Economic Failures & the Asia Tour

Obama "gets served" in Asia.

In the wake of blows taken by the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections, the media has labeled the President’s recent Asia tour a similarly crushing stroke on a global scale.  Where domestically the President “got served” by the Tea Party and Republicans – abroad China, South Korea and Germany delivered a similar treatment – overall displaying the growing weakness of the Obama administration.  This limited presentation of the Asia tour seems accurate only if one believes that economics was the only focus of the tour and that the G20 was somehow going to miraculously resolve the lingering woes of our global economic crises.

Overlooking the President’s activities in India and Indonesia as irrelevant in search for a single striking narrative is illustrative of the larger flaws in the way information is presented to the US populace.  However one may feel about the subjects of democracy promotion, international relations or religious freedom, acting as if these subjects simply weren’t relevant to the tour speaks of either dramatic shortsightedness or a conscious agenda.   Even in the area of economics it seems that a conscious decision has been made to ignore the activities of the administration in India.  The development and deepening of the bilateral relationship between India and the United States cannot be ignored if one is interested in economic policy.

In the area of democracy and international relations, the clashes between the China and the US over the elections in Burma and issues of human rights in the nation necessitate some attention.  The promotion of Indonesia as a thriving Muslim democracy (regardless of realities of religious freedom in Indonesia) deserves the same level of consideration.  The above issues alone would have justified the Asia tour, regardless of the successes of developing economic ties with India.  Yet the evening news supported only the conclusion that the whole of the tour was a waste of time and resources, and a dismal failure of foreign policy.  The only thing I really perceived as a marked failure in the tour was the effort to solve the world’s economic woes through the G20 summit, which I can’t imagine anyone genuinely expected.

Economic Success & Regime Change

Politics and economics tend to make rather strange bedfellows, and I wanted to take a bit to discuss the relationship between the two in regard to China. One of Barak’s comments on a recent post of mine urged me to raise the issue again, as it’s obviously of current relevance given the calls for political change in China.  Often in the past observers of Chinese politics have had their spirits raised at the prospect of political change, only to find themselves disappointed as the status quo is maintained, personally I expect about the same this time around.  That being said, my focus in this post is to discuss the role of China’s economic successes in keeping the nation’s regime precisely as it is. Continue reading »

China and India

The lead article in this week’s Economist argues that in the long-run, India’s chaotic democratic capitalism is likely to outperform Chain’s authoritarian capitalism for two reasons. First, due to China’s one-child policy, the country’s working-age population is falling, while India’s far younger population means the workforce is going to grow. Second, information flows much more easily and quickly in India compared to China because the former is a democracy and the latter is not. As a result, India has a big advantage over China in taking advantage of the information revolution. The big takeaway point is centralized planning is probably not the best model for sustaining long-term economic growth in today’s world. Rather, democracy in India, chaotic as it is, is a far better environment for sustaining economic development.

Charities

It’s hard to defend an authoritarian regime that discourages domestic charities because it doesn’t want competition in helping to address important social needs.

Jammin’

Chinese style.