The 2011 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) annual report to Congress has been released. Read the report here (PDF).
politics
Beijing, Washington, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige
Remarks to the China Maritime Studies Institute Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) 10 May 2011, Newport, Rhode Island The organizers of this conference recruited me to address it because I am a sort of living fossil. As a certified antique, exhumed from the diplomatic strata of the past, they thought I could not avoid having an historical perspective on things. While you were pondering naval matters today, they were sure that I would be contemplating my navel and reminiscing about ancient events. I don’t want to disappoint them, so bear with me as I speak of things as they were forty years ago today – on Monday, the tenth of May 1971. I had then just returned from training in Mandarin and Taiwanese. In the inscrutable wisdom of government personnel systems, this was thought somehow to qualify me to become, among other things, the officer-in-charge of the United States’ virtually non-existent economic interaction with the China mainland. (In all of 1971, bilateral trade came to less than $5 million. We do more trade with China in a single hour now.) Instead of focusing on that not very demanding aspect of my job, on that Monday, forty years ago, I was busy at other things. Like a few other colleagues
[Unfinished] Personal Thoughts on the U.S. Economic Collapse
![[Unfinished] Personal Thoughts on the U.S. Economic Collapse](http://quelquefois.net/toujours/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/unemployment.gif)
It’s ironic that I started (and, obviously, never finished) writing this blog just a few days before I was offered a fellowship. Four days later, I was approached by another company for interviews. Things seem to be coming together now, and I’ve never been more grateful for the support I received from friends, colleagues, and mentors. Where I go from here is still a mystery, but I remain optimistic, and I think that is the hardest part. ***** I left a stable job (and ample opportunities) in Beijing, China to come back to the U.S. to segue into new experiences and bolster my credentials for a future career (whatever that may be). I am currently an intern at a think tank. While I have never enjoyed my research, workplace, and colleagues more, a modest stipend is hardly sustainable. The employment market for 18- to 24-year-olds is astonishingly poor, with the unemployment rate hovering around 20-24%, which is about twice as high as the national average (see The Economist graph below). In the past several months, I: applied to over twenty-four jobs; was interviewed multiple times; was a finalist for a position that was ultimately given to someone completely overqualified. It is
Social Media and Networks, A Follow-Up
With a new Facebook movie out, documentaries and conferences revolving around Twitter, and recent theories on how 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg will take over the world, I was a little more than pleased when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s recent New Yorker piece, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” on how social media has not and will not revolutionize citizen action. It echoed my discontent with the so-called social activists heralding a new era of political protest during the Iranian elections. A good point to remember (and to apply) to other situations is how hard it is to look from outside a bubble when you’re encapsulated within it yourself. That is, it is difficult to conceive of a tweet not having as much social worth as you think because you are invested in it as a crucial networking tool. In addition to that, we are restricted by our own limitations–language, personal biases, and limits on information dissemination topping the list. How many of us read non-English tweets that disagree with our own political and social views? A well written argument by Gladwell, but like all his writing, imperfect. Gladwell also touched upon the inherent flaws in “networks,” in which
Teach for America? Yeah, Right
I recently read this article in the NYT on the popularity and exclusivity of a Teach for America teaching position. I’m still adamantly opposed to TFA. So some overachieving kid with big dreams of world change gets thrown into an inhospitable atmosphere and tries to make good of all that’s bad. With little training, he tries to create a positive impact, but before he can achieve that, his stint is over and he leaves after two years with a sense of moral righteousness. Kid, now with a “prestigious” bullet point on the resume, continues to build his future career, likely unrelated to TFA, make big money, leaving underperforming students feeling abandoned yet again by the system. A simple Google Scholar search shows more results that undermine the notion that TFA brings “positive” change to underperforming schools across the country than supporting it. One study says: Findings for 5 school districts, roughly 300 new teachers, show that students of under-certified teachers (including teachers from the “Teach for America” program) make about 20% less academic growth than do students of regularly certified teachers. While I believe the underlying philosophy of TFA is still honorable, the pageantry and self-righteousness involved on the applicant
Background on Xinjiang and Chinese Policies in the Region (1800s-2001)
Uyghurs are an ethnic minority of Turkic origin and Islamic faith that live in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR, or Xinjiang) in China, which today accounts for one-sixth of its land mass. As of 1998, Uyghurs comprised 45 percent of the 18.5 million citizens in Xinjiang; the Han Chinese comprised 40.58 percent of Xinjiang’s population. Two cultures, the Han Chinese represented by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Uyghurs (the largest minority group in Xinjiang), provide two different interpretations of the history of the formation and maintenance of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The CCP and Chinese scholars argue that Xinjiang has always been a part of China. Xinjiang has been under political contestation since the late eighteenth century, when the Qing reconquered the area. Political unrest became increasingly prominent since the late-1800s and sporadically manifests into violent opposition, especially during the late-1980s and early-1990s. From the 1820s to the 1870s, the Uyghurs posed a significant challenge to Qing conquests in the area until the Qing re-conquered the majority of the land. In 1884, the Manchu Qing empire brought Xinjiang under its control and incorporated it into the Chinese empire. The Manchus appointed hereditary princes and staffed local
The Iranian Election Through Colored Glasses
First, Twitter did not revolutionize citizen protests. If anything, it made for lazy journalism, wherein reporters and journalists spend time reading what other people have tweeted than providing their own analysis of the situation. It should be known that Iran still remains a vastly opaque country, with information becoming even more muddled as the Iranian government shuts down many communication services and blocks web access. Just today, reports of the Obama Administration scrambling for reliable information made the news. While Twitter has provided breaking, up-to-the-minute news about what’s going on in Iran, is the source to be trusted? You have to wonder who on the “other side” is reporting. There have been many false reports of protest traps, Mousavi under house arrest, and election results . Additionally, there has also been speculation that Iranian hardliner elites are manipulating the protests to “hoist themselves back into power.” Just like any other news source, you cannot take what you read at face value. What Twitter, YouTube, and 24-hour news syndicates have proven, though, is that media is very saturated in the average computer-user’s life. Thus, the repeated news stories from citizen journalists, bloggers, and reporters lead us to believe that much more
Tiananmen Square Faces Umbrella Dilemma
James Fallows painted a bleak picture of what it’d be like to visit TAM Square on June 4. So when I decided to visit today, I decided to forgo bringing my Canon 5d and brought my compact camera, instead. Indeed, more plainclothes security than visitors that day. Some followed us, others tried to photograph us, but all-in-all a very uneventful day (as expected). Guard standing at one of the entrances to the Square Sea of umbrellas Just standing around with umbrellas, very inconspicuous Tons of ?? (wujing, special police forces)
The Great Firewall Blocks Flickr, Twitter, Among Other Sites
Let today be known as the day the Chinese government impaled the internet with its mighty spear of technology and added Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, bing.com, live.com to its repertoire of blocked sites. Other sites blocked in China include: Blogspot, Tumblr, YouTube, WordPress, China Digital Times, and Huffington Post. 56minus1 speculates this may have to do with Ai Weiwei joining Twitter. Lostlaowai says it has to do with that special 20th anniversary on Thursday. Whatever the reason, this isn’t making my “I hate China” week any better. Edit: an exhaustive list of all the websites “down for maintenance” has been compiled. Check it out here.
Cultural Colonialism?
Yesterday, the WSJ posted an article called “An Expat’s Exotica.” It basically contends that expat havens such as Beijing and Shanghai are no longer considered “exotic” by Western standards because so many Westerners now live there and because these cities can now accommodate the familiar Western lifestyle. The author exalts those who veer off the beaten path, living in exotic places such as Changsha, Hunan or Wuhan, Hubei. He highlights a woman named Janie Corum, who is “pioneering the vast region for American businesses, striving to create a more comfortable environment (emphasis added),” paving the way for Westerners to discover China’s “remote corners.” This is the most ridiculous piece of journalism I have encountered in a while. That people still label countries (or parts of countries) as “exotic” is beyond me. Granted, much of Asia is still a mystery to many Westerners, but that is no excuse to call a culture exotic.* If anything, it a) just proliferates the need among Westerners to “understand” a supposedly mysterious and remote culture by infiltrating or dominating a foreign civilization (a la imperialism, colonialism), and b) perpetuates the notion of “Orientalism,” a European concept invented to label Asia as a place of exoticism,