Statement of the CPE Working Group on Empire on the G-20 Meeting of Presidents Trump and Xi

(Pix credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters posted HERE )

It was with some relief that the political and economic classes greeted the tentative but from their perceptive positive forward movement between China and the United States after their respective Presidents met at the G-20 Meeting in Japan. "Mr Trump also said he would allow US companies to continue to sell to the Chinese tech giant Huawei, in a move seen as a significant concession. Mr Trump had threatened additional trade sanctions on China. However, after the meeting on the sidelines of the main G20 summit in Osaka, he confirmed that the US would not be adding tariffs on $300bn (£236bn) worth of Chinese imports." (G20 summit: Trump and Xi agree to restart US-China trade talks). This appears to have had an effect on global financial markets (at least in the short term) (Dow Futures Higher as Trump/Xi Meeting Dominates G20 Focus, Keep Markets on Edge).  It was noted, however, that Presidents Trump and Xi had reached a similar agreement last year at the Argentina G20 meeting (‘It’s a temporary timeout’).

The Coalition for Peace & Ethics Working Group on Empire issued the following statement in the wake of that news:

Both Presidents Xi and Trump bear a heavy responsibility for ensuring that they each protect the highest principles and aspirations of their respective countries and that they each promote those core values that all peoples share. The process of realizing these objectives has been made more difficult by the uncertainties that arise at the start of this new era of historical development. For both countries, this new era presents new contradictions unique to each that must be understood as central to their respective continued development. Each requires greater attention to the obligation to emancipate the mind in the face of the respective historical realities of China and of the United States if they are to be overcome. That process can be painful. But under the core leadership of Presidents Xi and Trump, it now appears clearer that the collective leadership of both states will be able to work successfully toward a resolution that respects the core principles of their respective collective economic systems and is also sensitive to the respective dignities of their peoples. In the process, under their collective leadership and guidance, they will together contribute, each in their own way, to a more stable and equitable world order more suitable to the present times.

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Announcing Publication of "The Cuba-US Bilateral Relationship: New Pathways and Policy Choices" (OUP 2019)

I am happy to announce the (pre)publication of The Cuba-US Bilateral Relationship: New Pathways and Policy Choices published by Oxford University Press and set for delivery September 2019. The book profited from the vision and editing of a great team from Creighton University: Michael J. Kelly, Interim Dean and Professor of Law, Erika Moreno is Associate Professor of Political Science, and Richard C. Witmer is Professor of Political Science.

This book brings together experts from across three disciplines—politics, economics, and law—to address the key issues that affect Cuba-U.S. bilateral relations today. The chapters identify the opportunities and challenges presented to both nations in each of their respective disciplines while staking out what the future may hold. I was delighted to have been included in this effort. The book is especially timely now that the region continues to experience substantial flux. 

Features:

• Looks at the U.S.-Cuban bilateral relationship through the interdisciplinary lens of politics, economics, and law
• Timely analysis of U.S.-Cuban relations since 2014 and during the first two years of the Trump administration
• Includes a foreword by the first U.S. Ambassador to Cuba and an afterword by the acting Secretary of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

The description, table of contents, and contributor information follows. Finally, as part of the book kick-off, Oxford University Press has created a book flyer with a 30% discount code. I have included the flyer below as well. Feel free to print and circulate--and order the book!

Latin American Research Review: Links to Articles in Vol 54(2)

Happy to pass along the links to what looks like some very interesting new work from the latest issue of the Latin American Research Review. Particularly interestung may be the essays on the situation in Venezuela.

The Latin American Research Review (LARR) is the academic journal of the Latin American Studies Association. LARR publishes original research and review essays on Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latina/Latino studies. It covers the social sciences and the humanities, including the fields of anthropology, economics, history, literature and cultural studies, political science, and sociology.

The journal reviews and publishes papers in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. All papers, except for book and documentary film review essays, are subject to double-blind peer review.

"Theory Before Theory, and the Trade War Before the Trade War: Qiushi writing in Qiushi Journal A Perspective on Sinification" Brief Thoughts on Autumn Stone, "On Correctly Handling Government and Market Relations" [论正确处理政府和市场关系]

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2018)

Over the course of the last several weeks the Coalition for Peace & Ethics Working Group on Empire has been focusing the ongoing reshaping of the global order through the dialogue between the two emerging imperial powers--China and the United States (CPE EmpireSeries). Like others, CPE-WGE has thought to better analyze the underlying premises that shape the communication between these two trade leadership cores through a more rigorous analysis of the writings of Chinese thought leaders not directly intended for Western audiences.

In our last post Larry Catá Backer considered Zheng Yongnian's  essay, "Is Marxism Really Revived in China? [马克思主义在中国真的复兴了吗？]. The engagement with Marxism within the evolving principles of Chinese engagement with the world might provide useful hints about the principles underlying Chinese discursive styles in its negotiations with the U.S. leadership core. (Brief Thoughts on Zheng Yongnian: Is Marxism Really Revived in China? [郑永年：马克思主义在中国真的复兴了吗？]). This is part of the larger project of theorizing empire from the perspectives of Chinese and U.S. critical actors.

In this post Flora Sapio examines the writing of the person writing under the pen name Autumn Stone [秋 石] in Quishi the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Central Party School. More specifically, the post focuses on Autumn Stone's important article, "On Correctly Handling Government and Market Relations",  [论正确处理政府和市场关系] published on January 15, 2018.

Flora Sapio's essay, "Theory before Theory, and the Trade War Before the Trade War: Qiushi writing in Qiushi Journal: A Perspective on Sinification."

Brief Thoughts on Zheng Yongnian: Is Marxism Really Revived in China? [郑永年：马克思主义在中国真的复兴了吗？]

(Pix Credit HERE)

Over the course of the last several weeks  The Coalition for Peace & Ethics Working Group on Empire has been focusing an an interesting element in the ongoing reshaping of the global order through the dialogue between the two emerging imperial powers--China and the United States (CPE EmpireSeries).  That dialogue has been external--as both seek to define themselves in relation to each other and to transform and apply a substantially new conceptual framework. That framework takes as a given the rejection of the old bases of empire--occupation, racism, colonialism, and exploitation--in favor of what appears to be a new foundation. That new foundation is based on an embrace of the fundamental tenets of post 1945 economic globalization, and principally the free movement of goods, capital, and investment, along with the managed movement of people.  While it remains to be seen whether this transformation will succeed either as theory or in fact, the dialogue between the leadership cores of both states (Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump), suggests a commitment toward those efforts to which the intellectual and official classes of both states have been deployed.

The dialogue has also been internal. Since 2013 in China and since 2016 in the United States, internal elites have been faced with the core contradictions of their internal systems in the face of the emergence of empire.  For the United States, that internal dialogue has been both operatic and exaggerated-at least in public. Despite the unhelpful histrionics, the dialogue has forced the Americans to look more deeply at themselves and their sense of self, a process that is both far from complete and unclear as to its direction. Yet that dialogue itself helps situate the American movements out of the old approaches to its relationship with the world toward something new if still somewhat undefined (and untested). 

The internal dialogue of Chinese intellectuals and the leadership classes has been equally interesting for its intensity and sincerity. At its core, the external dialogue is shaped by the intense internal debate about Chinese principles, and more important, the Chinese character of these principles. That, in turn, has its core in a fundamental intellectual contradiction of the Chinese Marxist Leninist Line in the New Era--the principles underlying the outward reach of the principles of Reform and Opening Up (改革开放) and the long arc of stripping China of what is perceived as the vestiges of its semi-colonial humiliation and dependence on the West for its modernization and political-economic model. 

Sinification becomes a more delicate and complicated enterprise in the face of two countering realities.  The first is that the construction of empire requires an openness to imperial interaction between the core and the collective. China remains at an early stage of development of its mass line principle--both as a means of internal democratization, and as a means for weaving together the complex relationships that will eventually constitute a strong Belt and Road Initiative system. The second is that of the nature of inter-systemic communication itself in the face of history. That requires a careful balancing between the necessarily of every living political culture to absorb as well as project its own self-reflexive principles and by successfully operating within them prove their legitimacy and authority, against the danger of intellectual colonialism and the loss of autonomy.

Indeed, the balancing between absorption and autonomy and the utility of the mass line have been playing out in China's construction of its own trading system and in its reconstitution of its relationship with a non-dependent partner-competitor. Indeed, the discomforts of this contradiction, and its resolution, might well provide a foundation for the development of the Chinese line in its bilateral negotiations with the United States. Those negotiations may be important in themselves; but they assume a far greater importance as the discursive site in which China seeks to resolve its own historical contradictions and emerges as a more self-reflexive political model fit for its new era.

These issues converge in recent intellectual (and political) efforts to develop both Marxism (the normative a basis for the Chinese system) and Leninism (its operational principles founded on the leadership core of a revolutionary vanguard responsible for its collective). The issue is particularly delicate because it exposes the difficulty of a simple minded Sinification project--the core values of the political-economic model of China is itself the product of the intellectual power of German Jews resident in part in England, and Russian intellectuals who developed and operationalized a version of the normative vision whose birthplace is undeniably European.

The resolution of the issue is a critical barometer for the nature and intensity of the deployment of Chinese principles against Western negotiating partners.  Yet there is little the West can do as China sorts through the development of its own political theory in the shadow of its recent past. n this respect China is undergoing the same stormy process as the U.S..  While the Chinese focus on its relationship with the West from the end of the Qing period, the Americans are now equally absorbed in the resolution of its Civil War.  In both cases, the ghosts of the 19th century and its perceived perversion of both states into the 20th century now consume their respective intellectual and political classes--and help shape the approaches to empire--and thus the bilateral negotiations of each with the other.

In an excellent essay, Zheng Yongnian, Prof. Chairman of the Public Policy Institute (IPP) South China University, provides a quite useful window on the Chinese side of these dialectics. His essay, "Is Marxism Really Revived in China? [马克思主义在中国真的复兴了吗？] follows below, along with some brief observations. The article was first published in the Lianhe Zaobao on July 10, 2018.

From the CPE Working Group on Empire--Part 2; Larry Catá Backer, An Engagement With 《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"]

This post continues the Coalition for Peace and Ethics Working Group on Empire examination of the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by stakeholders as they adjust their operations to the emerging new era of global trade and production organized around leadership cores [领导核心] of states and undertaken by corresponding leadership cores of enterprises within demarcated market groups. 

In a prior post (here) the CPE-WGE introduced Jiang's Shigong's thoughtful essay, published in  the important journal  Qiushi (Seeking Truth), no. 12, 2019, an essay entitled 《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"].
CPE-WGE noted that Professor Jiang's essay presents a truly important intervention of an important Chinese intellectual in the increasingly high stakes negotiations between the United States and China for the control of the normative discourse on global trade, and for the way in which global production consequentially will be ordered. His work, always worthy of careful consideration, is worthy of even closer examination now.

CPE-WGE noted that Professor Jiang offered us a clear eyed view of the approach of the most sophisticated elements within the Chinese State and Party apparatus, and that it will not do to engage in the usual reaction common to, and now expected from, factions of our sclerotic and self-referencing intellectuals.

CPE's Working Group on Empire now offers its own analysis of this text in the context of the rapidly evolving situation. We hope it will be of some use; and perhaps serve as an antidote to the official responses that are sure to follow in short order. 

This post offers Part 1 of that WGE analysis offered by Larry Catá Backer, a member of the Working Group on Empire leadership group.

From the CPE Working Group on Empire--Part 1; Flora Sapio, An Engagement With 《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"]

This post continues the Coalition for Peace and Ethics Working Group on Empire examination of the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by stakeholders as they adjust their operations to the emerging new era of global trade and production organized around leadership cores [领导核心] of states and undertaken by corresponding leadership cores of enterprises within demarcated market groups. 

In a prior post (here) the CPE-WGE introduced Jiang's Shigong's thoughtful essay, published in  the important journal  Qiushi (Seeking Truth), no. 12, 2019, an essay entitled 《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"].
CPE-WGE noted that Professor Jiang's essay presents a truly important intervention of an important Chinese intellectual in the increasingly high stakes negotiations between the United States and China for the control of the normative discourse on global trade, and for the way in which global production consequentially will be ordered. His work, always worthy of careful consideration, is worthy of even closer examination now.

CPE-WGE noted that Professor Jiang offered us a clear eyed view of the approach of the most sophisticated elements within the Chinese State and Party apparatus, and that it will not do to engage in the usual reaction common to, and now expected from, factions of our sclerotic and self-referencing intellectuals.

CPE's Working Group on Empire now offers its own analysis of this text in the context of the rapidly evolving situation. We hope it will be of some use; and perhaps serve as an antidote to the official responses that are sure to follow in short order. 

This post offers Part 1 of that WGE analysis offered by Flora Sapio, a member of the Working Group on Empire leadership group.

From the CPE Working Group on Empire--A Thoughtful Exposition of the Chinese Position in the Current Conversation Between China and the U.S.:《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"]

This post continues the Coalition for Peace and Ethics Working Group on Empire examination of the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by stakeholders as they adjust their operations to the emerging new era of global trade and production organized around leadership cores [领导核心] of states and undertaken by corresponding leadership cores of enterprises within demarcated market groups. 

The focus this time is on a particularly powerful response by a highly regarded member of the Chinese intellectual class.  Jiang Shigong (强世功), the Director of the Rule of Law Research Center of Peking University, and a Professor of Law, has produced, for publication in  the important journal  Qiushi (Seeking Truth), no. 12, 2019, an essay entitled 《美国陷阱》揭露了一个骇人听闻的霸凌主义案例 [Jiang Shigong, "The 'American Trap' Exposes a Shocking Case of Hegemonism"].
It represents a truly important intervention of an important Chinese intellectual in the increasingly high stakes negotiations between the United States and China for the control of the normative discourse on global trade, and for the way in which global production consequentially will be ordered. His work, always worthy of careful consideration, is worthy of even closer examination now.

Empire is now certain, the only question is whether it will come on U.S. or Chinese terms.  The dress rehearsal for this was the great battle over the Trans Pacific Partnership--a great battle that the U.S. had won except for the phlegmatic action of the Obama administration and the calculated hostility of the Trump administration, both of which, and in very different ways, history might judge, made regrettable choices for very political reasons. The former might be understood to have disastrously dragged their feet in the face of an inward looking intellectual and political class who in retrospect might be judged to have arrogantly played class politics with the tools of the state apparatus; and the later might have succumbed to a temptation which later generations might judge as misguided to use TPP as a sacrificial lamb whose slaughter might have been necessary, in their minds, to launch their new vision, the America First Initiative. 

Professor Jiang now offers us a clear eyed view of the approach of the most sophisticated elements within the Chinese State and Party apparatus.  It will not do to engage in the usual reaction common to, and now expected from, factions of our sclerotic and self-referencing intellectuals. Starting from the perspective that they serve the only legitimate values for a legitimate ruling class worthy of that status, and that everyone else is in a state of development toward that goal (an ironic adaptation of Marxist notions of the inevitable movement from feudalism through capitalism to the idealized communist society), the analysis that this group might produce might take one of two forms. One is to ignore essays like this entirely or dismiss it as merely political work.  The other is to speak past the analysis grounded on a reading of these quite powerful statements through their own viewpoints and agendas. Something more is necessary now; something that is unlikely to come from the "usual suspects" in Europe and North America who will likely be charged with the "official" response.  That is a pity.

CPE's Working Group on Empire will provide its own analysis of this text in the context of the rapidly evolving situation. We hope it will be of some use; and perhaps serve as an antidote to the official responses that are sure to follow in short order. 

For this post, the original essay follows below (Chinese Only) along with an English language summary.  Those interested in the English translation should contact the Coalition for Peace & Ethics.

CPE Working Group on Empire--Part 4; The Sino-Russian Statement [中华人民共和国和俄罗斯联邦关于发展 新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系的联合声明]

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019)

This post is the third of a series of four (4) posts in which the CPE WGE examine the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negations.

Part 1 focused on the meaning embedded in the text itself on a paragraph by paragraph basis, suggesting macro and micro strategies, challenges and opportunities in the emerging Chinese positions on global trade and its role in such systems. To that end it critically examined China's State Council [国务院] White Paper, entitled China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations ; <关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场>; 原中国语言版本. The White Paper was distributed by the State Council Information Office on Sunday 2 June. Part 2 drew broader insights that suggest the contours and trajectories of China's geo-political strategies in general, and their application to its management of the relationship with the United States more specifically. Part 3 then critically considered the official response of the U.S. Trade Representative was short and dismissive. It relied substantially on the United States issued a 200-page report in March 2018 (Findings of the Investigation into China's Acts, Policies, and Practices  (22 March 2018) along with the Chinese-Russian counter-thrust, in the form of the Development of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation Joint Statement of the New Era Comprehensive Strategic Collaboration Partnership [中华人民共和国和俄罗斯联邦关于发展 新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系的联合声明]

This Part 4 takes up the Sino-Russian Joint Statement in some detail.  It suggests that accounts of Empire have failed to notice two differences between pre- and post-Westphalian forms of governmental organization: the average life-span of Empires; and Empires’ ability to form outside of models and templates traced following the contours of the past, and therefore potentially outmoded. And thus the pathos of conventional analysis--its insistence of looking at things in terms of the passing age makes it impossible to see the con tours of the trajectories of "new era" developments. 

Part 1 and the Introduction to this critical reading of the State Council White Paper may be accessed here.
Part 2 may be accessed HERE.
Part 3 may be accessed HERE.
Part 4 may be accessed HERE.
The State Council White Paper may be accessed HERE (English) (中文版).

Structural Coupling Among Leadership-Center Based Networked Trading Groups in the "New Era"--The OMFIF Report, Global Public Investor 2019

(Source OMFIF interactive databank)

This post continues the Coalition for Peace and Ethics Working Group on Empire examination of the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by stakeholders as they adjust their operations to the emerging new era of global trade and production organized around leadership cores [领导核心] of states and undertaken by corresponding leadership cores of enterprises within demarcated market groups.

The focus this time is on the changing to projections of public power into private markets (on this theme generally in the context of sovereign investing, see, e.g., here, here, here, here, here, and here). In the face of the emerging decoupling of a singular global markets into "leadership center" networks (discussed here) sovereign investing appears to be acquiring a new character.  Where once it was focused on projections of public power into private markets and in that way to couple projections of  national interests (and in some cases regimes of public law and policy) through private, market regulatory mechanisms (e.g., here), sovereign investing appears to be moving toward a mediating role among decoupled "leadership center" networks of states. In this sense, it is useful to begin to consider the growing importance of sovereign investing as a form of structural coupling among competitive leadership network systems. 

To that end we consider the role of sovereign investing in the new global economic order. For that purpose the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) Report: Global Public Investor 2019

CPE Working Group on Empire: Anticipating Empire and Reorganizing Multinational Enterprises--the View From the Economic Sector

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019 (Fringes of Hong Kong Harbor))

This post continues the Coalition for Peace and Ethics Working Group on Empire examination of the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negotiations.  

The Working Group on Empire (WGE) of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics looks to study and theorize the construction of systems of management and control of human activities, that is of empire in the 21st century. In a series of essays that will be made available form time to time (CPE EmpireSeries), WGE considers the re-construction of Empire that has shed its old glosses (which elites everywhere have been taught to conflate with the form and thus to amalgamate a normative judgment about technique with an evaluation of the form of empire) in the context of the now heated contest for the control of the structures of global economic trade within which these new forms of empire might be developed (first described in Economic Globalization Ascendant: Four Perspectives on the Emerging Ideology of the State in the New Global Order). What will emerge is something quite distinct--a form of organization and management of institutions and individuals within a "leadership center" network that will be quite distinct from what preceded it. WGE is composed of members of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics of whom Flora Sapio, Larry Catá Backer, and James Korman have taken a leading role; its work product is collaborative. 

Here we briefly consider what may be evidence of the way in which economic actors within critical production chains are reacting to (and hedging against) the disengagement of the United States and China  from their respective economies and they each approach distinctive paths to empire within multinational and multi-enterprise networks of production. The ramifications for corporate law--and especially the legal organization of economic production across national territories,  will pose significant challenges for lawyers and compliance managers. What is clear, though, is that the new era is arriving (Ruminations 86: An Elegy on the 75th Anniversary of the Allied Invasion of Normandy).

Ruminations 86: An Elegy on the 75th Anniversary of the Allied Invasion of Normandy

 

How does one mark the passing of an age? To mark is to acknowledge; it affirms  a difference that might be incomprehensible but for the way in which the signs that mark the collective self reflection of a society are understood. To pass is to suggest a transition or movement from one state of things to another that can be recognized by reference to some set of collective judgements grounded in collective premises about the meaning of events and conditions.  An age suggests a period of time joined together by a collective consensus about the meaning of things and the ordering of relations; an age is the expression of the way on which a self reflexive community sees itself and the world around it, and how it sets itself apart from and in relation to tat world.

But to mark the passing of a age requires that those marking that passage stand outside that age. That "apartness" might itself be marked  by the passage of time, or a change to the place from which such judgment can be made. On this 75th Anniversary of the start of the Allied invasion of Europe to defeat the Axis Powers (and ultimately to bring about the birth of a new age, it is worth thinking, if only for a moment about the passing of time--and in this case about the passing of an age that is itself marked by the celebrations designed to affirm the birth of that age.  This post , then, is an elegy for the celebrations of the coming of the new age of globalization that itself now marks the passga eof the age the birth of which it is meant to celebrate.

CPE Working Group on Empire--Part 3; The U.S. Trade Representative Response to the Chinese State Council White Paper and the Sino-Russian Statement [中华人民共和国和俄罗斯联邦关于发展 新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系的联合声明]

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019)

This post is the third of a series of four(4) posts in which the CPE WGE examine the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negations.  

Part 1 focused on the meaning embedded in the text itself on a paragraph by paragraph basis, suggesting macro and micro strategies, challenges and opportunities in the emerging Chinese positions on global trade and its role in such systems. To that end it critically examined China's State Council [国务院]  White Paper, entitled China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations ; <关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场>; 原中国语言版本. The White Paper was distributed by the State Council Information Office on Sunday 2 June.  Part 2 drew broader insights that suggest the contours and trajectories of China's geo-political strategies in general, and their application to its management of the relationship with the United States more specifically.

This Part 3 includes the official response of the U.S. Trade Representative was short and dismissive. It relied substantially on the United States issued a 200-page report in March 2018 (Findings of the Investigation into China's Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation Under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (22 March 2018) documenting how China had engaged in a pattern of repeated commitments that were then ignored. It was posted on the Trade Representative's web site and follows below, with brief comments interlineated in red after an introduction. In a sense, then, the U.S. took the position that the Chinese State Council White Paper was the response to its March 22, 2018  Findings of the Investigation into China's Acts, Policies, and Practices. The Chinese-Russian counter-thrust, in the form of the Development of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation Joint Statement of the New Era Comprehensive Strategic Collaboration Partnership [中华人民共和国和俄罗斯联邦关于发展 新时代全面战略协作伙伴关系的联合声明] is also reproduced below.

Part 1 and the Introduction to this critical reading of the State Council White Paper may be accessed here.
Part 2 may be accessed HERE.
Part 3 may be accessed HERE.
Part 4 may be accessed HERE.
The State Council White Paper may be accessed HERE (English) (中文版).

UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights Newsletter No. 2-2019

The UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky has just distributed his Newsletter No. 2-2019. Some interesting materials and thoughts. Noteworthy is his  call for contributions for the Independent Expert's forthcoming thematic report to the Human Rights Council on private debt and human rights. The Call  is still open until 31 July 2019. Any submission from interested governments, civil society organizations, academic, experts, businesses, and other stakeholders would be most welcome. More details on the call for contributions are available at this link.

The Newsletter follows.

CPE Working Group on Empire: Part 2--A Critical Reading of China's State Council [国务院] White Paper "China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations" [关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场]

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019)

This post is the second of a four (4)  part series in which the CPE WGE examines the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negations.  To that end it critically examines China's State Council [国务院]  White Paper, entitled China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations ; <关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场>; 原中国语言版本. The White Paper was distributed by the State Council Information Office on Sunday 2 June.  

For this Part 2, The CPE Working Group on Empire take a broader view.  While Part 1 focused on the meaning embedded in the text itself on a paragraph by paragraph basis, Part 2 draws broader insights that suggest the contours and trajectories of China's geo-political strategies in general, and their application to its management of the relationship with the United States more specifically. In the process it suggests the dangers of the current hyper focus on the bilateral trade negotiations that tend to obscure the much greater objectives at stake.

Part 1 and the Introduction to this critical reading of the State Council White Paper may be accessed here.

Part 2 may be accessed HERE.
Part 3 may be accessed HERE.
Part 4 may be accessed HERE.
The State Council White Paper may be accessed HERE (English) (中文版).

On the Front Lines of the U.S. Pivot Toward the Caribbean: The U.S. Announces Further Restrictions on Travel to Cuba as Part of its Comprehensive Caribbean Strategy

(Pix credit: Trump administration bans cruises to Cuba in clampdown on U.S. travel)

I had earlier suggested that over the course of the last year, and perhaps led by a team operating through the office of the U.S: Vice President Pence, the United States has substantially and quite coherently reshaped its Caribbean (and eventually will reshape its Latin American) policies and strategies (discussed in The Pivot Toward the Caribbean: Announcement of Permission to Sue Anyone Using American Property Confiscated by Cuba and the Larger Trump Administration Strategy Coordinating Policy Against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela).  Despite the overall theme of bilateralism that is the Basic Foreign Policy Line of the current Administration, the U.S. has now begun to apply a coordinated and regional approach to the Caribbean and Latin America.   With origins in the National Security Strategy (discussed here: Ruminations 76: From Global to Fortress America; Thoughts on "National Security Strategy of the United States" (4 Dec 2017)), the United States has begun coordinating action against identified key competitors and enemies by targeting their flanks (referenced in the Statement of the Secretary of Commerce in his press release reproduced below).

One of the great consequences of this tilt, of this pivot toward the Caribbean, is that a policy initiative that appears directed against country A may actually be directed toward country B, or to the region as a whole or some of its parts (e.g., CARICOM).  This has become especially apparent in the way in which the United States has been coordinating policy initiatives respecting Cuba and Venezuela, both identified as enemies--whose interests are aggressively adverse to those of the United, and both targeted for efforts to permit mass movements to overthrow their political and economic models (as well as their current leadership core). 

Today, 4 June 2019, the Trump Administration announced a further policy initiative designed to advance its objectives in the Caribbean. It announced the imposition of "heavy new restrictions on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens, including a ban on cruises, in a bid to further pressure the Communistisland over its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro." ( Trump administration bans cruises to Cuba in clampdown on U.S. travel). 

My brief reflections, some initial reporting, links to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations 31 C.F.R. part 515 (CACR)[FEDERAL REGISTER Vol. 84; No. 108 pp. 25992-25993], and relevant official statements from the Departments of State, Treasury and Commerce follow. 

CPE Working Group on Empire: Part I--A Critical Reading of China's State Council [国务院] White Paper "China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations" [关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场]

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2019)

Every great state has several paths among which it can choose, each consist with its governing ideology and culture. One might imagine, for example, that over the last several centuries in Russia, those paths tilted it east toward the Stepppe cultures and Mongolia, or the south toward Central Asian Islam and the Ottoman Turks, or west toward (northern) Europe and the Prussians.  The results are quite distinct Rissia's now constantly in tension with each other and manifested in shifting strategies for identifying, valuing, and interacting with the non-Russian world (including the non-Russian world within Russia).

For the Americans the choice is quite different, between socio-racial hierarchies and isolation within a continent sized nation, or toward the embrace of the ideal of the United States as the embodiment of the world and all of its cultures, in both cases providing a basis for global leadership.  In the 20th and 21st centuries these tilts produced both the Washington Consensus and contemporary economic globalization and variations of America First, both under the leadership of the United States as the global vanguard nation. 

Ironically, China's paths appear along lines similar to those facing the United States, though of course with Chinese characteristics. On the one hand, Chinese paths point inward toward a self referencing and self contained unit that deals with the rest of the world through carefully controlled entry and exit points and from which it develops paths toward relations of use to it. The current manifestation (and variation) of this path is the Belt and Road Initiative, perhaps. The other cluster of paths point outward toward a more robust integration in the world in which though relations are hierarchical, they tend to be open and interactions are deeply integrated.  The "Go Out" Policy and the process of Reform and Opening Up (at least practiced for a generation) might point in this direction. 

For both China and the United States, then, their respective vanguard "leadership core" [领导核心] have sought to manage the choice of paths grounded in a calculation of the respective interests of each state (within a global system in which isolation is no longer an object) and constrained by their respective governing ideologies. The choice on both sides had been stable until the time of the current "leadership core" [领导核心].  Over the past several years both have sought to rethink the parameters of what had been a dynamic but relatively stable relationship as each embraced the idea that they both operated at the moment of the start of a great "new era" [新时代].  This New Era [新时代] was to be manifested in the most important sector of national engagement--its economic model within globalization. 

It ought to come as no surprise (at least in retrospect), that the flash point for choosing the new path in the "new era" [新时代] would find expression at the core of the framing relations that drives global economic activity--the China-US economic and trade negotiations. It is here that both states have been playing out the process (mostly internal and opaque except to the leadership and their servants) of choosing their respective paths consistent with their ideologies which in turn will define not just their bilateral relations, but also the way in which both states approach the world in the context of a globalization that cannot be avoided.  China, especially, appears to face a choice.  Having spent the greater part of the time it had embraced the "Reform and Opening Up" period deeply integrating its economy with that of the world--a choice accelerated with China's Accession to the WTO and its more robust engagement in the institutions of then dominant global economic principles--China appears now to be considering the value of a new path. That path would be grounded on the disentangling of its generalized connection with an unstructured environment of production and substituting in its stead a much more focused and directed set of streams of activity over which it will preside.  To that end, the principal task is to disentangle the Chinese and U.S. economies.  And the trade negotiations provide the perfect cover for the development, articulation and implementation of that choice (formally connected to the receding system but effectively substituting another). In that respect, of course, the Chinese are also providing substantial (and critically necessary) support to the leadership core of the United States who, within the structures of their own governing ideology have also faced this choice and appear as well willing  to follow suit.

The Working Group on Empire (WGE) of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics looks to study and theorize the construction of systems of management and control of human activities, that is of empire in the 21st century. In a series of essays that will be made available form time to time (CPE EmpireSeries) WGE considers the re-construction of Empire shorn of its old glosses (which elites everywhere have been taught to conflate with the form and thus to amalgamate a normative judgment about technique with an evaluation of the form of empire) in the context of the now heated contest for the control of the structures of global economic trade within which these new forms of empire might be developed. WGE is composed of members of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics of whom Flora Sapio, Larry Catá Backer, and James Korman have taken a leading role; its work product is collaborative.

This post is the first of a series of four (4) posts in which the CPE WGE examine the question of paths to empire performed through the choices being made by the U.S. and Chinese leadership cores [领导核心] within the theater of the U.S.-China bilateral trade negations.  To that end it critically examines China's State Council [国务院]  White Paper, entitled China's Position on the China-US Economic and Trade Consultations ; <关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场>; 原中国语言版本. The White Paper was distributed by the State Council Information Office on Sunday 2 June.  

For this Part I the critical analysis is embedded in the English text of the White Paper Annotation in RED (original in black).  The original Chinese version [关于中美经贸磋商的中方立场]; then follows--原中国语言版本如下印刷.  
Part 1 may be accessed HERE.
Part 2 may be accessed HERE.
Part 3 may be accessed HERE.

Part 4 may be accessed HERE.

Joel Slawotsky: On "China's Long March"

Joel Slawotsky, of the Radzyner School of Law, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, and the Law and Business Schools of the College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel has guest blogged for "Law at the End of the Day" on issues relating to globalization, international law and relations, and corporate liability under international law. He has served as Guest Editor of the Sovereign Wealth Fund special issue of Qatar University International Review of Law (IRL) (2015).

He has very kindly produced a marvelously insightful essay: China's Long March. The title is meant to allude both to the famous "long March" of the Chinese Communists in the 1930s, as much as recent reporting on the way in which some have written about a "Long March" strategy that appears to the core of Chinese strategic choices in its engagement with the United States (e.g., The new Long March -- Xi's 15-year battle plan with the US), a connection that Xi Jinping has himself deployed in his for-public-consumption-globally statements (China Faces New ‘Long March’ as Trade War Intensifies, Xi Jinping Says). Professor Slawotsky concludes that "developments described above point to an ascendant China and corroborate China’s status as a potent and effective hegemonic rival. Furthermore, U.S. allies perhaps sensing a transformation underway seem to be hedging their bets or at least unwilling to openly embrace the U.S. open confrontation with China. Therefore, the risks over the longer-term of U.S. allies aligning with China cannot be discounted. U.S. allies’ self-interested embrace of China, should it gain critical mass, would constitute a transformative geo-strategic shift imperiling the hegemonic status of the United States."

To read more essays, see e.g., "Rethinking Financial Crimes and Violations of International Law", Jan. 9, 2013; "Corporate Liability Under The Alien Tort Statute: The Latest Twist" April 26, 2014) and on issues of multilateral trade and finance (Joel Slawotsky Reports From Chinese University of Hong Kong: Asia FDI Forum II--China's Three-Prong Investment Strategy: Bilateral, Regional, and Global Tracks; Joel Slawotsky--Essay "On the potential shift from the present-day architects to new architects on the definition of international law" (March 16, 2017); Joel Slawotsky: "Principled Realism: Thoughts on the New National Security Strategy" (Jan- 11. 2018); Joel Slawotsky: "The Longer-Term Ramifications of China’s BRI Jurisprudence".

The Essay follows below.

From Markets as Governance to Governance Through Markets--Considering President Trump's "Statement Regarding Emergency Measures to Address the Border Crisis" and the Mexican Response, All With Chinese Characteristics

By now it is well known that President Donal Trump has announced an intention to impose a series of increasing tariffs on Mexican goods if Mexico does not demonstrate to his satisfaction immediate progress in efforts to stem the flow of migrants through Mexico. Less well known among American audiences but equally important has been the response of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has both objected to the policy and its punitive intent and also sought to find common ground for advancing both nation's interests. This appeared in Mexican social media and then widely reported. For news coverage see, here, here, here, and here. At the same time, the Chinese state announced the roll out of a new blacklist policy against economic actors and individuals deemed unfriendly or unhelpful to China and its business interests. This was undertaken, in part, in response to the actions of the United States which had recently announced a blacklist of Huawei, and China ceased purchasing American soybeans (and threatened the supply of rare earths) as part of its ongoing dispute with China about the terms of their bilateral trade.

Both President Trump's Statement explaining the imposition of tariffs, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's response letter (Spanish original with my English translation) follows, along with brief reflections. Those reflections suggest the way that profound changes are already occurring in the normative structures of economic globalization.  Principally it suggests the way in which global economic stakeholders are increasingly retreating from private market driven governance to state to state mechanisms.  But these are not a reactionary move toward pre-1945 models.  It is too late for that. Instead there is a Chinese model that suggests the contours of the new intertwining of economics and politics in the role of states within and through production chains.  These new models of  state action arise within environments of free movement of goods and capital in which markets and production across borders define the extent of effective state projections of power.  These will define  the new forms of synergies between private sector driven governance (in which the state itself may be an actor) at the micro-level delegated to markets and compliance responsibilities of entities, while at the same time strengthening the role of the state (the the largest governmentalized non-state enterprises) in driving macro-economic decision making through their economic instrumentalities (whether public or private in organization).