Q. How should the US view China's developing relations with her neighbors? Should the US modify its foreign policy toward these same nations in light of their changing relations with China? I wish to humbly suggest without too long a tangent to defend it that the word "should" in these questions is loaded, and suggests an ideal to which the US does not possess the necessary being to recognize and enact. I actually believe that morality is hierarchical, and involves epistemological threshholds, such that the whole idea of "revealed truth" basic to all spiritual tradition is a claim of a higher moral authority, which, could it be perceived correctly, would serve as a yardstick to amend our own ethical philosophies - that is to say, what makes sense to us on our own level. For example, many people snicker at the "simpleton" pacifism of Gandhi, assuming that their culturally conditioned worldview faces reality much better in a violent world. Yet anyone who studies the life of Gandhi knows he was far from being naive about the realities he faced. He saw deeper and further, and proved that a pacifist philosophy could in principle be pragmatic to the extent that on occassion it makes more sense that the brute force mentality of the rest of the world. No one who supports a trillion dollars and thousands of lost lives for a decade-long heinously violent imperialist campaign to stubbornly cling to fossil fuel myopia in a patch of Middle East desert has any room to call pacifists naive. That last remark pulls me back on track for the questions at hand. And having spent time in discussion board on Southeast Asia, I will devote more attention here to Central Asia. My source is Sean L. Yom in his discussion of SCO: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is an alliance of Russia and China with the four "stans" that I'll not torture myself typing out. (The prior "Shanghai Five" left out Uzbekistan). The six countries pledged to fight "three evil forces": terrorism, extremism and separatism (violent Islamic radicalism). The alliance was lopsided with Russian and Chinese hegemony. But 9/11 and the Afgan conflict altered the playing field with more western influence and attention and Russia and China a bit diluted. The economic and political future of the region is dependent on three principle vectors: Sino-Russian relations,, the US presence, and Islamic militancy. All the "stans" have positive US relations. The US has two primary interests there: 1) oil and gas reserves, and 2) tactical ground. Needless to say, Russia and China are less than happy with the US presence development. US presence is the key variable of SCO's future. I'll spend my time more on one of the three vectors - Islamic militancy, and US presence will ride piggyback on that discussion. The militants are not well organized and are weak in resources. They are not terribly imposing as a military front, but more effectual in isolated terrorists tactics. Russian and Chinese hawkish policy actually overstates the threat, and on this the US hopscotches depending on where situated - placating in the "stans" and in accord with Russia and China in Iraq and elsewhere. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International complain that hawkish policy "actually sustains an ebb-and-flow cycle of Islamic violence". Brutal repression alienates unemployed youths who face little economic opportunity. Networks easily recruit more fighters from among them. Moscow and Beijing in the face of that population justify even further suppression and the cycle repeats in a positive feedback loop. The US might seem a counterbalance in the "stans" if their motive was humanitarian and not oil. The US first needs to extricate itself from the Bush regime (and not fall into another Republican oligarchy) and then re-think both motive and action in its policy. There is a part of me like many others that does not much care how the Muslims fare in all of this. They don't inspire my sympathy. But another part of me knows that such a position is the most myopic of any of my inner Munchkin's opinions. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International represent a wiser perspective, though I shall not presume to know much less elaborate on how this would or should play out. But at a time in a higher state I myself made the following quote: "Whoever sees reality for what it is knows that the only sensible consistent inner response to one's fellow humanity is one of compassion." I know that I was across a higher epistemological threshhold when I said that - said it not glibly but with real insight. I know to trust that insight. And yet, most of my life I do not live in the state where this is evident and it sounds hollow. I am just another cynic who would be more comfortable if all the Muslims were gone. US policy comes from this kind of level upon which I spend most of my time. Whoever has spent a trillion dollars on a decade-long experiment to put my quote into practice can call it naive. Steve

Blame tardiness on "black karma"

All that talk of movements, and here I am with a cold! Serves me right! Hard to make myself do anything, and I didn't see what I wanted on RSS feeds - I can't do the Tibetan Buddhists because I get too emotionally involved. But to pick something that "interests you" - I can do that. Our reading in Blum and Jensen (okay, so it's not from the news - flunk me!) included an essay by Dru Gladney, "Ethnoreligious Resurgence in a Northwestern Sufi Community". I have been interested in Sufism for many years (and no, I'm not naive enough to interpret it through the lens of Idries Shah). Here we have the Hui people in China in the small north-central province of Ningxia. The Hui here belong to the Khufiyya brotherhood which "developed from a branch of the Naqshbandiyya" - of interest to me if no one else, as the early Naqshbandi Order held an esoteric school. My reading of Gladney made it very obvious (to me) no such thing is present here in contemporary China, which is one reason the sociology takes on the character it does. (That's an observation - not a judgment). Sufism in general is a diverse set of mystical or quasi-mystical heterodox Shiite sects whose origin can be ultimately traced to a Hermetic influx that took on the garb of Islam as a cover against persecution (see Tobias Churton, "The Golden Builders"). The Hui in China don't seem to match such a description very well - to me, they're just Muslims, which is fine but (to me) doctrinally boring. In fact, I'm hitting at a main point here - these Hui are not very doctrinal at all. Researchers cite the most common answer they give as to why they believe in Islam: "We believe in Islam because we are Hui." Okay... Most of the sociological research reported on by Gladney centered on a village called the Na Homestead. These people during the Cultural Revolution had deviated from the straight-and-narrow, engaging in alcohol and tobacco among other things. Now they are very strict. Attendence at the local mosque is very high. Large numbers of men, some elderly, prostate for over an hour in prayer even when the ground is frozen. Han influence is all around, and the state is up to its usual nonsense, while the Hui cling to their identity strongly in practice even if not in overt ideology. Ironically, the economic liberalization policies of China in the post-Mao era has led to an increase in religious conservatism and practice. Chinese economic and political reforms are making the Hui feel closer to Islamic neighbors than to Beijing and intensified their religious and social identity. The state wishes to keep ethnic identity separate from religious belief and practice, but for the Hui these are shown to be nearly inseparable. This is especially the case in conservative Na Homestead. We tend to see the modern reforms in China as a unifying force leading toward globalization, but it can also be fragmenting, or lead toward greater unity in directions very different than intended by Beijing.

A Tale of Two Factories

Before I started this course, China was this "thing" over there that was taking American jobs and buying us out, and sending us cheap imports while "it" was getting rich off of us and we were getting poorer. This is a typical view of Americans - with lots of media scaffolding - toward China, and as a caricature, it has some degree of merit - provided it is not mistaken for anything more than a caricature. I was actually pretty good about that. I have this strong doctrinal position that one should not have an opinion about everything in the world about which one knows nothing whatever, that this in society may be seen as clever but I see it as lying. I am not perfect about practicing what I preach, but I did at least confine my attitudes to the impact here and not presume to understand what was happening over there - I knew my "thing" over there was a vacuous label. Now I'm even more messed up, because I presume to know something about that "thing" over there as well. And no sooner do I get a more "enlightened" perspective than I am hit with the realization that the situation is so fluid and dynamic that to know what I am talking about, I have to continuously update it. That point was driven home this morning - April 5, 2008 - when I looked for a news post to use on this blog post. Hot off the press in the New York Times it sat at the top of the list: an article in today's business section by Joe Nocera, with this title: "Seeing the Sights of Industrial China: 2 Factories, 2 Futures". The article was sufficiently rich to pose a dilemma of how to streamline it here... The context is the RMB against the dollar. RMB stands for "renmimbi" - also called the "yuan" - which is the Chinese currency. The yuan, as I will call it, rose 4% against the dollar since the start of the year. It would have risen higher, but it is moored to government control. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson praised the increase, but wants China to let the yuan be "free floating" (the US sees a rising yuan as beneficial if Paulson's view is taken as "official"). The author visited two Chinese factories, both on the outskirts of Shanghai. The first is the Shanghai Jinjue Fashion Company directed by Mr. Jin Jue. This is the stereotypical run-down one-room cavernous complex with a dirty looking river running behind it, making stereotypical cheap goods garments for mainly European markets. But it is largely vacant: 60% of the work force either quit or has been laid off. Business is bad. "The RMB is killing me," groaned Jin Jue. With the rising currency, cheap goods are not so cheap anymore. Inflation was up 8.7% in February alone, and workers cry for more money to make ends meet. Recent labor laws have passed for worker protection, but this also raises Jin Jue's costs. Some Chinese goods are actually being labeled "Made in Mexico" and routed through Mexico to take advantage of NAFTA. Mr. Jin Jue said that with a rising yuan "all these factories will go out of business." The author said that it may turn out accordingly, inflicting short-term pain, but that it would be good for the Chinese economy in the long haul. "And it won't be a lot of fun for the West to watch" he added. In China today there is much talk of "moving up the value chain." China wants business to gravitate toward more complex, higher-value goods that bring bigger profit margins and depend less on cheaper goods made on the premise of rock-bottom costs. One strategist spoke of a deliberate policy to push manufacturing up the value chain, and added that it comes at the same time as rising raw materials costs. For example, in the high tech goods market such as iPods, the Chinese are no longer content to simply assemble the components. They want to make them as well, and own the brand. The second factory the author visited is an example of a business that has already fulfilled this dream. Li Xian Shou is founder and CEO of ReneSola, that makes silicon wafers for solar panels. His first quarter 2007 earnings were up 200% from the previous year. He made $53 million in 2007, almost double his 2006 profit. In January of this year he raised $130 million in a stock offering on NYSE. His complex is spreading like a wildfire, with some buildings no more than six months old. The number of people he employs rose from twenty in 2005 to 3300 now. At first his company assembled solar panels for companies in Germany and Japan who supplied him the silicon wafers. But assembly, he notes, is a "commodity business" and attracts much competition. So in 2005 he converted to producing the wafers themselves and now competes with the foreign companies. Because he does not export directly, but sends the wafers to solar panel assembly plants in China, he can demand payment in yuan. Asked about the effect of a rising yuan, "he gave an indifferent shrug." After all the other background from Blecher, Han Dongfang and others, I was encouraged to hear about the recent worker reform laws being passed, but nothing further about them was said. Here I confine my attention to the polemic posed by these two factories. I qualifyingly presume to agree that a rising yuan is in the best long term interest of China, but I am also inclined to the impertinence of suggesting that the same is true for us. In other words, the pain it may inflict here with rising prices and adjustments of competition will likewise prove a check on unrestrained myopic growth unattached to resources and long-term vision. For one thing, as a geologist I know there is only so much oil in the ground, and the implications of that fact are not being seriously faced. My wish for China is not that it cease to "get rich" at the expense of the United States, but that this "thing" over there ostensibly "getting rich" should include all the people of China and not just a few. I wish China good economic health. I wish all of us good economic health. We all need to start thinking more holistically global about that, or all of us may find ourselves missing out.