Law and Diplomacy in the South China Sea

We tend to distinguish, at least for analytical purposes, law, diplomacy, and the use of force as tools for the conduct of foreign policy. Each typically gets a separate chapter in the international relations textbooks and a separate week on the syllabus of the typical introductory IR course. But, as a story by Helene Cooper in today's New York Times illustrates, this can be misleading. In reality, the military may provide the means by which legal claims are asserted, naval officers may be required to engage in diplomacy while on alert, and a ruling by an international arbitration panel may nudge the world toward war.

Cooper's reporting from on board the U.S.S. Chancellorsville (CG 62), a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser, recounts the ship's participation in a freedom of navigation (FON) exercise in the South China Sea. Her story, which includes conversations between the Chancellorsville's officers and those on a Chinese ship tailing the Chancellorsville, provides a glimpse of the legal/diplomatic/military confrontations that are taking place with increasing frequency as China attempts to establish a claim to sovereignty over much of the South China Sea even as the United States attempts to rebut that claim.

Today U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work told reporters that the U.S. has told China it will not recognize an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea should one be declared there. "We have spoken quite plainly to our Chinese counterparts and said that we think an ADIZ would be destabilizing. We would prefer that all of the claims in the South China Sea be handled through mediation and not force or coercion," Work said. Transits through the South China Sea like the one conducted by the Chancellorsville are how the United States backs up its verbal representations to the Chinese.

Lawfare in Cyberspace

Attorney General Loretta Lynch today announced a federal indictment against seven Iranians believed to be responsible for distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against several large American financial institutions. The attacks began in December 2011 but became much more intense in December 2012. The indictment also accuses one of the Iranians of hacking into the control system of Bowman Dam in Rye, New York in August and September of 2013, a more worrisome attack because of its potential to threaten lives.

While the indictment does not specifically accuse the Iranian government of being behind the attacks, it does note that the accused "were employed by two Iran-based computer companies, ITSecTeam (ITSEC) and Mersad Company (MERSAD), that performed work on behalf of the Iranian Government, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps." At the time of the attacks, computer security experts speculated that Iran was retaliating for a series of sophisticated cyberattacks (beginning with Stuxnet but also including Duqu and Flame) most likely engineered by the U.S. and Israeli governments. Those attacks destroyed centrifuges being used to enrich uranium for Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The indictment was brought some time ago by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York but only unsealed today. It is possible the indictment was sealed in order to avoid complicating the negotiations that resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action last July by which Iran agreed to halt efforts to develop nuclear weapons. January 16, 2016, marked "Implementation Day" when, having verified Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, the other parties to the agreement (the United States and other UN Security Council and European Union states) lifted a variety of sanctions against Iran.

Today's announcement suggests that the United States intends to continue to use legal means to address cyberattacks emanating from state or state-sponsored actors. It follows on an indictment announced in May 2014 of five Chinese military officers affiliated with the 61398 hacker group, a unit of China's People's Liberation Army. Similar uses of the law in conflicts are addressed in a recently published book by Orde F. Kittrie entitled Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War (Oxford University Press, 2016).

For more on the indictment unsealed today, see this story in the New York Times by David Sanger.

Deadly Air

Wednesday's catastrophic explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin are, understandably, attracting greater attention at present, but new research suggests that day-to-day air quality is a far greater threat to human life than random events like the Tianjin disaster.

A statistical analysis by researchers at Berkeley Earth asserts that air pollution in China is responsible for somewhere between 700,000 and 2,200,000 deaths each year. The midpoint of the estimate--1,600,000 deaths per year--translates to 4,400 deaths per day.

The paper, based on detailed records of air-sampling stations in China and neighboring countries combined with World Health Organization frameworks for estimating mortality associated with the diseases most commonly linked to air pollution, is scheduled to be published in PLOS One on August 20. PLOS One is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed science journal that publishes about 30,000 papers per year.

The Berkeley Earth research suggests that much of Beijing's famed air pollution is produced 200 miles away in the industrial areas of Hebei Province. This means that local efforts to mitigate air pollution in advance of the 2022 Winter Olympics will likely be inadequate in the absence of measures addressing the pollution generated by more distant coal-fired power plants.

More on the Berkeley Earth findings, including maps and data sources, can be found here. The study to be published in PLOS One is available here (PDF).

Deterring Cyber Attacks

The New York Times reports today that President Obama has been weighing a variety of possible responses to the intrusion into Office of Personnel Management computers that was first reported in June. The hack, which has been attributed to China, resulted in the theft of personal information for over twenty million federal employees. Although CIA data was not involved in the breach, some of the information collected may have allowed the Chinese to determine the identity of spies posted to China in the past.

One of the considerations involved in the Obama administration's deliberations--and apparently the reason that certain administration officials were willing to talk to a reporter about ongoing discussions--is the desire to achieve a measure of deterrence by imposing costs on the attackers that are clearly tied to the initial data breach. James R. Clapper, Jr., director of national intelligence, and Admiral Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, have both argued that Chinese cyber attacks will keep escalating as long as the United States fails to impose costs on China for the attacks. On the other hand, there is a concern that retaliation, if not carefully calibrated, might prompt escalation rather than restraint.

According to the Times article, the idea of economic sanctions against China has been considered and rejected due to the potential for costly Chinese retaliation against U.S. economic interests. Additionally, the idea of criminal prosecution has apparently been rejected due to the scope and nature of the OPM breach. A recent Congressional Research Service report notes that U.S. policy regarding cyber espionage attempts to distinguish between breaches that involve national security and those that are concerned with economic interests. The former draw a counterintelligence response while the latter are potential subjects for criminal prosecution.

Two years ago, at a "shirt sleeves summit" in Rancho Mirage, California, President Obama tried but failed to get his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to agree to a framework for the regulation of activities in cyberspace. If the U.S.-Soviet nuclear relationship provides any guidance--and it's not entirely clear that it does--a sense of mutual vulnerability may be necessary to bring the United States and China to the point of being able to cooperate on cyber arms control.

Gassed

One hundred years ago, on April 22, 1915, German troops near the village of Gravenstafel along the Ypres Salient in Belgium released 170 tons of chlorine gas in an attack against the trenches occupied by French forces including units from Morocco and Algeria. The gas was released from canisters along the German line and allowed to drift with the wind toward the French line where it settled into the trenches. Soldiers scrambling out of the trenches to escape asphyxiation were hit with a withering fusillade from the Germans.

John Singer Sargent, Gassed (1919)

The French and colonial forces suffered approximately 6,000 casualties with many of the wounded being blinded and suffering serious lung damage. A four-mile wide gap in the defensive line was opened up by the attack, but the Germans were unprepared to exploit it fully.

Adam Hochschild's description of the attack in To End All Wars (pp. 140-41) is worth quoting at some length:

On April 22, 1915, near the battered city of Ypres, French soldiers and troops from French colonies in North Africa noticed a strange, greenish yellow mist billowing out of the German positions and blowing toward them in the wind. An unfamiliar smell filled the air. When the acrid cloud reached them, it was so thick that they couldn't see more than a few feet. Soldiers quickly found themselves gagging and choking, yellow mucus frothing out of their mouths. Hundreds fell to the ground in convulsions. Those who could still breathe fled, staggering into first-aid posts blue from suffocation and coughing blood, speechless but pointing desperately to their throats. In the next few days, Canadian troops fell victim as well. Whatever this mysterious cloud might be, it was heavier than air and sank into the trenches, hugging the earth and forcing soldiers to stick their heads out into a hail of bullets. "The chaps were all gasping and couldn't breathe," a sergeant remembered later. "And it was ghastly, especially for chaps that were wounded--terrible for a wounded man to lie there! The gasping, the gasping!"

The spring leaves just coming out on the trees shriveled; grass turned yellow and metal green. Birds fell from the air, and chickens, pigs, cows, and horses writhed in agony and died, their bodies rotting and bloating. The ever-fatter rats that normally swarmed through the trenches, keeping men awake by running over them in the dark on the way to feast on soldiers' corpses, themselves died by the thousands.

This was the first widespread use of poison gas--chlorine--on the Western Front. Deadly and painful as it could be, later forms of gas would be still worse. Like so much else about the war, chlorine was the product of an industrial economy, in this case made by a complex of eight large chemical firms in Germany's Ruhr region known as the IG cartel. Chlorine and its compounds had a long history in manufacturing, but its new use in warfare was an ominous landmark, seeming to open up a range of horrifying possibilities that had previously existed only in the realm of early science fiction.

Chastened by the experience of World War I in which even the Allied Powers eventually deployed chemicals, the international community attempted to close off the "range of horrifying possibilities." In 1925, the Geneva Protocol was adopted to ban the use of chemical and biological weapons in international conflicts. Significant gaps in the coverage of the Geneva Protocol were closed with the adoption in 1993 of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to which 190 states are party. The CWC prohibits not only the use but the manufacture and stockpiling of chemical weapons.

Credible evidence indicates that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons--including chlorine gas--with devastating effects on civilians in recent attacks conducted in violation of Syria's obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and UN Security Council Resolution 2118 (2013). Acting on the basis of findings by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Security Council, on March 6, 2015, adopted Resolution 2209 threatening enforcement action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter in the event of further use of chemical weapons.

It seems unlikely that the Security Council will be able to back up its threat to punish Syria for its use of chemical weapons given the continued intransigence of Russia and China on matters related to Syria's civil war. However, both states voted for Resolution 2209. Both are also paying a diplomatic price for their grossly immoral position.

 

Gas for China

The New York Times reports today that Russia and China have signed a thirty-year agreement for the sale of natural gas to China. The deal, which had been in the works for over a decade, was signed while Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping were in Shanghai for a regional security conference.

While the New York Times story correctly notes the political impetus for the conclusion of this agreement in a setting in which Russia's relationship with Europe has been imperiled by events in Ukraine, it is also worth pointing out the significance of the agreement for China's efforts to address its environmental problems. According to the EPA, the use of natural gas for electricity production generates 1.22 pounds of carbon dioxide CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. In comparison, bituminous coal generates 2.08 pounds of CO2 per kWh, sub-bituminous coal generates 2.16 pounds of CO2 per kWh, and lignite generates 2.18 pounds of CO2 per kWh. The natural gas advantage is partially offset by the leakage of methane--the principal component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas--into the atmosphere during gas production and transportation, but, at least in the United States, studies suggest that the offsetting effects of leakage are not great enough to overcome the benefits of the ongoing transition from coal to natural gas.

Natural gas is no panacea for air pollution and climate change; energy from wind, water, and the sun remain far better options than any fossil fuel. Nevertheless, changes that can reduce China's dependence on coal--the increase in CO2 emissions from coal in China between 2002 and 2012 was roughly equal to Europe's total CO2 emissions from coal in 2011--should be welcomed even if the alternative (natural gas, in this case) is sub-optimal.

Poisoning the Rice

The environmental news out of China would be bad under any circumstances--as always--but combined with what we're learning about rice, it seems especially worrisome.

China's government has released a study conducted from 2006 to 2013 that found that 19.4 percent of all arable land in the country is contaminated. Cadmium, nickel, and arsenic--products of emissions from Chinese industry--are the chief pollutants in the soil with the heaviest concentrations located in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the northeast corner of China.

Meanwhile, studies conducted in the U.S. have found that rice absorbs arsenic and cadmium from the soil all too efficiently. In traditional rice-growing, where a paddy is flooded with water, rice draws arsenic from the soil. But if the amount of water used is reduced in an effort to limit the absorption of arsenic, rice will absorb cadmium instead. Both elements are toxic.

In addition to a massive environmental cleanup, what China needs is not organic rice but a genetically modified form of the grain that is able to avoid rice's normal thirst for cadmium and arsenic. Until that's available, though, it might be best to go with the noodles.

China in Africa

It's more than just oil . . . but not much more.

Since the early 1990s when China's economic liberalization began to produce high annual GDP growth rates, Chinese foreign economic policy has tilted toward the Middle East and Africa in a bid to ensure adequate supplies of energy and other resources necessary to sustain that growth. China's courtship of Africa has been intentional and, by any economic measure (with economic being an important qualification), it has been successful.

Just a few examples are necessary to illustrate how extraordinary China's diplomatic effort to build ties with Africa has been. First, in October 2000, China hosted a ministerial meeting in Beijing to inaugurate a new organization called the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). At this meeting, President Jiang Zemin announced a series of Chinese initiatives designed to aid Africa (and promote China's interests there). These initiatives included a doubling of China's development assistance to Africa, the construction--at China's expense--of a new headquarters building for the African Union, the cancellation of all African debts, the establishment of a $5 billion fund to promote African investments by Chinese firms, a doubling (to 4,000) of the number of scholarships for African students in Chinese universities, construction of 30 hospitals and 100 schools in Africa, the training of 15,000 Africans in the professions, and more. Since that initial meeting, FOCAC has held meetings at the ministerial level every three years, alternating between Beijing and an African capital. Second, between 2004 and 2006, China hosted at least 29 leaders from Africa; some who had been shunned for human rights-related reason in Washington were given red-carpet treatment in Beijing. Meanwhile, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao between them made 15 state visits to Africa in the same period.

The results of these and other efforts can be quantified. The value of trade between China and Africa increased from $8 billion in 1997 to $106 billion in 2008. In 2009, China overtook the United States to become Africa’s largest trading partner; by 2012, trade between China and Africa reached a total value of $198.5 billion divided between approximately $85 billion in Chinese exports to Africa and just over $113 billion in African exports to China. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China today maintains embassies in 41 African states. (Three African states with no Chinese embassy--Burkina Faso, Sao Tome and Principe, and Swaziland--maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.)

To the extent that there is political and economic competition involved, China has a number of advantages over the United States and Europe in its dealings with Africa. First, as a victim itself of Western imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, China is able to engage with former colonial states with a measure of credibility and trust that is lacking for those states that once ruled colonial empires. This is no small matter on a continent that for centuries was divided up and exploited by a handful of European states. Second, China's history and ideology give it a worldview with respect to sovereignty and human rights that more closely matches that of many African governments than the worldview of the West. Paradoxically, in its relationship with Africa, the West suffers both from the illiberal policies of the past and the liberal policies of the present. Third, China offers what to many African leaders appears to be a very attractive model of state-centered development. Thus far, Beijing has managed to achieve impressive economic gains without conceding the need for more open political processes. This is appealing to the long-time rulers of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, and other African states. Fourth, the Chinese political system makes possible forms of investment in Africa that are generally difficult, if not impossible, for the United States and Europe to match. Specifically, China is able to tie the contracts its state-owned enterprises make with African governments to government aid packages. It is as if a U.S.-based oil company were able to promise that, upon the completion of a deal, USAID would follow with a new set of grants. Fifth, China's economic dealings in Africa are unaffected by concerns over the quality of governance. What human rights and anti-corruption advocates in the West decry as “dirty aid” or tainted contracts appears to some African leaders merely to be business as it should be--without conditions external to the matters at hand.

Much of what China gets from Africa is oil. Eighty percent of the value of African exports to China comes from oil. China imports more oil from Angola, the second-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, than any other state. It has a significant stake in exploration and production in many other African states, and has had, in some cases, for a decade or more. Two Chinese IOCs, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC), began operating in Sudan in 1995 with petroleum production beginning in 1999. Chinese companies began oil exploration in Libya in 2001, Nigeria in 2002, and Ethiopia in 2005. China began purchasing petroleum from Congo in 2000, from Equatorial Guinea in 2002, and from Gabon and Mauritania in 2004.

China's efforts to increase and diversify its sources of petroleum are essential to the maintenance of the economic growth that has so far kept the Communist Party in power by lifting millions of people out of poverty. China surpassed Germany and Japan to become the second-largest car market in the world in 2005. It is expected to have 130 million vehicles on the road by 2020, surpassing the U.S. By 2030, the number of cars and trucks in China is expected to reach 270 million. Quite apart from the urban road construction necessary to accommodate 270 million vehicles, China will require significant increases in its supply of petroleum to meet future demand.

In a world of scarcity, this might be a problem. It is not clear, however, that we are living in world of scarcity at this point. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2013 puts the world supply of petroleum (proved reserves) at 1.669 trillion barrels of oil--more oil than has been produced since the beginning of petroleum exploration and production. Of course, demand is accelerating, so a better indicator may be the reserves-to-production ratio. BP puts the reserves-to-production ratio (the ratio of petroleum reserves remaining at the end of the year divided by that year's rate of production) for the end of 2012 at 52.9 years. That's not a long time, but with a few new finds it may be long enough to see even China and India move away from oil consumption as the U.S. has begun to do.

Getting Paid to Hack in China

Panasonic, the Japanese electronics company, has announced that it will begin providing bonus pay to its employees working in China to compensate for the risks posed by China's high levels of air pollution.

"Banana Man"?

NPR reports that an editorial in a Chinese state-run newspaper called outgoing U.S. ambassador to China Gary Locke a "yellow-skinned white-hearted banana man." Locke, who is Chinese-American, earned the affection of ordinary Chinese and the scorn of  China's government officials for his common touch.

The editorial also suggested that Beijing's heavy smog had arrived with Ambassador Locke and then left with him.

Locke, for his part, called on the Chinese government to respect human rights in his final news conference.

Super Mario Meets the Sheng

The release of Super Mario Bros. almost 30 years ago may seem like ancient history, but it's nothing time-wise compared to the invention of the sheng in China over 3,000 years ago. What links the two events--in a sort of "Lexus and the olive tree" way (if an IR spin on this story is necessary)--is that Koji Kondo's theme music for Super Mario Bros. sounds great played on the sheng. Take a look at the video and the story here, courtesy of the BBC.

Obama and the Dalai Lama

President Obama met with the Dalai Lama at the White House yesterday. Predictably, the meeting drew a sharply critical response from the People's Republic of China. Prior to the meeting, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry said the meeting would "grossly interfere in the internal affairs of China, seriously violate norms governing international relations, and severely impair China-U.S. relations." The Obama administration has correctly concluded that (1) on matters of importance to the United States, China doesn't help much even when the Dalai Lama isn't stopping by for a visit and (2) on matters of importance to China, an Obama-Lama conversation won't keep the Chinese from dealing with the U.S.

Nonetheless, it's worth asking what's behind China's bluster on Tibet? In a nutshell, China fears the possibility that Tibet will assert a claim to self-determination and, worse for China, that others in the world will support the Tibetan desire for autonomy.

As with many places where there is a self-determination claim pitted against a claim of sovereignty and territorial integrity, Tibet has a history that is subject to multiple interpretations. Furthermore, as the introduction to the Tibet Oral HistoryProject at Case Western Reserve’s Center for Research on Tibet states, “Our understanding of the social and political history of Tibet during the second half of the Twentieth Century has been distorted by politically driven polemics.” In reality, much of Tibet’s history is shrouded in mystery, in part because it has not been reliably recorded.

What we know can be summarized this way: Tibet has had an independent existence and even an empire in the age of great, amorphously bounded Asian empires. For at least the last 1500 years, its existence has been interwoven with China's imperial ambitions in Asia. At times, at it does now, China has dominated the relationship. At other times, Tibet has clearly been set apart and even independent. There is a myth, based like all myths on at least a partial truth, that the Tibetan-Chinese relationship has been one of priest and patron, with Tibetans having been invited by both Mongolian and Chinese emperors into a spiritual and political relationship of equals.

Tibetan Buddhist monks

Another thing we know is that modern Tibet's history, like China's and India's, was compromised by European imperialism. At a time when Tibet had walled itself off from the outside world, the British forced their way in, demanding free trade and tribute. In 1886, 1890, and 1893, the British entered into treaties with China regarding Tibet. The Tibetans refused to accept the legitimacy of these agreements. In 1904, a British force led by Col. Francis Younghusband invaded Tibet and occupied Lhasa in order to head off possible moves by the Russians. This led the Chinese to formally declare their sovereignty over Tibet, the first such formal declaration. When the Dalai Lama fled to Beijing to escape the British invasion, the relationship between Tibet and China was further complicated. (He later determined that the Chinese were a greater threat than the British and moved from Beijing to India.) Britain forced the Chinese in 1906 to accept a treaty calling for Beijing to pay the 2.5 million rupees that had been demanded of the Tibetans in a treaty that followed the 1904 invasion.

Finally, to conclude this very brief summary of an earlier period of Sino-Tibetan relations, it is worth noting that the collapse of China's Qing Dynasty in 1912 brought de facto independence to Tibet. From 1912 to 1950, Tibet functioned as a separate state under the leadership of the Dalai Lamas. Its independence was not, however, acknowledged by China, Britain, or India, in part because Lhasa was closed to foreigners during this period.

During its de facto independence, China remained in control of large parts of Tibetan territory. China's Tibet Autonomous Region is roughly half of Tibet as defined by the Tibetan government in exile. The Qinghai province, a part of Sichuan, and other areas inhabited by Tibetans are also considered to be Tibet by the Tibetans although they lie outside of the TAR. The area beyond the TAR was never, during the twentieth century at least, under Tibetan control, although a Tibetan army was sent to try to seize territory in Qinghai and Xikang in 1932. China’s National Revolutionary Army repulsed the attack.

In 1950, a year after the Communists emerged victorious in China's civil war, the People’s Liberation Army entered Tibet, defeating token resistance from the Tibetan army. The so-called Seventeen Point Agreement was negotiated between the Chinese Communists and the leaders of Tibet resulting in Chinese sovereignty over the region with little social and cultural change being forced on the Tibetans. During the 1950s, the Chinese established secular schools, built infrastructure (running water and electricity were introduced to Lhasa), and abolished serfdom. Otherwise, the Dalai Lama was allowed to maintain life in Tibet much as it had been prior to 1950.

Beginning in 1956, small uprisings against Chinese authority began occurring in Tibet. Some of these were organized and funded by the CIA. To this day, the extent to which trouble in Tibet during the 1950s was indigenous and spontaneous or the result of outside provocations remains contested. There were guerilla attacks on PLA convoys beginning in 1957, leading to a Chinese crackdown on Tibet. This prompted the Lhasa Uprising in March 1959, an episode in which revolt spread throughout the country. It was at this point that the current Dalai Lama fled to India. He has not been permitted to return to Tibet since then.

Potala Palace, Lhasa

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party demonstrated open hostility to all forms of religion, including, of course, Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibet, monasteries were closed (and in many cases destroyed along with temples), monks were forced to marry and thus violate vows of celibacy, and the Tibetan language was banned. Whether repression was worse in Tibet than in any other part of China during the Cultural Revolution is open to debate, but the Red Guards' hostility toward religious expression seemed especially significant in Tibet given its theocratic character.

After Mao died, Deng Xiaoping introduced a broad-based policy of liberalization in China. Certain religious freedoms were restored and, in Tibet, many monasteries were rebuilt. The Chinese government actually went so far as to promote Tibetan culture. There were talks between the Dalai Lama and the government in Beijing, but no progress was made toward satisfying the Tibetans' desire for autonomy.

Frustrated by the failure of negotiations, Tibetans began protesting in the streets in 1987. A promising young Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official named Hu Jintao was sent to Tibet. In February 1989, shortly before the anniversary of the 1959 Lhasa Uprising, Hu brought 1,700 People’s Army Police to Lhasa to clamp down on protests. On March 5, police fired on a crowd. Tibetans claim the shooting was unprovoked; Chinese claimed the police were acting in self-defense. On March 8, Hu asked the central government in Beijing to declare martial law. Three months later, on June 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation Army fired on protesters in Tiananmen Square. Some have suggested that Hu’s actions in Lhasa established the precedent for the otherwise unprecedented use of force by the Chinese government against its own people.

Hu Jintao left Tibet in 1990 due to altitude sickness—whether he had it or not is subject to some dispute—and went to Beijing. There he was brought into the inner sanctum of the CCP. In 2002, he became General Secretary of the CCP; the following year he assumed the presidency of China, a position he held until 2013. Hu's willingness to use force against Tibetans, some believe, is what led to his ascension to the top of the Chinese political system.

In 2000, China launched what was called the "Great Western Investment Strategy," a strategy designed to reduce economic inequality in the country while attempting to undermine political dissent through economic growth. This, arguably, was the same strategy that was applied to the country as a whole after the events of 1989. Of course, the "Great Western Investment Strategy" had a third purpose, and that was to develop the natural resources necessary to fuel eastern China's continued economic expansion.

For Tibet, the centerpiece of the regional development strategy was a plan to link Lhasa to the rest of China by rail. In 2001, construction began on a railway line running from Golmud to Lhasa (the section from Xining to Golmud having been constructed in the 1980s). The project cost $4 billion and was completed in 2006. With considerable justification, the Chinese regard the construction of the Qinghai-Lhasa railroad as one of the greatest engineering feats in their nation’s history. To advocates of Tibetan independence, however, the railroad presents a threat. It is the means by which more Han Chinese may come to Tibet and the means by which more of Tibet's resources may flow to the Han regions of China. It appears not to be a tool for Tibetan development as much as it is a tool for Chinese control of Tibet.

In 2011, China initiated a policy for the TAR called "the nine haves." Some of the "haves" involve development projects—"to have roads, to have water, to have electricity"—but one requires flying the Chinese flag—"to have a national flag." This is part of Beijing's effort to enforce its authority in Tibet. Even monasteries are required to fly China's flag (and to display portraits of Chinese leaders) under this policy.

PRC flag over Lhasa

In Driru, the people have resisted the edict to fly flags. On September 27, 2013, China reportedly sent thousands of troops to enforce the policy, with limited success to this point. Forty villagers were arrested. According to media reports, on Sunday, October 6, Chinese troops fired on a crowd protesting the arrests. Tibetan sources say that 60 people were injured in the incident.

Where do things stand today? In some respects, Chinese rule in Tibet is heavy-handed, as it has always been. The Tibetans regard the Chinese presence as an occupation and see the increasing presence of Han Chinese in Tibet as part of a deliberate strategy to dilute the influence of Tibetans in their own culture. The Dalai Lama has relinquished his political role in the Tibetan Government in exile, but he remains Tibet’s most visible and important leader. Some Tibetans believe the Chinese strategy regarding Tibet involves a waiting game. The Dalai Lama is 77. The Chinese may believe that dreams of Tibetan independence will die when he dies.

[Photos courtesy of Sandy Harrison]

China's Response

China responded today to the report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "We believe that politicizing human rights issues is not conducive toward improving a country's human rights." She also noted China's opposition to referring the situation in North Korea to the International Criminal Court, something recommended by the Commission of Inquiry.

China's defense of North Korea is, of course, self-interested. While China's human rights record is not like North Korea's, there are elements of repression and social control in China that also merit international scrutiny and condemnation. Furthermore, North Korea's atrocities have to a considerable degree been aided and abetted by Beijing--directly in the many cases of refoulement involving those who have managed to flee from North Korea into China and indirectly in the many diplomatic negotiations that have occurred over the years among members of the UN Security Council seeking to impose more effective sanctions on North Korea.

At a time when the international community is trying to move, haltingly, toward a new global ethic of collective responsibility in cases involving crimes that shock the conscience of humanity--as those in North Korea clearly do--China has positioned itself as the chief obstacle.

The End of the Spanish Inquisition?

The New York Times reports that Spain's parliament is considering legislation that would roll back a 1985 law that has provided jurisdiction for Spanish courts over a wide range of international crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture. Spain's exercise of universal jurisdiction nearly brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to trial in Spain in 1998 before the British, who had arrested him in London on a Spanish arrest warrant, allowed the former Chilean dictator to return home to Chile for medical reasons.

The move by Spain's ruling Partido Popular to scale back the use of universal jurisdiction in the nation's courts (for the second time in recent years) comes just as Spain's National Court has issued international warrants for former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and former prime minister Li Peng in a case involving allegations of genocide in Tibet. The case was filed in 2006 by two human rights organizations and a Buddhist monk who is a Spanish national. Former president Hu Jintao was also named in the complaint, but no warrant has been issued yet for his arrest.

China has responded angrily, touching off a debate in Spain regarding the competing imperatives of trade and human rights.

(Thanks to Michael Reid for flagging the story and to Thomas Doyle for the title of this post.)

Virtual Sunrise Revisited

Strange things happen in China. All the time. This is what the China hand whose views I respect the most (and whom I also happen to live with) tells me all the time. So, I didn't find it too hard to believe that residents of Beijing were getting their fill of sunrise each morning--in spite of the perpetual smog--via large video screens. The photo accompanying the story in the Daily Mail seemed to confirm the tale.

I should have paid more attention to the logo in the lower right corner of the video screen, a logo that seemed to indicate that the video was, in fact, an advertisement for tourism in Shandong Province. Mea culpa.

On the other hand, U.S. State Department air quality monitoring in Beijing currently indicates that the air quality in Beijing has been in the "Hazardous" range ("Everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.") for the past twenty-four hours. Of course, that's not news. Virtual sunrises would be news.

Perhaps the Shandong Province tourism video would be most effective in luring Beijing-ren to the coast if it showed nothing but sunrises.

Welcome to Wyoming

Internet service for many in China ground to a halt for eight hours yesterday as a result of what may have been a mistake made by Chinese censors. Many of China's half a billion Internet users were unable to get to .com, .org, or .net addresses because Chinese Internet traffic was being routed to servers operated by a shadowy company based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. A cyberattack was initially suspected, but American experts, noting that the Wyoming servers are owned by a company that helps Internet users cover their tracks, surmised that Chinese authorities trying to block access to the servers may have inadvertently directed traffic to them instead.

Virtual Sunrise

Now that smog in Beijing is once again making it impossible to see the sun, residents are turning to video screens to see the sunrise as it appears along the coast in the somewhat less-polluted Shandong province. Seriously.

Asia's "Great Smog"

Harbin, a city of roughly 6,000,000 in northeastern China (and the venue for the celebrated Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival each winter), is experiencing a level of air pollution reminiscent of London’s “Great Smog” in 1952.

The New York Times’ Sinosphere blog reports that the air quality index (AQI) in Harbin topped out at 500 (the highest number on a scale where only numbers under 50 are considered healthy), forcing the closure of schools and the city’s airport. PM 2.5 (especially hazardous particulate matter under 2.5 microns in diameter) was up to 1,000 milligrams per cubic meter. In contrast, the AQI today in Shanghai, where the air is none too clean, has ranged between 127 and 183 with PM 2.5 generally under 100 milligrams per cubic meter. (This data, updated hourly, is available from the U.S. Department of State’s mission in China on this site.)

Although the start of the winter heating season has exacerbated air quality problems in Harbin, where coal-fired plants supply most municipal heat and power, a development-environmental quality dilemma exists across China. There is abundant coal in China, but coal is not clean. Consequently, China's leadership is facing demands for forms of development that are more sustainable than what has been offered for the past thirty years.

Coal barges on the Huangpu in Shanghai.

Race to the North

It is a pleasure to note the recent publication of "Race to the North: China's Arctic Strategy and Its Implications" in the Spring 2013 issue of the Naval War College Review. Shiloh Rainwater, a senior Political Science major at Pepperdine, is the author of this important paper analyzing Chinese interests in the Arctic and China's desire to join the Arctic Council.

The cover art for the issue is linked to Rainwater's article, with this description:

Open water in the Arctic ice cap, in a U.S. Coast Guard image posted on the website of the U.S. Geological Survey. This 2009 image, which the photographer titles Reflections, was taken in August, but open water is appearing in ever-greater expanses of the region and for ever-larger proportions of the year—a fact that has drawn the attention of nations far from the pole. In this issue, Shiloh Rainwater explores the Arctic interests of one important non-Arctic nation, the People’s Republic of China.

I am delighted to have served as the thesis advisor for Rainwater on this paper. Congratulations, Shiloh.

China in the World

The People's Republic of China has an image problem. George Washington University professor David Shambaugh explains the problem and suggests ways Xi Jinping and his new foreign policy team could remedy it in this New York Times op-ed today.