH SWARUP/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By

Oct. 28, 2021 10:59 am ET

NEW DELHI—An Indian missile test was seen by security experts as a warning shot to China after military talks between the two countries over a contentious border dispute broke down earlier this month.


India’s Defense Ministry said it successfully launched on Wednesday the Agni-5, the country’s longest-range missile, with the power to hit a target up to 3,100 miles away.


Security experts said the launch of the missile, the only one in India’s arsenal capable of reaching Beijing, was a pointed reminder to China that the South Asian nation has the firepower to fight back if tensions flare up again. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have been in a tense standoff along their 2,000-mile border, with tensions escalating after a bloody Himalayan clash in June 2020 left 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers dead.


“India doesn’t speak out through words, they speak out through their actions, in symbolism in the form of these kinds of tests,” said N.C. Bipindra, an independent New Delhi-based strategic affairs and defense analyst. India has tested the Agni-5 seven times, he added.


These tests are especially important because India is trailing China when it comes to missile capabilities, Mr. Bipindra said. China has intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of at least 7,500 miles, more than twice the distance of the Agni-5. India’s other missiles can go up to only 1,900 miles or less.


India and China have engaged in military talks in an effort to cool the standoff, but the latest high-level military talks earlier this month ended with no new agreements and both sides pointing fingers over the lack of progress.


The two countries are digging in as winter approaches, with troop deployments in the border region reaching their highest level in decades. Both countries have built infrastructure in the area this year, including insulated cabins and huts to keep troops stationed there through the frigid Himalayan winters.


China’s People’s Liberation Army has gradually increased its troop presence to at least 50,000, up from about 15,000 last year, according to Indian intelligence and military officials. Those moves have been matched by India, which has sent thousands of troops and advanced artillery to the region, officials said.

 A Farewell to Readers, With Hope

Oct. 28, 2021


Credit... David Smoler

Nicholas Kristof

Mr. Kristof was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and reporter for The Times for 37 years. He is now a candidate for governor of Oregon.


My life was transformed when I was 25 years old and nervously walked into a job interview in the grand office of Abe Rosenthal, the legendary and tempestuous editor of The New York Times. At one point, I disagreed with him, so I waited for him to explode and call security. Instead, he stuck out his hand and offered me a job.


Exhilaration washed over me: I was a kid and had found my employer for the rest of my life! I was sure that I would leave The Times only feet first.


Yet this is my last column for The Times. I am giving up a job I love to run for governor of Oregon.


It’s fair to question my judgment. When my colleague William Safire was asked if he would give up his Times column to be secretary of state, he replied, “Why take a step down?”


So why am I doing this?


I’m getting to that, but first a few lessons from my 37 years as a Times reporter, editor and columnist.


In particular, I want to make clear that while I’ve spent my career on the front lines of human suffering and depravity, covering genocide, war, poverty and injustice, I’ve emerged firmly believing that we can make real progress by summoning the political will. We are an amazing species, and we can do better.


Lesson No. 1: Side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the best.


The genocide in Darfur seared me and terrified me. To cover the slaughter there, I sneaked across borders, slipped through checkpoints, ingratiated myself with mass murderers.


In Darfur, it was hard to keep from weeping as I interviewed shellshocked children who had been shot, raped or orphaned. No one could report in Darfur and not smell the evil in the air. Yet alongside the monsters, I invariably found heroes.


There were teenagers who volunteered to use their bows and arrows to protect their villages from militiamen with automatic weapons. There were aid workers, mostly local, who risked their lives to deliver assistance. And there were ordinary Sudanese like Suad Ahmed, a then-25-year-old Darfuri woman I met in one dusty refugee camp.


Suad had been out collecting firewood with her 10-year-old sister, Halima, when they saw the janjaweed, a genocidal militia, approaching on horseback.


“Run!” Suad told her sister. “You must run and escape.”


Then Suad created a diversion so the janjaweed chased her rather than Halima. They caught Suad, brutally beat her and gang-raped her, leaving her too injured to walk.


Suad played down her heroism, telling me that even if she had fled, she might have been caught anyway. She said that her sister’s escape made the sacrifice worth it.


Even in a landscape of evil, the most memorable people aren’t the Himmlers and Eichmanns but the Anne Franks and Raoul Wallenbergs — and Suad Ahmeds — capable of exhilarating goodness in the face of nauseating evil. They are why I left the front lines not depressed but inspired.


Lesson No. 2: We largely know how to improve well-being at home and abroad. What we lack is the political will.


Good things are happening that we often don’t acknowledge, and they’re a result of a deeper understanding of what works to make a difference. That may seem surprising coming from the Gloom Columnist, who has covered starvation, atrocities and climate devastation. But just because journalists cover planes that crash, not those that land, doesn’t mean that all flights are crashing.


Consider this: Historically, almost half of humans died in childhood; now only 4 percent do. Every day in recent years, until the Covid-19 pandemic, another 170,000 people worldwide emerged from extreme poverty. Another 325,000 obtained electricity each day. Some 200,000 gained access to clean drinking water. The pandemic has been a major setback for the developing world, but the larger pattern of historic gains remains — if we apply lessons learned and redouble efforts while tackling climate policy.


Here in the United States, we have managed to raise high school graduation rates, slash veteran homelessness by half and cut teen pregnancy by more than 60 percent since the modern peak in 1991. These successes should inspire us to do more: If we know how to reduce veteran homelessness, then surely we can apply the same lessons to reduce child homelessness.


Lesson No. 3: Talent is universal, even if opportunity is not.


The world’s greatest untapped resource is the vast potential of people who are not fully nurtured or educated — a reminder of how much we stand to gain if we only make better investments in human capital.


The most remarkable doctor I ever met was not a Harvard Medical School graduate. Indeed, she had never been to medical school or any school. But Mamitu Gashe, an illiterate Ethiopian woman, suffered an obstetric fistula and underwent long treatments at a hospital. While there, she began to help out.


Overworked doctors realized she was immensely smart and capable, and they began to give her more responsibilities. Eventually she began to perform fistula repairs herself, and over time she became one of the world’s most distinguished fistula surgeons. When American professors of obstetrics went to the hospital to learn how to repair fistulas, their teacher was often Mamitu.


But, of course, there are so many other Mamitus, equally extraordinary and capable, who never get the chance.


A few years ago, I learned that a homeless third grader from Nigeria had just won the New York State chess championship for his age group. I visited the boy, Tanitoluwa “Tani” Adewumi, and his family in their homeless shelter and wrote about them — and the result was more than $250,000 in donations for the Adewumis, along with a vehicle, full scholarships to private schools, job offers for the parents, pro bono legal help and free housing.


What came next was perhaps still more moving. The Adewumis accepted the housing but put the money in a foundation to help other homeless immigrants. They kept Tani in his public school out of gratitude to officials who waived chess club fees when he was a novice.


Tani has continued to rise in the chess world. Now 11, he won the North American chess championship for his age group and is a master with a U.S. Chess Federation rating of 2262.


But winning a state chess championship is not a scalable way to solve homelessness.


The dazzling generosity in response to Tani’s success is heartwarming, but it needs to be matched by a generous public policy. Kids should get housing even if they’re not chess prodigies.


We didn’t build the Interstate System of highways with bake sales and volunteers. Rigorous public investment — based on data as well as empathy — is needed to provide systemic solutions to educational failure and poverty, just as it was to create freeways.


In this country we’re often cynical about politics, sometimes rolling our eyes at the idea that democratic leaders make much of a difference. Yet for decades I’ve covered pro-democracy demonstrators in Poland, Ukraine, China, South Korea, Mongolia and elsewhere, and some of their idealism has rubbed off on me.


One Chinese friend, an accountant named Ren Wanding, spent years in prison for his activism, even writing a two-volume treatise on democracy and human rights with the only materials he had: toilet paper and the nib of a discarded pen.


At Tiananmen Square in 1989, I watched Chinese government troops open fire with automatic weapons on pro-democracy demonstrators. And then in an extraordinary display of courage, rickshaw drivers pedaled their wagons out toward the gunfire to pick up the bodies of the young people who had been killed or injured. One burly rickshaw driver, tears streaming down his cheeks, swerved to drive by me slowly so I could bear witness — and he begged me to tell the world.


Those rickshaw drivers weren’t cynical about democracy: They were risking their lives for it. Such courage abroad makes me all the sadder to see people in this country undermining our democratic institutions. But protesters like Ren inspired me to ask if I should engage more fully in America’s democratic life.


That’s why I am leaving a job I love.


I’ve written regularly about the travails of my beloved hometown, Yamhill, Ore., which has struggled with the loss of good working-class jobs and the arrival of meth. Every day I rode to Yamhill Grade School and then Yamhill-Carlton High School on the No. 6 bus. Yet today more than one-quarter of my pals on my old bus are dead from drugs, alcohol and suicide — deaths of despair.


The political system failed them. The educational system failed them. The health system failed them. And I failed them. I was the kid on the bus who won scholarships, got the great education — and then went off to cover genocides half a world away.


While I’m proud of the attention I gave to global atrocities, it sickened me to return from humanitarian crises abroad and find one at home. Every two weeks, we lose more Americans from drugs, alcohol and suicide than in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — and that’s a pandemic that the media hasn’t adequately covered and our leaders haven’t adequately addressed.


As I was chewing on all this, the Covid pandemic made suffering worse. One friend who had been off drugs relapsed early in the pandemic, became homeless and overdosed 17 times over the next year. I’m terrified for her and for her child.


I love journalism, but I also love my home state. I keep thinking of Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,” he said. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”


I’m bucking the journalistic impulse to stay on the sidelines because my heart aches at what classmates have endured and it feels like the right moment to move from covering problems to trying to fix them.


I hope to convince some of you that public service in government can be a path to show responsibility for communities we love, for a country that can do better. Even if that means leaving a job I love.


Farewell, readers!

Wednesday 27 October 2021

 The Fight for Taiwan Could Come Soon


www.wsj.com


This article is in your queue.


The U.S. and China are engaged in a “strategic competition,” as the Biden administration has put it, with Taiwan emerging as the focal point. But an ascendant view inside the administration seems to be that while China represents a serious economic, political and technological challenge to American interests, it doesn’t pose a direct military threat. This is a very imprudent assumption that could lead to war and, ultimately, American defeat. To avoid that disastrous outcome, the U.S. must recognize that China is a military threat—and conflict could come soon.


What makes China an urgent military threat? First, Beijing has made clear it is willing to use force to take Taiwan. Subordinating the island isn’t only about incorporating a putative lost province—it would be a vital step toward establishing Chinese hegemony in Asia. And this isn’t mere talk. The Chinese military has rehearsed amphibious attacks, and commercial satellite imagery shows that China practices large-scale attacks on U.S. forces in the region.


Second, China doesn’t merely have the will to invade Taiwan, it increasingly may have the ability to pull it off. China has spent 25 years building a modern military in large part to bring Taiwan to heel. China now has the largest navy in the world and an enormous and advanced air force, missile arsenal and network of satellites. This isn’t to say China could manage a successful invasion of Taiwan tomorrow—but Beijing could be very close. It will be “fully able” to invade by 2025, Taiwan’s defense minister said recently. China’s military power is improving every month.


Third, China may think its window of opportunity is closing. Many wars have started because one side thought it had a time-limited opening to exploit. Certainly this was a principal factor in the outbreaks of the two world wars. Beijing may reasonably judge this to be the case today.


The U.S. is finally, if too slowly and fitfully, waking up to the China challenge and reorienting its military efforts toward Asia. But these investments won’t really start to pay off until later this decade. Meanwhile, coalitions like the Quad (the U.S., Australia, Japan and India) are coalescing to deny China the ability to dominate the region. From Beijing’s view, if it waits too long, America’s military investments will yield a much more formidable opponent, while an international coalition works to frustrate Chinese ambitions.


This all adds up to a situation in which Beijing may reckon it would be better to use force sooner rather than later. To avoid a conflict, and possible defeat, the U.S. must act quickly to deter Beijing. Repeatedly declaring our “rock solid” commitment to Taiwan is fine but insufficient.


The most urgent priority: Taiwan must radically upgrade its defenses. The island’s own efforts in this regard will decide whether it survives as a free society. Taipei must multiply its defense budget, grossly neglected in recent decades, and focus its expenditures and efforts on two things: degrading a Chinese invasion with the help of the U.S. and making the island resilient to a blockade and bombardment by Beijing. This will require antiship missiles, sea mines and air defenses, as well as stockpiles of supplies to ride out a blockade. The U.S. will need to use every lever to prod or force Taipei to make this shift.


Washington should also bring comparable pressure on Japan, America’s single most important ally. If Taiwan falls, Japan will be under direct military threat from Beijing. And Japan would play a critical role in any defense of Taiwan. Japan should at least double its defense budget (now merely 1% of gross domestic product) immediately.


Meanwhile, the U.S. needs to strengthen its military position west of the international date line. A potent forward-deployed force of Marines, submarines and other survivable forces would ensure America and its allies could blunt any attack against Taiwan. The U.S. must buy and rapidly field systems like antiship missiles and unmanned reconnaissance platforms that would be essential to defeating a Chinese invasion.


Averting war against a superpower will require being ruthless about American priorities, though. Holding the line in Asia will mean the U.S. military will have to stop doing almost everything else other than nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism. The U.S. military will have to scale down in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and even Europe. America had a chance to make a more evolutionary and balanced shift to Asia, but we blew it. Now we need to focus, even if it means the military must effectively drop everything else.


China will surely pose a long-term challenge to the U.S. in areas outside the realm of military power. But the most pressing risk is that Beijing may see an advantage in resorting to war. Convincing Beijing it won’t gain from aggression must be the overriding priority.


Mr. Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.” He served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, 2017-18.



 Why I’ll Keep Saying ‘Pregnant Women’

Being inclusive is important. But it’s not everything.


October 26, 2021

A pregnant person.

Getty

Who can get pregnant? It sounds like a trick question. For centuries, English speakers have talked about “pregnant women” without a second thought, but a vocal and growing movement wants to replace that phrase with the more inclusive pregnant people. And because the United States hasn’t yet found an issue it can’t turn into a polarized debate, a partisan divide has already formed. The received wisdom is now that a good liberal should always say “pregnant people,” if only because it upsets Tucker Carlson.


I disagree. Language evolves, and inclusion for transgender people matters. But for now I will keep using pregnant women in almost all circumstances.


Pregnant people is a relatively new phrase. Google’s Ngram viewer, which trawls English-language books dating back to 1800, finds absolutely no trace of it before 1978, and a sharp spike in the past decade. It now appears in CNN headlines, Planned Parenthood advice, Washington Post columns, and CDC guidelines on COVID-19 vaccination. Its usage reflects a growing awareness that not everyone who gets pregnant defines themselves as a woman—transgender men and nonbinary people can give birth too. (Nonbinary is itself a very recent coinage; the usage examples given in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary date back only to 2015.) Using more inclusive language, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy legal director, Louise Melling, recently told my colleague Emma Green, “should do a fair amount of work to help address discrimination. If we talk about ‘pregnant people,’ it’s a reminder to all of us to catch ourselves when we’re sitting in the waiting room at the GYN that we’re not going to stare at the man who’s there.”


At first glance, the shift to pregnant people seems like a natural extension of feminism’s second wave, which was keenly aware of how language reflected and shaped sexist assumptions about women’s lives and careers. Removing needless gender markers was part of the feminist project. Campaigners objected to the use of mankind in textbooks about humans of both sexes, they coined Ms. to give women an honorific that didn’t reveal their marital status, and they argued for changing references to firemen, chairmen, and newspapermen because women could hold those jobs too.


There was, inevitably, a backlash. Remaking language was deemed threatening and trivial—an outrageous imposition and a distraction from real problems. In 1985, the New York Times columnist William Safire insisted that there was no need to say “he or she,” because “historically, the male usage has embraced the female.” The newspaper backed him, running an unsigned editorial protesting that “non-sexist language” had gone too far, warning that it would end with “the ultimate absurdity in nomenclature,” which was replacing woman with woperson. Correspondents replied that this would surely lead in turn to woperdaughter, leading the Times to conclude in another editorial that “trying to force values onto language, however virtuous they may be, obviously seethes with absurdity.”


Woperdaughter never caught on, but then, it was a deliberately extreme example dreamed up by letter writers so that they could be offended by it. Overall, the advocates for change triumphed, and Douglas Hofstadter’s now-classic parody “A Person Paper on Purity in Language,” also published in 1985, suggests why. Hofstadter, writing in the persona of “William Satire,” imagined a world in which common words referred to race instead of gender—think firewhite instead of fireman. Defending that status quo with mock indignation, he showed how bizarre, patronizing, and reactionary the opponents of gender-neutral language sounded. “It’s high time someone blew the whistle on all the silly prattle about revamping our language to suit the purposes of certain political fanatics,” he wrote, scoffing at the notion “that using the word ‘white,’ either on its own or as a component, to talk about all the members of the human species is somehow degrading to blacks and reinforces racism … There is great beauty to a phrase such as ‘All whites are created equal.’” The essay makes its point elegantly, and most of us now talk about firefighters and clergy without feeling that we are making a political statement.


Given all the effort feminists have invested in making language more equitable, you might expect that they would welcome use of the term pregnant people. But some, including me, are concerned that it obscures the social dynamics at work in laws surrounding contraception, abortion, and maternal health. The argument for the second wave’s language changes was that women fought fires in the exact same way as men, so one word should cover both sexes. That’s a different decision from whether we should keep gendered language to reflect heavily gendered experiences. Earlier this month, the British Pregnancy Advice Service announced that it would continue to use pregnant women—while also stressing that it runs trans-inclusive services—because “from choice in childbirth to access to emergency contraception, our reproductive rights are undermined precisely because these are issues that affect women.”


Perhaps a comparison will help. The same progressives who push for pregnant people have no problem saying “Black Lives Matter”—and in fact decry the right-wing rejoinder that “all lives matter.” Yet, hopefully, all lives do matter—and about half of the people shot by U.S. police are white. So why insist on Black? Because the phrase is designed to highlight police racism, as well as the disproportionate killing of Black men in particular. Making the slogan more “inclusive” also makes it useless for political campaigning.


Pregnant people does the same. The famous slogan commonly attributed to the second-wave activist Florynce Kennedy—“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”—would be totally defanged if it were made gender-neutral. And if we cannot talk about, say, the Texas abortion law in the context of patriarchal control of women’s bodies, then framing the feminist case against such laws becomes harder. No more “men making laws about women.” Instead we get: “Some people who are in charge of policy want to restrict the rights of some other people. We oppose that because people’s rights are human rights!”


Simplicity, clarity, and effectiveness are paramount when language is used in political arguments. Many of the recent attempts to take women out of the abortion conversation result in gibberish—a word salad that helps no one. A few weeks ago, the ACLU gave a vivid demonstration of the problem when it amended Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s famous legal opinion to read: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.” Inspiring! Put that on a T-shirt.


The ACLU’s executive director has since apologized for that tweet, saying that rewriting Ginsburg was an error. But the organization wasn’t alone in trying out the new orthodoxy and then realizing how useless it can be for making a political point. Here is the snap reaction from Joe Biden’s Twitter account to an outrageous law that promises private citizens a bounty for turning in anyone who helps a vulnerable woman procure an abortion: “Texas law SB8 will significantly impair people’s access to the health care they need—particularly for communities of color and individuals with low incomes,” wrote Biden (or, more likely, a young staffer). “We are deeply committed to the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade and will protect and defend that right.”


This is an inch away from the kind of anemic corporate speak that promises to circle back with stakeholders on this quarter’s key performance indicators. Another way to write the Biden tweet would be: “The new Texas abortion law is an attack on women and their right to receive medical care. It will hurt poor women most, and Black women, and Latina women. We will defend the constitutional right to abortion.” In politics, making a point that most people can’t understand is not very inclusive. (Presumably, the White House agrees with me, because Biden’s later statements used the word women.)


Substituting people for women might emphasize women’s humanity—as some have argued—but it does so at the cost of obliterating the history and theoretical basis of feminism. Yes, women are people. But they are a particular kind of people, the kind of people who have historically been denied the vote, not allowed to own property, excluded from higher education and professional careers, beaten into submission by their partners, and paid lower wages. These things did not happen by coincidence. They were part of a social order—patriarchy—that controlled and monitored female sexual purity and reproduction. Dismantling that system is not as simple as declaring women to be people too and then retiring in triumph. To combat a problem, you have to be able to name it.


This is my position on pregnant people: It’s fine! I have no issue with someone writing about their own experience of miscarriage, or IVF treatment, or parenting, or their shoe size suddenly increasing at 28 weeks and talking about their kinship with other pregnant people. But—and this is crucial—saying “pregnant women” in those situations isn’t grievously wrong either. It’s the language that every adult alive today grew up using, and for 99 percent of English speakers, it’s the language with which they are most familiar. You can argue that the newer phrase is preferable without having to insist that the old one is hateful and its use is slam-dunk evidence of bigotry.


Moving language forward by decree is difficult, unless you’re in one of those dictatorships where the supreme leader renames January after himself. Yet in Britain, where I live, the prime driver of a certain type of trans-inclusive language is not grassroots demand but the lobbying organization Stonewall. It has successfully recommended the removal of gendered language to corporations, universities, police forces, regulators, charities, and government departments, many of which also pay Stonewall a fee to be celebrated as “diversity champions,” according to a recent BBC investigation. Forcing through rapid linguistic change like this freaks people out because they sense that reality itself is shifting—and because language then becomes a test you can fail, even if you don’t mean any harm. To regular people not steeped in the culture wars, discovering that common phrases are now off-limits feels like being expected to know which cutlery to use—an etiquette code set by the rich and well educated.


Perhaps you think that’s unfair, that pregnant people is just a small tweak to language and tweaking language is the least we can do to help marginalized communities. Okay, but we don’t talk about “ejaculators” or “testicle havers” dominating the Texas legislature. We don’t note that only sperm-shooters have ever been president of the United States. Prostate Cancer UK can use the hashtag #MenWeAreWithYou, whereas the medical journal The Lancet talks about “bodies with vaginas” lacking access to hygiene products during their periods. (Sensibly, rather than overhauling its entire vocabulary, Prostate Cancer UK offers some dedicated resources for trans women.) The new rules of language are patchily applied, and deciding when to be maximally inclusive is itself a political choice. Some progressives use pregnant people reflexively, because they assume anything that offends Ted Cruz must be good.


That background makes pregnant people look like an arbitrary shibboleth—a signal that you belong to the correct political tribe. And that is dangerous, because instead of ushering in a new and helpful phrase by explaining and encouraging its use, progressives have turned it into a political purity test. It’s the soup spoon of language. Some in the political middle ground would have happily accepted a calm, reasonable argument in favor of pregnant people but will now regard saying it as a capitulation, a humiliation, an insult—forced deference to values that they do not share.


In the past few years, I’ve become more open to talking about “pregnant people.” It’s not one of those pieces of avant-garde terminology that risks baffling readers who don’t have a Ph.D. in gender studies. Everyone understands what it means, and using it won’t confuse anyone about who is being discussed. I am, however, more skeptical of other ostensibly inclusive language suggestions related to female bodies, such as public-awareness campaigns targeting “people with cervixes.” As Britain’s recent unedifying debate on that subject showed, even senior politicians don’t know what a cervix is or who has one. The Labour Party’s justice spokesman, David Lammy, thought that “a cervix is something you can have following various procedures, hormone treatment, all the rest of it.” (It is not. It is a distinctive physiological structure that keeps the uterus sterile and supports a pregnancy, and it is not constructed as part of a vaginoplasty.) Again, language is not very inclusive if the majority of people don’t understand it. Imagine seeing a poster in a doctor’s office urging “anyone with a cervix” to get a cancer screening, and ask yourself: Might some patients not realize that the message applies to them?


If I’m talking about someone who doesn’t identify as a woman, I would call them a “pregnant person.” That’s common courtesy. I might also use pregnant people as a general term if it feels appropriate—and other people will quite defensibly draw that particular line in a different place from me. Being a minority using services designed for the majority is always hard, whether you are a male breast-cancer patient, a woman experiencing hair loss, a man giving birth, or a woman trying to find work boots to fit her small feet. Inclusion and acceptance are legitimate political goals. But they are not the only goals.


When it comes to this battle, I believe in the right to choose. And I will keep using pregnant women when talking about abortion laws that restrict women’s freedom, and the toll of rape in war zones, and medicine’s lack of research into female bodies. In those cases, trans men and nonbinary people are being swept up in a fight we need to name: the war on women.

 

The tentacles of Hong Kong’s national security laws reach Australia

By Eryk Bagshaw

Inside the Lucky Dumpling Market on the Moon Lantern Trail, Janet Leung wanted to put up some umbrellas.

The Hong Kong stall at Australia’s largest Asian festival in Adelaide was not expecting rain when its performances kicked off last week.

The Hong Kong Cultural Association of South Australia, seen in a performance earlier this year. They wanted to use umbrellas as one of their props for a workshop at the OzAsia festival in Adelaide.

The Hong Kong Cultural Association of South Australia, seen in a performance earlier this year. They wanted to use umbrellas as one of their props for a workshop at the OzAsia festival in Adelaide.

Its team of five had planned an interactive workshop that would take spectators through Hong Kong’s food and cultural scene, then through a century of transformation from a fishing village to an international financial hub.

“And lastly, we told them we will have a yellow umbrella as decoration because it has always been our signature,” said Leung.

That’s when the trouble started.

The organisers of the OzAsia Festival, which is sponsored by the Hong Kong government’s economic and cultural office in Sydney and the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Communications, suspected these weren’t ordinary umbrellas.

“With regards to the yellow umbrellas, we found this online,” said one festival official in an email that linked to the Wikipedia page of the 2014 Hong Kong pro-democracy umbrella movement.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to approve the use of the yellow umbrellas as props or decor.”

The Hong Kong group, which had been rehearsing for months, reluctantly agreed to remove the umbrellas. It just wanted the chance to perform. Then they were told that unfortunately, the festival could not supply them with audio equipment. Undeterred, the performers said they would bring their own.

On September 29, the festival said all the workshops scheduled to take place in the Lucky Dumpling Market had been cancelled due to COVID restrictions (South Australia recorded 0 cases that day).

But when Leung picked up a pamphlet for the festival two weeks later she found there was space for performances from other groups, including at least five from mainland Chinese associations.

An OzAsia spokeswoman said the performances or workshops from other groups had already been scheduled in the initial planning.

“There were no available slots to reschedule the Hong Kong Cultural Association of South Australia,” she said.

One official said to Leung if the “Chinese group or other people are not happy with your yellow umbrella display, we will be in trouble”.

Leung said the group “just wanted to be part of the community”.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam. CREDIT:AP

“We live in Australia, which is a democratic and free country, and we have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. This was a cultural event, not political propaganda. We worry about political censorship, and also we worry about foreign interference. We really want to get an answer.”

The group has written to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher whose department sponsors a section of the festival seeking just that. He has yet to respond. The Department of Foreign Affairs was contacted for comment.

OzAsia said the workshop was cancelled because they needed more staff for extra COVID cleaning measures. A spokeswoman said that the Moon Lantern Trail and Lucky Dumpling Market were inclusive community and family events, “and as such, activities with political or religious content are not scheduled”.

The initial incident, first reported by SBS Cantonese and independently verified by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, is not an isolated one. Another Hong Kong market stall selling crafts at Brisbane Riverside Markets has been moved away from the main thoroughfare after almost 10 months.

The Hong Kong stall at Brisbane’s Riverside Markets.

The Hong Kong stall at Brisbane’s Riverside Markets.

Peter Hackworth, who runs some of Brisbane’s most popular markets, said the stall was moved because of space constraints. “As we are short on space at Riverside in the Garden Market, we do not take political or charities in the main area of the market,” she said.

But the organisers of the Brisbane stall, which sells trinkets and T-shirts, have a different version of events.

“Pro-Beijing people were coming to our stall, shouting and arguing with us and then complaining to the organiser of the market,” said Hong Kong stall host Jacob, who asked to be referred to only by his first name because of concerns for the safety of his family in Hong Kong.

Jacob and others associated with the stalls are so concerned about the national security laws imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong that they are afraid to speak on the record about umbrellas being displayed in Adelaide or T-shirts being sold in Brisbane.

The national security laws are extraterritorial, which means they apply to any activity around the world that could be interpreted as dissent. They are so broad that the Adelaide umbrellas could be seen as a threat to the Chinese state, putting the families of those involved in the stalls in danger.

The market incidents are minor compared to the censorship and political purges under way in Hong Kong but the impact on freedom of expression almost 6000 kilometres away in Australia shows how insidious the laws have become.

In Hong Kong, civil society is reeling from the withdrawal of human rights group Amnesty International from the territory over staff safety fears. A dozen unions and civil rights groups have disbanded after the laws were implemented to end to more than 18 months of protest in the former British colony.

Anjhula Mya Singh Bais, chair of Amnesty’s International Board, said the decision to shut down its operations in Hong Kong had been “driven by Hong Kong’s national security law”.

“The recent targeting of local human rights and trade union groups signals an intensification of the authorities’ campaign to rid the city of all dissenting voices,” she said. “It is increasingly difficult for us to keep operating in such an unstable environment.”

Controversial national security laws for Hong Kong have been passed by China with Beijing saying it will create stability, whilst critics say it will undermine the city's civil and political freedoms.

Even shutting down is now seen as an act of defiance. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Holden Chow Ho-ding accused Amnesty of “smearing the national security law” by daring to leave the city.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam said no organisation should be worried about their “legitimate operations in Hong Kong”.

“[But] if there are individuals and organisations that have been using Hong Kong to spread news or engage in activities [that] are undermining national security, then, of course, they would need to be worried.”