The China Deal

 2022 will be remembered for the Russian assault on Ukraine, an extraordinary choice by the Russian leadership. I still believe there is a dimension to the situation that is not yet in the public domain, because otherwise the decision seems not just reckless but seriously ill-judged; indeed it seems likely that ultimately it will lead to the fall of the regime. Sadly, there will be a lot more blood to spill and nuclear risk to endure before that endgame can be reached.

 

As far as countering the Russians is concerned, I still believe that the Biden administration has performed excellently. The CIA (and MI6) are clearly still very strong in matters Russian, and on this occasion being set up to fight yesterday’s war has yielded a bonus. The western strategy, unspoken because of its cynicism and cost in Ukrainian suffering, is to play for a winning draw. Once initial defeat was averted by Russian ineptitude, accepting a defeat became unnecessary and politically unacceptable. But playing to win carries too many nuclear risks to countenance. Hence we see a stalemate, a situation likely to endure for several more months or even years.

 

I am also convinced that 2022 will go down as a year of lost opportunity by that same Biden administration. The Russian invasion created a window of opportunity for a reconciliation with China. The Russians provided the pretext to reset the narrative, and the strategic incentives for both China and the US to be partners are huge. Sadly, most political incentives in the US work in the opposite direction, but I do believe that a more far-sighted State department could have perhaps pulled off a historic deal.

 

Rather than merely sniping about their lack of vision, I spent some time pondering what the parameters of such a deal could look like. That way I could confirm my belief that the strategic conditions exist and go further in assessing what the blockers are and how they might still be overcome.

 

Any holistic deal with China must have three broad components. There would have to be a chapter for sustainability and development, a chapter for trade and a chapter for defence and strategic interests. Each chapter could be supported by a set of reformed institutions for global governance.

 

The first chapter would be the easiest to draft and enforce and have the most obvious benefits to the signatories and to the rest of humanity. The world faces a climate crisis for which the solutions are clear but the political will lacking. Much has been done to reduce poverty, infant mortality and malnutrition, but the task is far from complete.  Covid has highlighted a different set of risks, but science has the demonstrated potential to mitigate these too. For me one of the saddest moments in the whole pandemic was witnessing Doctor Fauci being forced by political imperative to equivocate in having worked with China to understand Covid and other pathogens. Surely such cooperation can only serve to benefit all of us?

 

Strong goals already exist for all of these challenges, from the updated UN millennium development goals to the latest COP climate goals. China clearly sees the benefits available, and already actively participates in many global fora, while the US quietly and valiantly takes the lead in scientific research and funding. But too often the execution is stymied by narrow national and commercial interests and by political cowardice. It would not take a huge stretch to eliminate most of these obstacles. Perhaps the most significant step would be to reform the governance and mandates of the World Bank and the IMF to be more representative of global population and GDP. It was worrying to see how both of these bodies were able to sanction Russia: the cause was just in this case, but a truly global body (rather than a western dominated one) would not have been able to take such steps. A reformed global aid structure could reduce the incentives for individual nations to plough their own furrow with schemes such as Belt and Road.

 

The second chapter would be about trade, and this also need not be difficult to draft or to execute. There have been backlashes against trade in many parts of the world, but the potential net benefits remain huge. Countries need stronger policies to help those citizens negatively affected, and the true costs of transport (including environmental costs) should be considered, but otherwise specialisation will lead to cheaper and more abundant goods for all, notably those most in need.

 

Once again, the “rules based” system needs some reform so that it is no longer a “western imposed” system. China needs to agree to follow the rules, including for intellectual property. But trade is good, and the EU provides excellent templates for its governance, including for regulations around product quality and items such as privacy. Over time, trade pacts can develop to include more services.

 

An annex to the trade chapter would be required to handle controls on human movement, including for education. It feels weird that the US appears to be drifting towards a cold war with China, while its streets and its educational establishments become ever more populated by Chinese faces. Goals of free movement are laudable, but politically tough and requiring long transitional periods and stipulations on those choosing to migrate.

 

The tough chapter would be the one for defence and security. Again, the goals are not too difficult to envisage; the challenge would be to provide a palatable and trustable path and to find roadmaps to deal with a host of thorny issues.

 

China, the US and everybody else (except the leaders of Russia and North Korea and a few other renegade places) have a clear interest in progressive nuclear disarmament, and indeed in disarmament generally. One neat provision that most might accept in a more trusting climate could be that every dollar spent on national defence should be matched by a dollar committed to global peacekeeping. The global bodies to keep the peace are those with the greatest need for reform, and the Russian veto would initially be insurmountable, so a parallel security body to the UN, including all but the renegades, may be necessary during a transition.

 

Then there is a long list of conflicts and frozen conflicts and historical anomalies to handle, and therein lie the toughest nuts to crack. In most cases it will be impractical to reach an immediate solution, notably because such diplomacy tends to brush over the reasonable wishes of local actors. The places where clear agreements up front would be required are Taiwan, Russia and North Korea. For Taiwan, a Hong Kong type process envisaging eventual reunification would be the major concession to China to make the whole deal possible. In return China would need to clearly distance itself from Russia in its conflict in Ukraine (and its frozen conflicts elsewhere). China can still maintain a policy of not interfering in domestic affairs of other countries, yet be clear that the Ukraine situation is in no way domestic. In the case of North Korea, it is a matter of agreeing an endgame while waiting for the dynasty to implode. China would need to accept refugees and a responsibility to finance redevelopment of North Korea, but the US and its allies would need to agree to some regional disarmament in return.

 

For sure such a deal would be tough to pull off even in propitious circumstances, and the context today is far from helpful. Yet I would argue that it will only get more difficult over time, and Russia’s belligerence does offer a window. Other parties, most especially the EU but also the parts of the UN and existing institutions that are not western puppets, would need to be closely involved.

 

It is clear to me that the main block towards such a deal lies with the American mindset and its politics. With Trump in the wings, China would be mad to agree to anything without a US legal basis that could not be reversed. And Biden’s domestic capital to spend on this deal would be miniscule while the Republicans are in full MAGA mode. But it would be nice to see any evidence that the Biden team could even contemplate such a historic outcome and would start to chip away at public attitudes towards China.

 

I will dream on.   

How did I become so weird?

 Every so often a situation leaves me thinking that I live on a different planet to the rest of humanity. I still recall one occasion during a choir rehearsal when the Star Wars movies came up in conversation. It was clear that every other member was animated and engaged by the topic, while I sat in bemused silence, having never seen any of the films and not really understanding why anyone would want to. It sticks in my memory because these were people who I thought were like me; many were of my own generation and level of education and experience and of course we shared a common passion for singing early music. I went home pondering my weirdness.

 

I have similar experiences whenever I am with my wife’s extended family, as I was last weekend. On these occasions I can use my excuse of demographics, because I am one of the few who is not of Philippine extraction and few of the group are close to my age. But even so my weirdness always strikes me at these gatherings, as I sit patiently at the side of conversations I don’t really relate to. Shopping is always one topic of difference; for many of the group an afternoon at an outlet mall is their idea of heaven, while for me it is much closer to hell.

 

This week I have decided that my conclusion is rather lazy, and I should challenge it, I came up with three sub-questions. Am I truly weird? If so, how did that happen? And does it matter?

 

I think I can answer the last sub-question first. I don’t think it matters at all. Why should it matter, since variety is the spice of life? I have the blessing of a reasonable level of self-confidence, so I don’t go around equating weirdness to abnormality or inferiority or suffering attacks of anxiety or depression. Perhaps this self-confidence is one explanation for the weirdness itself since I don’t go out of my way to conform. I feel that I have a full enough social life, including the blessing of love from many sources. And I don’t think my weirdness, such as it is, creates an unacceptable challenge to others – I don’t go around groping or fighting or (nowadays) bullying. True, I find it difficult to contribute to some conversations and in some events, but I generally have the patience to sit to the side when that happens; I have always been blessed by a contentment with my own company; perhaps that forms another licence for weirdness.

 

For the first sub-question, I am probably not very weird at all, and it can be a bit arrogant to lazily live in a mindset that I am. As humans, we are all remarkably different to each other, and therein lies our magic.

 

In vaguely stressful situations, we can convince ourselves that we are strange or don’t fit in. I used to hate going to the sort of parties where you stand around making conversation with people you don’t know very well with a drink in your hand. I always felt that I was the only one standing around on my own, shunned by everybody else and too inadequate to be worthy of anyone wanting to converse with me.

 

After suffering through this on many occasions, I made some resolutions. First, I would not be desperate. Unless there were people I knew or people inviting me to join a group, I would be content to stay on the side and be patient. I realised soon enough that nobody was looking at me or humiliating me, and that it would not be long before some kind soul would come and talk to me. Secondly, while alone I consciously observed other people. Surely enough I always discovered that a large minority of other party guests were in the same boat as me, nervously alone and afraid to mingle. Indeed this held true for most of the guests who were not in groups of friends who they arrived with. I was not unusual at all! After a while I could even summon the courage the approach some of these people myself. Now, while I can’t say I actively enjoy such gatherings, they no longer fill me with dread.

 

I can us the same techniques in other situations to test out the extent of my weirdness, and they always yield the same answer, that I am not weird at all. It may seem as though everybody else at a gathering has common interests that diverge completely from my own, but that is misleading. There are always others on the sides, I do not stick out as an aberration, and if I am patient and make some effort then I can find others who are a bit like me in some respect.

 

So I am not so weird after all, and when I convince myself that I am weird, it is often displaying an arrogant superiority complex. Look, everybody else is obsessed with their phone, and cannot stop themselves taking mindless photos, and display countless other pieces of evidence of their inferiority! Clearly this is not a healthy way to be thinking.

 

So I am not uniquely weird, but in fact everybody is weird, in that we all have our unusual traits. At last, this gives me a healthy place to explore the second sub-question. What are my most unusual traits, and how might I have acquired them?

 

In a random group of a hundred people, like in the game show, where would I be in a class of one? There is the Star Wars thing, to which could be added an animated or superhero movie, indeed any movie not about credibly real people doing credibly real things. What else? Among those with smart phones, mine probably has fewer photos stored than any of the other ninety-nine, and I probably care less than any of the others about how I might look in a photo. I probably spend less time scrolling my phone and grazing material such as ads, social media, celebrity gossip, or news than any of the others too. I am also probably the most cynical and resistant when it comes to brands and product claims. In Trader Joe (a rare brand that I somewhat trust) I will consciously choose the items not labelled as organic, because I do not trust the claims or marketing and link the word “organic” only to the word “overpriced”.

 

How did this all happen? There are bound to be a million reasons, but I think I have discovered two critical ones.

 

The clue to the first root cause comes from thinking about the person I know who displays most of the same unusual traits. That person is my sister. And the common link is our mother. As the excellent Progressive ads like to tell us, we all turn into our parents eventually, and that is an especially painful realisation for both me and my sister, because we both struggle to admire our (deceased) mum. But my paragraph of strange traits matches her character very closely. She hated all films. She cared not a jot for grooming or appearance. She shopped only on price and was acutely cynical about brand claims. My sister and I both love certain types of film but the other traits have been passed on, by the magic combination of genetics and environment. We are both turning into our mother, and we would be smart not to deny it.

 

The trait missing from mum’s personality is the one about grazing and celebrity. Mum devoured the Daily Mail each day and tracked TV celebrity gossip avidly. So that tendency must come from somewhere else. In my case, I suspect the key factor was living in countries where I did not speak the native language between 1996 and 2012, the period when information became ubiquitous and visual and when smartphones and social media took off.

 

During this time, I lived in countries where English was spoken well. As someone too lazy to learn local languages very well, I did not lack for much. But I was somewhat removed from the culture, and the gossip. I always would claim that I could follow a conversation but could never get the jokes. Social media and celebrity culture depend on such nuance.

 

Perhaps to compensate, I got into the habit of doubling down on deep content. I follow sports, but the whole long game rather than the highlight reels. I read The Economist and Guardian Weekly from cover to cover but barely glance at the pictures and have become very cynical of other sources. I blog, but resolutely (stubbornly?) refuse to include any pictures.

 

I am pleased that I took the time this week to ponder the questions about weirdness more deeply. The conclusions are clear. I am weird, but so is everybody else, and that is OK, indeed wonderful (though no cause for arrogance). Cocktail party survival techniques are valuable. One advantage of living in a large city where I speak the native language is that I can find others who share most of my weird passions, should I wish to. And, should we care, we can probably trace a lot of our own weirdness to a handful of root causes.                

Stresses, Scams, and Biased Judgments

 It felt very good to get home from Los Angeles last week, even though the apartment feels emptier without our son. I took away a rather negative view of LA. IT has taken me a few days of reflection to realise that perhaps I my judgment was not entirely fair.

 

Even the airlines seemed to line up in favour of New York over LA. On the outbound journey, we were delayed four hours, with barely an acknowledgement and no apology. On the way home, everything went unusually well. The airline allowed us to swap our middle seats for two together. The plane departed right on time and took a short flight path. The journey was improved by reading an Economist end to end (I could not find a seller in LA until the airport), and a wonderful British film called The Duke – Jim Broadbent is a hero of mine. Our luggage was first on the belt, and our taxi delivered us home before the flight had been scheduled to land. Would that air travel always worked out this way!

 

Our primary negative impression of LA came from the vast number of homeless people lining the streets. We frequented downtown and a neighbouring district, parts of Hollywood, various metro lines (subway and bus) and Santa Monica. Each of these areas were blighted by homeless, seemingly at all hours of day and night. Most of their lives seemed unrecoverable. Many were angry and vocal. Too many were young. Initially it made us feel unsafe, and it affected the hours in which we were willing to be outside. Once we had become more familiar, it just made us very sad.

 

We have a growing homeless problem in NYC too, but somehow LA’s seemed a lot worse. But after some reflection I reasoned that perhaps the difference was not so great. Firstly, our climate in NYC tends to drive the homeless indoors and into larger settlements. But then I wondered if the main factor was where we happened to be. How often in NYC am I walking the downtown or deprived areas after dark? How often am I frequenting the major hubs like the Port Authority terminal? Yes, I travel the subway in the evening frequently, but the trains are longer and better lit so perhaps the same number of homeless can appear less visible.

 

Then I wondered if other aspects of my negativity about LA might be equally biased. I considered how the trip was one of high stress that had little to do with its location. Three of us were packed tightly together trying to execute a tough agenda under time pressure in unfamiliar surroundings We had to find Lucas somewhere to live, then sign a lease and then furnish the place. We had to find accommodation and transport options that were somewhat affordable. And we all had to deal with the emotional stress involved in a major change in our lives.

 

It is no wonder we were somewhat stressed and that we took out our stresses by complaining about our location. We worked remarkably well as a team and achieved a great deal on the trip, but inevitably we had differing opinions, we bickered at times and each of us suffered moments of intolerance. We spent a lot of money, something which is never good for my mood. It is only afterwards that I can perhaps revise some of my opinions of the place where that stressful environment played out.

 

Then there were the scams. Scams are a part of daily life here in the US. Perhaps 50% of the phone calls I receive are from some bot lying me that my car needs servicing or that I owe the IRS a fortune. I have learned to quickly disconnect and move on without becoming angry. But in LA I was angry already, and then two original scams came along to make me even more angry.

 

Firstly, we parked our rental car in a regular downtown car park, one that clearly advertised that it only accepted payment by credit card. Trying to exit, my first card was rejected by the reader with an error message about a failed modem connection. With no practical option, I inserted a second card, this time with success. But the following morning came a massage from Chase inquiring about a suspicious use of that second card which had nothing to do with me. Congratulations to Chase for being so alert, and I accept that the hassle involved has been minimal – replacement cards have arrived today. But the experience still leaves a nasty taste, and some of that taste is directed towards the location where the scam happened.

 

The second scam came while I was walking to the rental car to return it to its garage, so at a time when I was already nervous (would the car have been stolen or damaged overnight? Might the rental company try to charge me for something?). This scam involved a call purporting to come from my electricity supplier, with another supplier connected on the call claiming that I had agreed a contract with them. This was a clever scam because the scenario was quite credible – we are bombarded with offers to change supplier. The purported new supplier tried to charge me $900 to cancel the non-existent contract, and then, the clever part, the person claiming to be from my actual supplier took a sympathetic tone but tried to charge me to rectify the situation. Only then did I twig that both callers were a part of the scam. Cue another bad mood.

 

We have plenty of scams in New York so it is ridiculous of me to blame LA. Now I am more relaxed, I can review some of my other harsh judgments. True, it is a calumny that the best real estate in oceanside Santa Monica has been used for a highway, but we have our own examples, notably Coney Island and Chinatown. It is sad that concrete and cars work against any sort of community feel and extend the California city far too far, but then we have Staten Island, Westchester and Nassau County doing similar things. Their climate is undoubtedly better; New York is truly horrible in summer. Both have garbage and smells, but we have more rats. Our drivers are less respectful and more reckless, our roads less well-designed and with more potholes. Perhaps our culture is better, but the vanilla musicals playing throughout Broadway to ill-behaved audiences are not really a credit to us, while the beautifully produced Dudamel performance we witnessed at the Hollywood Bowl was a credit to LA. Perhaps the comparison is not so one-sided after all.

 

Now I am starting to wonder if I am guilty of similar biases in my comparisons between the USA and Europe, during my current spell of negative thoughts about America. It is true that my recent trips to Europe have been in circumstances where my spectacles are likely to be rose-tinted, loaded with singing holidays, friends, family, great food, and relaxation. My comparisons need to be more specific, to check that they don’t just reflect more propitious circumstances.

 

I have not lived in Europe for ten years, so I don’t know about scams, but I am pretty sure that the legal environment in Europe is more orientated to support the consumer rather than the corporation. Why do these US scammers seem to be beyond the reach of the law? As for homeless, I remember my daily walk from Waterloo Station to Waterloo bridge in London, so perhaps Europe has its problems too. As for culture, there may be advantages on both sides of the Atlantic: in Europe I certainly don’t expect to be able to replicate the oasis of my Sunday mornings. California probably wins for climate, but I don’t recall anywhere in Europe being so horrible s a humid New York summer. 

 

But the cities and towns are surely much more attractive there, with less bad housing, fewer highways (and without potholes), more green space, more courteous and safer driving, better mass transit, and fewer rats and smells. The people of the USA would surely do well to work on some of these eminently fixable unflattering comparisons, instead of the relentless self-promotion of “The greatest city on earth” or the ludicrous “Tinseltown”.

 

So my conclusion is that I should be kinder to LA, but not necessarily to the USA as a whole. It is certainly a good lesson to temper judgments to take account of circumstances. My recent European experiences could almost have been tailor-made to make me feel positively, very unlike my stressful LA experience.