The "Chinese Dream" and its Challenges

Martin Khor

Last week saw the completion of China’s leadership transition, with Xi Jinping as the new President and Li Keqiang the new Premier.

President Xi set the world speculating when he spoke of “striving to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

One Western newspaper commented it was a collective national dream, contrasting it, unfavourably, to the “American dream” of giving individuals equal opportunities.

But to the Chinese, the promised renaissance of the nation is a reminder of the collective humiliation during the colonial era and the “dream” to win back its previous place as a world leader in science, technology, economy and culture.

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The “Chinese Dream” and its Challenges

Martin Khor

Last week saw the completion of China’s leadership transition, with Xi Jinping as the new President and Li Keqiang the new Premier.

President Xi set the world speculating when he spoke of “striving to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

One Western newspaper commented it was a collective national dream, contrasting it, unfavourably, to the “American dream” of giving individuals equal opportunities.

But to the Chinese, the promised renaissance of the nation is a reminder of the collective humiliation during the colonial era and the “dream” to win back its previous place as a world leader in science, technology, economy and culture.

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Curbing the Insatiable Desire for Gold

C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

Gold, diamonds and jewellery, it appears, are in the Government’s perspective among India’s many sacred cows. The result is a policy favouring producers and consumers of these items of luxury and stores of value.

Much is done in the name of promoting exports by India’s gems and jewellery industry. And little is done to curb the insatiable domestic desire to possess gold which India, for lack of known domestic reserves, is forced to import from abroad.

This, however, is only true of neoliberal India. For many years after Independence, recognising that foreign exchange was scarce and needed to purchase essential capital, intermediate and consumption goods, the Government had chosen to severely restrict gold imports and limit access to the metal.

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The Perils of Technocracy and the Future of European Integration

Daniela Schwarzer

The current crisis in the euro area, the reforms governments have to implement, and the high unemployment levels in many member states are weakening the legitimacy of European integration. In my last post, I described how this output legitimacy crisis unfolds.

The debate about legitimacy and democratization in the EU traditionally focuses on the input side. As crises have surfaced, the flaws in the governance structures have also fuelled this old debate. In fact, it can hardly be argued that citizens have the chance to effectively influence the developments that deeply affect them, given the national fragmentation of decision-making and the resulting hazardous nature of macro-economic developments.

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BRICS cook the climate (Part Two)

Patrick Bond, Guest Blogger

A secondary objective of the Copenhagen deal – aside from avoiding emissions cuts the world so desperately requires – was to maintain a modicum of confidence in carbon markets. Especially after the 2008 financial meltdown and rapid decline of European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, BASIC leaders felt renewed desperation to prop up the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM), the Third World’s version of carbon trading. Questioning the West’s banker-centric climate strategy – which critics term ‘the privatisation of the air’ – was not an option for BRICS elites, given their likeminded neoliberal orientation.

By the end of 2012, the BRICS no longer qualified to receive direct CDM funds, so efforts shifted towards subsidies for new internal carbon markets, especially in Brazil and China. In February 2013, South African finance minister Pravin Gordhan also announced that as part of a carbon tax, Pretoria would also allow corporations to offset 40 percent of their emissions cuts via carbon markets.

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Cyprus: Rescuing a Tax Haven

Alejandro Nadal

It must hurt when you show your hand without anybody calling your final bet. After all, why do you have to give free information to your opponents? This is what the infamous troika must feel right now after revealing its “rescue” plan for Cyprus. The parliament in Nicosia has flatly rejected the strategy, but the troika’s game plan has been unveiled at great political (and possibly financial) costs.

The little island in the eastern Mediterranean is responsible for only 0.2 per cent of the European Union’s GDP. But the architecture of the rescue plan has resuscitated primal fears about the future of the euro. Why is this so?

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BRICS cook the climate (part one)

Patrick Bond, Guest Blogger

As they meet in Durban on March 26-27, leaders of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – must own up: they have been emitting prolific levels of greenhouse gases, far higher than the US or the EU in absolute terms and as a ratio of GDP (though less per person). How they address this crisis could make the difference between life and death for hundreds of millions of people this century.

South Africa’s example is not encouraging. First, the Pretoria national government and its Eskom parastatal electricity generator have recently increased South Africa’s already extremely high emissions levels, on behalf of the country’s ‘Minerals-Energy Complex’. This problem is well known in part because of the failed civil society campaigns against the world’s third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants (Eskom’s Medupi and Kusile), whose financing in 2010 included the largest-ever World Bank project loan and whose subcontractor includes the ruling party’s investment arm in a blatant multi-billion rand conflict of interest.

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Missing Women: The G20, Gender Equality and Global Economic Governance

James Heintz, Guest Blogger

The Group of 20 (G20) has declared itself the “premier global economic forum” and was created to tackle the most pressing challenges confronting the world economy today, including reducing instability and preventing future financial crises. The G20 has committed itself to a goal of shared and inclusive growth. Given this commitment, it is striking how little attention has been paid to issues of gender equality in its policy frameworks, summits, and declarations.

This report examines the G20’s strategies and their effects on gender equality. It finds that the G20 has not seriously considered the consequences for women and men when formulating policies and setting its agenda. There are indications that this situation has changed somewhat, with a commitment to gender equality made at the 2012 Los Cabos Summit in Mexico. Nevertheless, questions remain over whether gender equality will be taken seriously. Representation within the G20 is unbalanced – only 25 percent of the heads of state of the G20 member countries are currently women. The figure for the official government representatives, the “sherpas,” is lower – just 15 percent are women.

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