Friday, July 18, 2025
Thursday, July 17, 2025
On China’s Rise, America’s Dysfunction, and the Need for Cooperation
Kishore Mahbubani is a renowned diplomat, scholar, and one of the most insightful analysts of global power dynamics. He served as Singapore’s Ambassador to the United Nations and as President of the UN Security Council, and is the author of books including Has China Won? and Has the West Lost It?
Mahbubani joined Current Affairs to explain why the United States is losing ground to China—not because of Chinese aggression, but because of internal dysfunction, elite failure, and strategic incoherence. He critiques the emotional, zero-sum mindset dominating U.S. foreign policy and calls for a more rational, cooperative approach to global affairs. (...)
Robinson
You pointed out that global economics is not a zero-sum game, and another theme that comes across in your writing is that essentially, if we are going to have a prosperous, peaceful 21st Century that deals with the major crises that we face, such as climate change, we will have a world that cooperates, a world of mutual respect, and a world where countries are capable of understanding one another. And in the rhetoric that you hear in the United States, Donald Trump openly says China is our enemy. That’s his quote. The rest of the world is ripping us off. It is really quite the opposite of the story that you’re telling. You tell the story of us all inhabiting one planet and a need to work things out. In the United States, the Trumpian narrative is that we inhabit a world of enemies, those enemies need to be tamed or destroyed, and we need to build up our ability to crush them militarily if necessary. So, it would seem that much of the story told in the United States is really going in the opposite direction of the one that you feel generates the understanding necessary to live well in the 21st Century.
Mahbubani
Well, you’re absolutely right about that, but I can fully understand why Donald Trump wants to try and improve the livelihoods of the bottom 50 percent of Americans. I think that’s a noble goal that he has. I can understand why he wants to make American industries more competitive and re-industrialize America. That’s also an understandable goal. But I think he will find that the best way to achieve those goals is actually to work with the rest of the world. And one thing I’ve learned after studying geopolitics for 55 years is that you’ve got to be cold and calculating if you want to succeed in geopolitics, and if you’re emotional, then you’re at a major disadvantage.
So, for example, how did China become so wealthy so quickly? What they did was to work closely with the United States. Even though, technically, during part of the Cold War the U.S. was an adversary, China worked with the United States to grow its economy. And I think that’s one thing that is taboo in the United States, that actually the best way for the United States to regenerate its economic growth and make it grow faster is not to try and bring down China, but to work with China. Just as in the time when you were worried about Japanese cars taking over the United States, what did you do? You have voluntary export restraints. You encourage the Japanese to set up factories—Toyota factories, Honda factories—in the United States. The same thing can be done with China. It can only be done if you are rational and calculating in your moves and not emotional and say, oh, no, we can never work with China. Why can’t you work with China? If working with China is going to bring benefits to the American people, why not work with them? Because at the end of the day, it’s very clear that all efforts to stop the rise of China by the United States will fail. You cannot stop a 4,000-year-old civilization that has its own civilizational cycles, and as it is rising, depriving them of this technology or that technology is not going to stop the rise of China.
Robinson
And you point out that for most of human history, the Chinese and Indian economies were among the largest in the world. They have the largest global population. And so to try and reverse the trend towards a more equal balance of power in the world, you argue, is futile.
Mahbubani
Yes, that’s a fact that everyone should know, that from the year 1 to the year 1820, for 1,800 out of the last 2,000 years, the two largest economies of the world have always been those of China and India. It’s only in the last 200 years that Europe and North America have taken off. The last 200 years of Western domination of world history have been a major historical aberration, and all aberrations come to a natural end. So it’s perfectly natural to see the return of China and India. But what’s important to emphasize is that the reason why China and India are coming back is that they are studying, absorbing, and implementing Western pillars of wisdom, and that’s why they’re succeeding. And paradoxically, at a time when, for example, China—a Communist Party run country—is discovering the virtue of free trade agreements, free trade agreements have enabled China to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and the United States is walking away from them. But this is where Economics 101 theory is right. The United States should be signing more free trade agreements and not walking away from them.
Robinson
Now, you mentioned there China being a Communist Party run country, but one of the points that you make in your book, Has China Won?, is that one of the major misunderstandings of China comes from seeing it as an ideologically communist entity in the kind of classic Marxist-Leninist sense.
Mahbubani
Well, I think anybody who thinks that China is a communist country should go visit China. I mean that literally: every American who believes that should go visit it. I actually visited Moscow in 1976, and trust me, that place was so controlled, so oppressed. And when you went into the biggest department store in Moscow, and you wanted to buy a toothbrush—I’m not exaggerating—you had a huge cabinet, and you had one toothbrush separated from the other toothbrush by one foot. Even the toothbrushes were scarce commodities. A small 7-Eleven in the United States has more toothbrushes than the largest department store in Moscow. Everything was scarce.
Now, you go to China today, and you will see the most advanced economy in the world in terms of how it produces both private goods and public goods. If you go and see the infrastructure of China, you begin to realize that after going from Kennedy Airport to Beijing Airport, you’re going from a third world airport in the United States to a first world airport in China. And by the way, incidentally, also a first world airport in New Delhi and Mumbai. So there are areas in which Asia has surged ahead, clearly, of the United States, and the United States should consider the possibility that it could possibly try to emulate what the East Asian economies have done. (...)
Robinson
I want to go back to something that you said earlier. People might have been a little surprised to hear you talk of the virtues of being cold and calculating. And when you read your books, one of your prescriptions is to become more Machiavellian. I think this is very interesting because people might be surprised to hear Machiavelli praised—staying on the subject of political philosophy. But one of the interesting things that comes out of your books, your analysis, is that actually, when the United States thinks it’s being cold and calculating—there’s certainly no lack of callousness or coldness in a lot of American foreign policy, or willingness to destroy the lives of others, but there is a certain absence of strategic thinking. And one of the things that you point out is that we mistake what real strategic thinking is. For example, you cite Sun Tzu saying, if you don’t know your enemy as well as yourself, you’re going to lose half your battles. It seems like in the United States, we don’t know either our enemy or ourselves. It might be considered non-strategic or sappy or excessively empathetic to try and understand China, but you say, no, understanding China, understanding how Putin thinks, these are not things you do out of an excess of emotion and sympathy. These are things you do because you are a strategic, careful thinker.
Mahbubani
Absolutely, and it’s a bit sad that the United States, when it launches geopolitical contests against China, decided to do so without first working out a comprehensive, long-term strategic plan. In an early chapter in my book, Has China Won?, I say there are 10 questions that anyone should ask if they’re formulating a strategy. And I’m actually trying to help the United States formulate a comprehensive long-term strategy, because if you don’t have a comprehensive long-term strategy, you just carry out emotional actions and end up hurting yourself. So, for example, the Biden administration thought they could stop the development of semiconductors in China by imposing all kinds of sanctions. And you can see the result a few years later: China’s share of the semiconductor market used to be 10 percent, and now it’s 50 percent. So all the efforts to stop China didn’t work because no one thought strategically. And just to make a very important point of detail, when the United States cut off supplies of advanced semiconductors to China, it was cutting off his nose to spite his face. Because by depriving yourself of 30 percent of your revenue, you lose all your R and D budget, and when you lose all your R and D budget, you’ve lost your capacity to compete. So, you’ve got to think strategically when you carry on an action—is it going to do more damage to my opponent, or is it going to do more damage to me? And I’m actually trying to help the United States work out policies that will be beneficial for the United States.
Robinson
Yes. Another example of this kind of this kind of paradox, where the thing that the United States does to counter China is actually helping China and not the United States, is as you say, irrational and wasteful defense spending. This might surprise some people, but you say it’s in China’s national interest for American wasteful defense spending to continue. The more money America spends on weapons systems that will never be used against China—because, as you say, a war between the two countries would result in the destruction of both countries—the better off China will be, and American military expenditures are geopolitical gifts to China. That is certainly something that those authorizing those expenditures don’t believe.
Mahbubani
Yes, and the tragedy here is that the way America spends money on defense expenditures, in theory, you should first work out a strategy and say, what kind of weapons do we need? And then you work backwards and say, okay, in this new strategic environment, maybe instead of piloted jets, we need pilotless jets, because drones today are as good as piloted jets. You spend so much money on an aircraft trying to protect the body of the pilot, but once you have a pilotless jet, everything is much cheaper, and the planes can go faster—they don’t have to worry about the human body in there. Similarly, today, with advanced missiles, aircraft carriers have become sitting ducks. You no longer need aircraft carriers anymore to project power. But the reason why you cannot change course is that in America, and this is part of being a plutocracy, the arms industry can lobby the US Congress to pass bills to buy weapons that are outmoded and that are no longer needed. So America is producing a lot of weapons that will not be useful when the real war comes. The aircraft carriers will be sitting ducks in the face of all these hypersonic and supersonic missiles that are being developed. You have vested interests in deciding what should be purchased. But if you do a zero-based thing, you can actually defend the United States much more effectively with half the budget, or one quarter of the budget, with much more effective weapons. But of course, a large part of the military industrial complex will complain, then they will go to Congress, and you won’t be able to arrive at a rational decision. So in that sense, it is not China that is distorting your defense expenditures. It’s the American political system that is preventing the United States from having rational defense policies.
Robinson
We’ve been talking here about how United States policy towards China is ultimately irrational and self-defeating and pseudo-Machiavellian, without actually thinking sensibly about what is in the interests of this country. But it’s not the only example that you give of self-defeating Western policy. Just opening up your book here, Has the West Lost It?, you have a section, “Strategic Errors: Islam, Russia and Meddling in World Affairs.” And you make a series of arguments there that, for example, the United States’ treatment of Russia after the Cold War actually led to the rise of Putin, which was preventable, and that the United States, through its disastrous wars in the Middle East, has created, in many ways, or exacerbated, the problems that they that supposedly we are trying to solve.
Mahbubani
Yes. Certainly, the Iraq war was completely unnecessary—completely unnecessary. You spent $3 trillion of blood and treasure, and at the end of the day, delivered a broken state which is not safe for Americans to live in. And similarly, by the way, the removal of Gaddafi was a huge mistake, especially for the Europeans, because Gaddafi was acting like a cork in the bottle, preventing a surge of migrants from Africa towards Europe. But as soon as Gaddafi was removed, the floodgates opened up. So it’s not in your interest. It’s important to do a rational calculation of where your interests lie, and it is not in America’s interest necessarily to fight forever wars and to have 800 military bases around the world, because the United States is a very safe country. You are protected by two wonderful, huge oceans, and you’re protected by Canada and Mexico. You don’t have hostile republics as your border, so you can actually cut down your defense expenditures dramatically. And instead of making it a sole American mission to keep international waterways safe, work with other navies in the world cooperatively, because we all share common interests in keeping international sea lanes safe.
Robinson
I believe you were in the UN Security Council in the lead up to the Iraq war.
Mahbubani
That's right, 2001-2002.
Robinson
Can you tell us a bit about that?
Mahbubani
Yes, you could see the tension building up in the Security Council because the United States was trying to pass a resolution to justify an invasion of Iraq, and it was very clear that Russia, China, Germany, and France thought it was a wrong decision. And frankly, if the United States had listened to its good friends, Germany and France, who said, you shouldn’t fight this war, you will lose a lot of money, and you will be worse off, the United States could have saved $3 trillion, and by the way, used it to develop the infrastructure of the United States and make it as gleaming as that of China. So why spend $3 trillion fighting an unnecessary war? And I’m surprised that no one has been held accountable for this unnecessary war. I should also mention that I’m making these points because I actually believe that the United States can become, once again, a very strong country. And the goal of all my prescriptions is not to weaken the United States, but to strengthen the United States and to make it a more effective actor in a complex world environment.
by Nathan J. Robinson and Kishore Mahbubani, Current Affairs | Read more:
Robinson
You pointed out that global economics is not a zero-sum game, and another theme that comes across in your writing is that essentially, if we are going to have a prosperous, peaceful 21st Century that deals with the major crises that we face, such as climate change, we will have a world that cooperates, a world of mutual respect, and a world where countries are capable of understanding one another. And in the rhetoric that you hear in the United States, Donald Trump openly says China is our enemy. That’s his quote. The rest of the world is ripping us off. It is really quite the opposite of the story that you’re telling. You tell the story of us all inhabiting one planet and a need to work things out. In the United States, the Trumpian narrative is that we inhabit a world of enemies, those enemies need to be tamed or destroyed, and we need to build up our ability to crush them militarily if necessary. So, it would seem that much of the story told in the United States is really going in the opposite direction of the one that you feel generates the understanding necessary to live well in the 21st Century.
Mahbubani
Well, you’re absolutely right about that, but I can fully understand why Donald Trump wants to try and improve the livelihoods of the bottom 50 percent of Americans. I think that’s a noble goal that he has. I can understand why he wants to make American industries more competitive and re-industrialize America. That’s also an understandable goal. But I think he will find that the best way to achieve those goals is actually to work with the rest of the world. And one thing I’ve learned after studying geopolitics for 55 years is that you’ve got to be cold and calculating if you want to succeed in geopolitics, and if you’re emotional, then you’re at a major disadvantage.
So, for example, how did China become so wealthy so quickly? What they did was to work closely with the United States. Even though, technically, during part of the Cold War the U.S. was an adversary, China worked with the United States to grow its economy. And I think that’s one thing that is taboo in the United States, that actually the best way for the United States to regenerate its economic growth and make it grow faster is not to try and bring down China, but to work with China. Just as in the time when you were worried about Japanese cars taking over the United States, what did you do? You have voluntary export restraints. You encourage the Japanese to set up factories—Toyota factories, Honda factories—in the United States. The same thing can be done with China. It can only be done if you are rational and calculating in your moves and not emotional and say, oh, no, we can never work with China. Why can’t you work with China? If working with China is going to bring benefits to the American people, why not work with them? Because at the end of the day, it’s very clear that all efforts to stop the rise of China by the United States will fail. You cannot stop a 4,000-year-old civilization that has its own civilizational cycles, and as it is rising, depriving them of this technology or that technology is not going to stop the rise of China.
Robinson
And you point out that for most of human history, the Chinese and Indian economies were among the largest in the world. They have the largest global population. And so to try and reverse the trend towards a more equal balance of power in the world, you argue, is futile.
Mahbubani
Yes, that’s a fact that everyone should know, that from the year 1 to the year 1820, for 1,800 out of the last 2,000 years, the two largest economies of the world have always been those of China and India. It’s only in the last 200 years that Europe and North America have taken off. The last 200 years of Western domination of world history have been a major historical aberration, and all aberrations come to a natural end. So it’s perfectly natural to see the return of China and India. But what’s important to emphasize is that the reason why China and India are coming back is that they are studying, absorbing, and implementing Western pillars of wisdom, and that’s why they’re succeeding. And paradoxically, at a time when, for example, China—a Communist Party run country—is discovering the virtue of free trade agreements, free trade agreements have enabled China to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and the United States is walking away from them. But this is where Economics 101 theory is right. The United States should be signing more free trade agreements and not walking away from them.
Robinson
Now, you mentioned there China being a Communist Party run country, but one of the points that you make in your book, Has China Won?, is that one of the major misunderstandings of China comes from seeing it as an ideologically communist entity in the kind of classic Marxist-Leninist sense.
Mahbubani
Well, I think anybody who thinks that China is a communist country should go visit China. I mean that literally: every American who believes that should go visit it. I actually visited Moscow in 1976, and trust me, that place was so controlled, so oppressed. And when you went into the biggest department store in Moscow, and you wanted to buy a toothbrush—I’m not exaggerating—you had a huge cabinet, and you had one toothbrush separated from the other toothbrush by one foot. Even the toothbrushes were scarce commodities. A small 7-Eleven in the United States has more toothbrushes than the largest department store in Moscow. Everything was scarce.
Now, you go to China today, and you will see the most advanced economy in the world in terms of how it produces both private goods and public goods. If you go and see the infrastructure of China, you begin to realize that after going from Kennedy Airport to Beijing Airport, you’re going from a third world airport in the United States to a first world airport in China. And by the way, incidentally, also a first world airport in New Delhi and Mumbai. So there are areas in which Asia has surged ahead, clearly, of the United States, and the United States should consider the possibility that it could possibly try to emulate what the East Asian economies have done. (...)
Robinson
I want to go back to something that you said earlier. People might have been a little surprised to hear you talk of the virtues of being cold and calculating. And when you read your books, one of your prescriptions is to become more Machiavellian. I think this is very interesting because people might be surprised to hear Machiavelli praised—staying on the subject of political philosophy. But one of the interesting things that comes out of your books, your analysis, is that actually, when the United States thinks it’s being cold and calculating—there’s certainly no lack of callousness or coldness in a lot of American foreign policy, or willingness to destroy the lives of others, but there is a certain absence of strategic thinking. And one of the things that you point out is that we mistake what real strategic thinking is. For example, you cite Sun Tzu saying, if you don’t know your enemy as well as yourself, you’re going to lose half your battles. It seems like in the United States, we don’t know either our enemy or ourselves. It might be considered non-strategic or sappy or excessively empathetic to try and understand China, but you say, no, understanding China, understanding how Putin thinks, these are not things you do out of an excess of emotion and sympathy. These are things you do because you are a strategic, careful thinker.
Mahbubani
Absolutely, and it’s a bit sad that the United States, when it launches geopolitical contests against China, decided to do so without first working out a comprehensive, long-term strategic plan. In an early chapter in my book, Has China Won?, I say there are 10 questions that anyone should ask if they’re formulating a strategy. And I’m actually trying to help the United States formulate a comprehensive long-term strategy, because if you don’t have a comprehensive long-term strategy, you just carry out emotional actions and end up hurting yourself. So, for example, the Biden administration thought they could stop the development of semiconductors in China by imposing all kinds of sanctions. And you can see the result a few years later: China’s share of the semiconductor market used to be 10 percent, and now it’s 50 percent. So all the efforts to stop China didn’t work because no one thought strategically. And just to make a very important point of detail, when the United States cut off supplies of advanced semiconductors to China, it was cutting off his nose to spite his face. Because by depriving yourself of 30 percent of your revenue, you lose all your R and D budget, and when you lose all your R and D budget, you’ve lost your capacity to compete. So, you’ve got to think strategically when you carry on an action—is it going to do more damage to my opponent, or is it going to do more damage to me? And I’m actually trying to help the United States work out policies that will be beneficial for the United States.
Robinson
Yes. Another example of this kind of this kind of paradox, where the thing that the United States does to counter China is actually helping China and not the United States, is as you say, irrational and wasteful defense spending. This might surprise some people, but you say it’s in China’s national interest for American wasteful defense spending to continue. The more money America spends on weapons systems that will never be used against China—because, as you say, a war between the two countries would result in the destruction of both countries—the better off China will be, and American military expenditures are geopolitical gifts to China. That is certainly something that those authorizing those expenditures don’t believe.
Mahbubani
Yes, and the tragedy here is that the way America spends money on defense expenditures, in theory, you should first work out a strategy and say, what kind of weapons do we need? And then you work backwards and say, okay, in this new strategic environment, maybe instead of piloted jets, we need pilotless jets, because drones today are as good as piloted jets. You spend so much money on an aircraft trying to protect the body of the pilot, but once you have a pilotless jet, everything is much cheaper, and the planes can go faster—they don’t have to worry about the human body in there. Similarly, today, with advanced missiles, aircraft carriers have become sitting ducks. You no longer need aircraft carriers anymore to project power. But the reason why you cannot change course is that in America, and this is part of being a plutocracy, the arms industry can lobby the US Congress to pass bills to buy weapons that are outmoded and that are no longer needed. So America is producing a lot of weapons that will not be useful when the real war comes. The aircraft carriers will be sitting ducks in the face of all these hypersonic and supersonic missiles that are being developed. You have vested interests in deciding what should be purchased. But if you do a zero-based thing, you can actually defend the United States much more effectively with half the budget, or one quarter of the budget, with much more effective weapons. But of course, a large part of the military industrial complex will complain, then they will go to Congress, and you won’t be able to arrive at a rational decision. So in that sense, it is not China that is distorting your defense expenditures. It’s the American political system that is preventing the United States from having rational defense policies.
Robinson
We’ve been talking here about how United States policy towards China is ultimately irrational and self-defeating and pseudo-Machiavellian, without actually thinking sensibly about what is in the interests of this country. But it’s not the only example that you give of self-defeating Western policy. Just opening up your book here, Has the West Lost It?, you have a section, “Strategic Errors: Islam, Russia and Meddling in World Affairs.” And you make a series of arguments there that, for example, the United States’ treatment of Russia after the Cold War actually led to the rise of Putin, which was preventable, and that the United States, through its disastrous wars in the Middle East, has created, in many ways, or exacerbated, the problems that they that supposedly we are trying to solve.
Mahbubani
Yes. Certainly, the Iraq war was completely unnecessary—completely unnecessary. You spent $3 trillion of blood and treasure, and at the end of the day, delivered a broken state which is not safe for Americans to live in. And similarly, by the way, the removal of Gaddafi was a huge mistake, especially for the Europeans, because Gaddafi was acting like a cork in the bottle, preventing a surge of migrants from Africa towards Europe. But as soon as Gaddafi was removed, the floodgates opened up. So it’s not in your interest. It’s important to do a rational calculation of where your interests lie, and it is not in America’s interest necessarily to fight forever wars and to have 800 military bases around the world, because the United States is a very safe country. You are protected by two wonderful, huge oceans, and you’re protected by Canada and Mexico. You don’t have hostile republics as your border, so you can actually cut down your defense expenditures dramatically. And instead of making it a sole American mission to keep international waterways safe, work with other navies in the world cooperatively, because we all share common interests in keeping international sea lanes safe.
Robinson
I believe you were in the UN Security Council in the lead up to the Iraq war.
Mahbubani
That's right, 2001-2002.
Robinson
Can you tell us a bit about that?
Mahbubani
Yes, you could see the tension building up in the Security Council because the United States was trying to pass a resolution to justify an invasion of Iraq, and it was very clear that Russia, China, Germany, and France thought it was a wrong decision. And frankly, if the United States had listened to its good friends, Germany and France, who said, you shouldn’t fight this war, you will lose a lot of money, and you will be worse off, the United States could have saved $3 trillion, and by the way, used it to develop the infrastructure of the United States and make it as gleaming as that of China. So why spend $3 trillion fighting an unnecessary war? And I’m surprised that no one has been held accountable for this unnecessary war. I should also mention that I’m making these points because I actually believe that the United States can become, once again, a very strong country. And the goal of all my prescriptions is not to weaken the United States, but to strengthen the United States and to make it a more effective actor in a complex world environment.
by Nathan J. Robinson and Kishore Mahbubani, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Pretty straightforward assessment, I think (there's more). As someone once said "You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you!"]
Optical Glass House, Hiroshima Japan
from NAP Architects:
This house is sited among tall buildings in downtown Hiroshima, overlooking a street with many passing cars and trams. To obtain privacy and tranquility in these surroundings, we placed a garden and optical glass façade on the street side of the house.
The garden is visible from all rooms, and the serene soundless scenery of the passing cars and trams imparts richness to life in the house. Sunlight from the east, refracting through the glass, creates beautiful light patterns.
Rain striking the water-basin skylight manifests water patterns on the entrance floor. Filtered light through the garden trees flickers on the living room floor, and a super lightweight curtain of sputter-coated metal dances in the wind.
Although located downtown in a city, the house enables residents to enjoy the changing light and city moods, as the day passes, and live in awareness of the changing seasons.
Optical Glass Façade
A façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery.
To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass.
The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy.
Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.
Waterfall
To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass.
The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy.
Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space.
Waterfall
So large was the 8.6m x 8.6m façade, it could not stand independently if constructed by laying rows of glass blocks a mere 50mm deep. We therefore punctured the glass blocks with holes and strung them on 75 stainless steel bolts suspended from the beam above the façade.
Such a structure would be vulnerable to lateral stress, however, so along with the glass blocks, we also strung on stainless steel flat bars (40mm x 4mm) at 10 centimeter intervals.
The flat bar is seated within the 50mm-thick glass block to render it invisible, and thus a uniform 6mm sealing joint between the glass blocks was achieved. The result —a transparent façade when seen from either the garden or the street.
The façade appears like a waterfall flowing downward, scattering light and filling the air with freshness.
Captions
The glass block façade weighs around 13 tons. The supporting beam, if constructed of concrete, would therefore be of massive size. Employing steel frame reinforced concrete, we pre-tensioned the steel beam and gave it an upward camber.
Then, after giving it the load of the façade, we cast concrete around the beam and, in this way, minimized its size.”
Such a structure would be vulnerable to lateral stress, however, so along with the glass blocks, we also strung on stainless steel flat bars (40mm x 4mm) at 10 centimeter intervals.
The flat bar is seated within the 50mm-thick glass block to render it invisible, and thus a uniform 6mm sealing joint between the glass blocks was achieved. The result —a transparent façade when seen from either the garden or the street.
The façade appears like a waterfall flowing downward, scattering light and filling the air with freshness.
Captions
The glass block façade weighs around 13 tons. The supporting beam, if constructed of concrete, would therefore be of massive size. Employing steel frame reinforced concrete, we pre-tensioned the steel beam and gave it an upward camber.
Then, after giving it the load of the façade, we cast concrete around the beam and, in this way, minimized its size.”
by Karmatrends | Read more:
Images: NAP Architechs
[ed. See also: Optical Glass House, Hiroshima, Japan (Architectural Review).]
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
[ed. I can't recommend Bill Finnegan's surfing biography Barbarian Days highly enough, which among many other things, describes the awe (and fear) of discovering Nazaré for the first time.]
What's the Worst Part of the GOP Bill? Let's Get Specific.
In politics today, specificity is a superpower. Specificity tells voters: I care so much about your frustration that I’ve sought to deeply understand the details of what’s behind it. Specificity doesn’t just offer a story to grab people’s momentary attention. It promises agency. If we can name our problems, we can fix them.
In that spirit, I want to offer a critique of the GOP tax and spending bill that descends from the rafters and articulates its worst elements in a very specific way. Yes, this bill is a reckless debt bomb and perhaps the largest cut to the social safety net in US history. But also, at a very granular level, it represents a narrow tradeoff between two American constituencies that tells us something important about the GOP’s political priorities.
It’s Millionaire Auto Dealers vs. Moms on Medicaid
Let’s imagine a guy named Derek. He makes a fortune on floors. He rips up, repairs, and replaces flooring. He goes around to schools and corporate offices and does thousands of miles of flooring. It’s great work. Derek's company makes $50 million a year. It’s structured as an S Corporation, which means the company doesn’t pay income taxes. Instead, the profits pass through to shareholders, like Derek, who can pay himself a share of the operating profits and save lots of money on taxes.
This isn’t a goofy hypothetical I made up because of a longing to quit journalism and get into carpets. Derek Olson is the chief executive of National Flooring Equipment. As the Wall Street Journal explained, Olson is a typical member of the 1 percent, part of what the economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick call the “stealthy wealthy.” These are business owners in non-glamorous trades who often make millions of dollars a year and benefit from pass-through provisions in the tax code. As the Journal explains:
What noble cause does this serve? It looks like a handout for America’s richest auto dealers, surface-restoration barons, and consultants with pass-through entities. I don’t think there’s anything morally egregious about people who set up these tax vehicles. Legally reducing one’s tax burden is each citizen’s right. Creating sensible and moral tax policy is every government’s obligation. The Section 199A change is neither sensible nor moral. Pass-through income is the most common source of income for a microscopic sliver of the country: the top 0.1 percent. The very last thing we should be doing is burning an $800 billion hole in the budget deficit by narrowly tailoring a tax cut for the richest 1/1000th of the country. (Chart)...
Economists don’t agree about much. But they are "nearly united" against extending and expanding this Section 199A rule, William G. Gale and Samuel I. Thorpe write in a Brookings essay. “Put simply, the rule has proven to be expensive, regressive, complicated, ineffective in promoting investment, and unfair to wage earners.” Unpacking each adjective, they elaborate:
Now let’s look at the spending side of the ledger. Infamously, the GOP bill reduces spending on Medicaid and food stamps, or SNAP, by about 20 percent. These policies are projected to throw 10 million low-income Americans off Medicaid and other subsidized insurance plans, while yanking food assistance from about two million poor households. The budgetary savings from these cuts? Just north of $1 trillion.
There is a mathematical elegance to this sort of madness. The policies might be esoteric, but the tradeoff could not be clearer. We’re throwing poor families off health care and food assistance to make budgetary space for American dynasties and the “stealthy wealthy.” We’re deliberately making life worse for the poorest people in America so that we can extend a tax cut that has been shown to achieve practically nothing for job growth, investment growth, or economic growth. Donald Trump’s GOP is showing its values and its virtues: generous tax breaks for dynastic wealth and new paperwork requirements for the working class. Democrats will have many opportunities to run against this thing. When they do, let’s hope they get specific.
[ed. If you think the homeless problem is bad now... See also: The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters (DT)
In that spirit, I want to offer a critique of the GOP tax and spending bill that descends from the rafters and articulates its worst elements in a very specific way. Yes, this bill is a reckless debt bomb and perhaps the largest cut to the social safety net in US history. But also, at a very granular level, it represents a narrow tradeoff between two American constituencies that tells us something important about the GOP’s political priorities.
It’s Millionaire Auto Dealers vs. Moms on Medicaid
One of the most important yet least-discussed elements of the GOP tax-and-spending bill is the expansion of the Section 199A pass-through deduction. This might sound weedy and esoteric. But by some measures, it’s one of the most expensive provisions of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. And to truly understand this tax change is to see in 8K clarity just how nuts this bill really is.
This isn’t a goofy hypothetical I made up because of a longing to quit journalism and get into carpets. Derek Olson is the chief executive of National Flooring Equipment. As the Wall Street Journal explained, Olson is a typical member of the 1 percent, part of what the economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick call the “stealthy wealthy.” These are business owners in non-glamorous trades who often make millions of dollars a year and benefit from pass-through provisions in the tax code. As the Journal explains:
The largest source of income for the 1% highest earners in the U.S. isn’t being a partner at an investment bank or launching a one-in-a-million tech startup. It is owning a medium-size regional business. Many of them are distinctly boring and extremely lucrative, like auto dealerships, beverage distributors, grocery stores, dental practices and law firms, according to Zidar and Zwick.The Big Beautiful Bill contains a provision that makes it easier for these business owners (and high-income professionals who set up pass-through entities) to deduct up to 23 percent of their net business income from tax. This one tax measure is projected to cost the US treasury more than $800 billion in the next 10 years.
Their analysis of anonymized tax data from 2000 through 2022 suggests the importance of such business ownership to the U.S. economy has grown. The share of income that ownership generates has increased to 34.9% in 2022 from 30.3% in 2014 for the top 1% earners.
It has increased even more at the topmost levels. The top 0.1% highest-earners saw 43.1% of their income come from such business ownership in 2022, compared with 37.3% in 2014. (The minimum income threshold in 2022 to qualify for the top 0.1% of earners was $2.3 million, according to Zidar.) … The number of such business owners worth $10 million or more, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled since 2001, to 1.6 million as of 2022.
What noble cause does this serve? It looks like a handout for America’s richest auto dealers, surface-restoration barons, and consultants with pass-through entities. I don’t think there’s anything morally egregious about people who set up these tax vehicles. Legally reducing one’s tax burden is each citizen’s right. Creating sensible and moral tax policy is every government’s obligation. The Section 199A change is neither sensible nor moral. Pass-through income is the most common source of income for a microscopic sliver of the country: the top 0.1 percent. The very last thing we should be doing is burning an $800 billion hole in the budget deficit by narrowly tailoring a tax cut for the richest 1/1000th of the country. (Chart)...
Economists don’t agree about much. But they are "nearly united" against extending and expanding this Section 199A rule, William G. Gale and Samuel I. Thorpe write in a Brookings essay. “Put simply, the rule has proven to be expensive, regressive, complicated, ineffective in promoting investment, and unfair to wage earners.” Unpacking each adjective, they elaborate:
Expensive: Extending it would cost over $700 billion over the next 10 years, and the other proposed changes would cost another $100 billion or more.Speaking of tax changes that serve little economic purpose, the GOP bill also eliminates estate taxes for single filers with up to $15 million and married couples with more than $30 million. By definition, this policy only applies to families with tens of millions of dollars in wealth. The combined cost of these policies—the 199A change and the estate tax exemption—is just north of $1 trillion.
Regressive: The benefits are highly skewed to the affluent … 44 percent of the tax benefits would go to taxpayers with annual incomes above $1 million.
Complicated: The deduction is notoriously complex and encourages tax-driven income shifting rather than economic growth.
Ineffective: The stated rationale for enacting the deduction was to create jobs and raise investment. But research shows the deduction did neither. One paper found “little evidence of changes in real economic activity,” including investment, employee wages, or job growth, while another found that 199A led to zero change in employment.
Unfair: A fundamental principle of an income tax is that two different people with the same income and same economic situation (both married, both have children, etc.) should pay the same tax. But the 199A deduction arbitrarily favors business income over wages, encouraging taxpayers who have the means to relabel their income to avoid paying taxes.
Now let’s look at the spending side of the ledger. Infamously, the GOP bill reduces spending on Medicaid and food stamps, or SNAP, by about 20 percent. These policies are projected to throw 10 million low-income Americans off Medicaid and other subsidized insurance plans, while yanking food assistance from about two million poor households. The budgetary savings from these cuts? Just north of $1 trillion.
There is a mathematical elegance to this sort of madness. The policies might be esoteric, but the tradeoff could not be clearer. We’re throwing poor families off health care and food assistance to make budgetary space for American dynasties and the “stealthy wealthy.” We’re deliberately making life worse for the poorest people in America so that we can extend a tax cut that has been shown to achieve practically nothing for job growth, investment growth, or economic growth. Donald Trump’s GOP is showing its values and its virtues: generous tax breaks for dynastic wealth and new paperwork requirements for the working class. Democrats will have many opportunities to run against this thing. When they do, let’s hope they get specific.
by Derek Thompson, Substack | Read more:
Image: StellrWeb on Unsplash
The Point of Life?
[ed. See also: British Open 2025: Scottie Scheffler's sermon is the answer Rory McIlroy has been searching for (Golf Digest). Exactly right, and the media should get the message.]
GLP-1s Are Quietly Killing Your Cravings (and Maybe Your Bad Habits Too)
What happens when you can actually watch sugar cravings disappear from someone's brain? — You've probably heard people talking about 'food noise’. It’s that persistent, nagging voice in your head that keeps whispering about donuts, pizza, or cookies.
For many struggling with obesity, this chronic craving for sugar and fat feels like a voice you just can't mute.
But when people begin taking GLP-1 medications, it's as though someone finally found the volume knob and dialled it down to zero. The experience is something like an instantaneous liberation, so surreal and dramatic it almost feels like magic.
Recently, a good friend described starting tirzepatide this way:
When the brain says no
We've known for a while that GLP-1 meds like semaglutide dial down cravings, but now we've got visual proof of it actually happening in the brain.
A groundbreaking randomized controlled trial just published in Nature Medicine, used functional MRI (fMRI) scans to watch people's brains in real-time as they looked at images of high calorie, high sugar foods (think pizza, cakes, burgers etc) while taking tirzepatide, liraglutide, or a placebo.
Average brain activity shown on scans at the start of the study (baseline) and after three weeks of treatment (week 3). Bright colours (red and yellow) indicate higher brain activation in areas linked to cravings and reward when participants viewed images of high-fat, high-sugar foods.
Average brain activity shown on scans at the start of the study (baseline) and after three weeks of treatment (week 3). Bright colours (red and yellow) indicate higher brain activation in areas linked to cravings and reward when participants viewed images of high-fat, high-sugar foods.
After just three weeks on tirzepatide, the brain regions that light up when we see junk food went quiet. The areas responsible for cravings and reward anticipation (like the cingulate gyrus and medial frontal gyrus) showed roughly 170 % to 220 % less activation than they did on placebo, meaning these brain regions actually went into suppression. (...)
You’d think a drug like this would just crush hunger everywhere, like a sledgehammer smashing through a wall. Nope. Tirzepatide works more like an elite sniper perched on a rooftop, laser focused and zeroing in on your strongest cravings for high calorie, high sugary crap and picking them off with precision.
Amazingly, it leaves your appetite for fresh salads, crisp veggies, and sweet raspberries untouched.
Cravings for healthier foods (fruits and vegetables) remained virtually unchanged
The $1.2 Billion Question
Now, let’s zoom out for a second. What happens if millions of us suddenly lose that intense urge for soda, chips, or those wonderful chocolate chip cookies from subway (my fave)?
Agricultural economist Brian E. Roe calculated that even moderate levels of adoption of GLP-1s, say 10% among overweight people and 20% among those with obesity, would lead to a 3% drop in total calorie demand in the U.S.
That translates to around 20 billion fewer calories eaten daily and $1.2 billion less spent each week on food and drinks.
In other words, companies like Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, and Nestlé, who’ve built sprawling empires by tapping directly into the very cravings we've just seen silenced on MRI, may soon face an existential threat.
Some innovative companies, however, have already started adapting.
Smoothie King sensed the winds shifting first, cleverly rolling out high-protein, GLP-1-friendly shakes to capture the health-aware consumer.
Expect other fast-moving brands to dive headfirst into a wave of products customized specifically for people freed from the constant grip of food cravings.
The rest will need to pivot quickly or risk fading into oblivion.
GLP-1s as Impulse Dampeners
But tirzepatide might be doing something even more profound than silencing food noise. The same study suggests it's actually rewiring impulse control in the brain itself.
The researchers measured impulsiveness using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, a validated psychological tool that captures everyday impulsive tendencies like “acting without thinking” or “struggling to resist urges.”
After 3-6 weeks of tirzepatide treatment, participants reported feeling significantly less impulsive than those who received the placebo.
They reported feeling calmer, more in control, and far less prone to snap decisions or irresistible urges.
This is important when you consider that impulsivity is the engine behind pretty much every self-destructive habit out there. Whether you're talking binge-drinking, gambling, chain-smoking or falling into the black hole of substance abuse.
If GLP-1 meds can dial down the noisy circuits in our brains screaming 'just do it!', we might be staring down the barrel of an entirely new way of treating addiction and it’s devastating consequences.
Just imagine a world (to borrow from John Lennon) with fewer overdose headlines, calmer Friday nights in emergency rooms, shrinking gambling debts, maybe even drops in domestic violence and incarceration rates.
Researchers are taking this seriously.
Major clinical trials already underway are testing whether GLP-1 meds might quiet the destructive impulses behind addiction itself. If they're right, we're looking at something much bigger (and far more important) than just weight loss.
by Ashwin Sharma, MD, GLP-1 Digest | Read more:
But when people begin taking GLP-1 medications, it's as though someone finally found the volume knob and dialled it down to zero. The experience is something like an instantaneous liberation, so surreal and dramatic it almost feels like magic.
Recently, a good friend described starting tirzepatide this way:
"Bro, my food noise just vanished. Gone. Poof. I finally had the freedom to think about other things. And my shopping basket changed overnight. I actually wanted leafy greens and sweet potato. Sweet potato! Do you know how crazy that is?”Stories like my friend's are piling up everywhere. So what's actually happening inside the brain when food noise just... stops?
When the brain says no
We've known for a while that GLP-1 meds like semaglutide dial down cravings, but now we've got visual proof of it actually happening in the brain.
A groundbreaking randomized controlled trial just published in Nature Medicine, used functional MRI (fMRI) scans to watch people's brains in real-time as they looked at images of high calorie, high sugar foods (think pizza, cakes, burgers etc) while taking tirzepatide, liraglutide, or a placebo.
After just three weeks on tirzepatide, the brain regions that light up when we see junk food went quiet. The areas responsible for cravings and reward anticipation (like the cingulate gyrus and medial frontal gyrus) showed roughly 170 % to 220 % less activation than they did on placebo, meaning these brain regions actually went into suppression. (...)
You’d think a drug like this would just crush hunger everywhere, like a sledgehammer smashing through a wall. Nope. Tirzepatide works more like an elite sniper perched on a rooftop, laser focused and zeroing in on your strongest cravings for high calorie, high sugary crap and picking them off with precision.
Amazingly, it leaves your appetite for fresh salads, crisp veggies, and sweet raspberries untouched.
Cravings for healthier foods (fruits and vegetables) remained virtually unchanged
The $1.2 Billion Question
Now, let’s zoom out for a second. What happens if millions of us suddenly lose that intense urge for soda, chips, or those wonderful chocolate chip cookies from subway (my fave)?
Agricultural economist Brian E. Roe calculated that even moderate levels of adoption of GLP-1s, say 10% among overweight people and 20% among those with obesity, would lead to a 3% drop in total calorie demand in the U.S.
That translates to around 20 billion fewer calories eaten daily and $1.2 billion less spent each week on food and drinks.
In other words, companies like Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, and Nestlé, who’ve built sprawling empires by tapping directly into the very cravings we've just seen silenced on MRI, may soon face an existential threat.
Some innovative companies, however, have already started adapting.
Smoothie King sensed the winds shifting first, cleverly rolling out high-protein, GLP-1-friendly shakes to capture the health-aware consumer.
Expect other fast-moving brands to dive headfirst into a wave of products customized specifically for people freed from the constant grip of food cravings.
The rest will need to pivot quickly or risk fading into oblivion.
GLP-1s as Impulse Dampeners
But tirzepatide might be doing something even more profound than silencing food noise. The same study suggests it's actually rewiring impulse control in the brain itself.
The researchers measured impulsiveness using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, a validated psychological tool that captures everyday impulsive tendencies like “acting without thinking” or “struggling to resist urges.”
After 3-6 weeks of tirzepatide treatment, participants reported feeling significantly less impulsive than those who received the placebo.
They reported feeling calmer, more in control, and far less prone to snap decisions or irresistible urges.
This is important when you consider that impulsivity is the engine behind pretty much every self-destructive habit out there. Whether you're talking binge-drinking, gambling, chain-smoking or falling into the black hole of substance abuse.
If GLP-1 meds can dial down the noisy circuits in our brains screaming 'just do it!', we might be staring down the barrel of an entirely new way of treating addiction and it’s devastating consequences.
Just imagine a world (to borrow from John Lennon) with fewer overdose headlines, calmer Friday nights in emergency rooms, shrinking gambling debts, maybe even drops in domestic violence and incarceration rates.
Researchers are taking this seriously.
Major clinical trials already underway are testing whether GLP-1 meds might quiet the destructive impulses behind addiction itself. If they're right, we're looking at something much bigger (and far more important) than just weight loss.
by Ashwin Sharma, MD, GLP-1 Digest | Read more:
Image: GPT/GLP-1 Digest Illustration; Nature Medicine
[ed. See also: How GLP-1s Are Breaking Life Insurance; and, Why are GLP1 drugs good for everything?]
Don't Go Near the Water
Israel has warned Gazans to stay out of the Mediterranean Sea or risk getting killed under wartime restrictions that critics say serve no security purpose and are meant to deprive Palestinians of a key source of sustenance—and respite from the horrific realities of 21 months of constant death and destruction.
"Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on the social media site X Saturday. "This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers—refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives."
While Israel has imposed a maritime blockade on Gaza since 2007 following Hamas' victory in legislative elections and subsequent takeover of the coastal enclave, restrictions were tightened after the October 7, 2023 attack as part of the "complete siege" that has caused deadly malnutrition throughout the strip, where Israel's 646-day U.S.-backed onslaught has left more than 211,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"Strict security restrictions have been imposed in the maritime area adjacent to Gaza—entry to the sea is prohibited," Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on the social media site X Saturday. "This is a call to fishermen, swimmers, and divers—refrain from entering the sea. Entering the beach and waters along the entire Gaza Strip endangers your lives."
However, the IDF appears to have not enforced the post-October 7 ban on entering the sea against swimmers and bathers. Only Palestinian fishers have been targeted, with more than 210 killed since October 2023, according to United Nations data.
"We live off the sea. If there's no fishing, we don't eat," Munthir Ayash, a 52-year-old fisher from Gaza City, told the Emirati newspaper The National Monday. "Me, my five sons, and their families—45 people in total—depend entirely on the sea. With it closed, we face starvation."
It is unclear why the IDF issued Saturday's warning, which came amid excessive heat warnings as temperatures rose to over 30°C (86°F). With Gaza's infrastructure obliterated by 21 months of Israeli onslaught and safe running water in severe shortage, the Mediterranean Sea provided a place to cool off and clean up.
"I used to go every day. The sea was where I bathed, where I relaxed, where I ran from the horror of war," Ibrahim Dawla, a 26-year-old Palestinian man forcibly displaced from Gaza City's Zaytun, told The National. "Now even that's gone." (...)
"We are camped by the sea," Qudeih added. "Where else can we go? Are they going to ban the air from us next?"
The IDF claims the maritime blockade is a security measure aimed at preventing weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.
However, Zakaria Bakr, head of the Palestinian Fishermen's Syndicate in Gaza, and many other residents of the embattled enclave believe there is another reason why Israel is prohibiting them from entering the sea.
"This is not about security. It's economic, social, and psychological warfare; a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation," he told The National.
Dawla said that "people here die a million times every hour; we needed the sea just to feel human again, even if only for a few minutes. And they knew that. That's why they shut it down.
"We live off the sea. If there's no fishing, we don't eat," Munthir Ayash, a 52-year-old fisher from Gaza City, told the Emirati newspaper The National Monday. "Me, my five sons, and their families—45 people in total—depend entirely on the sea. With it closed, we face starvation."
It is unclear why the IDF issued Saturday's warning, which came amid excessive heat warnings as temperatures rose to over 30°C (86°F). With Gaza's infrastructure obliterated by 21 months of Israeli onslaught and safe running water in severe shortage, the Mediterranean Sea provided a place to cool off and clean up.
"I used to go every day. The sea was where I bathed, where I relaxed, where I ran from the horror of war," Ibrahim Dawla, a 26-year-old Palestinian man forcibly displaced from Gaza City's Zaytun, told The National. "Now even that's gone." (...)
"We are camped by the sea," Qudeih added. "Where else can we go? Are they going to ban the air from us next?"
The IDF claims the maritime blockade is a security measure aimed at preventing weapons from being smuggled into Gaza.
However, Zakaria Bakr, head of the Palestinian Fishermen's Syndicate in Gaza, and many other residents of the embattled enclave believe there is another reason why Israel is prohibiting them from entering the sea.
"This is not about security. It's economic, social, and psychological warfare; a weapon of slow, deliberate suffocation," he told The National.
Dawla said that "people here die a million times every hour; we needed the sea just to feel human again, even if only for a few minutes. And they knew that. That's why they shut it down.
by Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams | Read more:
Image: Omar AL-QATTAA/AFP
[ed. Sick. From the Times of Israel:]
The IDF has not enforced the restriction against Palestinians seeking to cool off in the waters on the beach, but only those heading out deeper into the sea.
Image: Omar AL-QATTAA/AFP
[ed. Sick. From the Times of Israel:]
***
The vast majority of the Palestinian population in Gaza is concentrated in areas on the coast, with tent camps set up on the beaches.The IDF has not enforced the restriction against Palestinians seeking to cool off in the waters on the beach, but only those heading out deeper into the sea.
Monday, July 14, 2025
Apple in China
Apple Used China to Make a Profit. What China Got in Return Is Scarier.
A little more than a decade ago, foreign journalists living in Beijing, including myself, met for a long chat with a top Chinese diplomat. Those were different days, when high-ranking Chinese officials were still meeting with members of the Western press corps. The diplomat whom we met was charming, funny, fluent in English. She also had the latest iPhone in front of her on the table.
I noticed the Apple gadget because at the time, Chinese state news media were unleashing invectives on the Cupertino, Calif.-based company for supposedly cheating Chinese consumers. (It wasn’t true.) There were rumors circulating that Chinese government officials were being told not to flaunt American status symbols. The diplomat’s accouterment proved that wrong.
At the time, one could make the argument that China’s economic modernization was being accompanied by a parallel, if somewhat more laggardly, political reform. But the advent in 2012 of Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader who has consolidated power and re-established the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party, has shattered those hopes. And, as Patrick McGee makes devastatingly clear in his smart and comprehensive “Apple in China,” the American company’s decision under Tim Cook, the current C.E.O., to manufacture about 90 percent of its products in China has created an existential vulnerability not just for Apple, but for the United States — nurturing the conditions for Chinese technology to outpace American innovation.
McGee, who was the lead Apple reporter for The Financial Times and previously covered Asian markets from Hong Kong, takes what we instinctively know — “how Apple used China as a base from which to become the world’s most valuable company, and in doing so, bound its future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state” — and comes up with a startling conclusion, backed by meticulous reporting: “that China wouldn’t be China today without Apple.”
Apple says that it has trained more than 28 million workers in China since 2008, which McGee notes is larger than the entire labor force of California. The company’s annual investment in China — not even counting the value of hardware, “which would more than double the figure,” McGee writes — exceeds the total amount the Biden administration dedicated for a “once-in-a-generation” initiative to boost American computer chip production.
“This rapid consolidation reflects a transfer of technology and know-how so consequential,” McGee writes, “as to constitute a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
McGee has a journalist’s knack for developing scenes with a few curated details, and he organizes his narrative chronologically, starting with Apple’s origins as a renegade upstart under Steve Jobs in the 1970s and ’80s. After Jobs’s firing and rehiring comes a corporate mind shift in which a vertically integrated firm falls for the allure of contract manufacturing, sending its engineers abroad to train low-paid workers in how to churn out ever more complicated electronics.
We only really get to Apple in China about 90 pages into the book, and that China, in the mid- to late 1990s, was mainly attractive because of what one China scholar called “low wages, low welfare and low human rights.” McGee relates how one Apple engineer, visiting suppliers in the southern Chinese manufacturing center of Shenzhen, was horrified that there were no elevators in the “slapdash” facility, and that the stairs were built with troubling irregularity: with, say, 12 steps (of varying heights) between the first and second floors, then 18 to the next, then 16, then 24.
But China at the turn of the millennium was in the process of joining the World Trade Organization, and its leaders were banking on an export-led economy that would learn from foreign investors. Starting in the 2000s the Taiwanese mega-supplier Foxconn constructed entire settlements for Chinese workers building Apple electronics. First up on the new assembly lines were iMacs that were produced by what became known as “China speed.”
Less than 15 years after Chinese workers began making Apple products en masse, Chinese consumers were buying them en masse, too. Covering China at the time, I chafed at the popular narrative that reduced Apple’s presence in China to a tale of downtrodden workers at Foxconn and other suppliers. Yes, there were nets outside factory dorms to prevent suicides; and wages remained low. Even Apple admitted to alarming labor abuses in its Chinese supply chain.
But that was only half the story. The iPhone in China signified success, an individualistic, American-accented flavor that seemed to delight both veteran diplomats and Foxconn workers I got to know in southwest China. Those of us who had lived in China for years could see that life was getting freer and richer for most Chinese. By the mid-2010s, it was the United States that seemed behind in terms of integrating apps into daily life. In China, at least in the big cities, we were already living in the tech future. (...)
In 2015, Apple was the largest corporate investor in China, to the tune of about $55 billion a year, according to internal documents McGee obtained for this book. (Cook himself told the Chinese media that the company had created nearly five million jobs there: “I’m not sure there are too many companies, domestic or foreign, who can say that.”) At the same time, Xi laid out “Made in China 2025,” his blueprint for achieving technological self-sufficiency in the next decade, dependent on Apple being what McGee calls “a mass enabler of ‘Indigenous innovation.’”
“As Apple taught the supply chain how to perfect multi-touch glass and make the thousand components within the iPhone,” he writes, “Apple’s suppliers took what they knew and offered it to homegrown companies led by Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo.” Today, some of these premium products come with specs that are increasingly ahead of American design, and have outsold Apple in many major markets.
by Hannah Beech, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
[ed. See also: China’s Rise, America’s Dysfunction, and the Need for Cooperation (Current Affairs):]
"Well, you’re absolutely right about that, but I can fully understand why Donald Trump wants to try and improve the livelihoods of the bottom 50 percent of Americans. I think that’s a noble goal that he has. I can understand why he wants to make American industries more competitive and re-industrialize America. That’s also an understandable goal. But I think he will find that the best way to achieve those goals is actually to work with the rest of the world. And one thing I’ve learned after studying geopolitics for 55 years is that you’ve got to be cold and calculating if you want to succeed in geopolitics, and if you’re emotional, then you’re at a major disadvantage.
So, for example, how did China become so wealthy so quickly? What they did was to work closely with the United States. Even though, technically, during part of the Cold War the U.S. was an adversary, China worked with the United States to grow its economy. And I think that’s one thing that is taboo in the United States, that actually the best way for the United States to regenerate its economic growth and make it grow faster is not to try and bring down China, but to work with China. Just as in the time when you were worried about Japanese cars taking over the United States, what did you do? You have voluntary export restraints. You enccourage the Japanese to set up factories—Toyota factories, Honda factories—in the United States. The same thing can be done with China. It can only be done if you are rational and calculating in your moves and not emotional and say, oh, no, we can never work with China. Why can’t you work with China? If working with China is going to bring benefits to the American people, why not work with them? Because at the end of the day, it’s very clear that all efforts to stop the rise of China by the United States will fail. You cannot stop a 4,000-year-old civilization that has its own civilizational cycles, and as it is rising, depriving them of this technology or that technology is not going to stop the rise of China."
I noticed the Apple gadget because at the time, Chinese state news media were unleashing invectives on the Cupertino, Calif.-based company for supposedly cheating Chinese consumers. (It wasn’t true.) There were rumors circulating that Chinese government officials were being told not to flaunt American status symbols. The diplomat’s accouterment proved that wrong.
McGee, who was the lead Apple reporter for The Financial Times and previously covered Asian markets from Hong Kong, takes what we instinctively know — “how Apple used China as a base from which to become the world’s most valuable company, and in doing so, bound its future inextricably to a ruthless authoritarian state” — and comes up with a startling conclusion, backed by meticulous reporting: “that China wouldn’t be China today without Apple.”
Apple says that it has trained more than 28 million workers in China since 2008, which McGee notes is larger than the entire labor force of California. The company’s annual investment in China — not even counting the value of hardware, “which would more than double the figure,” McGee writes — exceeds the total amount the Biden administration dedicated for a “once-in-a-generation” initiative to boost American computer chip production.
“This rapid consolidation reflects a transfer of technology and know-how so consequential,” McGee writes, “as to constitute a geopolitical event, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
McGee has a journalist’s knack for developing scenes with a few curated details, and he organizes his narrative chronologically, starting with Apple’s origins as a renegade upstart under Steve Jobs in the 1970s and ’80s. After Jobs’s firing and rehiring comes a corporate mind shift in which a vertically integrated firm falls for the allure of contract manufacturing, sending its engineers abroad to train low-paid workers in how to churn out ever more complicated electronics.
We only really get to Apple in China about 90 pages into the book, and that China, in the mid- to late 1990s, was mainly attractive because of what one China scholar called “low wages, low welfare and low human rights.” McGee relates how one Apple engineer, visiting suppliers in the southern Chinese manufacturing center of Shenzhen, was horrified that there were no elevators in the “slapdash” facility, and that the stairs were built with troubling irregularity: with, say, 12 steps (of varying heights) between the first and second floors, then 18 to the next, then 16, then 24.
But China at the turn of the millennium was in the process of joining the World Trade Organization, and its leaders were banking on an export-led economy that would learn from foreign investors. Starting in the 2000s the Taiwanese mega-supplier Foxconn constructed entire settlements for Chinese workers building Apple electronics. First up on the new assembly lines were iMacs that were produced by what became known as “China speed.”
Less than 15 years after Chinese workers began making Apple products en masse, Chinese consumers were buying them en masse, too. Covering China at the time, I chafed at the popular narrative that reduced Apple’s presence in China to a tale of downtrodden workers at Foxconn and other suppliers. Yes, there were nets outside factory dorms to prevent suicides; and wages remained low. Even Apple admitted to alarming labor abuses in its Chinese supply chain.
But that was only half the story. The iPhone in China signified success, an individualistic, American-accented flavor that seemed to delight both veteran diplomats and Foxconn workers I got to know in southwest China. Those of us who had lived in China for years could see that life was getting freer and richer for most Chinese. By the mid-2010s, it was the United States that seemed behind in terms of integrating apps into daily life. In China, at least in the big cities, we were already living in the tech future. (...)
In 2015, Apple was the largest corporate investor in China, to the tune of about $55 billion a year, according to internal documents McGee obtained for this book. (Cook himself told the Chinese media that the company had created nearly five million jobs there: “I’m not sure there are too many companies, domestic or foreign, who can say that.”) At the same time, Xi laid out “Made in China 2025,” his blueprint for achieving technological self-sufficiency in the next decade, dependent on Apple being what McGee calls “a mass enabler of ‘Indigenous innovation.’”
“As Apple taught the supply chain how to perfect multi-touch glass and make the thousand components within the iPhone,” he writes, “Apple’s suppliers took what they knew and offered it to homegrown companies led by Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo.” Today, some of these premium products come with specs that are increasingly ahead of American design, and have outsold Apple in many major markets.
by Hannah Beech, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
[ed. See also: China’s Rise, America’s Dysfunction, and the Need for Cooperation (Current Affairs):]
"Well, you’re absolutely right about that, but I can fully understand why Donald Trump wants to try and improve the livelihoods of the bottom 50 percent of Americans. I think that’s a noble goal that he has. I can understand why he wants to make American industries more competitive and re-industrialize America. That’s also an understandable goal. But I think he will find that the best way to achieve those goals is actually to work with the rest of the world. And one thing I’ve learned after studying geopolitics for 55 years is that you’ve got to be cold and calculating if you want to succeed in geopolitics, and if you’re emotional, then you’re at a major disadvantage.
So, for example, how did China become so wealthy so quickly? What they did was to work closely with the United States. Even though, technically, during part of the Cold War the U.S. was an adversary, China worked with the United States to grow its economy. And I think that’s one thing that is taboo in the United States, that actually the best way for the United States to regenerate its economic growth and make it grow faster is not to try and bring down China, but to work with China. Just as in the time when you were worried about Japanese cars taking over the United States, what did you do? You have voluntary export restraints. You enccourage the Japanese to set up factories—Toyota factories, Honda factories—in the United States. The same thing can be done with China. It can only be done if you are rational and calculating in your moves and not emotional and say, oh, no, we can never work with China. Why can’t you work with China? If working with China is going to bring benefits to the American people, why not work with them? Because at the end of the day, it’s very clear that all efforts to stop the rise of China by the United States will fail. You cannot stop a 4,000-year-old civilization that has its own civilizational cycles, and as it is rising, depriving them of this technology or that technology is not going to stop the rise of China."
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
Separated as Toddlers, Raised on Opposite Sides of the World
The men who came to snatch the toddler were from an agency known as Jisheng Ban: Family Planning.
The child’s aunt was home alone with her on the late-spring morning when the intruders began flooding through her door. Her village, amid the rice paddies and pomelo orchards of China’s Hunan Province, was isolated. But now the outside world threatened.
Some of the assailants held the woman’s arms and legs; others ripped the 21-month-old’s grip from the hem of her shirt. The men then climbed into a waiting car with the child and sped away.
The story of the stolen child — known as Fangfang as an infant and Esther as an adult — is the subject of Barbara Demick’s entrancing and disturbing new book, “Daughters of the Bamboo Grove.” It follows the girl’s grotesque odyssey from a Chinese orphanage, to which she was brought by the human traffickers, to the home of the evangelical Christian family in Texas who adopted her. To make matters even more dramatic, the girl eventually came to discover that she had an identical twin sister who’d been raised by her birth parents back in China.
Demick, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and author of several other books, including the National Book Award finalist “Nothing to Envy,” about North Korean defectors, is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. She hammers together strong, solid sentence after strong, solid sentence — until the grandeur of the architecture comes into focus.
Demick’s characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop. It is impossible to forget, for instance, the young lovers in her North Korea book who look forward to power outages so that they can spend time alone together in the dark.
This book, too, will inspire strong feelings. Its backdrop and context are China’s ambitious and misguided attempts to limit family size — referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as its “one-child” policies.
Starting in 1979, and continuing for the next 36 years, Chinese authorities policed the most intimate of activities — procreation — sometimes through brutal tactics including forced sterilization, late-term abortions using formaldehyde syringes, vandalism of violators’ property and even kidnapping. Monitors who kept track of women’s menstrual cycles were derided as the “period police.” By one estimate, around 83 million Chinese worked in some capacity for Family Planning units by the 1990s.
Human rights advocates sounded the alarms. American evangelicals, in particular, viewed the initiatives through the prism of domestic abortion politics. Opponents chafed at traditional Chinese society’s preference for male children, who were relied upon to provide for their parents in old age. (Tellingly, a common girl’s name in China is Yaodi, which means “want little brother.”)
In a widely circulated incident in 1983, a Chinese father, hoping for a son, threw his daughter down a well as she screamed, “Baba!” The episode outraged Americans, spurring some activists — including the parents who raised Fangfang — to adopt Chinese children as a form of rescue. “What God does to us spiritually,” “he expects us to do to orphans physically,” the megachurch pastor Rick Warren declared, “be born again and adopted.”
There is plenty to be appalled by in China’s enforcement. But the horror stories also have a way of feeding Cold War-style orientalism. The rescue narrative — civilized West, backward East — distorts a great deal. To start, China’s policies were themselves rooted in Western science and economics, as the scholar Susan Greenhalgh has shown: They were conceived by Chinese rocket scientists seeking to reduce its population and thus raise its G.D.P., making the nation more competitive in global markets as China liberalized. They were a product of capitalism as much as communism.
This was certainly true when it came to the market for babies. In 1992, Beijing opened its doors to international adoptions, eventually fueling a black market for trafficked children. As a journalist working in China at the time, Demick was early to raise awareness of the problem. She wrote a story in 2009 headlined “Stolen Chinese Babies Supply Adoption Demand,” and then followed one lead after another until she was able to identify Fangfang’s family in Texas. (...)
Demick is at her most coolly analytical when she writes in economic terms — including about herself. The essayist Joan Didion was once asked how it felt to encounter a 5-year-old child who was tripping on LSD as she reported one of her pieces. “Let me tell you,” Didion replied icily, “it was gold.” One has the sense, reading this book, that Demick knows she is in possession of gold. It is an extraordinary yarn, the kind reporters dream about. (...)
If there is a flaw in this excellent book it is only that the story of a single family — even, and perhaps especially, a story as dramatic as this one — is not a great vehicle for understanding Chinese family-planning policies as a whole. The initiatives, spread over three and a half decades, were too diverse, varying from region to region and time to time, to be grasped through a single sensational experience of this kind.
by Kevin Peraino, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Barbara Demick
The child’s aunt was home alone with her on the late-spring morning when the intruders began flooding through her door. Her village, amid the rice paddies and pomelo orchards of China’s Hunan Province, was isolated. But now the outside world threatened.
Some of the assailants held the woman’s arms and legs; others ripped the 21-month-old’s grip from the hem of her shirt. The men then climbed into a waiting car with the child and sped away.
Demick, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and author of several other books, including the National Book Award finalist “Nothing to Envy,” about North Korean defectors, is one of our finest chroniclers of East Asia. She hammers together strong, solid sentence after strong, solid sentence — until the grandeur of the architecture comes into focus.
Demick’s characters are richly drawn, and her stories, often reported over a span of years, deliver a rare emotional wallop. It is impossible to forget, for instance, the young lovers in her North Korea book who look forward to power outages so that they can spend time alone together in the dark.
This book, too, will inspire strong feelings. Its backdrop and context are China’s ambitious and misguided attempts to limit family size — referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as its “one-child” policies.
Starting in 1979, and continuing for the next 36 years, Chinese authorities policed the most intimate of activities — procreation — sometimes through brutal tactics including forced sterilization, late-term abortions using formaldehyde syringes, vandalism of violators’ property and even kidnapping. Monitors who kept track of women’s menstrual cycles were derided as the “period police.” By one estimate, around 83 million Chinese worked in some capacity for Family Planning units by the 1990s.
Human rights advocates sounded the alarms. American evangelicals, in particular, viewed the initiatives through the prism of domestic abortion politics. Opponents chafed at traditional Chinese society’s preference for male children, who were relied upon to provide for their parents in old age. (Tellingly, a common girl’s name in China is Yaodi, which means “want little brother.”)
In a widely circulated incident in 1983, a Chinese father, hoping for a son, threw his daughter down a well as she screamed, “Baba!” The episode outraged Americans, spurring some activists — including the parents who raised Fangfang — to adopt Chinese children as a form of rescue. “What God does to us spiritually,” “he expects us to do to orphans physically,” the megachurch pastor Rick Warren declared, “be born again and adopted.”
There is plenty to be appalled by in China’s enforcement. But the horror stories also have a way of feeding Cold War-style orientalism. The rescue narrative — civilized West, backward East — distorts a great deal. To start, China’s policies were themselves rooted in Western science and economics, as the scholar Susan Greenhalgh has shown: They were conceived by Chinese rocket scientists seeking to reduce its population and thus raise its G.D.P., making the nation more competitive in global markets as China liberalized. They were a product of capitalism as much as communism.
This was certainly true when it came to the market for babies. In 1992, Beijing opened its doors to international adoptions, eventually fueling a black market for trafficked children. As a journalist working in China at the time, Demick was early to raise awareness of the problem. She wrote a story in 2009 headlined “Stolen Chinese Babies Supply Adoption Demand,” and then followed one lead after another until she was able to identify Fangfang’s family in Texas. (...)
Demick is at her most coolly analytical when she writes in economic terms — including about herself. The essayist Joan Didion was once asked how it felt to encounter a 5-year-old child who was tripping on LSD as she reported one of her pieces. “Let me tell you,” Didion replied icily, “it was gold.” One has the sense, reading this book, that Demick knows she is in possession of gold. It is an extraordinary yarn, the kind reporters dream about. (...)
If there is a flaw in this excellent book it is only that the story of a single family — even, and perhaps especially, a story as dramatic as this one — is not a great vehicle for understanding Chinese family-planning policies as a whole. The initiatives, spread over three and a half decades, were too diverse, varying from region to region and time to time, to be grasped through a single sensational experience of this kind.
by Kevin Peraino, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Barbara Demick
There is Nothing Stranger Than a Golfer's Brain
Just ask us.
For example: You, the observer, might believe that my success or failure on a given shot is a matter or technique and execution, but in my mind I am being blessed or cursed by higher universal forces. If I'm having a good round, I imagine there's a secret gallery living and dying with every shot, and I'l sometimes conduct imaginary interviews about the round as it's happening. (In this respect, I am almost exactly like a 10-year-old kid shooting baskets in his driveway, imagining he's in the NBA Finals ... except I'm a 41-year-old dude with kids of my own, which is perhaps mildly more pathetic.) As we'll get to in the reader email section below, I assign character traits to individual balls based on past performance, and reward or punish them accordingly. You want to slice on me, old Callaway triple track? Guess who's staying in the pocket on the next tee. Save your tears—you brought this on yourself.
I could go on—it's one lunatic thing after another. The thing is, though, so much of it comes to the forefront of my mind unbidden. It's the constant brain noise that golf invites, and I think I do a pretty good job of letting it flow through me without indulging it to any damaging degree. As I said, if I gave in to the darker impulses, I'd probably be one of those neurotics you find on the range who own 300 sets of clubs, or I'd force myself to recite a 3-minute mantra before each swing. Luckily, I've largely fought off those demons. And I am very grateful that nobody has figured out a way to project the thoughts running through my head to a larger audience, because even in my restrained form, I'd probably be committed.
Here's the thing, though ... that's kind of the appeal. Right? Golf has a way of absorbing 100% of your mental energy in a way that can be freeing. If your mind is consumed with technique, and score, and routine, or even the broader narrative of your round, you're not thinking about the world burning or wondering why your kid suddenly seems really into watching videos of sharks eating seals or fantasizing about telling off your terrible boss/wife. (For the record, I love my bosses and my wife, albeit in different ways.) In the escapism that golf provides, it's very much like a drug, which is why a lot of recovering addicts find golf so useful—you can spend four-plus hours free of your cravings. I used to play with a recovering heroin addict who would literally play 54 holes every weekend day for that exact reason.
As such, it's a salutary madness. I have a secret opinion that almost every human on earth is about 50% weirder than you'd think, and I can't think of a better way to safely indulge that insanity than golf. One of my friends, for instance, mutters to himself after mistakes in extended monologues that are just barely audible to the rest of us. He looks like a headcase, but he is in fact a very successful human being and plenty of fun to be around. Clearly, he needs this outlet.
by Shane Ryan, Golf Digest | Read more:
Image: Karl Hendon
[ed. I say golf is a negative game (for most of us). What other sport involves so much focus on not screwing up? See also: Nobody cares about your golf game.]
[ed. I say golf is a negative game (for most of us). What other sport involves so much focus on not screwing up? See also: Nobody cares about your golf game.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)