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CURRENT
AFFAIRS
What the
Coronavirus Means for China
The
global march of the
coronavirus — there are now over 92,000
confirmed cases in dozens of countries across six continents
— has overshadowed what is unambiguously good news: The rate of
transmission at the epicenter of the crisis, China’s Hubei Province, has
slowed. Even still, the effects of China’s response to the
outbreak are expected to have lasting repercussions, raising a crucial
question. What does the coronavirus say about China in 2020?
Arthur R.
Kroeber, a veteran economic thinker, argues
in ChinaFile
that the crisis will reinforce Beijing’s belief in coercive state power
over the Chinese population — but that foreign governments and
businesses will take other lessons.
Multinational firms now have more
reasons to diversify their supply chains away from China, both to hedge
against the risk of disruption from future nationwide shutdowns, and
because finding expatriate staff willing to serve in such a chancy
environment will be harder. Political leaders in democracies will have
more reason to be wary of a government seemingly incapable of a
measured, transparent response to a crisis with international
implications. And the gap in core values between democracies and a
China whose main governance tools include quasi-military mobilization
and draconian social and information controls will now be seen as a
chasm.
The
coronavirus is occurring in an era in which President Xi Jinping,
who has eliminated potential rivals and refrained from anointing a
successor, has become the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
“Politically, it shows that there are flaws with [Xi]’s extreme
centralization of power,” Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President
for International Security and Diplomacy Daniel Russel
said on
Bloomberg TV. “It has meant that local officials are very
reluctant to make decisions. They put a priority on avoiding blame.”
“I’m sure that [Xi] and the Communist Party are worried,” Russel added.
“But unfortunately, the response to that worry is to double down on
social, political, and security control.”
People are assigned a green, orange,
or red code, according to their risk of having coronavirus, and must
scan green codes before they can enter stores or restaurants, or take
public transportation — an electronic passport for daily life.
The code syncs with payment and messaging apps but in Hangzhou,
Alibaba’s hometown, the code can even be linked to a person’s social
insurance and medical records, according to local
reports. It will soon be
required to enter office buildings, factory sites, and
technology parks.
Arthur Ross Director of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations Orville Schell,
quoted in Fifield’s piece, argues that there’s only so much Xi can do.
“He’s got an enemy that, for the first time, is absolutely
uncontrollable, in a state that has always ruled by control,” Schell
said. “You can’t imprison a coronavirus or get it to undergo ‘thought
reform.’”
Image: Nicolas
Asfuri/AFP/Getty Images
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PODCASTS
Tishani
Doshi and Salman Rushdie on Fiction, Poetry, and India
In Tishani Doshi’s
Small
Days and Nights, the unhappily married,
half-Indian, half-Italian Grace leaves the U.S. and returns to her
childhood home in South India to cremate her mother. There, she
discovers she has a sister — four years older and never spoken of. And
so Grace seeks to remake a life caring for her sister on the isolated,
wild, beaches of Tamil Nadu.
The novel is the second by Doshi, who is also an accomplished poet, and
has drawn acclaim for both story and prose. “It’s a big novel
masquerading as a small one,” says the author Salman Rushdie.
The novel crosses the world and tackles major subjects, he notes, never
straying from an intimate scale.
The latest
episode of Asia
In-Depth features a conversation between these
two authors taken from the Asia Society New York stage. It begins with
Doshi reading an excerpt from Small
Days and Nights and includes a forthright discussion about
the changes occurring within India.
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CURRENT
AFFAIRS
Rethinking
the U.S.-Japan Alliance in the Trump Era — and Beyond
The
security alliance between the United States and Japan has been a
bedrock of trans-Pacific affairs since World War II. But China’s
emergence as a military power in East Asia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s
transactional approach to foreign policy has changed this calculus.
What to make of the current state of the U.S.-Japan alliance under
President Trump? And what might happen after he leaves?
Three
experts on U.S.-Japan relations — Sheila Smith, Narushige Michishita,
and Takako
Hikotani — addressed
these questions and more during a recent program at Asia
Society New York.
Image: Nicholas
Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
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