Day: September 2, 2021

How Will the Taliban Govern? A History of Rebel Rule Offers Clues.

Chin@Strategy

As Taliban commanders exchange their guns for the reins of power, some 38 million Afghans can do little but hold their breath and wait to see how their latest conquerors will rule. That uncertainty, also palpable in foreign capitals from Washington to Beijing, is compounded by the deep contradiction between the group’s record of extremism and brutality during its prior reign, from 1996 to 2001, and its promises of moderation today. History may offer a few clues. The Taliban are, depending on how one counts, something like the sixth or…

Hong Kong’s Sedition Law Is Back

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement While George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” remains one of the best-selling allegories in history, two children’s books that are seen as Orwell-style allegories of the Hong Kong protests were recently banned by the government. The authors have become criminals under the sedition laws that are part of Hong Kong’s colonial legacy. Five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists were arrested a month ago for having published a series of children’s books about sheep defending their villages from the threats posed by wolves. Earlier this week, they…

China Bans ‘Sissy Men’ From TV

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement China’s government banned effeminate men on TV and told broadcasters Thursday to promote “revolutionary culture,” broadening a campaign to tighten control over business and society and enforce official morality. President Xi Jinping has called for a “national rejuvenation,” with tighter Communist Party control of business, education, culture, and religion. Companies and the public are under increasing pressure to align with its vision for a more powerful China and healthier society. The party has reduced children’s access to online games and is trying to discourage what it sees as unhealthy…

Sub-Provincial City Cadres: China’s Leadership Cohort for 2027 and Beyond

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement China’s governance is barely institutionalized into any formal central forms of political power. Instead, China is governed by geographic regions. There is no distinction between central and provincial positions once cadres reach the “provincial-ministerial” zhengbu rank. The central governance structure is then made up of a combination of formal institutionalized positions and loose alliances, making an informal centralized power structure close to a form of cadre-federalism. Sub-provincial level cities, though, are governed by cadres at the fubu rank, half a rank above prefectural rank and half a rank below…

China Tells Kerry Strained Ties Could Sink Climate Cooperation

Chin@Strategy

China and the United States agree that climate change is a crisis whipping up worsening droughts and storms across the planet. Yet escalating tensions over trade, security and human rights threaten to overshadow efforts between the world’s top two greenhouse gas polluters to stop global temperatures from hitting catastrophic levels. The United States envoy for climate, John Kerry, and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, are wrangling this week over those steps in Tianjin, a northern Chinese city, seeking common ground before international negotiations in Glasgow in November. Leaders from nearly…

Businesses Push Biden to Develop China Trade Policy

Chin@Strategy

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told The New York Times this summer that tariffs had harmed American consumers, but she has also warned that Chinese subsidies for exporters pose a challenge for the United States. The United States trade representative, Katherine Tai, has described the tariffs as providing leverage. Understand the Infrastructure Bill One trillion dollar package passed. The Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure package on Aug. 10, capping weeks of intense negotiations and debate over the largest federal investment in the nation’s aging public works system in more than a…

Alibaba Faces Reckoning Over Harassment

Chin@Strategy

At an employee dinner, women were told to rank the attractiveness of the men at the table. During a team-building exercise, a woman was pressured to straddle her male co-worker in front of colleagues. Top executives traded lewd comments about male virility at company events and online. The e-commerce giant Alibaba, one of China’s most globalized internet companies, has often celebrated the number of women in its senior ranks. In 2018, the company’s billionaire co-founder, Jack Ma, told a conference in Geneva that one secret to Alibaba’s success was that…