United States of America Scoping: Fareed: China Keeps Scoring Own Goals

Fareed: China Keeps Scoring Own Goals

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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May 28, 2021

Fareed: China Keeps Scoring Own Goals

As China's "wolf warrior" diplomats harangue other countries, and as Beijing levies trade penalties over perceived slights, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that Beijing's international aggression keeps backfiring.

"What is striking about China's strategy is that it has produced a series of 'own goals'—leading countries to adopt the very policies Beijing has long tried to stop," Fareed writes. "There have also been serious consequences for its global image, greatly diminishing its soft power."

It's a far cry from the deliberately nonthreatening, "peaceful rise" posture of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and his successors. President Xi Jinping "has transformed China's approach, domestically and abroad," consolidating power and reasserting economic control, Fareed writes. "It all brings to mind another period of centralized politics and aggressive foreign policy—the Mao era. That did not end so well for China."

I❤️NY's Vaccines

When vaccines became available in select countries, "vaccine tourism" emerged as a potential fast lane for the wealthy to get inoculated, Eileen Guo writes for The MIT Technology Review. Now, it's becoming a bit more common—and "[a] small but increasing number of places even see this travel as a way to help restart local economies stalled by the pandemic," including in the US.

"Such is the case with New York City," Guo writes. "In early-May, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a proposal to offer visitors the J&J vaccine at popular tourist sites such as Central Park and Times Square. 'Come here; it's safe,' he said in a press conference … he added, 'and we're going to take care of you. We're going to make sure you get vaccinated while you're here with us.' ... Twenty-four [US] states currently do not require residency for vaccines; 25 more offer the shot to both residents and nonresident workers. … There are reports of Mexican celebrities flying into Miami, a Peruvian presidential candidate getting vaccinated in Texas, and Canadians seeking vaccines in American pharmacies just south of the border."

The Belarus Plane Incident and the Threat to Dissidents Abroad

As Anne Applebaum wrote for The Atlantic of the recent Belarus plane saga—in which a Greece-to-Lithuania flight carrying a Belarusian opposition journalist was strong-armed into landing in Minsk on Sunday—such aerial coercion may become more common, unless the West pushes back. At Foreign Affairs, Nate Schenkkan writes that autocrats seem to feel emboldened, more broadly, to reach across borders to exact revenge.

"Lukashenko's methods were novel; state-sponsored hijackings are rare," Schenkkan writes. "But [Belarusian journalist Roman] Pratasevich's arrest represents just the most recent example of a trend toward transnational repression, as authoritarian regimes increasingly seek to apply the brutal tactics they use at home to exiles and members of diasporas elsewhere in the world. In February, my colleagues at Freedom House and I released a report compiling 608 cases of such treatment around the world since 2014, including deportations, detentions, renditions, assaults, and assassinations. Authoritarian governments in every region and of every stripe have increasingly turned to such methods to combat what they see as an intolerable threat from increasingly networked, visible, and influential critics who hail from their countries but have found refuge elsewhere."

Note to readers: Applebaum will appear on this Sunday's GPS to discuss the Belarus plane incident and what it means for governments and dissidents globally.

Poland, the UK, and Pandemic Economics

At The London School of Economics' EUROPP blog, Pawel Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos write that contrasting Poland's 2020 GDP with the UK's makes for a useful natural experiment in Covid-19 economics. Compared with the UK, Poland's economy centers more on manufacturing and less on things like tourism and hospitality, the authors note; Poland also didn't emphasize working from home, unlike Britain. As such, Poland's economy suffered less; a 6.6 percentage-point GDP shortfall in 2020, comparing 2019 projections to 2021 estimates, was among the lighter economic blows in Europe and easily bested the UK's 11.4 percentage-point drop.

"Poland is the only big EU country that has a growing share of manufacturing in both employment and production," Bukowski and Paczos write. "This kept more of the economy humming when the service services sector had to be locked down. Also, thanks to this, the country was able to benefit from the global shift in consumption from services to durable goods induced by the pandemic."

The Price of Cobalt

If you've ever wondered about the provenance of cobalt used in electric-car batteries and smartphones, New Yorker contributor Nicolas Niarchos details the mining economy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to almost half the world's known cobalt supply. While foreign companies set up official operations, Congolese citizens often dig artisanal mines on their own—and often without safety equipment or reinforcements to prevent mine collapses.

Niarchos tells the story of one man who began digging beneath the floor of his rented house; an entire town, Niarchos goes on to note, was uprooted when cobalt was found; children are pressed into mining, and it's common for independent miners to sneak into corporate mines at night, to dig. Rife with abuse that goes uncontrolled by authorities, Niarchos presents the DRC's mining industry as an object lesson in how valuable natural resources can coincide with poor governance and socio-economic problems.