The US Debt Ceiling: An Excuse for China's Irascibility?

Irascible, by Mel Bochner

Sensitivity – we all know the feeling. You just want to enjoy your iced tea on a hot and sunny day when a frosty wave of the cold sweetness rushes over an exposed root at the gum line. It’s a shocking, painful experience to be avoided at all cost.

As for emotional sensitivities, most socially adept humans try to avoid raising the ire of others, while those who are less socially adept often fall afoul of those sensitivities. For example, when a farmer complained to President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan on July 9 that the price of bananas was too low, thus making it difficult for farmers to make ends meet, Ma’s response of “你怎麼不早說” (Why didn’t you say something sooner?) was probably not the best way to handle the matter. The outburst that this response prompted clearly shows the danger of falling afoul of the sensitivities of others. One brief moment of insensitivity prompted the farmers to join with a group of other farmers decrying the issue of land seizures in a July 16 protest against the Ma government on Ketagalan Boulevard.

Of course, sensitivity can be excessive, and those who do develop a reputation for being overly sensitive are often ridiculed more than respected. Those who excessively express sensitivity as anger are referred to as “irascible”, a word with clear negative connotations (as in "an irascible old man"). Excessive sensitivity expressed using softer emotions is hardly better. Think of the result of the second wish that the devil fulfills for Brendan Fraser in the movie Bedazzled. Unable to do anything but sigh and cry, the overly sensitive, and therefore effeminate, Elliott (Fraser) turns off the love of his life, who gleefully joins the sand-kicking beach bully and his friends for a romp at his pad.

Clearly excessive sensitivity, whatever its manifestation, is not a desirable trait. So the willingness of politicians and the media to tiptoe around the Chinese government's sensitive tendencies is interesting indeed. My friend Michael Turton often blogs on this phenomenon (for example). Simply put, whether it’s over weapons sales to Taiwan, over support for a multilateral solution to the South China Sea dispute, over a visit by Xinjiang activist Rebiya Kadeer to Japan, over the seemingly constant worldwide circumambulation of the Dalai Lama, who met – against the backdrop of Chinese anger – with President Obama yesterday, or over one of a multitude of other issues, various China watchers often are quick to take note of Chinese anger and sensitivity. In fact, such emotions are usually expected and forgiven rather than challenged. It suffices to say that not one of the above articles goes so far as labeling the angry responses as irrational. (Actually, while each episode of anger is irrational, the angry approach as a whole is entirely rational for China if it gets other countries to do what China wants them to do. Needless to say, none of the above articles enters this territory either.)

In fact, the US presidents often play along by timing announcements of actions that might displease China for moments when China could be angered the least. This is always a challenge. After all, there are so many sensitive anniversaries in China, a legacy of the country’s National Humiliation Discourse as well as a variety of important events that have taken place during the rule of the CCP.

An incomplete list (including both positive and negative sensitive events from the perspective of the Chinese government) would include the beginnings of the Opium Wars in 1839 and 1856, the October 18, 1860 destruction of Yuanming Palace, the April 17, 1895 signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the August 1900 invasion of China by eight nations to quell the Boxer Rebellion, the founding of the CCP on July 1, 1921, the September 18, 1931 Japanese invasion, the Nanjing Massacre following the fall of the city in December of 1937, the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949, the entry of Chinese troops into Lhasa in October 1951, the March 1959 Tibet uprising, the incident that never happened in that square in central Beijing despite the existence of plenty of eyewitness accounts and footage in June 1989, the April 2008 Tibet uprising and the July 2009 unrest in Kashgar. Heaven forbid anyone do anything to anger the Chinese during the anniversary of one of those sensitive moments. 

And, of course, we cannot forget the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics or the run-ups to any of the party congresses. Then there are the visits. Barack Obama goes to China. Hu Jintao goes to the US. Biden goes to China. Xi Jinping goes to the US, etc. We couldn't have the Chinese cancel one of those visits in anger, now could we?

Clearly, almost every month of the year and almost every year of every decade contains sensitive anniversaries. And if there are no anniversaries scheduled, new sensitive events are always in the works. If the US is to avoid every sensitive date, there will be no way to avoid "angering" China at a bad time. It’s a bad time all the time.

One would think that, faced with such a full calendar of sensitive dates, anyone would want to shy away from creating more. Anyone, that is, except for careless journalists. Apparently not content with the multitude of prickly moments that US policymakers must navigate when dealing with China, Jeff Mason and Ben Blanchard, writing for Reuters, have felt it necessary to create one more. Commenting on China's angry reaction to the latest meeting of President Obama with the Dalai Lama, the authors state:

Obama's meeting came at an extra sensitive moment for China, the United States' biggest creditor, with leaders in Washington at odds over how to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling in time to avoid default.

Although I know very well that the Chinese do not want the value of their US treasuries to fall and that a US default might cause this result to come to pass, I wonder at what point the US debt ceiling negotiations became an issue that could prevent us from dealing plainly with the Chinese government? China is not required to purchase US treasuries. If the US does default on its debt, China will simply be the unfortunate victim of its own poor investment decision. Yet Mason and Blanchard would have us believe that Chinese anger is more justified now because of Chinese anxiety over the value of Chinese assets? 

Can any one tell me at what point we can stop making excuses for the irascible man?

Global Times Fears Our Eyes and Ears

Cisco camera, lovingly made in China

Should American companies be allowed to sell products in China that can be used to monitor or suppress dissent? Whether prompted by Cisco’s sale of IT equipment that helps maintain the Great Firewall or the sad sad saga of Google China, this question, and the ethical dilemma it evokes, has already been extensively mulled over by American politicians, businesspeople, lawyers and press outlets.

It’s much rarer to hear the official Chinese media weigh in on the issue, and even rarer for those media organs to agree with those who would prohibit US companies from making such transactions. Therefore, the fact that a recent editorial by the Global Times (环球时报) – an English-language Chinese paper with a pro-establishment reputation – agrees with those who would prohibit such sales is quite odd indeed.

Has the Global Times broken character? Certainly not! After all, the devil is in the details. The paper proclaims: 

Video images throughout Chongqing could involve important national security information. How could we ask a foreign company, especially a company from a not so friendly country, to handle this project?

In other words, far from acknowledging the ethical issue at hand, the Global Times makes it's declaration on the basis of its fears of US eyes and ears. As the argument goes, what is stopping Cisco from secretly designing or configuring these cameras to broadcast images to US security agencies? 

This thought is risible for many reasons. Not only does Chongqing have the liberty to put the cameras anywhere it pleases, but one would also assume that the municipality, as well as Chinese security experts, would have unlimited opportunities to examine Cisco's system thoroughly. Nevertheless, the Global Times seems to think a Cisco surveillance system is a national security risk, and is convinced that Americans would agree if the tables were turned.

If the surveillance cameras in New York City were made in China, US congressmen would riot. We know the storms of opposition seen against US soldiers wearing berets made in China, or against Chinese private companies trying to acquire US companies.

I won’t argue that Americans don’t have their protectionist streak. But does Congress really care where New York City’s security cameras are made? Hardly. In fact, I would be willing to bet quite a bit of money that most of the Big Apple's cameras are made in China, assembled in China, or contain a large number of Chinese components.

But just to be on the safe side of my wager, I used five minutes of my day to Google one company that claims it supplies security cameras to New York City. According to this press release, in 2007, the State of New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded Smiths Detection a $3.2 million contract to engineer and deploy a system of chemical sensors and security cameras in NYC transit stations. I took a minute to look up several cameras Smiths currently offers and found many familiar brand names: Sony, Panasonic, Bosch, etc.

I have written B2B advertisements for many security cameras before, so I know very well that such brands often source cameras on an OEM basis or have them assembled in China using lenses and high-end components from Japan or other developed markets. Many if not most of the parts are China-made. So where is the Congressional rioting? One might argue that American politicians might be more quick to take note if the company handling the installation were Chinese. However, the Global Times has specifically used the phrase "made in China" to describe devices that would be sure to rile our testy lawmakers.

The fact that the paper doesn’t seem to realize that Cisco’s cameras are already fabricated in their own homeland says a lot about the quality of the paper’s reporting. It took me no more than one minute to find this China-made model from Cisco. So how can China-made cameras, installed under the eyes of local authorities, operated by Chinese security wonks, and open for examination at any time the government pleases constitute a national security risk?

Is the Global Times editorial staff so embarrassingly incapable of doing research, or is there another motive behind the paper’s opposition to Cisco’s supposed meddling? One clue might come from the following sentence from the conclusion of the editorial in question:

In the past, China might have sacrificed some smaller aspects of security in order to gain larger security. Now that we have grown stronger, we should not be nervous about US threats of sanctions.

The reference to sanctions is noteworthy. In a July 14 article in Time (dated one week after the Global Times piece) Fareed Zakaria takes note of what he calls China’s "New Parochialism". Zakaria claims that the Middle Kingdom is turning inward, increasingly favoring local companies over Western companies, often to the point of violating rules of market access and trade. He ties this local favoritism to a broader rejection of Western values symbolized by the rise of Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai and other romanticizers of the days of Mao. 

In light of the above, one might wonder whether the Global Times really feels that Cisco’s cameras are a national security risk or whether the paper would simply have preferred that the contract for supplying security cameras to Chongqing have gone to a Chinese enterprise.

Taiwanese with Chinese Characteristics?

You can tell it’s election season again in Taiwan. How so? Among pan-Blue candidates, being Taiwanese is suddenly popular again – too popular, if New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming has anything to say about it.

Yok made an announcement yesterday in response to comments DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen made at a campaign event in Nantou (English, Chinese), where she defended her declaration of her Taiwanese identity in a recent campaign ad. At the July 9 event, she explained:

最近有人錯誤解讀我在廣告中所講「我是台灣人」這句話的含意。我必須強調：「我是台灣人」是指任何住在台灣、認同台灣的人，都是台灣人。每個人到國外都應該要大聲說出「我是台灣人」，讓國際社會知道台灣的存在，了解台灣在經濟、社會、民主與人權上的發展。「讓世界看到台灣，是我們共同的責任！」

Recently, some people have falsely understood the meaning of the words, ‘I am Taiwanese’ that I said in my advertisement. I must emphasize, ‘I am Taiwanese,’ refers to anyone who lives in Taiwan and identifies with Taiwan’s people. Anyone who travels abroad should loudly proclaim, ‘I am Taiwanese,’ in order to inform foreigners of Taiwan’s existence and help them understand the development of Taiwan’s economy, society, democracy and human rights.

Tsai also accused Ma of seemingly being unable to utter the word, “Taiwanese.”

Ma was not about to take that one lying down! On his June 12 Facebook page post, he responded (Chinese, English): 

「血統上，我是中華民族炎黃子孫」,「身分上，我認同台灣，為台灣打拚，我是台灣人」；「國籍上，我是中華民國國民。而我也是中華民國總統」.

In my blood, I am a Chinese son of the Yellow Emperor. In terms of my identity, I identify with Taiwan and fight for Taiwan. I am Taiwanese. In terms of nationality, I am a citizen of the ROC, and I am the President of the ROC.

Now, identity is a tricky thing, as many residents of Taiwan know well. Many local residents declare that they share both a Taiwanese and Chinese identity. If we could truly believe that Ma was one of these conflicted souls, we would not be quick to play down his declaration.

However, Ma has hardly been shy about declaring his Chineseness in the past (this interview is just one case among many). See this interview, for example. In fact, he has made such a point of declaring Chinese identity that his sudden verbal acrobatics hardly come across as more than electioneering.

Enter Yok Mu-ming.

Yok stirred the pot on July 12 when, in his response to Tsai’s Nantou speech, he stated (Chinese): 

 我是郁慕明，我是中國人！ (I am Yok Mu-ming. I am Chinese.) 

Grammatically, his declaration mirrors that of Tsai, and, on the surface, the statement is indeed targeted at the DPP presidential candidate.

Yet, the fact that Yok’s statement followed right on the heels of Ma’s cannot be overlooked, nor can the fact that, at the time of the posting of Yok’s declaration on the New Party’s website, another statement was posted that declared that the New Party would definitely be taking part in the January legislative elections. This declaration was hardly news to anyone who has been paying attention to Taiwan’s political environment. But the back-to-back posting of these statements to the New Party website recalls the big picture.

Yok is intelligent enough to know that he will not score political points against the DPP with his rhetoric. As the bluest of Taiwan’s blue parties, the New Party is not about to peel off votes from the DPP in the upcoming legislative election. The DPP seemingly agrees, if their refusal to respond to him is any indication.

However, as it becomes ever more evident that all is not well (Chinese) between the KMT and James Soong and his People’s First Party, raising the prospect that three blue parties will fight over seats in the legislature, Yok might feel that there is value in passing his party off as Bluer-Than-Thou. Yok's real dart board might just be Taiwan's newest Taiwanese with Chinese characteristics.