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comrade-meow · 3 years

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The market is said to control the price of rent. However, landlords own large chunks of property and will often withhold property in order to artificially inflate the market prices of rented accommodation.

The cost of rent is forecast to rise by 15% in Britain over the next five years and real wages are stagnating. Whilst this is the result of capitalism’s inherent contradictions, there are many ways in which people have fought and continue to fight to effect real change whilst we progress towards revolution. One of the strongest tactics people have employed against unfair rent, is through rent strikes.

The Communist Party played an integral part in the rent strikes. One popular tactic was for party members to go around all the houses in a street and ask the tenants to pay only the regular amount of rent, not the extra that had just been hiked up.

Women played a particularly prominent role in the rent strikes. The women of the Communist Party were lynchpins who helped organise resistance to landlords. Another popular tactic was where women would switch the nameplates on the doors, in order to confuse the bailiffs who were unfamiliar with the area.

Sometimes these tactics were not quite enough and when someone was facing eviction, the tactic of direct action was employed. Entire streets worth of tenants would flood the street to stop the bailiffs passing.

Another form of rent strike is the use of squatting. Squatting is where people occupy an empty piece of private property that has sat dormant and is not being used to house people. The squatters do not pay any rent to the landlord whilst they are squatting there.

The Connolly Youth Movement in Ireland have had great success at implementing squatting within a communist framework. The movement have implemented communism’s rejection of private property by taking over a former house that has been allowed to become derelict through the hoarding of accommodation under capitalist notions of private property.

The stereotypical view of squats is that they are unsanitary places, but the Connolly Youth Movement have implemented cleaning rotas and principles of democratic centralism, that make for an efficient way of occupying capitalist private property.

There is a proud real socialist history of rent strikes in Britain, although this could be the subject of a whole book, we have tried to cover what we found the most relevant and intriguing.

In the summer of 1939 some 45,000 council housed tenants in Birmingham stood up to Tory rent increases via a mass strike. The 30s’ in Brum was ripe with working class resistance, such as prominent trade unionist Jessie Eden leading 10,000 women out to the Joseph Lucas Motors picket line in 31’, in refusal to the new ‘Beaux’ system introduced in which pay depended on a dubiously measured level of productivity. This women’s strike amongst more industrial action defeated the Lucas bosses, heralding the headline of the 29th January 1932 Daily Worker to be ‘VICTORY! BEDAUX SYSTEM SMASHED!’.

Jessie Eden, Communist of Peaky Blinders fame, was a well known industrial and tenants leader in 1930’s Birmingham. You can read more about her as part of the YCL’s International Women’s Day Series in 2019.

In the advent of further successful industrial action and the slight restabilising of the economy, towards the late 30s’, small sections of Birmingham’s proletariat were receiving a few extra crumbs from the table of the bourgeois, this became an excuse for the Tory council to hugely increase rent on municipal homes, although the real reason was simply so they could lower council tax for their core voter base of middle class home owners.

The rent rises were questionably means tested, based on the size of one’s house, hitting hardest families who had bigger homes to facilitate their children. The Tories sent out forms to means test people in the communities. These did not get filled in. They attempted further coercion by offering temporarily rebated increases for lower income tenants. This did not change many perspectives.

Soon enough Birmingham’s Central Tenants Association got involved, headed by Communist party member Ted Smallbone, with previously mentioned Jesse Eden (now also in the CP) as vice secretary.

Close to when the increases were to be introduced, the CTA arranged a vote regarding a rent strike throughout Birmingham’s estates in the April of 39’. Around 92% were in favour. In a fierce battle, tenants withheld rent from the council for ten weeks. Whole communities were in a state of militancy, protecting their communities from the force of bailiffs and rent collectors. The CTAs own paper, ‘The Tenant’ was used to propagate and maintain the strike, with its circulation of 40,000, using this, signs stating ‘’No rent: On strike’’ were given to tenants and put onto thousands of windows.

The high level of organisation in the strike and the frequency of mass street protests struck fear in the hearts of Birmingham’s elite, showcasing the irrefutable power of an organised working class. The establishment paper The Birmingham Post desperately attempted to break the strike by claiming that most tenants were secretly paying their rent and merely pretended to be striking in fear of ostracization. There was little to no evidence to confirm this. The strike continued at full pace. The council was put into a corner they could not escape, and on the 3rd of July 1939, closing in on the outbreak of world war, the council caved in and abolished the rent increases, maintain the rebated rents and even ushered a promise of 50,000 new municipal homes. These huge compromises showed the power and potential of this rent strike movement, perhaps there would have been a lot of revolutionary potential had it not been just before WWII. Albeit, this brought the Communist Party to the forefront of the rent movement.

Despite the positive effect of post-war housing reform, Britain’s bourgeoisie inevitably still had the intention to squeeze as much as they could out of tenants, which was of course met with fierce resistance.

A notable event being the 1959-61 St Pancras rent strikes. Instigated because of the 1957 Rent Act, which stated that the level of rent would be based on rateable value and also because of the Tories taking control of the Borough in 59’, further increasing the rents. The United Tenants Association, comprised of 35 different labour organisations, suggested a strike, this was carried out by 8,000 tenants, all then threatened with eviction by the council.

It all kicked off on the 22nd of September 1960, when the council sent five bailiffs, accompanied by eight hundred police to evict two leaders of the strike; Arthur Rowe and Don Cook. The community was quickly alerted to what had happened and rushed out of bed to help on that climacteric early Thursday morning. Soon enough, there was a full-on battle between tenants and the police. Their batons were matched with whatever could be found; rocks, sticks, milk bottles…

There were dozens of injuries and arrests, all for the sake of working-class solidarity against the systemic exploitation imposed on them by these policies of Rachmanism. The strikes eventually came to nothing due to the brutal repression by the class traitors within the police, despite this, it reaffirmed the revolutionary potential of mass strikes and showed that there’s an alternative to the conventional politics of pleas, polls and petitions.

There were other significant rent strikes post WWII. One was the East London rent strike of 1968-70. The Tory ran Greater London Council (which was the biggest municipal housing authority in the country), proposed a policy to try and match the price of social housing to that of the private market, which would have increased rent by an average of 70% over the next three years, this resulted in thousands striking and 20,000 protesting on Trafalgar square in solidarity.

In July 1970 the GLC wrote to tenants that if they did not pay up in three weeks they would be evicted; this prompted the creation of an anti-eviction committee and further protests outside the city hall. Eventually the government were forced to step in, shook again by the fear of strong popular resistance, and forced the Greater London Council to retract the increases.

Albeit, my research began to dry up when looking for rent strikes in the 80s’ and beyond. This we have put down too many factors, particularly due to the ‘quieting down’ of real left-wing politics and the rise of Neo-Liberalism. This manifested itself with the elections of the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, the imperialistic destruction of Allende’s socialist project in Chile and the rise of reactionary nationalism in Britain, with the Falklands war and the breaking up of the Britain’s Communist party in 88’.

These are among a plethora of grim events. This period can be defined as an age of nihilism as far as the cause of building a better world is concerned. Nevertheless, to borrow from Engels, this period seems to be withering away. In Scotland, the grassroots tenant’s union, Living Rent, with many Party and YCL members involved, are building a strong network of resistance against exploitative private landlords and unifying local authority tenants who have been too long neglected by the council. This can be seen with their outreach programme in the Muirhouse estate of Edinburgh.

There is also ACORN, Living Rent’s sister union, operating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Their work has liberated thousands of tenants from unfair evictions and unjust money grabbing from previously unchallenged landlords. Only time will tell what the future brings, but the power of British communists and therefore the working class is inevitably on its way up.

#Anglo.txt

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noelpinnock1 · 4 years

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“Into the Unknown! – Part I”

Author Noel Pinnock, B.S., M.P.A., C.A., CCC

www.noelpinnock.com

Merriam-Webster (MW) defines “mind,” in the noun tense, as the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and reason. Furthermore, MW defines “set” as to put, lay, or stand (something) in a specified place or position. When you concatenate these words, we arrive at mindset. This compound word is so powerful that it can drive countries as well as individuals, alike, into mass turmoil or elevate them to great prosperity. The interesting thing about mindset is that it vacillates because its nature is predicated on situations and circumstances. We all have internal processes that govern our growth and development. Some may have a fixed mindset; therefore, growth and development can be limited. While others have a learning mindset and adjustments are made along our life’s journey. Whether fixed or learning, a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people or groups of people and can also be seen as arising out of a person's world view or philosophy of life. Our mindset or logic box is our collection of knowledge, attitudes, skills, and habits (KASH) that often limit our perception and acts as a restriction on objective thought and creative expression. What is in your mindset? What are your views and perspectives that have eroded some of your best intentions with unintended consequences?

In 1972, one of the best-known slogans in public-service was “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The United Negro College Fund ran this slogan in print, radio, and television as an intentional campaign to close a persistent gap between African Americans and other groups in college completion. They understood then as we know today that in a land that is constantly going through entropy only the learned will survive. We can no longer rest on the scaffold of mediocrity and not take the leap into the unknown.

The animated movie Frozen 2 was a mega-billion dollar hit at the box office and the soundtrack was equally successful on the music charts. One song, most notably, Into the Unknown, aligns with the perspectives of this article, in huge part because we fear what we don’t know, and many don’t ever like asking questions because it will make others believe that we don’t know thus the paradox. Check out the first to verses of the song:

“I can hear you but I won't Some look for trouble while others don't There's a thousand reasons I should go about my day And ignore your whispers which I wish would go away.

You're not a voice, you're just a ringing in my ear And if I heard you, which I don't, I'm spoken for I fear Everyone I've ever loved is here within these walls I'm sorry, secret siren, but I'm blocking out your calls I've had my adventure, I don't need something new I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you”

These words are very powerful for a seminal audience to comprehend but if you dissect its meaning, you will understand the humanistic nature of individuals whose mindset has been hindered or restricted because they don’t want to leave the porch, get out of the boat, or take the leap into the unknown. The unknown is scary and unpredictable. It isn’t something that we are used to. We prefer routine and certainty but as I have always told my staff, certainty is the enemy and uncertainty an ally. Our 10-year old daughter sang this song so much during the Frozen 2’s hey-day that I became so curious that I woke one early Saturday morning to watch it for myself.

The movie’s plot was rich, and it captivated me. Elsa the Snow Queen has an extraordinary gift -- the power to create ice and snow. But no matter how happy she is to be surrounded by the people of Arendelle, Elsa finds herself strangely unsettled. After hearing a mysterious voice call out to her, Elsa travels to the enchanted forests and dark seas beyond her kingdom -- an adventure that soon turns into a journey of self-discovery. Synoptically, Elsa discovers that the voice calling to her was the memory of young Iduna's call; that her powers were given to her by nature because of Iduna's selfless act of saving Agnarr; and that Elsa herself is the fifth spirit who would break the water dam that would save their kingdom.

You see, the voice calling Elsa (like you and me) into the unknown was challenging her mindset and comfort zone. She was doing just fine after Frozen 1 but there was an agitation that persisted and kept her up at night, trepidatious and reluctant to escape from the comfort the has confined her perspectives. We all get comfortable and enjoy what comfort brings. Many people see comfort as an adjective, describing an attribute or something, when, in fact, comfort is a noun.

Comfort enters your home as a guest, remains as your host, and will eventually become your master. Comfort is a silent killer and has been charged with homicides in careers, families, marriages, and almost every place imaginable where growth and development are quintessential factors to success. Our limited KASH affects our ability to create or solve problems in two important ways: it heavily influences the kind of opportunities or problems that we recognize as being important enough to create (opportunities) and/or solve (problems); and it influences the analysis of the potential (opportunities) and cause (problems) and therefore the proper course of action to maximize the opportunities in life or to minimize the duplication of problems that have been solved in our past. What’s the definition of insanity? There, you got it, doing the same thing while expecting different results or better yet…being fearful of entering the unknown.

Our mindset should be challenged. We should have a desire to grow but that’s not innate in us. Physically speaking, our bodies do this on the regular. When we are hot, our bodies don’t sit there and internally combust. No, our bodies respond to the external stimuli by sweating to ensure we don’t overheat and dehydrate in the process. If the hairs in our nose tickle a bit, we sneeze. In other words, our bodies respond to external forces and are not going to be suppressed by anything.

Like our physical nature, our psyche (not psychic) nature, which comprises of our mind, will, and emotions should, like a thermostat, adjust to the external environment to maintain the proper climate in our lives. To do this we must be committed to the foundational premise of continuous learning and development. Without challenging ourselves, we subscribe to an internal newsletter whose content never changes. Imagine that, picking up a magazine and reading the same articles over and over again. Certainly, the cure to insomnia. So, if you want to challenge your mindset and are daring to enter the unknown to discover and unlock your internal talents and gifts, you must evict comfort because comfort is the enemy of change. Not to mention, we must dismiss the notion that nobody likes “change” but a wet baby.

Apostle Paul, whose mindset was drastically change on the Damascus Road, wrote that we are not to be conformed to the ways of the world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds or mindset. He realized, like we should, that transformation doesn’t end with age or experience, but it continues daily as we invent and reinvent ourselves. If you can agree with this, then you must establish parameters to keep your mind percolating and hungry for more.

Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926, on her second attempt. 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle swam 21 miles from Dover, England, to Cape Griz-Nez across the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France. On August 6, 1926, Ederle entered the water at Cape Gris-Nez in France at 7:08 a.m. to make her second attempt at the Channel. The water was predictably cold as she started out that morning, but unusually calm. Twice that day, however–at noon and 6 p.m.–Ederle encountered squalls along her route and Burgess urged her to end the swim. Ederle’s father and sister, though, who were riding in the boat along with Burgess, agreed with Ederle that she should stay the course. Ederle’s father had promised her a new roadster at the conclusion of the swim, and for added motivation he called out to her in the water to remind her that the roadster was only hers if she finished. Ederle persevered through storms and heavy swells, and, finally, at 9:04 p.m. after 14 hours and 31 minutes in the water, she reached the English coast, becoming the sixth person and first woman to swim the Channel successfully. Furthermore, she had bettered the previous record by two hours.

Afterwards, Ederle told Alec Rutherford of The New York Times, “I knew it could be done, it had to be done, and I did it.” She went on to say that she was successful the second time around, not because of the incentives outlined by her father but because she possessed a mindset that failure was not an option. She started the journey with intentionality to reaching the English coast. It was in her mind from the beginning even though she felt like giving up and her body became fatigued. She was set on not breaking the record but breaking up the comfort in her mindset that would oftentimes tell her she wasn’t capable, or the feat was impossible.

What has kept you anchored in a position of mediocrity? What has prevented you from going to the next level? I can guarantee you this…that something would be your mind. The richest place on the planet, found in every place across the globe, is the graveyard – filled with so many people who could have, would have, and should have, but for many (not all) were scared to enter the unknown. I am inspired by these words myself, and will likely archive this article because I, like you, will no longer be afraid to enter the unknown, because when we are there, we can unlock some of our life’s greatest experiences and moments. There I say again, let’s #getatit!

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pierrehardy · 4 years

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COVID-19 x China: A Geopolitical Analysis

This week, I focused my research on the pandemic and how it changes the world stage with regards to China. I have seen one too many Facebook posts going along the lines of “ChInA hAs WoN tHe ThIrD wOrLD WaR wItHOuT fIrInG a SInGle BuLlET.” So, let’s see, is China about to replace America as the leading global superpower?

TL;DR

Nope. But that’s not to say China is not ambitious and trying to be more influential, but they have a long way to go.

Currently, Chinese propaganda is in full swing. Donations and aid to other countries are highly publicized while diplomats are furiously deflecting blame for the pandemic. Chinese state news blasts four main messages on the regular: (1) China’s leaders are great. (2) China’s system is superior to the Western system. (3) The West’s handling of the pandemic sucks. (4) The virus was an American bioweapon (and other conspiracy theories). All in all, the publicity stunts are quite inelegant.

Why isn’t China going to replace America anytime soon?

World trade still runs on the dollar.

Economically and militarily, America is still on the top and has a sizable lead.

China is still relatively not trusted. From their data (economic figures, COVID-19 figures) to their crass propaganda (motives are seen too clearly), it is turning people off more than winning their hearts (Have you seen the song they made for the Philippines regarding our disputed islands?) Trust, accountability, and likeability are needed to be a global leader.

The predicted global supply chain shift away from China would erode its importance in world trade.

China does not seem to actually want to replace America. Instead, it wishes to lower America’s dominance to make itself more influential. More on just balancing the playing field than outright replacing. What China wants is for critics to leave them alone and not try to change them (with its view on civil liberties, internet censorship, and authoritarian socialism).

China attempts to expand its power by:

Racing to be the winner of the COVID-19 vaccine race.

Increase its soft power by winning over Westerns with Western methods (like making news broadcasts of sanitized Chinese news in a Western “style” and making their diplomats use Twitter, which is banned in their own country).

Improve relations with poorer nations by showing a willingness to be forgiving of debt during this pandemic.

By placing diplomats in various international organizations.

Finally, to answer one more question, did China find an opportunity to grow during this pandemic? Yes. It was able to flex the advantages of its system in a time of crisis. Compared to the West, their economy fared better. This flex showed three benefits of the Chinese regime.

While America had to whip out trillions to prop up the economy, this mechanism is already “built-in” in the Chinese system. State-owned banks regularly finance private and state-owned firms.

In general, China is more cautious than the West. Currently, they are not impatient to craft policies to hasten the rebound of the economy. I find this to be a merit. China is also careful in spending too much so as not to unravel their progress for lessening their debt. A bit of prudence would indeed go a long way.

Finally, China was able to show the attractiveness of their bonds (higher yields than American bonds while still being quite high quality) and of their technology (China is the leader in e-commerce and digital payments, which is predicted to have a boost thanks to the virus). They’re also exhibiting signs of being a reasonable creditor.

This write-up was a bit of a struggle to organize as it can get all over the place, but I tried my best to structure it like this:

Retelling the story

Past: How did it all start, and how did China handle it?

Present: What are they doing now?

Future: What are the risks they could face?

Geopolitical analysis

What is China doing to revive the economy?

What are the perks that China is enjoying right now?

Why is China not about to replace America?

A segue explaining the criticisms against WHO

What is China actually aiming for?

Retelling the Story

Past: How did it all start, and how did China handle it?

As someone who reads the news every morning (or afternoon), the first time I remember this virus being reported was around late November or early December 2019. It was reported to be a disease among pigs that was not transmissible to humans.

Well, that was a lie.

China then proceeded to gyrate wildly from extremes. First, local officials of Wuhan gagged the doctors and journalists wanting to sound the alarm, then next, Beijing imposed the swiftest and most massive lockdown in history. [1] This move seemed to work, limiting its casualties (especially compared to other countries), and lifting it after 77 days.

Present: What are they doing now?

Currently, businesses are open and Chinese propaganda is in full swing. The propaganda has been, to put it gently, quite inelegant and rather crude. This is what they’re doing:

State news. The messages revolves around:

Praising their country’s leaders. [2]

Bragging by pointing out how badly other countries (read: America) are handling the crisis compared to how great China did it. [2]

Spreading conspiracy theories (usually that the virus was an American bioweapon). [3] One conspiracy theory that backfired is that Africans are, for some reason worse carriers, leading to mass evictions and maltreatment of Africans in China. [4]

Sending the message that the system of Chinese socialism is better than the free and democratic system of the West.

Magnanimous posturing when giving aid. Every donation to other countries and every discussion of Xi Jinping to a foreign world leader is heavily publicized. Here are examples of some high-profile donations:

Donations for Spain [5]

Sponsor: China

Contents: 800 protective suits, 110,000 masks (totalling (just) $50,000)

Criticisms

The donations arrived 2 weeks after. By that time, Spain has already bought 10,000x more than what they have donated. [6] In fact, China has earned about$1.45 billion from sales of medical equipment. [2]

China’s donations are dwarfed by what Germany and France donated to Italy (2 million masks, tens of thousands of protective suits) without any publicity. [7]

Also, for all the airs and graces, China seems to have forgotten that America and the EU gave them a total of 30 tons of medical donations back when the outbreak was just beginning in China. [8][9]

Donations for Africa

Sponsor: Jack Ma, China’s most prosperous businessman.

Contents: So far, 120 million masks, 4.1 million testing kits, and 3.7k ventilators [10]

Donations for other countries like Canada and the Netherlands (read: countries hesitant on investing in Huawei made 5G infrastructure)

Sponsor: surprise, Huawei

Contents: For Canada, 1 million masks, 30k face shields, 50k gloves. [11]

Diplomatic sharp power. Every Chinese diplomat would shake their fists and bluster at anyone trying to implicate or assign blame to China for this pandemic. [12]

All these state-sponsored bla-blas isn’t mainly for winning the hearts and minds of other countries. They also do this to deflect any blame from their leaders for how they mismanaged the initial response to the outbreak. The death of the first doctor from Wuhan who rang the alarm sparked some outrage back home, prompting the higher ups to pacify their citizens as much as they can. [13]

Future: What risks they could face?

For all this triumphant marching, the riskiest thing to happen is for there to be rain on their parade. A possible second wave of infections can ruin their narrative. In fact, there have been footages of hushed up additional deaths caused by the virus post-lockdown. [14]

Another one is if the economy fails to pick up, wherein unemployment can rise, increasing social tensions in China.

Geopolitical Analysis

What is China doing to revive the economy?

If you look at it from the outside, they seem to be doing nothing, which is strange. In the past, when there’s a slump, China goes on an infrastructure spending spree to jump-start the economy. So are they really doing nothing? Well, no, they’re not not doing anything, but they are indeed doing less than what they usually would.

Firstly, they are being cautious. I believe this is merit. This prudence is likely caused by the fact that the government manages every facet of the lives of more than a billion citizens. Not only that, but they’re also cautious of derailing their progress on shaving off debt. They seem to have accepted the fact that there are too many unknowns to make the right policy move.

The second thing to note is that the trillions that the American government is whipping out to prop up the economy are already “built-in” to the Chinese system. State-banks are regularly lending money to state and private firms. Thanks to this, economic damage has been limited from the start. One can conclude that the Chinese regime does have some advantages in a time of crisis. It is indeed true that a centralized government can mobilize huge amounts of resources more quickly when needed.

What are the perks that China is enjoying right now?

Because of the aforementioned advantages, China can enjoy some perks thanks to the pandemic.

First, China was able to flex the resilience of its system during a crisis (Figure 1). For more explanation on interpreting this graph, check out appendix A. I will explain very quickly what bonds and yield spreads are.

Figure 1 [32]

This flex can also highlight the attractiveness of their bonds (Figure 2).

Figure 2 [33]

As mentioned in my previous blog, the pandemic can accelerate the adoption of e-commerce and digital payments. China is one of the technological leaders in this field. [15]

If China’s propaganda of its medical donations to the West fails to win them over, a more potent option is to extend their generosity as creditors to poorer nations. If they show a willingness to be more forgiving to its poor debtors, that’s a sure way to win their hearts.

Why is China not about to replace America?

Before I list the reasons why China is not about to replace America, let’s first touch upon the factors that conjured this idea in the first place. Basically, it’s because of Trump.

Trump showed an unwillingness to lead the world in overcoming this pandemic (unlike America’s leadership to dealing with AIDS/HIV in the past [16]). This provided a gap in which China is more than happy to fill.

Trump puts America first to such an extent that other countries found it selfish, irking some of its allies. There were complaints that America diverted much needed medical supplies en route to Europe for its own use.

Trump attacked the World Health Organization (WHO) for mismanaging the initial response to the pandemic (nevermind that WHO labeled the outbreak as a pandemic quite early as Trump downplayed it). For this one, however, Trump is not totally without reason.

So another segue, what’s up with the criticism against the WHO?

The criticism: the WHO is too friendly with China.

WHO praised China’s leadership. [17]

WHO failed to challenge China’s early claims that the coronavirus is not transmissible to humans. [18]

WHO is cited as corrupt since it fumbled on Taiwan’s request to be a member of the organization. [19]

Result: America threatened to withhold its monetary contributions to the organization. This is no small thing since America is the biggest donor of the WHO (Figure 3).

Figure 3 [20]

My personal take: cut the WHO some slack. This is where I argue for some empathy for the organization. First, we need to realize that WHO cannot stand on its own. WHO cannot function without funding. And who funds them? That’s right, multiple countries. This makes the diplomatic balancing act very difficult. WHO effectively relies on keeping everyone happy, so they continue to fund and to cooperate with the organization. This is very difficult to do. As we know, the Taiwan-China issue is very thorny, and I cannot blame them for squirming after being put in a difficult situation. Personally, I don’t know what was the right thing to do. All I can say is I understand them and cannot blame them.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s go to the bread and butter of this write-up. What are the reasons why China is not about to replace America’s dominance? What does it even mean to be the world’s leading superpower? Here’s some ways to measure it:

Hard Power - these are the most evident manifestations of a country’s muscle to influence others. It consists of two main things:

Military. Who has the strongest military? Let’s use the 2020 Military Strength Ranking [21] as a guide since it takes into account not just military numbers but also technological superiority. It ranks America as the strongest military in the world (with a score of 0.0606; smaller value means more muscle). China ranks third (with a score of 0.0691), just behind Russia. So militarily, it’s America.

Economy. We will measure this using the nominal GDP, or the country’s income without adjusting for its inflation. Typically when seeing the progress of a country, real GDP is better. However, if we’re comparing brute economic might, nominal GDP paints a better picture (Figure 4). Currently, the biggest economy goes to America with $21 trillion. China comes second at $14 trillion. [22] Despite being the second-biggest economy, the gap between their incomes is wide.

Figure 4 [34]

Soft Power - these are the less obvious strengths of a country. If hard power is used to arm wrestle others to get what you want, soft power is more for convincing them to cooperate with you. This is done by being diplomatic, likeable (which are usually achieved by cultural exports. Do you like KDrama or KPop? Those are deliberate moves by the South Korean government to expand their soft power), and trustworthy.

Let’s see how China is doing on that front. First is trustworthiness. As it stands, people do not trust China, especially when it comes to disclosing data about their country [23][24]

Second, their propaganda, as mentioned, is crass. The West can see right through this and are turned off by it. Hell, even its neighbors. Admittedly, the music video they made for the Philippines was lame and of poor taste. [25] (1.9k likes vs 139k dislikes. Surprised they didn’t turn off the likes and dislikes). To most Filipinos, it felt like a robber breaking into your house then, while they’re looting your own home, they’re also singing a song for you. Then acting as if the song makes what they’re doing alright.

There are also economic factors considered as soft power.

Currently, the world still runs on the dollar. During the pandemic, everyone rushed to obtain dollars [26] and the dollar is still the biggest foreign currency in reserves (Figure 5). This can actually exhibit an unhealthy dependence on the dollar, but that’s for another time.

China’s dominance as the world’s supplier can be eroded as the pandemic spooked businesses into plans of shifting their supply chains away from China. I talked about this in more detail in my previous blog.

Figure 5 [35]

With all this discussion of China not being able to replace America, did we even consider if China even aims to do that?

What is China actually (probably) aiming for?

Back in the 2017 National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping mentioned that their goal is for China to be a global leader for international influence by the midcentury. Pair this with their efforts to gain soft power, it’s natural to assume that they aspire to be the world leader in the future [27]. However, there’s a line that Xi Jinping always says, echoing the same sentiment of Mao Zedong, which is the aim for “peaceful coexistence.” [28]

Currently, despite trying to step up to America’s shortcomings, China has been a rather timid leader. Their actions are mainly motivated by deflecting criticisms and toppling the American world order, not replacing them. What I believe makes more sense is to think that China doesn’t want to lead, but instead, it wants not to be meddled with and to be allowed to grow the way it wants to without constraints. This is similar to the cause of North Korea’s belligerence: they are afraid by the West’s tendency to assert their worldview unto others. China wants critics to leave alone how it handles its citizens’ liberties, internet censorship, and authoritarian socialism.

So basically, China doesn’t want to replace America, but simply to chip away at its dominance so it can pull its weight to the world without being constrained and bothered. Here are some examples of its efforts to do so:

China is working on developing its soft power.

Confucius Institutes are established all around the world for promoting Chinese culture and language. [29]

They present sanitized news for a Western audience, delivered in a Western way. [30]

By making their diplomats use Twitter, an app banned in their own country. [12]

China is showing a willingness to spend money to gain influence. This is exhibited in their readiness to provide debt relief to the poor. [31] But it’s worth noting how China deals with its debts. It prefers bilateral and discreet arrangements. For example, last year, China forgave Cameroon’s debt. Cool. But then afterwards, Cameroon withdrew its candidate for a position in a UN body, making it easier for the Chinese candidate to get the job. [2] This clearly shows that they had some hidden arrangements behind that debt forgiveness. Which leads us to its third effort:

China tries to station diplomats in various international organizations.

Finally, China is leading the race for developing the vaccine for COVID-19. Whoever creates the vaccine first gets the prom queen. Speaking of vaccines, check out my next blog to know more about the current status of the vaccine race.

So all that being said, why can’t we just let China grow the way it wants to then? Well, that’s because they have a tendency to step over the weak by abusing their strength. Filipinos such as myself don’t need to be reminded of this. China has slowly claimed our seas and for some reason flooding our country (causing distorted housing prices and being treated like second class citizens in our own country). What we need is a world order where it’s not a threat to be weak. A world order that is more cooperative and not “leave me alone to do my own thing.”

Appendix A: Bonds and Yield Spreads

To explain concisely, figure 1 shows the ratio between high-quality corporate bonds over government bonds.

Here are some basic finance concepts explained quickly: bonds are basically IOUs. In other words, when you buy a bond, you’re lending money to the government or companies where they promise to pay you back. Government bonds are considered to be the closest you can get to a risk-free investment (no such thing as risk-free but yeah). So what this graph shows is that when it is higher, it means that corporate bond yields (yields are how much you earn from bonds. It’s like the interest rate of the loan) is much higher than government bonds. Bonds, being a safe investment (relative to stocks), are typically expected not to yield high values. But if they do, it means that investors are demanding more “interest” to their “loans” to compensate for the risk that they don’t get paid back. An alternative way of viewing this, which is perfectly complementary, is that demand for bonds is lower, pushing the price down. See, in reality, bonds are like discounted money. A bond can have 100 dollars written on it, and it is only sold for 80 dollars. Depending on how soon the company/government is going to exchange the bond into real 100 dollars (called the maturity date) and depending on the demand, that 80 dollar price tag can move up/down. This can affect how much yield that bond really earns you. So if people are not buying corporate bonds because they find it risky, demand goes down which then makes the price of the bond go down which then makes the yield higher! Either way, pick whichever interpretation that is more intuitive for you. Both perspectives are correct.

So in figure 1, the spike in the yield spread means investors suddenly felt like the economy is not doing very well. Suddenly, yields from corporate bonds are higher relative to government bonds. The investors demanded more yield for the heightened perceived risk on the economy. You can also observe that the spike quickly went down. Investors are fickle creatures like that. So to summarize, higher in that graph = economic climate isn’t very nice.

References

[1]https://www.vox.com/2020/2/4/21122072/china-coronavirus-healthcare

[2]https://www.economist.com/china/2020/04/16/chinas-post-covid-propaganda-push

[3]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/609772/

[4]https://qz.com/africa/1842768/racism-to-africans-in-guangzhou-hurts-china-coronavirus-diplomacy/

[5]https://www.railfreight.com/beltandroad/2020/03/27/china-sends-thousands-of-masks-to-spain-by-train/?gdpr=accept

[6]https://www.news18.com/news/world/spain-buys-467-million-in-medical-equipment-from-china-to-fight-covid-19-epidemic-2551105.html

[7]https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronavirus-response/coronavirus-european-solidarity-action_en

[8]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_20_178

[9]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/

[10]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52325269

[11]https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/04/08/20/canada-says-huawei-medical-donations-wont-sway-policies

[12]https://www.wcjb.com/content/news/Chinas-diplomats-show-teeth-in-defending-virus-response-569915181.html

[13]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/07/coronavirus-chinese-rage-death-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang

[14]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says

[15]http://www.china.org.cn/top10/2019-02/08/content_74433001.htm

[16]https://eu.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2019/03/08/u-s-leadership-hiv-aids-fight-matters/3085743002/

[17]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3050351/coronavirus-who-head-stands-his-praise-china-and-xi-jinping

[18]https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2020/04/how-world-health-organisation-s-failure-challenge-china-over-coronavirus-cost-us

[19]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/senior-who-adviser-appears-to-dodge-question-on-taiwans-covid-19-response

[20]https://howmuch.net/articles/united-nations-budget-contributions-by-country-2019

[21]https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

[22]https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

[23]https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/economic-commentary-challenging-chinas-state-reported-economic-data-201908181614

[24]https://time.com/5813628/china-coronavirus-statistics-wuhan/

[25]https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/26/Iisang-Dagat-tribute-video-sparks-outrage-online-West-Philippine-Sea.html

[26]https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/dollar-gains-as-investors-continue-to-rush-to-convert-their-assets-into-cash/74778328

[27]https://www.ft.com/content/24eeae8a-b5a1-11e7-8007-554f9eaa90ba

[28]https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/04/12/covid-19-a-warning-for-rational-proactive-protectionism/

[29]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

[30]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping

[31]https://www.newsweek.com/china-debt-relief-african-countries-struggling-coronavirus-1497733

[32]https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/04/16/why-has-chinas-stimulus-been-so-stingy

[33]https://www.ft.com/content/41044876-6ab4-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

[34]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

[35]https://matasii.com/us-dollar-status-as-the-global-reserve-currency/

#blog #covid-19 #covid19 #covid #corona #coronavirus #virus #china #geopolitics #analysis #business #international business #international

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giarts · 5 years

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Too Many Elephants in the Room to Count: When a Conversation on Affordable Housing for Artists Refuses to Address Reality

Submitted by Bree Davies on October 17, 2019

Affordable housing for artists.

This topic is a hard one for me. I'm too invested. I know too much. I have had too many people close to me lose their housing and simultaneously, lose the place where they create art. For one of my friends, when he lost his home and his space to create art, he not long after, lost his life. Colin Ward, a fixture of Denver's Do-It-Yourself arts community, died by suicide on February 1st, 2018, fourteen months after he was evicted from his home, the internationally-recognized art space, Rhinoceropolis. After the surprise eviction, Colin's life was never the same; many of us close to him saw a direct connection between his displacement and his death.

Colin was one of dozens of artists—and one of thousands of people—in Denver to lose their homes and work spaces to surprise/unwarranted evictions, rising rents, unfair housing practices, and handshake leases that evaporated once land values skyrocketed. Predatory and classist real estate deals, often occurring in celebrated “arts districts,” have systematically removed artists from Denver's many neighborhoods.

When I saw the conference workshop Innovations in Artist Housing: Inspiration from South America to Address the “SoHo Effect, I was stoked. I thought, based on the other conversations and panels I had witnessed so far at the GIA conference, I was sure to learn something from one of many experts. Maybe I would hear from an artist in another city who overcame the housing challenge in a way I had not thought of before. Or, maybe there would be a real estate developer interested in talking about the real causes of rising affordability and what communities can do to stabilize themselves and prevent displacement. Maybe, just maybe, there could be talk of what homelessness, mental health and art have to do with each other, and the role stable housing can play in an artist's quality of life.

As I was walking into the panel's location, Redline—the gallery/studios/community space located right in the heart of Denver’s many social and homelessness services—I saw two friends walk in the building ahead of me—two artists who I had worked alongside during the mass evictions of artists and art spaces in 2016 (a knee-jerk reaction many cities across the country had to Oakland’s heartbreakingly deadly Ghost Ship Fire.) These artist friends of mine were people who had gone to city council meetings to implore city officials to do something—anything—about the crisis; they were people who had spent long nights strategizing around the legal rights of artists; they were artists who spent hours researching fair housing laws and real estate transactions along Brighton Boulevard, the strip of the city that is, on paper, an “arts district,” but has been the epicenter of visible artist displacement. I was hopeful; maybe my friends were joining the conversation, allowing conference goers from around the U.S. to hear firsthand from artists living through an affordability crisis in Denver.

But the presence of my artist friends at Redline was merely a coincidence. The panel on artist housing did not include a single artist, let alone an artist impacted by—or blamed for—the “SoHo Effect.” Instead, the panel physically resembled many urban planning panels I've had to painfully sit through—upper middle class white people who want to talk about housing, mostly in terms of real estate values and sexy urban design. They did not want to talk about the realities just outside the windows of the room I began to feel trapped in.

Most disappointing were comments from local developer Mark Falcone. His story was one I’ve heard over and over in the world of development and real estate investment—a wealthy guy who came up in the New Urbanism movement of the 80s and 90s, a time when “center city” infill was going to be the savior and the suburbs were to be scoffed and shamed (even though many of us Gen Xers and Millennials grew up in these so-called bastions of bland, because our parents bought houses in the suburbs—generational results of white flight and/or sometimes because the burbs were affordable, etc.) He showed us lots of renderings and photos of big, shiny object projects he had worked on, talked big game about the rise in an interest to “move back to center cities” (as if there weren't people—mostly black and brown folks—living there all along,) and on and on. Downtowns are like, revitalized now, everyone.

I am a privileged, housing-stable artist who has spent countless hours trying to get to the bottom of my city's current housing crisis. Because of this, I have been privy to dozens of conversations in rooms where mostly white men with generational wealth get to talk about “building cities” without any mention of their own privilege, the impacts of land value and who decides its value, their role in land speculation and what it does to communities, what historically racist housing and land policy did/does to generations of families and their rising inability to grab ahold of that mythical concept of home equity, how gentrification is systematic and not elusive, and so on.

One of the most popular (and tired) tropes in this great game of hot potato known as “who's fault is gentrification?,” is that artists are to blame. But, in this progressive space and in this progressive conference looking at money in art, I did not expect the “artists start gentrification” line to be uttered by a developer who has played a crucial role in the land acquisition (and gifting of that land,) to our modern art museum, not to mention partially funding and building said museum. To more accurately quote Falcone, artists are “the tip of the spear” of gentrification. The developer-favored assertion that artists are to blame for existing is very convenient, as it serves to distance real estate investors from the truth: artists almost never own the land they live on. They aren't the ones buying up huge swaths of lower income communities in a gold rush-like speculative fashion. They aren't the ones who have relationships with politically-adjacent powers-that-be who make these land acquisitions super easy. And artists certainly aren’t the ones out here re-naming neighborhoods in an effort to sell a lower-income communities out from under peoples’ grandmas.

This is not to remove artists—and in this context, I mean mostly white artists—from their role in how cities change, not always for the better. My artist friends Luke and Trevor who once lived at Rhinoceropolis, created a zine called RIP Art (which is not available online, but I did photograph it and post it, page by page on twitter, where you can read it.) It is the best takedown/breakdown of the artist’s role in gentrification that I’ve ever read.

At one point, Falcone said that in Denver, rents/housing consume “only 26% of a household income in Denver” and that people in his very office have proclaimed that they think they could squeeze Denver folks even harder and that the percentage of a person’s income going to housing “could be 32% in no time.” I was grateful and audibly relieved when another skeptical conference attendee commented that this was just the “planation mentality” in action, as the elites with power and land decide how the rest of the people “below” them live. Another conference attendee asked Falcone about some of the imagery in his presentation — alongside a bunch of statistics just how messed up housing issues are, Falcone used a photo of a tent city, an increasingly common sight in cities like Denver, where our community members experiencing homelessness often live. I didn’t catch a straightforward answer from the developer — but he seemed to brush off that part of our community’s life or death issue to talk about the “missing middle,” a part of the housing crisis urban planner professionals like to obsess over.

Just outside the door of this panel, in another studio space across the gallery at Redline, there was a gathering—it was a group of artists, many of whom are experiencing homelessness, working on their art. Redline is one of the few institutions in this city that is part of this “billion dollar economic arts boom” that actually works with artists at every level of their career, regardless of where they land on the economic spectrum. Housed or not, artists have a place at Redline. I wish this panel had made a place for these artists, too.

Posted by Bree Davies on October 17, 2019 at 08:48PM. Read the full post.

#arts #philanthropy #nonprofit

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