Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Subscribe here. February 6, 2022 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET: First, with the Winter Olympics now underway in Beijing, Fareed gives his take on what China is attempting to showcase.
Much has changed since the Beijing Summer Olympics of 2008, when "China was dazzling the world with its economic prowess and technological sophistication, determined to impress the world with its soft power," Fareed says. Since then, under President Xi Jinping, China has since turned aggressive abroad and repressive at home, and the US, UK, and Australia are all boycotting the games diplomatically amid reports of human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, which China denies.
China can tout economic prosperity, but Fareed says it's worth looking more closely. "Beijing has succeeded wildly in some areas, but that same government has made major mistakes, from persisting with the one-child policy to accumulating mountains of debt," Fareed observes. "The black box that is China's government always looks more impressive from the outside. America's openness and competition—economic, political, social—often looks chaotic but over the centuries, it has endured while many seemingly efficient models of government have failed."
Next: As Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin move closer on the world stage, the West has eyed a budding Russia–China partnership warily. Financial Times Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator Gideon Rachman and The Spectator's Cindy Yu join Fareed to discuss whether Moscow and Beijing are working to forge a "new world order" less friendly to democracy—and to the US.
After that: Just how strong is ISIS today? After its leader died in a US raid last week, Fareed asks author and London School of Economics and Political Science professor Fawaz Gerges what that means for the group and what kind of threat ISIS will pose in the coming years.
Then: Should regulators break up the tech giants? Fareed talks with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley's representative in the US House and author of the new book "Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us."
Finally: With inflation hitting the US economy hard, Fareed looks at a notable bright side—goods and services may be more expensive than they were decades ago, but their quality is often much improved. Do Russia and China hope to reshape the world to suit themselves and other autocrats, as Rachman suggests?
When Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, commentators expected the two men to "synchronize their watches," as Danil Bochkov put it at Nikkei Asia. Some speculation has concerned Russia's troop buildup near Ukraine: specifically, whether Putin would forestall a new invasion out of deference to Xi and his current Olympic spotlight, and whether such an invasion would pull US attention away from the Pacific and, critically, Taiwan.
"To be sure, Putin's aggressive diplomacy is serving Chinese interests, at least for now," Minxin Pei wrote recently for Project Syndicate. "Should he decide to invade Ukraine and divert US strategic focus away from China, so much the better" for Xi, though supporting Putin outright would alienate the European Union, a huge buyer of Chinese goods.
Aside from "the bonhomie and continuing bromance," Katie Stallard writes for The New Statesman, "the real question is whether China would abide by US or European sanctions on Russia" if Putin were to launch a new invasion of Ukraine "and how Beijing would respond to any US attempt to impose export controls that could prevent Chinese companies selling products with American components, such as smartphones, to Russia." Uncertainty Reigns in Ukraine Standoff A year after Myanmar's military coup in February 2021, control of the country is far from settled, Gwen Robinson writes for Nikkei Asia: Calm in the major city of Yangon is belied by what's happening elsewhere, as the military has attacked and killed in Myanmar's villages. A resistance movement has attracted many, armed militias appear poised to deepen cooperation against the military regime, and refugees have streamed into Thailand, Robinson writes.
At the same paper, Thitinan Pongsudhirak writes that popular expectations have changed deeply since Myanmar's 2011 democratic reforms and opening to the world. Myanmar's ruling generals will struggle to maintain public allegiance over the long run, Pongsudhirak argues. Bourgeoisie of the World, Unite? What do the protests of recent years in Algeria, Lebanon, Ecuador, Chile, Iran, Georgia, South Africa, and Kazakhstan have in common? At The New Statesman, Jeremy Cliffe writes that these are middle-income countries, and grievances were aired by their domestic middle classes.
We might expect more of that in years to come, Cliffe predicts. Economic growth from 1988 to 2008 saw countries rise into middle-income status and saw their domestic middle classes boom, Cliffe observes. But after the financial crisis, wealth and quality-of-life enhancements have lagged behind expectations, and the global middle class is now more sensitive to things like governmental corruption or, after 2019, pandemic mismanagement; as such, barring big shifts, the middle is poised to keep demanding a greater share of wealth and better governance. Churchill, the US, and the End of Empire The end of empire can be unpleasant, historian Niall Ferguson writes in the latest issue of the Hoover Digest. As Winston Churchill warned of pre-World War II Britain, Ferguson offers, the US would do well to wake up to its own weaknesses.
Drawing comparisons between present-day America and Britain between the two world wars, Ferguson notes a high government debt burden and a kind of "self-hatred": British intellectuals had soured on the notion of empire, just as (in Ferguson's comparison) today's American left has abandoned the idea of the US as a force for good, given the country's history of slavery and segregation. Predicting US public apathy if Beijing were to attack Taiwan, for instance, Ferguson points to Britain's Chamberlain-era reluctance to take on Hitler.
One of Churchill's lessons was to embrace the force of action, Ferguson writes, but an inevitable truth is that "the end of empire is seldom, if ever, a painless process." |
