Why China Won't Help with North Korea

At the meeting of the UN Security Council on July 4th, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley called upon the UNSC to condemn North Korea’s ICBM test and impose further sanctions. Russia and China made it very clear that they do not view the situation as terribly urgent, with the Russian ambassador questioning whether the missile should even be considered an ICBM. Ambassador Haley was visibly agitated in her response, saying “If you are happy with North Korea’s actions, veto it (the resolution). If you want to be a friend to North Korea, veto it.”

In 2016, China and Russia allowed the adoption of UNSC resolutions 2321 and 2270, which expanded sanctions on North Korea, but despite their cooperation on sanctions thus far, both countries’ statements at the July 4th meeting included mention of an alternative plan which they referred to as “dual suspension and parallel progress.” They called on the DPRK to suspend nuclear and missile tests and called on the US and South Korea to halt joint military exercises, with both sides thus making concessions in order to lay the ground for negotiations. For a while now, Chinese and Russian diplomats have (rightly) been pointing out that the US and North Korea have set mutually incompatible preconditions for negotiation: the US demands that the DPRK give up its nuclear weapons before talks can proceed, while the DPRK has written its status as a nuclear power into its constitution and demands that the US enter bilateral talks with no preconditions. 

Would China and Russia veto the upcoming resolution, and maybe even propose an alternative resolution condemning the provocative actions on both sides? Given their votes last year, that would surprise me. But given their chaffering about whether or not this was really an ICBM, and their mention of the alternative “dual suspension” plan, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they abstained. Nor would I be surprised if they voted to adopt, but then quietly continued to violate whatever new sanctions were adopted.

President Xi offered his view on the matter a couple days later at the G20, saying, in essence: China supports peace and stability, China supports the existing sanctions (no word on new sanctions), China favors dialog and negotiation, and Seoul should address “China’s legitimate concern” (translation: China will not lift a finger until the US removes THAAD from South Korea).

Remember this tweet?

I consider it quite questionable whether China ever tried. Many observers took heart when China announced in February that they would be reducing coal imports from North Korea, in keeping with Resolution 2321, but there are reasons to think that this had to do with China’s domestic market. Regardless of coal, trade in other goods has continued apace. As Trump noted in a more recent tweet:

Oh well! Had to give it a try! China-NK trade increased 37.4% in Q1 2017, according to China’s official data. That probably does not reflect the full extent of their bilateral trade, as there is considerable black market cross-border trade. And whether or not China has cut coal imports because of Resolution 2321, China has continued importing various minerals from North Korea in violation of Resolutions 2321 and 2270.

So why is China so wishy-washy when it comes to North Korea?

There is reason to expect that China might be willing to cut North Korea loose. Neither the leaders nor the people of China have much respect for Kim Jong Un. He is widely mocked on Chinese social media, where netizens have nicknamed him “Fatty Kim the third”. The last couple years have also seen China issuing harsher rebukes to North Korea via its state media, and in May, North Korean media directly criticized China for the first time, stating: “The DPRK will never beg for the maintenance of friendship with China, risking its nuclear program which is as precious as its own life, no matter how valuable the friendship is.” Also, a somewhat under-reported angle of Kim executing his uncle Jang Song-thaek was that Jang was one of North Korea’s leading advocates for closer ties to China and Chinese-style economic reforms. In short, the relationship is at an all-time low.

China’s relationship with the US may seem quite sunny by comparison. Sure, we have our differences, but whether you label us “strategic rivals” or “frenemies”, it’s hard to deny that China gets a lot out of its relationship with the US, with a trade relationship worth $648.2 billion in 2016 and 300,000 Chinese students in the US. But when it comes to national security, no matter how deep our economic and cultural ties, the Communist Party of China still regards the US as its greatest threat, far more dangerous than North Korea.

The DPRK is an official ally of China, with the Sino-North Korea Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty of 1961 still in effect. The longstanding view in China is that China and North Korea have a relationship “forged in blood” in the Korean War. As Mao used to say, China and North Korea “are like lips and teeth.” On a more analytical level, the Chinese military regards North Korea as a buffer against the United States. That is, a buffer against the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea. If the North Korean state collapsed, China would face a flood refugees, the possible proliferation of nuclear materials into China by the hands of non-state actors, and a united, democratic, capitalist Republic of Korea which might allow US troops to be stationed on its northern border, across the Yalu River from China.

This view of the DPRK as a security asset to China is not unchallenged in Chinese academia and think tank-dom, where a number of prominent scholars have criticized China’s North Korea policy (and yes, scholars are allowed to criticize state policies in China—scholars who are Party members doing research at Party think tanks publishing in Party journals and Party newspapers). Shen Zhihua and Yafeng Xia[1] have argued that the Chinese state is essentially deluded about North Korea. According to them, the Party believes that North Korea, as a socialist state, automatically shares China’s values and therefore is deserving of China’s loyalty. But actually, North Korea is more akin to a militaristic hereditary monarchy, and therefore not ideologically compatible with China. Furthermore, with his erratic and insulting behavior, Kim Jong Un does massive damage to China’s international image. Shen and Yafeng therefore advocate that China should cut off all economic support for North Korea and cooperate with the US in denuclearization. Shi Yinhong[2] has made similar arguments, saying that China cannot simultaneously support the DPRK, uphold stability on the Korean Peninsula, and push denuclearization. His view is that China should use its economic power to punish North Korea for its arrogant attitude toward China.

For now, however, the traditionalist line holds. However much China's leaders are willing to trade with America, send their children to American universities, and buy American real estate, they still don’t trust America when it comes to China’s national security. And why should they? As they see it, America is the only reason they are unable to reunite their country by taking back Taiwan, America backs a newly militaristic Japan which means China ill, America further tries to undermine China’s territorial integrity in the South China Sea, America creates chaos in China’s backyard (see: Afghanistan), America harbors dissidents who would like to topple the Chinese state, America supports “color revolutions” to topple authoritarian governments around the world, and America has military bases in various countries around China’s perimeter. Furthermore, the official line in China is still that America started the Korean War (or as it is known in China, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid North Korea). In short, the Party believes that America and its puppets have long pursued a conspiracy to hold China down and overthrow the Chinese state if possible. And are they wrong?

What about America’s endgame on the Korean Peninsula? Would America really be satisfied simply to get rid of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities? Once we had the DPRK in that position, wouldn’t regime change be next on the list? Or suppose the North Korean state collapsed. When exactly would America withdraw those 28,500 troops? Wouldn’t we want to keep them there, to support South Korea in securing their new borders, reconstruction, whatever?

Instead of complaining about China’s lack of cooperation, perhaps Washington should ask itself: why should China care? How does China stand to gain from cooperating with us? Is a defanged DPRK really in China’s best interest? Have we demonstrated how that may be so? What have we done to reassure China that we respect its national security interests? I believe that a denuclearized North Korea would be in China’s best interest as well as America's. As Zhu Feng and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga have pointed out, the security risks which the DPRK presents to China include: “unintended war, endangers Chinese citizens [via radiation], refugee issues, crime, nuclear blackmail, illicit nuclear proliferation, […] ballistic missile defense, regional nuclear proliferation, regional arms race, damaged credibility, legitimizes US ‘rebalancing.’”[3] That is a not inconsiderable list. And now North Korea has taken to openly criticizing China. So one has to wonder: how is it that America’s government continues to do such a bad job of convincing China that we are trustworthy—or at least worthy of cooperation?

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[1] In Freeman, Carla P. (Ed.). (2015). China and North Korea: Strategic and Policy Perspectives from a Changing China.

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid, p. 43

Who's Nuking Whom?

North Korea’s first successful test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday has made a big splash, and well it should, but in reading the media commentary, I have heard a lot about how the president has or has not bungled North Korea, whether or not China is responsible, and so on, but fairly few details about the precise level of threat posed by the DPRK’s nuclear weapons. Let’s pause for a moment to take nuclear warfare seriously. What is North Korea capable of? What defenses do South Korea, Japan, and the US possess?  

America is not going to be nuked (by North Korea)

Back in May, the US conducted the first ever successful intercept of an ICBM, using the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system stationed at Vandenburg Airforce Base in California. The missile was launched from the Marshall Islands and intercepted over the Pacific Ocean. I think for people who grew up during the end of the Cold War, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that no one had ever successfully conducted a test-interception of an ICBM before. This does not mean, of course, that this particular missile defense system would intercept ICBMs with a 100% success rate in the future. The system has successfully intercepted only 9/17 short- and medium-range missiles launched in tests since 1999. However, our sensors would detect an ICBM fairly soon after its launch, which means we would have the opportunity to launch multiple missiles to the intercept it, so the chance of our successfully intercepting an ICBM is definitely better than half.

Not comforted? Well, ok, but I would also argue that North Korea is not going to launch such a missile for one very important reason: Kim Jong Un does not want to die.

North Korea is a rational actor

People tend to think of North Korea as the wacky land of perfectly synchronized kindergarten accordion ensembles and baffling hairdos. This leads us to a number of illusions, the foremost being that the Kim dynasty is simply crazy. The problem with the label of crazy is that the attribution of a total lack of rationality to a person shuts down any attempt to understand that person’s actions.

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is a rational response to its national security concerns. The conventional (non-nuclear) military capabilities of the US-South Korea-Japan alliance far, far outweigh North Korea’s capabilities. If there were a war, there is basically a 99% probability that North Korea would lose. They are not at all confident that China, their treaty ally, would assist them. Facing this reality, and considering the fact that a state in possession of nuclear weapons has never been invaded, they made the rational choice to equip themselves with a deterrent. A nuclear arsenal gives them Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) vis-à-vis South Korea, and the closer they get to having an arsenal of ICBMs, the closer they get to having MAD vis-à-vis the US. They are simply trying to survive.

America could obliterate North Korea – not to mention planet Earth

Of course, North Korea is still very, very far from having MAD capability in light of the fact that America possesses an estimated 4018 nuclear weapons. Should North Korea launch a first strike, it is a distinct possibility that the president of the United States would decide to use a certain number of those missiles to end the existence of North Korea. For that matter, America has enough nuclear weapons to end all life on Earth. By the way, exactly the same thing could be said of Russia, which possesses 7300 nuclear warheads. If all of these were simultaneously launched at the US, for example, regardless of whether we could intercept a fair number of them, enough would land that it does not take a great leap of the imagination to suppose that humanity would face a nuclear winter scenario.

North Korea is a real threat… to South Korea and Japan

Although I have argued that North Korea is a rational actor, and although I do not believe that Kim Jong Un personally would be willing to face the consequences of launching a nuclear strike, let’s suppose I am wrong. North Korea does not yet possess many ICBMs, but it certainly has enough short- and medium- range ballistic missiles to hit South Korea or Japan with one or more nuclear warheads.

This map shows us how far some of North Korea’s missiles reach (though targeting is another matter). Among those listed here, Nodong is the important one, because this class has been successfully tested numerous times, and they possess a stockpile of a few hundred. These could be used to hit South Korea or Japan with nuclear warheads. The missile which you see Alaska in range of, Taepodong-2, is actually a rocket which has been used to launch a satellite, and there is no evidence that it is intended for use as an ICBM.

Missile defense systems offer South Korea and Japan limited protection

Both South Korea and Japan deploy Patriot missile defense systems from the United States, an earlier version of which had a 40% to 79% success rate against SCUD missiles launched in the first Gulf War. Though the system has since improved, one would like to see a 100% success rate, were one expecting to be attacked.

That's where THAAD comes in. South Korea now possesses another defense against short-range ballistic missiles in the form of the THAAD missile defense system which the US recently deployed in Korea despite strong protest from China (about which more in another post). THAAD has had a 100% intercept success rate in the last eleven trials, and includes "up to 72 interceptors per battery." I take that to mean that if North Korea launched 100 ballistic missiles at once, the single THAAD battery stationed in South Korea would shoot down 72/100. 

As I mentioned above, North Korea has a few hundred Nodong missiles, so the current THAAD battery appears to be a step in the right direction, but it isn't perfect protection. If North Korea launched 300 ballistic missiles at once, aimed at various targets throughout South Korea, this would be what defense experts refer to as a "needle in a haystack" strategy. The idea is that regardless of how accurate one's missile defense system is, if the number of incoming missiles is greater than the number of a defending missiles, some of those incoming are going to get through. The "needle" in this haystack refer to a missile tipped with a nuclear warhead. Some say that there would be no way to defend against this form of nuclear attack, because the missile defense units wouldn’t know which missile to target. Indeed, supposing North Korea used all 10-20 of the nuclear warheads believed to be in its arsenal, attached to 10-20 Nodong missiles, and launched in a barrage of a few hundred, this appears to be a guaranteed method of hitting some targets.

Conclusion: Americans can breathe easy; people in East Asia, not so much.

The even more serious threat which North Korea presents to South Korea is in the form of conventional artillery. North Korea has thousands upon thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul, and should North Korea choose to use them, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in South Korea would die. And that’s only the opening salvo of the war. 

America is not going to be nuked anytime soon, let alone invaded. I could not confidently say the same of North Korea, which is inhabited by millions of real human beings who have thoughts and feelings like you and me. Nor of South Korea.

President Trump might want to consider filling that vacancy.

How to Get Rid of a Presidential Nutjob

"The impeachment of Andrew Johnson"
Theodore R. Davis, Harper's Weekly, April 11, 1868.

How do you get rid of an odious, deleterious, maleficent, malodorous prez or prime minister who needs of rid to be gotten afore the a-fixed term is up? Herein I shall present the alternative methods of three political systems and tell you which one is the best.

Amid the news of the the FBI's investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice, many of us are thinking about impeachment, with practically everybody on the left already having mentally convicted him of treason long ago. It is, in my opinion, entirely reasonable that people should want him out of office, because he doing severe damage to America, though there are two caveats: many people felt exactly the same way about Obama, and Trump has as yet done very little damage to America in terms of domestic policy. Far more dangerous is the way he is reshaping norms (not the least of common decency) and fanning the flames of global anti-Americanism.

We should keep in mind that the way we are supposed to remove presidents from office is by voting for their opponents. But sure, you don’t want to wait four years. Well then, you had damn well better vote for Democratic representatives in 2018, because Republicans aren’t going to impeach him.

On the other side of the pond, meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May’s snap election has resulted in a hung parliament (translation: her party won’t be able to get stuff done). Americans, consider, if you please: if Labor had gotten another couple dozen seats, she would be out of office. Yes, that’s right, in parliamentary democracies, all you have to do to remove your crazy national executive is vote the opposition party into a parliamentary majority. Then their party leader becomes prime minister. Boom—country saved! What’s more, a parliamentary election could happen basically any time at all, should the parliament vote to hold it. All of this could happen in a couple months! Alternatively, the governing party could hold a vote of no confidence in the prime minister and then select a new one. Wham—country saved! That’s democracy, folks.

On the other hand, the Queen could dissolve the parliaments of Canada and Australia, which is a threat to democracy in theory, but European royalty in this century are leery of taking such actions for the good and obvious reason that people wouldn’t stand for it unless the monarch, in so doing, were obeying the will of the people.

In other words, parliamentary democracies are flexible and responsive to the needs of their constituents. In other words, they have more democratic legitimacy than the American system, even when they are constitutional monarchies. Words are unstable. Their connotations shift until their denotations have shifted, too. Political words are particularly shifty little buggers. If a president, a hundred years ago, had acted in excess of the authority constitutionally granted to him, people might have said that he was “acting like a king.” But nowadays, it would be far more accurate to say of a monarch flouting the will of the people that “her majesty is acting like a president.”

America is anomalous in being a stable presidential democracy. In some sense too stable. Granted, the constitution did not set up a system stable enough to avert civil war, but consider that we have not had a real constitutional crisis, large scale political violence, or a change in our system of government since 1865. Few countries can make a similar claim. Take a look at other presidential democracies in the Americas. The problem with presidential democracies is that removing the president is hard, and when people try, the president usually becomes a dictator and jails/kills them.

But thank your ever-lucky stars that you don’t live in a “real democracy.” Let us ponder, for a moment, what would be necessary to remove from office the president of a Communist country. We might, for example, consider a hypothetical East Asian unitary one-party state governed by the eternal wisdom of the heroic vanguard of the people. Ooo, but which one? Hint: it rhymes with finer. Not that I am suggesting that anyone actually would be so ungrateful as to want to have a say in selecting the head of Party-state, especially when one considers the obvious wisdom of a Party which has “lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.” But, you know. Just a stray thought. Let’s say I’m “letting a flower bloom.”

The presidency, in this perhaps mythical country, is a composite office. There is a position of head of state which is translated into English as president. Typically, the holder of that office is also the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Also, this selfsame person is usually the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. So that makes him head of state (mostly ceremonial), head of Party (most important), and head of military (important). With me so far?

Now the thing you must understand is that without the Party, there is no state. For every government office, there is a Party office shadowing it. The Party decides; the government implements (that’s also true in America, by the way, though our government officials tend to exercise their decision-making faculties more autonomously. The other key difference, of course, is that we have two parties, who switch places once in a while more-or-less in accordance with the will of the people [not that I’m implying that “the Party” does not govern in accordance with the will of the people. I would never say that]).  

As General Secretary of the Central Committee is the most important office, let’s look at how a person gets in there. The first thing you’ll want to do is be a member of the Party. The second thing is to get elected to higher and higher levels of the Party’s organization (whose precise details I shall omit here) over the course of many years of meritorious service. The third thing is to get elected to the Central Committee (of the Party). The fourth thing is to get elected to the Political Bureau of the Central Committee (the Politburo). The fifth thing is to get elected to the Standing Committee of the Politburo. Finally, they can make you General Secretary.

Note that these elections tend to be pretty harmonious (that is to say, not especially competitive). If there were, say, 206 seats up for grabs in the Central Committee, you might have something like 227 candidates (I have definitely maintained plausible deniability. Those numbers could refer to approximations of the actual numbers in either of two or three real states, or maybe a fictional one!).

Review:

Party

V

Various levels

V

Central Committee

V

Politburo

V

Politburo Standing Committee

V

General Secretary of the Central Committee (of the Communist Party; also president; also Chairman of the Central Military Commission; known in English simply as “president”)

So what if you’re not a member of the Party? Can you vote for somebody for one of these offices? Actually, yes. Depending on how well this has been implemented thus far where you happen to live, there is the possibility that you may vote for your local Party representative, who will go on to vote for all of the above. This is to say that this particular mythical state which I am describing does have a certain degree of democratic legitimacy. Though the elections may or may not be competitive, they have become more so in recent years. Needless to say, you need to be a Party member to run.

So what if—Marx forbid!—you were crazy enough to think that in some tenuously plausible alternative reality you might just go so far as to perhaps begin to contemplate the possibility of maybe kind of considering ejecting the president from office before he has duly completed the constitutionally mandated term of said office (five years, two terms) in accordance with the will of the people? Well, you might begin by joining the Party. You would also definitely be a whiny little ingrate who has no patriotism and no shame!

But hey, American reader—who says you can do anything about Trump? Huh, smart guy? Well, you could elect a Democratic representative to the House, and they might or might not move to begin impeachment proceedings, should the special prosecutor find that the President is probably guilty of a crime. Actually, impeachment is a strange process: it’s kind of an alternate version of a criminal trial, except the House is the prosecutor and the Senate is the jury. The House votes to impeach, then the Senate has to vote to convict. Then what? Who knows? Probably a coup or something. It’s never happened!

Speech Is a Weapon

Fake news (RT)

On a recent trip to England, as I waited for an evening flight, I lay channel-surfing on the bed in my hotel room. There was one show about recent immigrants called “Why Don’t You Speak English?” This struck me as topical. There were also many channels full of boring garbage, just like in America. 

And then I landed on RT (formerly known as Russia Today). There was a man with black glasses, unruly hair, and a goatee shouting in some apparent distress about fake news. I believe he said something to the effect of, “IT’S FAKE NEWS! THIS FAKE NEWS, IT’S NOT REAL! IT’S ALL FAKE! IT’S EVERYWHERE! IT’S COMPLETELY MADE UP! IT ISN’T ANYTHING! IT’S FAKE! IT’S! JUST! FAKE! NEWS! AAAAAAAAA!” Nothing very substantive. I supposed I could see what he was getting at, but I wondered for a moment why he was so worked up about it. Then I remembered what RT is.

You see, he wasn’t talking about fake news, as in news that is deliberately fabricated as part of a disinformation campaign. No, he was talking about “fake news,” as in real news—you know, the kind authoritarians hate. How do I know this? Because RT is a propaganda arm of the Russian government. As Google tells me, it is “the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.” In this case, the Russian view means Vladimir Putin’s view, or at least a view that he approves, not, say, Vladimir Kara-Murza's view or Grigori Chkhartishvili's. And Vladimir Putin’s “view” is that real news is fake. I say “view” because it isn’t a view; it’s a deliberate lie.

Why was the Trotsky-looking fellow so emotional? Because Vladimir Putin wants people to feel upset and confused. Because if people accept that reality is composed not of facts but of feelings, then they become suggestible and can be led to all sorts of bad behaviors. It disturbed me to think that there are people in this world who spend hours a day being riled up by broadcasts of this and other sorts. Just watching that guy for less than a minute, I could feel my cortisol levels rising.

States that engage in narrative manipulation can direct their state-sponsored information inward or outward. Propaganda is something that people in liberal democracies associate with the past, the bad twentieth century, fascism, the Cold War. But RT represents a new kind of propaganda, a propaganda apparatus of an authoritarian state playing on the same field as the free media of a liberal democracy.

One of the foundational premises of liberal democracy is that a society is strengthened when speech is legally protected. Americans historically have adhered to the Jeffersonian faith that a well-educated populace will have the wisdom to distinguish the truth from lies and thus to take political initiatives which conduce to the common good.

What Leninists (e.g., the Communist Party of China) believe is that the vanguard party has the right to use lies—any number of lies—in service of a noble end, just as they believe that any oppressive means will be justified by the ultimate end of all oppression.

What happens when the two collide?

China’s media environment, as you probably know, is comparatively closed. Since about 2013, the Communist Party has sought to correct the course of Chinese media, which had been allowed to move toward greater openness during the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao administration (2003–2013). This appears to be a project of particular interest to President Xi himself, as he has personally delivered lectures on the appropriate role of the media, saying that journalists should be “disseminators of the Party's policies and propositions,” whose work is “crucial for the Party's path, the implementation of Party theories and policies, the development of various Party and state causes, the unity of the Party, the country and people of all ethnic groups, as well as the future and fate of the Party and the country.” In a word, the Chinese media should be absolutely loyal servants of the Communist Party, which is the traditional Marxist-Leninist view of media. I would be remiss not to mention that there are Chinese journalists who take a more liberal view of journalism, attempting to speak truth to power, sometimes with serious consequences.

Yet despite this media atmosphere, international news organizations have their China bureaus. Though they are sometimes able to cover stories which the Chinese domestic media do not, they operate within limits. The Chinese state seems to want to give the impression that it treats foreign journalists well. After all, they are allowed into the country, they aren’t jailed, and they aren’t seriously harassed. Overall, they have much less to fear than Chinese journalists do. Yet they are sometimes, let us say, mildly harassed, particularly, it seems, when they seek to cover protests in person. Those journalists who write too many stories deemed to be excessively negative run the risk of having their visa renewals denied, and the state's measure of last resort is to deny an organization’s China correspondents their visas en masse and punt their websites over to the other side of the Great Firewall, as happened to the New York Times and Bloomberg when they published stories about the family wealth of China’s top leaders.

What about Chinese media operating in the US? I'm guessing you haven’t heard of or watched CGTN (China Global Television Network) America. It’s a Chinese state-owned news channel which broadcasts in the US. It is propaganda; that is, like RT, it presents “the Chinese side of the story.” It’s owned by China Central Television (CCTV), which is administered by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), which is the media organ of the Chinese government. Ultimately, SAPPRFT answers to the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China. Thus, CGTN is a Chinese state media company freely operating in the US, subject to the same restrictions as any other media organization in the US, that is, rather few.

Some in the US have lately questioned the wisdom of giving foreign governments’ propaganda organs free reign to operate in the US while US news organizations operate under worsening restrictions in China. Specifically, some have argued that if the Chinese government cancels US journalists’ visas in retaliation for coverage it doesn’t like, then the US government should respond with tit-for-tat cancellations of the visas of employees of Chinese state media like CGTN. 

Should the government of a liberal democracy limit the access of foreign media to its domestic market? I think most of us would regard that as an absurd proposition on the face of it. But what if the foreign media are not news organizations but propaganda organizations? What if the states which own them regard the US as a rival or even enemy state? Aren’t they just weapons? Or are they just presenting another point of view, broadening the minds of the US audience? Even if they are weapons, does that mean we should regulate or ban them? Don’t we trust the wisdom of American media consumers (haha)? I don’t doubt that CGTN actually has abysmal ratings, supposing that what they produce is just as anodyne as CCTV. So who cares? A democracy needn’t fear anyone’s views, right?

The reason we protect free speech is not because all speech is potentially valuable for our society. It’s because we don’t believe that any one person or party or organization should have a monopoly over information. In other words, the legal guarantee of freedom of speech preserves the balance of power, and checks the ambitions of those who would seek to amass power through a monopoly over information. Knowledge being power, the aim of propaganda is to increase the power of the disseminator of the propaganda vis-à-vis the audience. Insofar as power in a democracy flows from the people, influence over the people’s perception of reality is a meaningful lever of power.

If I were the US government, I might ask myself: does the freedom of the propaganda arms of hostile foreign states to operate in our country represent a useful check on the power of some actor within the American system? Whose power is checked by this? Surely it is either the US government’s power, the power of American news organizations, or the power of American citizens, or some combination of the three. Again, propaganda is a tool for gaining leverage over a society, not a tool for making an earnest contribution to its discourse. In a world in which certain actors wish democracy ill, does allowing this to occur speak to our democracy’s self-confidence, or its naivety?

By the way, this same debate has been taking place in Australia. China has been buying up shares in Australian media corporations and making sizable donations to Australian politicians. Australia is a traditional ally of the United States, with a shared political culture as a liberal democracy and a history of military cooperation. Yet in recent years, China has grown to be Australia’s largest trading partner, and China seems to prodding Australia toward a long-term realignment. The Little Red Podcast has a fantastic episode about this, which you should listen to immediately.

A Chinese Leftist Hot Take on Trump's Paris Agreement Announcement

What might a Chinese leftist say about President Trump's announcement of the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement?

That it simply serves to confirm two points which we have made all along about the US' so-called "democracy."

One, capitalism is not compatible with true democracy. The political superstructure of American life—which falsely claims itself to be a shining example of a government built on universal values—is actually built on an inherently unstable and exploitative foundation, i.e., the capitalist mode of production. The American Revolution was a bourgeois revolution intended to secure the rights of the bourgeoisie. Far from representing the rebirth of liberty in the modern era, it marked the beginning of a process through which the modern bourgeois form of production, i.e., capitalism, would come into being in North America. This was entirely in accordance with the laws of history. But as America has not yet had a proletarian revolution, it lags behind the cutting edge of history, still languishing in the mire of so-called "liberal democracy." Nearly 70% of Americans support staying in the Paris Agreement, yet President Trump, supposedly elected in accordance with the will of the people, has disregarded their will. Why? Quite obviously, because he actually represents the interests of the capitalist class, who have captured the government, as happens in all so-called "liberal" societies.

Two, the American constitution of government is unscientific and unstable. The political parties of the United States are not true democratic parties (in the sense of representing the interests of the people). Rather, they compete to represent the interests of the capitalist class. The US government shifts willy-nilly from policy to policy every four years in accordance with which segment of the capitalist class has captured power for that period of time. As capitalism is an irrational system of production, the political superstructure is equally irrational, with the result that it is impossible to predict what policy the US government will follow next.

Core Values

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One of my favorite parts of the Chinese city is the propaganda which adorns all manner of spaces: big red banners with slogans written in yellow characters (“People have a responsibility to each other”), PSAs about the Chinese Dream on the mass transit TV system (“The Chinese Dream, my dream”), couplets posted above urinals reminding us what constitutes civilized bathroom behavior (“Come in a rush, leave with a flush”), cartoons painted on the side of a staircase warning about the dangers of quack doctors and cults…

One poster which recently caught my eye listed the “socialist core values,” a set of twelve abstract nouns which has been disseminated campaign-style since 2012. Chinese students are required to memorize them, the Hunan provincial government has organized song-and-dance routines about them, and President Xi has urged authorities to “make them all-pervasive, like the air.” They are: prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship.

That all sounds fine. President Xi, or whoever came up with this list, is perhaps rightly concerned about China’s moral landscape, wherein youngsters dream of being brainwashed at American universities, giggle at Chuck Lorre's stupid jokes, and watch livestreams of girls lasciviously eating bananas. Nevertheless, one senses that President Xi hasn’t read his Joseph Nye when he says things like, “Core socialist values are the soul of cultural soft power. Basically, the soft power of a nation depends on the vitality, cohesive force, and charisma of its core values.” National leaders can’t create soft power by fiat.

Anyway, as I read this poster, I got to thinking: what would be the contents of a list of American core values? The word liberty immediately sprang to mind. China’s leaders are rightfully envious of the unflappability of the American belief in liberty. From the reddest-necked to the most bled-hearted, you’d be hard-pressed to find an American who does not adhere to the creed of liberty. I can just imagine the head of SAPPRFT lamenting, “Their culture workers don’t even need guidance to produce pieces which reaffirm their official national value! They just do it automatically! How is their Propaganda Department so good at this!” What’s more, Americans have the temerity to assert that liberty is the solution to what ails any and every human society. The Chinese Communist Party may have the gall to claim that their legitimacy derives from the choice of the people and the choice of history, but we don’t hear much anymore about the laws of dialectical materialism necessitating the eventual advent of global communism.

OK, so liberty, I thought to myself, but what else? At present, it seems there is little else Americans of all political tribes might agree on. I don’t need to spell that out for Americans readers. But what if we looked to the creed at the core of our childhood indoctrination, the Pledge of Allegiance? “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” So that’s: God, unity, liberty, justice. 23% of Americans don't affiliate with any religion. Unity? I guess we’re all still calling ourselves Americans and more-or-less participating in or submitting to a system of government under the same constitution. But anything more might be pushing it. As for justice, to liberals it means securing an ever-expanding legal and social recognition that all lives matter, while for conservatives it means locking up Hillary. Oh, but let’s not forget about the pursuit of happiness! The American Dream. Work hard, get what you want. I think almost all Americans agree on equality of opportunity; however, most liberals would argue that American meritocracy is a myth, while most conservatives would regard that as heresy, so it's questionable whether this counts as a shared value, either.

Maybe there is a downside to having a freewheeling marketplace of ideas in an age in which the internet has enabled everyone to find their own people and ignore the rest. Does that mean the government should choose an official set of core values for us and disseminate it through a vast information-control apparatus? No. America’s soft power derives from the fact that the government doesn’t think it can create soft power, though it does wield it, through the State Department, the various National Endowments, etc.—or at least it did before Trump. Also, I suspect that the atmosphere of the propaganda-laden state is rather unpleasant for those who live in it, because nobody likes being coerced into hypocrisy.

But Americans perhaps ought to consider who we are. People who believe in liberty, justice, fair play, common decency, neighborliness, baseball, the flag, supporting our troops, and mom’s apple pie? The descendants of mass murderers and slave owners who have unsuccessfully sought to assuage our collective guilt by plowing through an ever-more-exotic list of misappropriated spiritual practices until at long last we have come to ayahuasca? "White, Christian America"? Or the walking dead, who, having broken bad long ago, are just kind of waiting for society to collapse so we can live in Fallout?

So sure, Americans, chuckle at the idea that a government thinks it can teach its people values. Chuckle at the inclusion of "democracy" in China's list. But consider whether your own society really stands for something, and if so, what.