Month: March 2012

One Document, Under Siege

Here are a few things the framers did not know about: World War II. DNA. Sexting. Airplanes. The atom. Television. Medicare. Collateralized debt obligations. The germ theory of disease. Miniskirts. The internal combustion engine. Computers. Antibiotics. Lady Gaga.

People on the right and left constantly ask what the framers would say about some event that is happening today. What would the framers say about whether the drones over Libya constitute a violation of Article I, Section 8, which gives Congress the power to declare war? Well, since George Washington didn’t even dream that man could fly, much less use a global-positioning satellite to aim a missile, it’s hard to say what he would think. What would the framers say about whether a tax on people who did not buy health insurance is an abuse of Congress’s authority under the commerce clause? Well, since James Madison did not know what health insurance was and doctors back then still used leeches, it’s difficult to know what he would say. (Time)

Not Fade Away: The myth of American decline

Is the United States in decline, as so many seem to believe these days? Or are Americans in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of their own declining power? A great deal depends on the answer to these questions.
The present world order—characterized by an unprecedented number of democratic nations; a greater global prosperity, even with the current crisis, than the world has ever known; and a long peace among great powers—reflects American principles and preferences, and was built and preserved by American power in all its political, economic, and military dimensions. If American power declines, this world order will decline with it. It will be replaced by some other kind of order, reflecting the desires and the qualities of other world powers. Or perhaps it will simply collapse, as the European world order collapsed in the first half of the twentieth century. The belief, held by many, that even with diminished American power “the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive,” as the political scientist G. John Ikenberry has argued, is a pleasant illusion. American decline, if it is real, will mean a different world for everyone.

Read Robert Kagan’s attempt to deconstruct the “myth”

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

The National People's Congress: What makes a rubber stamp?

EACH year in early March, Beijing welcomes not only the sense of spring’s imminent arrival, but also the thousands of out-of-town delegates who descend on the capital for the once-yearly full session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s version of a national legislature. It is a time of year when the weather in Beijing might yet go any which way. But not the NPC session, which is a closely scripted and tightly controlled event featuring much pageantry and precious little drama.

The orderly proceedings and the pre-arranged outcomes are predictable. So too are the frequent invocations of the term “rubber-stamp” to describe the NPC, as well as heated complaints about that term from Chinese officials and other supporters of the system.

Like many western media outlets, The Economist has been a frequent “rubber-stamper” in its coverage of the NPC over the years. So too have many Chinese-language media, for that matter, including some of China’s own outlets.

Yet many in China take the term as an insult, feeling that it belittles the institutions and procedures by which the nation makes its laws.

When will the foreign media finally stop using the term “rubber-stamp” to describe China’s parliament?

The answer to that question should be obvious: when it finally rejects something put before it.

Among the matters the nearly 3,000 legislative delegates get to vote on are the approval of new laws, “work reports” delivered by senior officials, and new appointees to top government posts. Unanimous votes were once common. Multiple Chinese reports have noted with interest the first occasion on which a delegate cast a “no” vote, in 1988.

In 1992, the NPC caused something of a stir when only 1,767 delegates, two-thirds of the total, voted to approve the massive and massively controversial Three Gorges Dam project. There were 177 votes against, 644 votes to abstain, and 25 delegates who failed to vote at all.

In other cases where reports or candidates are approved by less than 75%, it is seen as a clear rebuke to the leadership.

None of this is to say that the NPC is entirely irrelevant.  Its full-time professional staff has grown in size and professionalism. In the course of drafting legislation, it has taken great strides in reaching out to social stakeholders and soliciting their input. Often it even pushes back against the Communist party leadership by insisting on substantial revisions to draft laws before moving them along.

In these ways, the NPC plays a meaningful and increasingly important role in China’s governance. And there are some political scientists, Chinese and foreign alike, who reckon that China’s system may evolve in ways that give the legislature genuine independence and substantial power in decades to come.
Indeed, many people will use terms like “rubber-stamp” and “coronation” to describe these conventions, in Charlotte, North Carolina and Tampa, Florida. Nobody will get angry about it. And why should they? After all, there is another, even more powerful force in Washington that provides actual checks and balances to the political power of the executive branch. That one bears the mark of another well-worn stamp: Gridlock.

China’s new tribes: Ant tribes and mortgage slaves

WHO knew China was tribal? The diversification of Chinese society has seen a flowering of a new vocabulary. Perhaps most fascinating has been the division of people into tribes (zu in Mandarin). The travails of the yi zu, or ant tribe, have been well-chronicled—recent graduates from outside the main cities who move to urban areas, live cheaply and work hard, often in low-paid jobs. Perhaps less well-known are the ken lao zu, the bite-the-old tribe, those between 25 and 35 who are underemployed or out of work, still at home and sponging off mum and dad.

Many of the tribes, inevitably, are made up of people looking for love. There is the jia wan zu, the marry-the-bowl tribe. These are young women searching for that most stable of husbands, the one who holds a government job (still known as the iron rice bowl). The shan hun zu, or lightning-marriage tribe, marry fast and sometimes divorce faster. They should not be confused with the yin hun zu, the hidden-marriage tribe. These are women in their 20s who hide the fact that they are married, knowing they will not be hired or promoted if there is even the whiff of the possible need for maternity leave—socialist gender-equality does not offer much protection in the Wild East of modern China. And if you can only afford a postage stamp of an apartment, you’re probably a member of the wo ju zu, the snail-house tribe.

You can belong to more than one tribe. Most members of the ant tribe also belong to the ben ben zu, the rush-rush tribe, to which, in fact, most urban Chinese belong. All that rushing around can create a lot of pent-up anger, giving rise to the nie nie zu, the crush-crush tribe, so named because they go into supermarkets and take out their frustration by standing in the aisles crushing packets of instant noodles (yes, really).

Many tribal members are also slaves (nu in Mandarin). There are the fang nu (mortgage slaves) and hun nu (marriage slaves, who are also, by definition, mortgage slaves) and all Chinese parents are of course haizi nu (slaves to the only child).

Perhaps the group China needs most as it tries to stimulate its domestic consumer economy is the yue guang zu, or moonlight tribe, so named because the Chinese characters for “moonlight” sound the same as the phrase “spend all your monthly salary”. Their parents saved every yuan, but life for these youngsters is just spend, spend, spend. Now, that’s patriotic consumption.