China looks weak on the world stage

This was not a good week for China. On the world stage, it looked weak in two very different areas.

First, Google announced it will only stay in China if the government lifts its censorship of the internet for Google’s users. Nicholas Kristof cheers Google’s decision:

By announcing that it no longer plans to censor search results in China, even if that means it must withdraw from the country, Google is showing spine – a kind that few other companies or governments have shown toward Beijing…

Google announced its decision after a sophisticated Chinese attempt to penetrate the Gmail addresses of dissidents….

China is redrawing the balance between openness and economic efficiency. The architect of China’s astonishingly successful economic reforms, Deng Xiaoping, clenched his teeth and accepted photocopiers, fax machines, cellphones, computers and lawyers because they were part of modernization.

Yet in the last few years, President Hu Jintao has cracked down on Internet freedoms and independent lawyers and journalists. President Hu is intellectually brilliant but seems to have no vision for China 20 years from now…

Eventually, I think, a combination of technology, education and information will end the present stasis in China. In a conflict between the Communist Party and Google, the party will win in the short run. But in the long run, I’d put my money on Google.

Second, following Haiti’s earthquake, no one looked to China to provide much in the way of aid and reconstruction, and the Chinese response has been rather paltry: 50 rescue workers and a commitment of $2 million for aid and reconstruction.  By contrast, the US has already offered at least $100 million and 5,000 troops. Now I realize that geography and history play a role here: the US is much closer to Haiti and we have much deeper ties to the nation. Nevertheless, articles and books about the rise of China and the decline of the US abound today. It seems to me that if China wants to establish itself as a major power, it is going to have to do a lot better than a 1:50 ratio of aid and a 1:100 ratio in personnel with the US when it comes to global humanitarian crises.

Moral authority matters. It’s clear the US has this and China does not. Two questions tend to dominate the news on Haiti: how bad is it and what is the US doing about it. The US may do a lot of bad and stupid things in the world. Nevertheless, in times of global crisis, people turn to the US to lead the rescue. Obama’s reaction has been swift and forceful. China may have economic power, but it is woefully short of global leadership.

Contextualizing Haiti’s earthquake

While most coverage of Haiti focuses on the extent of the disaster and rescue efforts, yesterday’s New York Times editorial and op-ed pages had some excellent analysis.

The editorial board links the extent of the damage to poor governance:

Once again, the world weeps with Haiti. The earthquake that struck on Tuesday did damage on a scale that scarcely could have been imagined had we all not seen the photos and videos and read the survivors’ agonizing accounts – of the sudden crumbling of mountainside slums, schools, hospitals, even the Parliament building and presidential palace…

An earthquake this size would have been a catastrophe in any country. But this was only partly a natural disaster. Look at Haiti and you will see what generations of misrule, poverty and political strife will do to a country. Haiti, suffering forever, is in the direst straits. But Haitians do not need condolences. They need help and the ability to help themselves.

Tracy Kidder explains why Haiti remains poor even though it is awash in foreign aid:

…at least 10,000 private organizations perform supposedly humanitarian missions in Haiti, yet it remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Some of the money that private aid organizations rely on comes from the United States government, which has insisted that a great deal of the aid return to American pockets – a larger percentage than that of any other industrialized country.

But that is only part of the problem. In the arena of international aid, a great many efforts, past and present, appear to have been doomed from the start. There are the many projects that seem designed to serve not impoverished Haitians but the interests of the people administering the projects. Most important, a lot of organizations seem to be unable – and some appear to be unwilling – to create partnerships with each other or, and this is crucial, with the public sector of the society they’re supposed to serve.

The usual excuse, that a government like Haiti’s is weak and suffers from corruption, doesn’t hold – all the more reason, indeed, to work with the government. The ultimate goal of all aid to Haiti ought to be the strengthening of Haitian institutions, infrastructure and expertise.

Pooja Bhatia explains why Haitians pray:

…there was singing all over town: songs with lyrics like “O Lord, keep me close to you” and “Forgive me, Jesus.” Preachers stood atop boxes and gave impromptu sermons, reassuring their listeners in the dark: “It seems like the Good Lord is hiding, but he’s here. He’s always here.”…

Why, then, turn to a God who seems to be absent at best and vindictive at worst? Haitians don’t have other options. The country has a long legacy of repression and exploitation; international peacekeepers come and go; the earth no longer provides food; jobs almost don’t exist. Perhaps a God who hides is better than nothing.

Read them all.

Haiti’s tragedy

Tyler Cowen succinctly describes the magnitude of the challenge in Haiti at Marginal Revolution:

…the country as a whole is currently below the subsistence level and will remain so for the foreseeable future…the U.N. Mission has collapsed, the government is not working…hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people are living in the streets without reliable food or water supplies. The hospitals and schools have collapsed. The airport is shut down. The port is very badly damaged…There is no viable police force or army.

In other words, it’s not just a matter of offering extra food aid for two or three years

…the country of Haiti, as we knew it, probably does not exist any more.

Matthew Yglesias’s conclusions are equally as grim:

The most likely alternative to mass immiseration and death for the survivors seems to me to be large-scale emigration to the developed world. Otherwise you’re going to have millions of people with no means of supporting themselves.

Earthquake flattens Haiti

From the New York Times:

A fierce earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon, causing widespread damage around the capital, leveling countless shantytown dwellings and bringing even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.

The powerful earthquake of 7.0 magnitude rocked Haiti just before 5 p.m. Eastern time, 10 miles southwest from the densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the United States Geological Survey. But damage to the capital city of 2 million people was apparently widespread, according to reports from the scene…

Haiti, by far the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, has been beset by natural disasters for most of its recent history. The island is struck by an annual series of hurricanes and is particularly vulnerable to storm-related disasters because much of its forests have been chopped down and used for fuel, leaving the country with very little tree cover. In one of its hardest hit years, 2004, Haiti was rocked by powerful Hurricane Jeanne, which caused untold destruction and killed 3,000 people.

Since 2008, the island has been struck by at least three severe hurricanes — Gustav, Hanna and Ike — that have wrought nearly a billion dollars worth of damage and killed 800 people. All of this has taken place against the backdrop of food riots, health crises and near constant government instability and upheavals.

I admit that my title is a bit snarky given the magnitude of this disaster. Nevertheless, it makes a good point that it is not the wealthiest societies that are most prone to damage and political upheaval from natural disasters, but the poorest. Climate change, for example, is already having drastic effects in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason is because since so many people on the continent are still reliant on nature for food (e.g., farmers without access to irrigation), small changes in rainfall patterns can have devastating effects on peoples’ livelihoods. I have seen evidence of this in Tanzania. That over-forestation exacerbates storm damage is another example of the link between poverty and vulnerability to natural disasters.

The New York Times has put up a useful blog on the earthquake with lots of up-to-the-minute reporting.