It’s no coincidence that democratic countries with capitalist systems typically have the highest quality of life, standard of living, economic productivity per capita, life expectancy and educational standards. Democratic systems also tend to have the lowest levels of corruption. In many countries, however, democracy is currently being challenged, which may have the potential to bring about harsh consequences. Democratic backsliding could, in turn, cripple our capitalist systems and reduce our standards of living.
On January 1, 1997, Hong Kong, effectively seized by Great Britain in war a century before, reverted to Chinese rule. Only recently liberated from the madness of Mao Zedong's rule, Beijing promised to preserve Hong Kong's "separate system" for 50 years. Alas, the People's Republic of China (PRC) terminated the political regime based on historic British liberties 27 years early, with passage of the National Security Law in June 2020. The PRC's increasingly repressive Xi Jinping government created a police state in the Special Administrative Region as suffocating as that on the mainland.
Give President Joe Biden credit for talking with Vladimir Putin over the latter’s demands for security guarantees. Yet the way forward appears blocked by Moscow’s insistence on assurances which Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman declared to be “simply nonstarters.” Russian officials were equally blunt. “Our patience has run out,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov: “Everyone understands that the situation is not improving. The potential for conflict is growing.”
The U.S. has had a bad military run recently. Rather than fight traditional wars and defeat conventional opponents, Washington attempted nation‐building at gunpoint. That is a daunting task anywhere and at any point in time. Especially problematic was America’s effort to transform Afghanistan, long heralded as the Graveyard of Empires.
2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and China is celebrating. Since Deng Xiaoping began economic reforms and opening up China in 1978, the country has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank, and become the world’s second largest economy after the United States. But today, the direction of China's reform process is unclear, it doesn't always play by long-established international trade rules, and it's presenting new challenges. How should the United States respond?
The business of international trade has become extremely complicated. Due to Covid-19, global supply chain disruptions have become commonplace, especially in China. And even when the risks associated with the pandemic end, the risks associated with supply chains won't.
President Trump’s trade policy has been defined by protectionism, cronyism, and mean‐spiritedness. President Biden’s will be more polite.On substance, geopolitics and domestic politics are sure to crowd out economic considerations in shaping U.S. trade policy. The best we can hope for is that Biden’s team will be resolute and more competent managing an increasingly adversarial relationship with China—a priority which will shape all major U.S. trade policy decisions for years to come.
Rather like Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich that ended 988 years early, China’s guaranteed 50 years of freedom for Hong Kong has ended 27 years early. It’s been a good run since 1997, since Beijing left the territory mostly alone for longer than many people expected.
Beijing no longer has many friends in Washington—for understandable reasons. The entire Chinese government mishandled various stages of the coronavirus outbreak, including hiding the extent of infection and transmissibility to humans, punishing doctors and citizen journalists who sought to report on the looming pandemic, and moving far too slowly on a travel ban from Wuhan, allowing the coronavirus to become a truly global crisis.
Videos of triumphant doctors in Wuhan removing their protective equipment flooding social media this week symbolized the end of the fight against COVID-19 in the city where the outbreak began. With travel restrictions set to lift April 8 in Wuhan and wider Hubei province, and domestically transmitted cases of the virus near zero, life for China’s 1.4 billion residents is getting back to a new normal.
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