New On the European Chinese Law Research Hub Blogsite: Baiyang Xiao, "Making the Private Public: Regulating Content Moderation"

 

Capture of the video installation “Unerasable Characters II” by Winnie Soon: Drawing on the Weiboscope database, she designed software that visualizes Weibo posts that have been erased on a daily basis during the pandemic. ^{Exhibit “Data Relations“, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne}

 

The folks over at the European Chinese Law Research Hub (with thanks to Marianne von Blomberg, Editor ECLR Hub, Research Associate, Chair for Chinese Legal Culture, University of Cologne) have posted  a marvelous essay by Baiyang Xiao, "Making the Private Public: Regulating Content Moderation." Xiao aims to study the way that legal measures China adopted to serve the needs of content control and compares the framework with the regulatory approach of the EU.

The study is particularly interesting for the way it nicely frames the core issue of regulation--the way that broad political principles are translated into policy, and then the way that policy is transposed into regulatory structures sensitive to political principles.  More interesting still is the way that this self-referencing regulatory framework is then plugged into what is extracted as emerging international norms and standards, but then applied with a socialist perspective. Lastly, the objectification of platforms as a site for regulation--that is as a virtual regulable space that assumes some of the characteristics of physical territory, is also quite useful. All of this comes at a price--which all states and political systems are discovering must be paid. 

I am cross posting the link to the essay which may also be read below. The original ECLRH post may be accessed HERE. And as a plug for the marvelous work at the European Chinese Law Research Hub: if you have observations, analyses or pieces of research that are not publishable as a paper but should get out there, or want to spread event information, calls for papers or job openings, or have a paper forthcoming- do not hesitate to contact Marianne von Bloomberg.

Conference: "The Features and the Future of the Chinese Legal Paradigm"

 

 For those interested, this is a conference that may be worth attending:

The Features and the Future of the Chinese Legal Paradigm

Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università Roma TreWednesday 20th December - 9h45-12h00 – Aula 248

Opening and institutional greetings: Giorgio Resta, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Speakers
Flora Huang, University of Derby, U.K.
Shu Zhang, Deakin University Melbourne
Peng Guo, Swinburne University Melbourne
Wen Xiang, University of Copenhagen

Moderator: Enrico Toti, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Scientific committee: Simone Benvenuti; Giorgio Pino; Enrico Toti

Segreteria organizzativa: Enrico Toti Link identifier #identifier__49065-1

enrico.toti@uniroma3.it

 

On Socialist Cultural Production in the New Era--中国文联党组书记李屹：深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹 [Li Yi, Party Secretary of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles: Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions]

 

Pix Credit Here

 

Pix Credit here

对于文艺界和广大文艺工作者而言，学习贯彻习近平文化思想，就要深刻领悟其中蕴含的宏阔的国际视野、开放的文明胸襟，在坚守中华文化立场的基础上，把目光投向世界、投向人类，提炼展示中华文明的精神标识和文化精髓，加快构建中国话语和中国叙事体系，创作更多彰显中国审美旨趣、反映全人类共同价值追求的优秀作品，用文艺的形式讲好我们正在经历的新时代故事，展现可信、可爱、可敬的中国形象，表达对于人类命运的普遍关怀，让世界人民在艺术审美的过程中深化对中国的认识、增进对中国的了解，为人类文明进步搭建相互了解、理解、包容的桥梁，谱写人类文明新形态的文艺篇章。 For the literary and art circles and the majority of literary and art workers, to study and implement Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts, all must deeply understand the broad international vision and open civilized mind contained in it, and on the basis of adhering to the Chinese cultural position, set our sights on the world. To that end it is necessary to focus on human beings, refine and display the spiritual symbols and cultural essence of Chinese civilization, accelerate the construction of Chinese discourse and Chinese narrative system, create more outstanding works that highlight Chinese aesthetic tastes and reflect the pursuit of common values ​​of all mankind, and use literary and artistic forms to explain what we are experiencing The story of the new era shows a credible, lovely and respectable image of China, expresses universal concern for the destiny of mankind, allows people around the world to deepen their understanding of China and enhance their understanding of China in the process of artistic appreciation, and contributes to the progress of human civilization. Build bridges of mutual understanding, understanding, and tolerance, and write a literary and artistic chapter for a new form of human civilization

 Li Yi (李屹), Party Secretary and Vice Chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, has written a most interesting essay on the importance and forms of cultural production as aspects f national productive forces essential to the  realization of the project of socialist modernization in the new era. The essay, Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions [深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹] appeared recently in Study Times [学习时报].  It represents a further development of the New Era's all around approach the development of the nation's productive forces as inevitably including cultural and social forces. In a sense it represents an older movement within Leninist theory that considers the role of the cultural and artistic within the framework of the Leninist imperative of vanguard forces to lead the nation toward its goal. That more ancient expression--a product of the European branch of Leninism transposed to the North American Caribbean, was expressed by Fidel Castro in 1961 in an address to the leading cultural and artistic forces of the nation of that era:

The Revolution must understand that reality, and consequently must act in such a way that the entire sector of artists and intellectuals who are not genuinely revolutionary find a place to work and to create within the Revolution, and so that their creative spirit will have an opportunity and freedom for expression within the Revolution, even though they are not revolutionary writers or artists. This means that within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing. Nothing against the Revolution, because the Revolution has its rights also, and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist, and no one can stand against the right of the Revolution to be and to exist, No one can rightfully claim a right against the Revolution. Since it takes in the interests of the people and Signifies the interests of the entire nation. (Fidel Castro Ruz, Pamphlet entitled Palabras a los Intelectuales (Words toIntellectuals), Havana, National Cultural Council, 1961).

In terms of Chinese Leninism of the New Era, the same divide separates patriots from counter-revolutionary forces. The former is to be accorded the privileges of democratic participation, the later the burdens of dictatorship. In a sense, them what is being developed here are the cultural aspects of the Peoples' Democratic Dictatorship (Chinese State Constitution Art. 1 (" The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.")) to arts and culture. In that sense, it accords with the times. 

It applies as well those principles to the projection of New Era culture into the international sphere. It represents, in that respect, an emerging aspect of Socialist  Internationalism that is geared for time, space, and place.  Aligned with the related aspects of economic, political, and security convergence, the leveraging of socialist cultural production suggests the way that cultural production, like the production of ideological baselines, economic commodities, and political institutions and frameworks, can be deployed in the service of the overall construction of a socialist democratic framework that, in its own ways, mimics the framework of the cultural production of liberal democracy and its integration with the overall organization and functioning of social relations across fields of human collective enterprise. The difference, for the moment still significant, touches on (1) the identification of the leading forces (still more or less private and markets driven in liberal democracy; under the overall leadership of the political vanguard in Leninist states); and (2) the overall direction and utility of such cultural production. The inter-connectedness within Leninist circles is easy to spot at least in its formal constitution (it does get messy at the level of production); the connections and tensions are more informal and coordination by and through the state or elite institutions more difficult (but not impossible in the level of overall management  of cultural production at elite levels) in liberal democratic environments. The overall framing of patriot-opponent or inside-outside marks both in quite different ways. In both the fundamental issues remain: to what extent are current manifestations appropriately aligned to the overall ruling ideology (liberal democratic or Marxist Leninist); and, to what extent is a formation of development and post colonial ruling ideologies different?

The essay, Deeply understand Xi Jinping’s cultural thoughts and shoulder new cultural missions [深刻领会习近平文化思想担负起新的文化使命 学习时报 | 作者 李屹] follows below in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation.

Parallel Barking Podcast: "Three Ivy League Presidents Versus Congress on Antisemitism"

 

 Episode description: Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were questioned about rising antisemitism on college campuses at a House committee hearing on Tuesday, December 5th. The
biggest backlash stems from the question that asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the university code of conduct. At Tuesday’s hearing Harvard president Claudine Gay said it depended on the context, adding that when “speech crosses into conduct, that violates our policies.” (AP).  While much of the discussion has focused on what was said--its text--what has been missed is any engagement with the collective belief that this context based discussion tmade plausible. Context provides a rationalizing veil for the translation of belief into action; it is a fundamental belief about the innocuousness of statements about exterminating Jews (in this case, and any other group in a different context) based on a belief system about the target of this contextualization that then drives a construction of plausibility about the effective innocuousness of the invitation.

I have written a little about the most remarkable testimony, followed by an even more remarkable colloquy, between high level functionaries of the leading forces of American Academic communities (all with deep ties to elite functionaries among the leading forces of other critical governance communities in the United States), and members of the U.S. House of Representatives (Contextually Relevant Discourse: Text of Statements Delivered by the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard for the U.S. House of Representatives Hearing-- "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism").

What was most remarkable about those performances, was the exposition of a quite interesting discursive positioning advanced by the University Presidents. That positioning, which I call "contextually relevant discourse" appears to posit that words only matter when they matter to those functionaries presiding over structures of discursive expectations. Those expectations of speech and speech acts, then, render words and other performative manifestations of meaning, a meaning that can be assumed to fall within what is expected, approved, tolerated, or embraced, by those with the power to control place, time, and manner rules for such discursive performances. 

Performing meaning, then, is quite contextually relevant. And in the context of inviting individuals to consider the value and positive qualities of engaging in the genocide of Jews, that context provides a way of taking the sting out of that invitation, rendering it merely an expression of something else. The clear semiotics of that journey from invitation to polite, if robust and "symbolic", discourse, is, in a way, quite breathtaking. *   *    *  Context, then, becomes the core around which meaning making is to be undertaken among those who mean to control its content. Context is the object (the facts around which meaning can be informed); the objectivity of context then is signified by the application of presumptions and modes of translating facts to objects within a rationalized system of understanding the world; and thus signified, context provides the means of investing its text and performance with collective meaning. And yet what also appears is a power of belief to shape context shaping meaning, then reinforcing belief. That is the wheel that these functionaries (and their collectives) mean to strategically turn.  (Context and the Discourse of Discourse: UPenn and Harvard Presidents Re-Imagine the Meaning of their Speech-Acts as the Relevant Context Changes).

Access podcast  HERE. 

Pix Credit Here

"Artificial Intelligence Act: deal on comprehensive rules for trustworthy AI" : Text of European Parliament Press Release 9 December 2023

Pix Credit 'Variety' here

In earnest since 2021, officials within the European Union, and interested stakeholders worldwide, have been debating the parameters, and ultimately the text, of a comprehensive regulatory framework for the exploitation of generative intelligence systems (so called artificial intelligence). See Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL LAYING DOWN HARMONISED RULES ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ACT) AND AMENDING CERTAIN UNION LEGISLATIVE ACTS COM/2021/206 final (Text Explanatory Memorandum) (Annex)

In its 2021 Explanatory Memo, it was explained that the reguñatory framework would be bent toward the following generalized core objectives:

· ensure that AI systems placed on the Union market and used are safe and respect existing law on fundamental rights and Union values;

· ensure legal certainty to facilitate investment and innovation in AI;

· enhance governance and effective enforcement of existing law on fundamental rights and safety requirements applicable to AI systems;

· facilitate the development of a single market for lawful, safe and trustworthy AI applications and prevent market fragmentation. (Memo, supra, at p. 3)

After much discussion, key political stakeholders have now reached agreement on the final form of the framework.

European Union officials have reached a provisional deal on a legal framework for the development and use of artificial intelligence within Europe, calling for greater transparency as well as setting parameters for high-risk AI. The political agreement, which has yet to be detailed and came together following 37 hours of debates within the European Commission, highlights what is prohibited when it comes to AI, key requirements for using high-risk AI and penalties. (Variety; here)

In its Press Release, the European Parliament stressed the boundaries of AI exploitation:

--biometric categorisation systems that use sensitive characteristics (e.g. political, religious, philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, race);
--untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases;
--emotion recognition in the workplace and educational institutions;
--social scoring based on social behaviour or personal characteristics;
--AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will;
--AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation). (Press Release)

Some of these normative taboos are meant to protect the current state of EU human rights and constitutional principles, especially for example, the restrictions on biometric information that crosses ideological boundaries on politically sensitive classes of data. Others serve to reject contemporary Marxist-Leninist approaches to the nudging of behaviors through so-called social scoring mechanisms, including emotion recognition  (eg Chinese "social credit") systems. These are going to be much harder to actually implement given the insatiable appetite in the liberal democratic camp to use a variety of semiotically powerful modalities to nudge behaviors. Indeed, one already sees in the limitations of the restrictions on emotion recognition technologies (to workplaces and schools) a concession to its obliquity in the marketplace and in the marketplace of ideas (including those of interest to the state). Another limitation appears to restrict the restriction on European social credit systems ONLY to "scoring based on social behavior or personal characteristics." That produces a tension, for example, between the openness of emotion recognition, and the prohibitions against"AI systems that manipulate human behavior to circumvent their free will." On the other hand it is clear (no one reads Nietzsche anymore on the difficulty of contemporary ideologies of free will) that environmental, social, economic, cultural, political and other realities, all contextually framed, already circumscribe (and sometimes make virtually impossible) the exercise of free will in significant ways. On the other hand, it raises the question about what in the field of social relations does NOT manipulate free will. There is nothing in the emerging regulation that suggests that AI may not be used to manage he circumstances against which free will can be curated for individuals or classes of humans identifiable by certain characteristics or predilections.  Managing circumstances and the conditions around which "will" is exercised can be a quite powerful field for AI application--from traffic patterns to just transitions.  The battles over the meaning and application of "manipulation" will consume much human capital.

All of this provides much fuel for anticipation of the official text, and its journey towards adoption and then transposition into Member State legal orders. The full text of the EU Parliament Press Release follows.

Context and the Discourse of Discourse: UPenn and Harvard Presidents Re-Imagine the Meaning of their Speech-Acts as the Relevant Context Changes

 

Pix Credit Here

 

I have written a little about the most remarkable testimony, followed by an even more remarkable colloquy, between high level functionaries of the leading forces of American Academic communities (all with deep ties to elite functionaries among the leading forces of other critical governance communities in the United States),  and members of the U.S.  House of Representatives (Contextually Relevant Discourse: Text of Statements Delivered by the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard for the U.S. House of Representatives Hearing-- "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism").

What was most remarkable about those performances, was the exposition of a quite interesting discursive positioning advanced by the University Presidents. That positioning, which I call "contextually relevant discourse" appears to posit that words only matter when they matter to those functionaries presiding over structures of discursive expectations.  Those expectations of speech and speech acts, then, render words and other performative manifestations of meaning, a meaning that can be assumed to fall within what is expected, approved, tolerated, or embraced, by those with the power to control place, time, and manner rules for such discursive performances. 

Pix Credit here (one of the first renderings of Ouroboros)

Performing meaning, then, is quite contextually relevant. And in the context of inviting individuals to consider the value and positive qualities of engaging in the genocide of Jews, that context provides a way of taking the sting out of that invitation, rendering it merely an expression of something else. The clear semiotics of that journey from invitation to polite, if robust and "symbolic", discourse, is, in a way, quite breathtaking. And its possibilities in other contexts, when judged to be similar by those given the authority to render such judgments and impose such meaning, quite broad. But for the moment such possibilities remain semiotically (that is in their power to impose public or communal meaning) locked within their potentials--except for the centering of context as the key to unlocking and managing meaning at a communal level. Context, then, becomes the core around which meaning making is to be undertaken among those who mean to control its content. Context is the object (the facts around which meaning can be informed); the objectivity of context then is signified by the application of presumptions and modes of translating facts to objects within a rationalized system of understanding the world; and thus signified, context provides the means of investing its text and performance with collective meaning. And yet what also appears  is a power of belief to shape context shaping meaning, then reinforcing belief. That is the wheel that these functionaries (and their collectives) mean to strategically turn.

These dialectics were most visible since the testimony and colloquy before the House of Representatives.  It appears that the greater context of public (or at least well reported elite reaction) has produced a context in which the meaning conveyed during the testimony has evaporated in favor of another.

Pix credit here

Facing heavy criticism, the University of Pennsylvania’s president walked back some of her remarks given earlier this week at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, saying she should have gone further to condemn hate against Jewish students. . . .In a statement posted Wednesday by Harvard on X, formerly Twitter, Gay condemned calls for violence against Jewish students. “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account,” Gay wrote Wednesday. White House spokesman Andrew Bates issued a statement Wednesday criticizing Gay, Magill and Kornbluth’s responses for not going far enough to condemn antisemitism on campuses.(Under fire, Penn and Harvard’s presidents walk back their comments about antisemitism and genocide: ‘It’s evil, plain and simple’; see also here, and here). 

The President of MIT remains unmoved--or at least still silent--the MIT President's testimony and answers provided continue to speak for themselves; that is they remain contextually relevant discourse. The semiotic dynamism of this quite remarkable and swift shift suggests the continued power of context. At the same time, the power of context remains untouched.  What remains, then, for discourse, are the inevitable battles over context, and with it, the ways in which speech can be signified in ways that accord with the manner in which people are encouraged to see and manifest  that "sight" in the world whose meaning is contextually relevant. The dialectics of the expression of meaning and belief remain untouched at the level of social relations except through the openings that context provides for nudging through narrative. Context changes meaning; it does not change belief. But belief can change context; which can then change meaning. The wheel turns; and it is not quite done here.

Contextually Relevant Discourse: Text of Statements Delivered by the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard for the U.S. House of Representatives Hearing-- "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism"

 

Pix Credit New York Times

 

On 5 December 2023, NPR posted its reporting on a U.S. House of Representatives hearing that had produced national interest  and substantial coverage by U.S. press organs of a variety of distinctive grounding points of view.

Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of MIT spoke before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce for several hours on Tuesday, condemning the rise in antisemitic incidents and defending their administrations' responses.  * * *  The hearing — which was titled "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism" — turned combative at times. Republican lawmakers grilled the administrators on topics like ideological diversity, foreign university funding and specific disciplinary actions.  Committee chair Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., described the hearing in her opening remarks as an opportunity for leaders to "answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your college campuses that have denied students the safe learning environment they're due."(Rachel Triesman, "Lawmakers grill the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn over antisemitism on campus," NPR 5 Dec. 2023).

Pix Credit Wall Street Journal

Most people might have focused on the performance of the testimony and the interactions that they produced.  See, e.g., here, here, here, and here. And, indeed, as expected, the exchanges were lively.

Opinions of course had likely hardened long before the delivery of the testimony and the performance of verbal exchanges that were video recorded and transcribed for the consumption of the masses, and toward the dueling constitution of narrative that might serve the interests and ideologies of the participants, stakeholders, and their respective circles (see, e.g., here, here).

Nonetheless, it is useful for those interested to consider the text of the statements crafted for delivery by the presidents of these institutions. Each of them follows below. They may also be accessed here: Penn; MIT; and Harvard.  

They are worthy of deep study for what they tell of of the discursive style of social leaders and high-level functionaries within the structures (in this case in the academic field) of national vanguard elites as they craft discourse  to serve ends and in the process shape and reshape both principle and the context (context was a critically important semiotic marker throughout the hearings) in which those principles might be manifested in the service of whatever it is that each of the statements identified. Indeed, in the fields of narrative curation and deployment, contextually relevant discourse appears to have assumed the role that administrative discretion has come to signify in the fields of public and private governance. That, in turn, permits a broad scope of choice in application of the principles, by those with the power to identify and signify context, subject only to the interpretation of the limiting principles themselves or discipline by a body with greater authority. Context can then represent a phenomenological engagement (we are the aggregation of our actions) with principle, an epistemological identification (we know what can be known in the way we can come to know it) of relevant spaces, or a dialectical embrace of something that is both emerging and as yet indeterminate in the fullness of its implications (the ontology of "semitism" and its semiotic synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and homophones). What is certain is that one encounters here contextually relevant discourse within contextually relevant applications creating a continually relevant engagement of something that can be better understood through a dialectical process of oppositions. The result is the complicated inter-weaving, that weaving together, which lies at the heart of the origins of the term context, and which forms the essence of what was offered.  But at the same time the presidential texts also serve as an invitation (in their own context) to a contestation on the same basis as the one in which the statements were offered.

Consideration of all of these points are left to the reader. I offer no views on the text or the performances in the space in which they were presented; I offer only text within that con-text. Semiotics, however, suggests that a close reading, in context, will reward the reader with the signification of its object (there are multiple objects the balancing of which occupies much of the text of the statements) the interpretation of which provides the contextual foundations within which the sense attempted to be conveyed are deployed.  

Latin America and the Caribbean Invest in China: Just Published--(Enrique Dussel Peters (ed)) "Latin American and Caribbean Overseas Foreign Direct Investment in China in the 21st Century" (Unión de Universidades de América Latina y el Caribe, 2023)

 

Enrique Dussel Peters has announced the publication of an important book:  Latin American and Caribbean Overseas Foreign Direct Investment in China in the 21st Century (Unión de Universidades de América Latina y el Caribe, 2023; ISBN 978-607-8937-05-9), which can be downloaded at: https://dusselpeters.com/388.pdf.

Dussel Peters describes the project this way:

The book is an in depth analysis of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) overseas foreign direct investment (OFDI) to China including macro, meso and micro (case studies) analysis. It includes a regional perspective (PRESENTATION/Enrique Dussel Peters), and the experiences of Argentina (Leonardo E. Stanley), Brazil (Celio Hiratuka), the Caribbean (Jevon Minto, Chevano Baker and Noel Young), Central America ( Rafael Arias-Achio and Rafael Arias Ramírez), Chile (Dorotea López, Andrés Bórquez, and Juan E. Serrano-Moreno), Mexico (Enrique Dussel Peters), and Peru (Alan Fairlie). An invitation by the Academic Network for Latin America and the Caribbean on China (Red ALC-China) to improve the examined countries and case studies, and to include new countries and case studies.

He offers 6 conclusions in his "Presentation" (Ibid., pp. 7-15): 

(1)  the methodological weakness of statistical production makes assessment difficult, especially as the major players have failed to coordinate their data production and reporting; 

(2) while LAC outbound investment in China has consistently grown, the trajectories may change as China and the West sort of their respective trade empires; 

(3) the rate of outbound investment into China varies considerably among states in the LAC region, with the usual suspects (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina) driving investment (along with special case Chile), while other states  the polarities of investment may be reversed; 

(4) the implications of rates and forms of outbound investment  beg further analysis especially with respect to LAC MNEs driving outbound investment that tend to be (a) experienced players in outbound investment; (b) long time investors in China; (c) most began investment through trade and representation offices; (d) all investors experienced periods of substantial learning and adaptation, including cases where outbound investment went badly; (e) pathways to investment were quite varied  reflecting experimentation and contextualization in overcoming entry barriers and included joint ventures; various forms of M&A,  and some greenfield investment; (f) the business case for outbound investment was fueled by cheaper labor and materials but has matured as Chinese markets have grown along with the capacity of partner firms; (g) successful experimentation in initial phases were followed by expansion especially through M&A; (h) success appeared to require inbound LAC firms to innovate global competition practices;  (i) inbound investment tended to avoid the larger cities in favor of small and medium sized urban centers; and (j) successful inbound investment has been leveraged by some firms to aid i development of further expansion into other Asian states;

(5) the trend appears to be for the imposition of increasingly higher entry barriers for new investment even as the overall investment climate in China has changed especially with respect to the costs and risks of investment;

(6) all  firms from the LAC region have been affected by the imperial maneuverings between the Chinese and the Americans; but rather than leave China LAC firms have adopted what is called a "China + 1" strategy--reasonably analogous to China's dual circulation policy as a means of promoting what the Europeans call "re-risking" strategies.

The work is well worth a read. Last point, and interestingly, while Brazilian firms might be sensitive to issues of sustainability (pp. 90, 94),  a reference to sustainability in Central American coffee production (pp. 162) is noted,  human capital (and resources) is mentioned several paces (eg pp. 18, 28, 49, 93, 116, 169, 196, 229, 252, 254, 271, 278); property rights are noted at pp. 111-112); the human rights landscape in investment did not play a prominent role in the analysis.

In Pictures--Automate and Delegate!: 制定实施"中央八项规定" [Formulate and implement the eight provisions of the CPC Central Committee]

 

 

The new trend of the times is around us

Doing things in one step

Formulate and implement eight central regulations. It is our party’s effort move to build trust in the new era. Over the past 11 years, we have persisted in upholding integrity and discipline. Correcting the "four winds" [or "four styles"] with the spirit of driving home nails has stopped some unhealthy tendencies that had not been confronted for a long time and corrected some stubborn social ills that have not been eliminated for many years. The eight provisions of the CPC Central Committee are iron rules and that provide strong leverage that are effective for the long term. We must constantly work hard and tirelessly until we can ensure that [these regulations] truly become custom.

十八届中央政治局关于改进工作作风、密切联系群众的八项规定，简称“中央八项规定”，是中共中央总书记习近平在2012年12月4日主持的第18届中共中央政治局会议 [The Eight Provisions of the Politburo of the 18th CPC Central Committee on improving work style and maintaining close contact with the masses, referred to as the "Eight Provisions of the CPC Central Committee", were issued at the 18th Political Bureau meeting of the CPC Central Committee chaired by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee on December 4, 2012]. And, indeed, working style of cadres/functionaries has been an element of close supervision, and much discussion, from the time of the founding of PRC. Certainly since the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, it has been a periodic focus of the central Party leadership to focus on bureaucratization.

Some of our current systems and institutions in the Party and state are plagued by problems which seriously impede the full realization of the superiority of socialism. Unless they are conscientiously reformed, we can hardly expect to meet the urgent needs of modernization and we are liable to become seriously alienated from the masses.

As far as the leadership and cadre systems of our Party and state are concerned, the major problems are bureaucracy, over-concentration of power, patriarchal methods, life tenure in leading posts and privileges of various kinds.

Bureaucracy remains a major and widespread problem in the political life of our Party and state. Its harmful manifestations include the following: standing high above the masses; abusing power; divorcing oneself from reality and the masses; spending a lot of time and effort to put up an impressive front; indulging in empty talk; sticking to a rigid way of thinking; being hidebound by convention; overstaffing administrative organs; being dilatory, inefficient and irresponsible; failing to keep one’s word; circulating documents endlessly without solving problems; shifting responsibility to others; and even assuming the airs of a mandarin, reprimanding other people at every turn, vindictively attacking others, suppressing democracy, deceiving superiors and subordinates, being arbitrary and despotic, practising favouritism, offering bribes, participating in corrupt practices in violation of the law, and so on. Such things have reached intolerable dimensions both in our domestic affairs and in our contacts with other countries. (Deng Xiaoping, On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership (18 August 1980) § III).

Some of this has found its way into the concept of the "four winds" or "four styles" [四风] , a collective shorthand for formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance, as working style errors for cadres/functionaries. While it is always easy to observe the movements around responses to bureaucratization and efficiency in the operations of Party cadres and especially when they are engaging in their administrative roles in the state apparatus at the national level--one can learn much by observing the way that trickles down to the local and provincial levels. To that end, sometimes one can glean much from education and working style  efforts directed downwards by central Party leadership.  

Recently the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and State Supervision [中央纪公国家监委] has caused to be distributed a quite interesting illustrated lesson in the virtues of avoiding bureaucratization and delegating authority downward with respect to the management of operational level application of  policy. These are meant to show how “中央八项规定” ["Eight Provisions of the CPC Central Committee"] can be implemented in a common "retail level" administrative operation.  The illustrated lesson follows below (with crude translations from the original Chinese text in the pictures). 

What emerges from this is worth considering.  First the old lessons about the dangers of bureaucracy and concentration of power (especially with respect to line  management) remains a problem, but one that has again captured the attention of the central authorities. In a sense, the illustration suggests the new era path to the resolution of the problem distilled by Deng Xiaoping in the prior era of historical development:

The problem is that we have gone too far in these respects, and we have even failed to clarify what we mean by decentralism and assertion of independence in the first place. Now that ours has become the ruling party in the whole country, and especially since we have basically completed the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production, the Party’s central task is different from what it was in the past. Now that we are engaged in the extremely difficult and complicated task of socialist construction, over-concentration of power is becoming more and more incompatible with the development of our socialist cause. (Deng Xiaoping, supra, § III).

And that is the problem of cadre/functionary working style in ways that remain connected to the masses but coordinated from the center with contextual differentiation as one moves from central to locality.  The New Era answer lies in the proper application of technology.

Second, it follows that what is novel is the way that the problem of bureaucracy is effectively overcome (at least to some extent) by the automation of decision-making. In effect, a close observation of the illustrated lesson reveals that efficiency (and therefor better management of the deployment of mass productive forces at the retail level).  The lower level functionary/cadre becomes a service assistant, and the actual decision making (approval of business license in this case) is undertaken by inputting information into a receptacle which can then be processed through algorithms that have, it is assumed, been developed by higher authorities--and managed beyond the level of mass population points of contact.

And thus the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and State supervision empathizes: "简化审批流程，优化营商环境需要干部放下架子、沉下身子 摒弃惯性思维，力戒官僚主义努力提升企业办事便利度、满意度和获得感 [(1) Simplify the approval process, (2) Optimize the business environment by requiring cadres to abandon pretensions and engage; (3) Abandon inertial thinking,(4)  Avoid bureaucracy and strive to improve business convenience, satisfaction and sense of gain]--a reworking for line cadres/functionaries of the formulation of the "four winds/four styles" [四风] error. Online processing “线上跑” serves both the purpose of avoiding bureaucratization and concentration of authority by (delegating contact to front line cadres while automating significant elements of what had once been within the scope of local level exercises of administrative discretion.  That n turn preserves  and augments central coordination (at the national, provincial and local levels, as determined by policy)  while leaving some space for local exercises of authority--though the later remains unspecified in the illustration. It is in this way, perhaps, that New Era operationalization seeks to move forward a tech based solution to the 2012 “中央八项规定”. The eight provisions also follow below. 

What may follow beyond automation is generative decision making.  It is not unlikely that, given enough data, it may be possible for processes like that described in the illustration may become not merely automated but also interactive. In that context, the program may not just process information and provide a yes-no result depending on satisfaction of all input requirements; it may also generate suggestions. In a sense, the program might become an assistant not just for the applicant, but more importantly, for the cadre/functionary who may now receive instructions on next steps or ordered alternatives where such may be necessary given either application irregularities, or implementation of other policy objectives grounded in the input entered.That may, indeed be the next era challenge for both  "four winds/four styles" [四风] error and “中央八项规定” (the eight provisions of the CPC Central Committee).

Parallel Barking Podcast: "Weaponizing Migrants--Russia Diverting Asylum Seekers to Finland"

 

 Episode description: In attempts to destabilize the West, Russia and its allies have been using migrants as pawns. After Russia invaded Ukraine and Finland joined NATO, it is clear that this "hybrid [type] warfare" combined with disinformation is becoming the norm. 

Although it has multiple uses, weaponized migration is often employed as an instrument of state-level coercion, undertaken to achieve a wide range of geopolitical and other foreign policy goals that have been frustrated by other means. States and nonstate actors have resorted to this tactic at least 81 times—and possibly many more—since the advent of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which granted those fleeing political persecution the right to seek asylum in states that are signatories to the agreement. Governments that weaponize migration to achieve foreign policy objectives are often, but not always, autocratic; their targets have disproportionately, but not exclusively, been advanced liberal democracies. (Kelly M Greenhill, "When migrants become weapons: The long history and worrying future of a coercive tactic," MIT Center for International Studies (March/April 2022))

While our focus is on the current use of the tactic by Russia in the context of its imperial adventurism; it ought to be considered as well as a tactic of equalizing power where smaller states seek concessions from larger and potentially opposing states (e.g., "Nicaragua is ‘weaponizing’ US-bound migrants as Haitians pour in on charter flights, observers say"AP (October 23, 2023), also here). While issues of state responsibility tend to be foregrounded usually those miss two significant points, (1) that exporting sates appear to be able to act with impunity and the receiving state appears to bear the greater responsibility to prevent-mitigate-or remedy (e.g. here; and here); and (2) little attention is paid to the micro-issues of human consequences (e.g., here).

Access podcast HERE.

For Additional background, see here for a classical perspective, and Sascha-Dominik Dov Bachmann & Anthony Paphiti, Mass Migration as a Hybrid Threat? - A Legal Perspective, Polish Pol. Sci. Y.B. 50 (2021) 119-145 , introduction below.

Pix Credit here