Bob Fu says the U.S. must fight for Chen Guangcheng:

This is a pivotal moment for U.S. human rights diplomacy. The United States must stand firmly with this broadly popular individual or risk losing credibility as a defender of freedom and the rule of law.

I understand being cautious about harming relations with China. But what I also understand is the Chinese government brutally represses individuals who have done absolutely nothing wrong, and uses the law as a tool to advance the government and party’s interests, rather than to provide for justice. When someone who suffers under the government’s arbitrary rule stands up to it, we should support them. And we should support them when they are silenced, too, because that’s especially when they need spoken for.

The Chinese government argues that advocating on behalf of persecuted lawyers, human rights activists and dissidents is meddling in their own domestic affairs and is an attempt to violate their sovereignty. That’s bullshit. We have every right to, in the course of our relations with a country as large and powerful as China, to demand that basic human dignity be respected, and the rule of law operate unfettered. Not only do we have a right to, we have a responsibility to recognize and oppose repression of people whose only crime is pointing out the government and party’s wrongs. It isn’t about politics or advancing our interests. It’s about respecting human dignity.

Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese lawyer and human rights activist, escaped extralegal house arrest last week and is believed to be hiding in the U.S. embassy or somewhere else in Beijing. The event, and the U.S.’s involvement, could stir up tensions once again between the U.S. and China.

I hope that Chen is indeed in the U.S. embassy, because no where else is safe. Chen’s escape is highly problematic for Beijing because it makes house arrests—one of China’s favorite tools for silencing dissidents and something they’d much rather not discuss at all—very public, and it weakens the government’s perceived power. After all, if even a blind man can escape police cordons and evade capture in the nation’s capital, how capable is it?

Worse, it means how they will deal with Chen will be very public, too. Do they allow Chen to go free, and weaken their perceived strength even more? Do they put Chen in prison, and receive international condemnation? And if Chen is in the U.S. embassy, do they risk relations with the U.S. by demanding that the U.S. hand him over?

There’s no good answer for Beijing. Their preferred approach, I would assume, would be to imprison Chen and let the controversy fade away, but with his escape being such an incredible story and embarrassment to the government, that may not be possible. Moreover, the government (and party) already feels particularly wounded after Bo Xilai’s downfall, so Chen’s escape piles on. This may be the most destabilizing period for the CCP since 1989.

Planetary Resources, a new venture supported by Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and James Cameron, plans on mining asteroids for rare-earth metals.

It’s a long-term, ambitious plan that is more likely to fail than it is to succeed. Granted. But they’re trying to expand space exploration beyond low-earth orbit, and that’s awesome. I want to see manned exploration of our solar system in my lifetime, and this is a step toward it. I hope it succeeds.

The Economist reports that over the last thirty years, China’s fertility rate (the number of children a woman can expect to have throughout her life) has fallen from 2.6 to 1.56. This means China’s population will peak sometime around 2026 and then begin to decline. Worse, though, their population will continue getting older:

The differences between the two countries are even more striking if you look at their average ages. In 1980 China’s median (the age at which half the population is younger, half older) was 22. That is characteristic of a young developing country. It is now 34.5, more like a rich country and not very different from America’s, which is 37. But China is ageing at an unprecedented pace. Because fewer children are being born as larger generations of adults are getting older, its median age will rise to 49 by 2050, nearly nine years more than America at that point. Some cities will be older still. The Shanghai Population and Family Planning Committee says that more than a third of the city’s population will be over 60 by 2020.

Think about that. China is a developing (that is, still relatively poor) nation with an average age comparable to developed (rich) nations, and it will only get older in the coming decades. This means two things: first, China’s cheap labor advantage—which was largely responsible for China’s remarkable record of economic growth since the 1980s—will dry up as their youth decline as a percentage of population; and second, their aging population will require significant financial support. Traditionally, this support comes from the elderly’s children, but because the country’s birth rate is declining, they will be less able to do so.

In other words, China is growing old before it grows rich. That presents profound challenges both for China¹ and the rest of the world².

1. How do they quickly move from an unskilled labor-fueled economy toward a more productive, value-add economy? do they import workers to help augment their declining workforce? If so, how do they adapt their rather exclusionary society to help integrate workers? As economic growth inevitably slows, how will they decide to split up limited funds between government interests and costs for supporting the elderly? [↩]
2. As China’s ability to manufacture products cheaply declines, consumer product prices could rise as a result—which means that unless wages increase commensurately, consumers will face lower real wages. China’s rise has effectively subsidized the poor and middle class in the U.S. and Europe by making goods cheaper. [↩]

The meteorite which killed the dinosaurs may have seeded the solar system—and even Gliese 581—with life-bearing earth material:

But perhaps most surprising is the amount that makes its way across interstellar space. Last year, we looked at calculations suggesting that more Earth ejecta must end up in interstellar space than all the other planets combined.

Hara and co go further and estimate how much ought to have made its way to Gliese 581, a red dwarf some 20 light years from here that is thought to have a super-Earth orbiting at the edge of the habitable zone.

They say about a thousand Earth-rocks from this event would have made the trip, taking about a million years to reach their destination.

The study concludes that Jupiter’s moon Europa would have picked up nearly as much as our own Moon, because Jupiter’s gravity sucks in so much material passing by.

Incredible to think about.

John Garnaut in an excellent piece about Wen Jiabao and a long-running schism within China’s Communist party:

“In the past I did not have a fully positive view of Wen Jiabao, because he said a lot of things but didn’t deliver,” says a leading media figure with lifelong connections to China’s leadership circle. “Now I realize just to be able to say it, that’s important. To speak up, let the whole world know that he could not achieve anything because he was strangled by the system.”

Hu Yaobang’s most faithful protégé, who carried his funeral casket to its final resting place, is building on the groundwork laid by Hu and his children ostensibly to prevent a return of the Cultural Revolution. Wen Jiabao is defending the party line set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1981 historical resolution against attack from the left. Between the lines, however, he is challenging the Communist Party’s 30-year consensus from the liberal right.

If you have any interest in China (or would just like to learn about a very opaque country), this is a must-read. Garnaut uses Wen Jiabao’s recent speech where he warned that a similar tragedy to the Cultural Revolution could reoccur if there are no political reforms and Bo Xilai’s sacking to consider a long-ranging debate that’s fractured the CCP: should the party open China’s government, push for greater rule of law, and eventually allow democratic elections? Or should it solidify the party’s control and use it to shape Chinese society toward revolutionary, communist ideals, and crush those who oppose it?

On the very far left, you have Mao Zedong, who pioneered the latter argument, and Bo Xilai, who advanced that argument; on the a-bit-closer-to-the-center-but-still-the-left, you have Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who both pushed for a smaller role in society for the government and party, separating the government and party, fighting corruption and free markets, and Wen Jiabao, China’s outgoing Premier and protégé of Hu Yaobang, who has quietly continued his legacy.

This debate cuts to the core of the party and to China’s future, and it’s been thrown into the public sphere in a way that I’m sure makes many in the party extremely uncomfortable by Wen’s speech and the downfall of Bo Xilai. This is especially important because China is transitioning now to its next set of leaders, so this debate—and the very-public show of what happens behind closed doors when certain leaders lose favor and are removed—couldn’t have popped up again at a more pertinent and sensitive time.

China is increasing repression of Tibetans once again:

Communist Party leaders have also introduced a “monastic management” plan to more directly control religious life. As part of the plan, 21,000 party officials have been sent to Tibetan communities with the goal of “befriending” monks — and creating dossiers on each of them. Compliant clergy members are rewarded with health care benefits, pensions and television sets; the recalcitrant are sometimes expelled from their monasteries.

At some temples, monks and nuns have been forced to publicly denounce the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader whose name is often invoked by self-immolators. The freedom of movement that allowed monks to study at distant monasteries across Tibet and four adjacent provinces has been curtailed.

Protests have increased, and there have been 29 self-immolations—where someone sets themselves on fire as a form of protest—in the past year, seven in the last month.

Bo Xilai, the son of a CCP official from when the CCP was still fighting the KMT for control of China, was removed from his position as party chief of Chongqing for a scandal surrounding his police chief. Here’s more on what happened. (It’s worth reading if you’re interested, by the way. It’s a weird story.)

Bo was, until this scandal, considered not just a rising star in Chinese politics, but almost guaranteed a seat on China’s politburo. Bo’s politics are, even by Chinese standards, far to the left—using his position, he favored state-owned enterprises and tried to create a revival of communist culture by promoting Mao quotations, singing “red” songs (including some from the Cultural Revolution), and by encouraging youth to work in the countryside. His rise in Chinese politics was seen as a possible sign that China’s next generation of leaders could move away from the relatively liberal views of current Premier Wen Jiabao and the country’s general progression toward a more free economy since Deng Xiaoping. His removal makes that shift less likely.

His fall also provides a look into China’s opaque political system that we rarely get. The Economist writes:

Welcome, too, is the little window the affair opens into the corrupt, fratricidal ways of party politics. Mr Bo’s downfall was precipitated by the flight to an American consulate of Wang Lijun, his former police chief and right hand in the anti-mafia drive. Mr Wang is now under investigation in China. Mr Bo, too, may soon find himself answering awkward questions. That Chongqing’s dirty linen was aired in front of American diplomats on his watch may matter more than the dirt itself. But his sacking will not herald a new era in which party and government officials are to account for their actions. Crimes and misdemeanours, like ideology, are merely weapons in a power struggle. Winners can still get away with it.

China’s leaders like to pretend that the party is a singular thing, and that China’s politics are very orderly and harmonious. But they’re far from it. Clausewitz wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means, but in China, threats, harassment, house arrest, being jailed and being killed are all a part of political struggles within the party. Because the party has primary power at the expense of a civil system, and political struggles happen behind closed doors, those struggles inevitably involve the rest of society. When there is no transparent system for transferring political power nor the rule of law enforced by an independent judicial system, everything in society is, necessarily, political.

A U.S. soldier murdered 16 Afghan civilians:

A US soldier in Afghanistan has killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five after entering their homes in Kandahar province, senior local officials say.

This is sickening. He may not represent U.S. armed forces, but it’s not going to matter. Our position in Afghanistan was already precarious, but now, I think, it is untenable. I don’t believe we have a chance of succeeding, and this murdering spree may have been the final push over the edge.

The Obama administration believes that an executive branch review of facts counts as due process before killing American citizens:

The Obama administration believes that executive branch reviews of evidence against suspected al-Qaeda leaders before they are targeted for killing meet the constitution’s “due process” requirement and that American citizenship alone doesn’t protect individuals from being killed, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech Monday.

Doesn’t that make you feel safe knowing that the executive branch reviewed evidence before killing an American?

The issue here isn’t that the government shouldn’t be able to kill American citizens fighting against the U.S. in a war zone. I don’t know of anyone who thinks that. The issue is that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by U.S. drones in Yemen, a country the U.S. is not (officially) at war in. Effectively, the administration is arguing the U.S. should be able to assassinate U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, if the executive branch deems they are planning to kill U.S. citizens and they cannot be captured.

I sympathize with the Obama administration, because they’re trying to fight a different kind of an enemy. Al Qaeda has no national affiliation nor are they congregated in a single area, so fighting them with the rules of war for nations is, well, difficult. But rather than just say that the executive branch should be able to decide on its own when to assassinate U.S. citizens, we need to create new standards for when it is permissible and when it isn’t. And there must be some kind of oversight, because it’s absolutely insane to allow the executive branch to be jury and executioner, however solemnly they carry that responsibility.

New evidence suggests the first Americans may have come from Europe, not Siberia:

Archaeologists have long held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and then moved down the West Coast.

But the mastodon relic found near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting that the blade was just as ancient.

Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here.

Fascinating story.

(Via Tyler Cowen.)

A new report says Japan considered evacuating Tokyo after the March 2011 tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant:

The report quotes the chief cabinet secretary at the time, Yukio Edano, as having warned that such a “demonic chain reaction” of plant meltdowns could result in the evacuation of Tokyo, 150 miles to the south.

“We would lose Fukushima Daini, then we would lose Tokai,” Mr. Edano is quoted as saying, naming two other nuclear plants. “If that happened, it was only logical to conclude that we would also lose Tokyo itself.”

The report claims that the plant’s operator, Tepco, wanted to pull out all staff from the plant, which would have allowed an even greater disaster and the evacuation of staff at other nuclear power plants, causing them to fail as well. When he heard of their intention, Naoto Kan, Japan’s former prime minister, went to their headquarters and insisted they keep staff at the plant.

If that had happened, Tokyo would have been evacuated. That’s almost unimaginable, but Japan came very close to it.

A Chinese immigrant whose aunt worked for Foxconn wrote David Pogue about Foxconn’s factory conditions:

If Americans truly care about Asian welfare, they would know that shutting down “sweat shops” would force many of us to return to rural regions and return to truly despicable “jobs.” And I fear that forcing factories to pay higher wages would mean they hire FEWER workers, not more.

Anyway, now my aunt has been living in New York for one year after saving up money for a plane ticket and visa, and she is wonderfully happy to have escaped Asia and reunited with our family. None of this would be possible if it wasn’t for that “sweat shop.”

The “jobs” he refers to? Prostitution, which is what his aunt did before working for Foxconn.

Working in Foxconn’s factories certainly isn’t “good” work, or enriching work, or enjoyable work. But it’s work, the conditions are much better for most workers than working in rural China, it pays relatively well, and it provides opportunities for people whose families have been locked in poverty in the countryside for generations.

There’s nothing unethical about Apple’s practices. They use Foxconn to manufacture their products and push them rather aggressively to improve working conditions. What we’re seeing in China is what occurred in the Western world during the nineteenth century—a poor country is being transformed into a wealthier, developed country, and that’s what this process looks like. When nations are poor, they compete on the cost of labor, because their workforce is uneducated and unskilled, and that’s what they have.

Conditions are poor during this stage, because reducing cost is the main focus, and because workers have no ability to demand better conditions, because productivity is low and each worker is replaceable. As the economy develops further, worker productivity rises, and wages rise along with it.¹ As productivity increases and wages along with it, two things happen: first, workers become relatively more affluent and expect a better standard of living, and second, workers have more leverage over their employer to demand better working conditions.

That’s how economies develop and working conditions increase. Labor laws help, but a labor law that isn’t economically feasible for the country will either do nothing, or do more harm than good. There is no magic way for China’s working conditions to instantly match the Western world’s. It is a process which takes time, but it is a process which makes people’s lives much better. It’s very hard to understand just how poor China is, but developing brings opportunities to people whose families haven’t had much of any for centuries. And that’s no exaggeration.

Others have argued that Apple is acting unethically because they use a company with relatively poor working conditions rather than manufacture their devices in countries with better conditions. The implication people make is that Apple only does this because China provides low-cost manufacturing, and since they don’t manufacture their products in countries with better conditions, they’re only concerned with reducing cost and maximizing profit.

Perhaps Apple’s management is only concerned with maximizing profit. That’s certainly possible, but it is also irrelevant, because the core of this argument is absurd. By using Foxconn, Apple is providing employment for hundreds of thousands of people who need opportunities to get out of the countryside and provide for their families. Moving their manufacturing to, say, the U.S. would certainly be good for the U.S. economy, but possibly disastrous for those workers. Other manufactures may hire some of these suddenly unemployed, unskilled workers, but it’s difficult to see all of them being hired. And even if they were, they would be working in precisely the same conditions they were before, or worse, so the net result is this: hundreds of thousands of unskilled Chinese workers lose their job, are forced to seek employment at other factories with similar or worse conditions, and may not find a job which pays a comparable amount at all.²

That’s Apple acting unethically? People making this all-too-common argument are making judgments before thinking through their reasoning for it, or the implications of their preferred outcome. That’s irresponsible, and that’s a charitable characterization.

The net result here is that Apple is contributing to a process which will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and they are aggressively pushing Foxconn to improve working conditions. No, there’s nothing unethical about what Apple’s doing. Maybe they could be even more aggressive. But it is absurd to say they’re acting unethically.

1. Think about what happens as a worker becomes more productive—that is, they can do more work, or more effective work, within the same amount of time. If a worker’s productivity increases, the company benefits because they can produce the same output for less cost. If a worker who is paid $2/hour and produces 1 unit/hour of output now produces 2 units/hour, the company’s cost per unit has declined from $2/unit to $1/unit. That productivity supports higher wages (say, $2.50/hour), and if the worker’s current employer won’t increase her wage, another company certainly will. Wages tend to increase as a result. [↩]
2. Imagine if all large Western companies followed this principle and chose not to use Chinese manufacturing. China’s economic growth would come to a screeching, painful halt, and hundreds of millions of people would be denied the chance of a higher standard of living. How the hell is that ethical? [↩]

Apple announced today that the Fair Labor Association will audit Foxconn’s operations:

Apple today announced that the Fair Labor Association will conduct special voluntary audits of Apple’s final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China, at Apple’s request. A team of labor rights experts led by FLA president Auret van Heerden began the first inspections Monday morning at the facility in Shenzhen known as Foxconn City.

“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The inspections now underway are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope, and we appreciate the FLA agreeing to take the unusual step of identifying the factories in their reports.”

I’m sure we’ll soon hear that it’s merely a charade.

Israeli diplomats were targeted in India and Georgia by attempted bombings:

The wife of an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi and her driver were injured in a blast from explosives slapped on their car by a passing motorcyclist, authorities said. Around the same time, a grenade-type device was found duct-taped to the bottom of a car affiliated with the embassy in Tbilisi. It was defused without anyone being injured.

Israel is blaming Iran and Hezbollah for the attacks, which is no surprise.

Not good. Israel’s been leaking information that they intend to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities soon, possibly in an attempt to scare Iran to back off before Israel really does attack. And if that’s the case, then they aren’t very far away from attacking Iran.

Tensions have increased tremendously in the last couple of months, and these bombings only makes it worse. We are getting closer to the point where war is inevitable, and that truly would be a disaster. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would result in reprisal attacks from Iran against Israel or Israeli and Jewish soft targets across the world, and almost certainly against the U.S., too. Military conflict with Iran could result in a significant portion of the world’s oil supply disappearing and, as a result, a collapse in the world economy. There’s nothing to joke about here—conflict would be very bad for everyone.

Unfortunately, all sides feel like their backs are against the wall. Iran’s dignity, and respect for the government’s power, is on the line, while Israel (legitimately) fears a nuclear Iran would ultimately result in the destruction of their nation. Arab countries are just as afraid as Israel, because a nuclear Iran would be the uncontested dominant power in the region. And the U.S. fears that outcome for all of those reasons, plus Iran’s proxy group, Hezbollah, receiving nuclear expertise from their patron country.