If you know me or have been reading this blog with any regularity, you know I’m a skeptic. Not about climate change but about China. I made an analysis several years back that, in retrospect, seems mistaken. I perceived that the economic and political pressures of the liberal democracies would push and pull China toward more openness. It hasn’t worked out that way. The Chinese Communist Party, for example, is as dug in on its oppression of the Tibetans as it ever was. People, around the world, let the Chinese get away with murder. Thomas Friedman, for instance, showed a shocking lack of perspective recently when he called the Chinese leadership “enlightened.” My response to that noted, among other things, and in case Friedman hadn’t been paying attention, that China is a police state.
Paul Krugman called China out the other day on one of the most important issues facing the world: the PRC’s “predatory” mercantilist policy. Krugman noted that “…the biggest problems with China involve climate change.” (More about that in a moment.) However, he devoted his column to describing the impact of their currency policy and trade surplus. “My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that for the next couple of years Chinese mercantilism may end up reducing U.S. employment by around 1.4 million jobs.” But we let the Chinese get away with this in the name of … what again? Krugman – a Nobel laureate, lest you’ve forgotten – punctures the two great arguments against confronting the Chinese: that they’ll dump the trillions of US Treasuries they’ve accumulated and protectionism is always a bad thing. Read this column to learn why confrontation is good.
Meanwhile, we saw China’s performance in Copenhagen for two weeks. For one thing, they displayed, in my opinion, a bizarre intransigence on the critical issue of MRV – measurement, reporting and verification. (I addressed that in this post during the last week of the conference.) The Chinese also put up procedural roadblocks at every opportunity during the entire two weeks.
To top it off, the Chinese, for all intents and purposes, blew a substantive agreement out of the water at the end. Mark Lynas had a blockbuster look at this in “The Guardian” recently: How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room. Lynas, attached to a foreign delegation, witnessed “profoundly shocking” behavior by Wen Jiabao and the PRC delegation during the intense talks that took place on the last day. He describes Wen’s attempts to insult the other world leaders and representatives of key constituencies by sending lower-level functionaries to key meetings. He notes how China blocked mention of the GHG emission targets previously agreed at the MEF and G-8 meetings last July, and mentioned in late drafts in Copenhagen. There’s more. China was, to India’s shame, backed in much of this by Manmohan Singh.
How to proceed? Krugman, regarding the trade imbalance, calls for greater protection from Chinese goods. I have noted that US climate legislation may well include mechanisms for protection against other countries ignoring necessary GHG-reduction measures. And why not? See this recent post, for instance, for more on the “carbon tariff.”
Are we going to roll up our sleeves, here in the US and throughout the world, and finally call for responsible behavior, not only on greenhouse gases but on democracy and predatory economic behavior from China? John Ikenberry wrote in this brilliant essay at “Foreign Affairs” two years ago, that “The rise of China does not have to trigger a wrenching hegemonic transition. The U.S.-Chinese power transition can be very different from those of the past because China faces an international order that is fundamentally different from those that past rising states confronted. China does not just face the United States; it faces a Western-centered system that is open, integrated, and rule-based, with wide and deep political foundations.” We simply have to remember, don’t we, that there are rules and China does not get a free pass.
I quoted Christopher Patten here a year ago: “The suggestion that there is a correct way of dealing with China – humoring China, acceding to Chinese sensitivities, allowing China to rewrite whatever language it is negotiating in, leaning over backward not to provoke or annoy China, playing endlessly to what (as we shall see) are China’s not very awesome strengths – blights the West’s attempts to develop any sort of sensible strategic relationship with Peking. Perhaps as important, it is bad for China; it encourages China to think that it can become part of the modern world entirely on its own terms. Were that to happen, it would make the world a more dangerous and less prosperous place.”
It’s time for Obama, Brown, Merkel, and the others to heed this quintessential wisdom.
