Why China Cannot Decarbonise

[...]it is often argued—as by Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro, for example—that China's dictatorship should be an advantage in this context: ‘Given the limited time that remains to mitigate climate change and protect millions of species from extinction, we need to consider whether a green authoritarianism can show us the way' (Li and Shapiro 2020, quoted from the publisher's book description). Since CCP bosses do not have to contend with public hearings, environmental studies, recalcitrant legislatures, labour unions, a critical press, and so on, Xi should be able to force state-owned polluters to stop polluting or else, and ram through his promised transition to renewable energy (see Smith 2017, 2020c). Climate Action Tracker estimates that in 2021 China's emissions increased by 3.4 per cent to 14.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e)—nearly triple those of the United States (4.9 GtCO2e) with a gross domestic product just three-fourths as large (CAT n.d.;EIA 2022). Since 2019, China's emissions have exceeded those of all developed countries combined and presently account for 33 per cent of total global emissions (Larsen et al. 2021;IEA 2021). In the first half of 2021, rebounding from the first wave of Covid-19, China's carbon dioxide emissions surged past pre-pandemic levels to reach an all-time high 20 per cent increase in the second quarter before dropping back in late 2021 and the first half of 2022 as the real estate collapse, Omicron lockdowns, and drought-induced hydropower reductions slashed economic growth to near zero in the summer (Hancock 2021;Myllyvirta 2022a;Riordan and Hook 2022). China promised to stop building coal-fired power plants abroad, but it is building more than 200 new coal-fired plants at home in a drive to boost economic growth, maintain jobs in coal-dependent regions, and ensure energy self-sufficiency—locking the country into coal reliance for many decades to come, derailing the transition to renewables, and dooming Xi's UN pledge to transition to a green and low-carbon mode of development (Xie 2020).

China: Interpreting the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of national goals

The urgent task of combining anti-epidemic measures with restoring economic activity was the most important focus for Chinese economists up to mid-2020. The main research topic was the growth rates required to meet the national goal of overcoming extreme poverty in 2021. China rapidly entered the post-COVID-19 era. Economists began to discuss the future of globalisation and the sustainability of global value chains. In the context of the normative concept of 'the profound changes unseen in a century', COVID-19 was interpreted as one of the multiple factors driving these changes. Economists took an active part in preparing a new five-year plan of socioeconomic development. Xi Jinping's meeting with leading Chinese economists in August 2020 was of great symbolic significance, since it highlighted the prestige of the profession in the eyes of the authorities. The new policy of 'dual circulation' responded to the effects of the pandemic and the deteriorating external economic environment. In 2021 Chinese economists focused on this policy, along with the tasks involved in the long-term development of China's economy and how to achieve 'the second centenary goal' of comprehensive national modernisation by the middle of the century. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Documents on Democracy

Global/Canada The post–Cold War assumption of democracy's inevitable triumph—described by Francis Fukuyama as the "End of History" thesis—does not apply to our world, and democracies need to adjust accordingly, argues Canada's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland. The jeers I face in Question Period, the fact-checking of skeptical journalists, the hard verdict of the ballot box—all of these make me a better minister than I would be if we governed in splendid authoritarian isolation. Support independent workers' power in and beyond these protests;abolish anti-worker practices like the 996 work schedule and strengthen labor law protections, including protecting workers' right to strike and self-organization, so they can participate more extensively in political life. Avoid the risky tactic of long-term occupation of streets and town squares—adopt "Be Water"-style mobilization to prevent authorities from too easily clamping down on protesters.

Authoritarian Crisis Response to COVID-19 in China

What explains the Chinese government's differentiated response to the COVID-19 pandemic? This chapter argues that the same sources of control in authoritarian crisis response that enable the state to mobilize resources and people hamper the flexibility and nimbleness needed to adapt amid uncertainty. It analyzes how political priorities in a predominantly top-down system and experience with past infectious disease outbreaks shape the public health approach to COVID-19 and examines the response from late 2019 through mid-2022 in three approximate phases: early missteps and institutional impediments, rapid shift in response effectiveness, and top-down control and cracks in zero-COVID. Initial reactions were dispersed and incremental as local officials wrestled with how loudly to sound the alarms on the emergence of a new respiratory virus that seemed to be spreading. Beijing eventually backed a centralized, coordinated effort. The ramped-up response was effective, if authoritarian and heavy-handed at times. Since then, the scale and speed of the state's ability to assemble testing, tracing, quarantining, and isolating capacity and other measures enabled China to generally enclose inevitable flare-ups in most of 2020 and 2021. But unyielding pursuit of dynamic zero-COVID policy through mid-2022 reveals a fragile flip side of dogged top-down control. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Politics of COVID-19: The Political Logic of China's Zero-COVID Policy

From the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in late 2019 until December 2022, China implemented stringent infection prevention and control measures known as the Zero-COVID policy. Western observers and some Chinese intellectuals have questioned this rigid policy, but few studies offer a comprehensive overview of the political reasonings behind it. This article positions the Zero-COVID policy in a broader historical context of the Chinese Communist Party's regime maintenance, revolutionary legacies, and political mobilisation. It analyses the political reasonings behind this policy from three dimensions: system, actors, and approach, and provides accounts of the politics of the pandemic. The results reveal that the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party was caught in a dilemma. The Zero-COVID policy is used to bolster legitimacy of the regime;however, it also set traps in which the Chinese government risked losing the public's trust. The negative outcomes of the policy were underestimated by the Chinese leadership, which believed in its ability to balance the cost and benefit of this policy for the sake of maintenance of its rule. The politics of COVID-19 mirrors China's authoritarian politics in general. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Contemporary Asia is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Biopolitical Binaries (or How Not to Read the Chinese Protests)

On 26 November 2022, prompted by a deadly fire in a high-rise apartment block in Ürümqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, protesters took to streets and university campuses across China calling for an end to the country's restrictive ‘zero Covid' policy (清零政策) (Davidson and Yu 2022). With its zero-Covid policy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has attempted to position itself as the polar opposite of governments in the West and the United States in particular—as a biopolitical state that ‘deploys its governing techniques in the name of defending the security of life against external threats' (L.G. 2022: 139), which represents a centralised technocracy starkly distinct from the class-based revolutionary politics of the Mao Zedong era. [...]the emergence of the much more transmissible Omicron variant of the virus, the Chinese Government successfully mobilised the population, state, and economy in a concerted effort to suppress transmission through newly developed surveillance technologies aimed at systematically mapping, tracking, and containing the population. In their recent book on the pandemic, What World is This?, Judith Butler (2022) argues that the normalisation of deaths due to Covid-19 means the acceptance of a percentage of the population as disposable—or a society in which ‘mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order' (Lincoln 2021: 46). If it is a natural disaster, the party appears as the saviour;human-made catastrophes, on the other hand, raise questions about responsibility and point to broader systemic issues.

China in 2022: Political Power, Zero-COVID Policy, and Economic Slump

In 2022, president Xi Jinping's prolonged one-man rule was formalized, further concentrating political authority in the Communist Party of China. Unemployment increased sharply because of the continued zero-COVID policy, and the economy declined significantly, generating pain and dissatisfaction and leading to anti-government protests and demonstrations in several cities. At the end of the year, the Party recognized the crisis and eased the preventive measures. Internationally, the United States maintained its technology blockade, hampering China's economy.

Unpacking the Black Box of China's State Capitalism

Much ink has been splashed on the ideological, conceptual, and practical challenges that China's state capitalism has posed to global trade rules. There is a growing perception that the current international trade rules are neither conceptually coherent nor practically effective in tackling China's state capitalism. This perception has not only led to the emergence of new trade rules in regional trade agreements, but also culminated in the US-China trade war, only further aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This Article contributes to the debate of what trade rules may be needed to counteract China's state capitalism by unpacking the black box of China's state capitalism. Based on an analysis of the nature of China's state capitalism, this Article provides a preliminary evaluation of current trade rules taken to counteract China's state capitalism, in particular the new rules in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and explain why they are unlikely to be successful.

Why Xi Jinping Reversed His Zero-Covid Policy in China

The rare display of public anger, with some protesters directly criticizing Mr. Xi and the Communist Party, alarmed Mr. Xi and his inner circle, the officials and advisers said. Keywords: leder;wsjworld;photo-news;Political/General News;Respiratory Tract Diseases;Global/World Issues;Health;Medical Conditions;Outbreaks/Epidemics;Politics/International Relations EN leder wsjworld photo-news Political/General News Respiratory Tract Diseases Global/World Issues Health Medical Conditions Outbreaks/Epidemics Politics/International Relations N.PAG N.PAG 1 01/11/23 20230105 NES 230105 A wave of protests coupled with urgent pleas from many corners of the government finally prodded the leader to scrap the strict lockdown system he had touted throughout the pandemic BEIJING - By the end of an otherwise triumphant Communist Party Congress for Xi Jinping in October, it was growing harder for China's leader to argue that his zero-Covid policy was working. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Wall Street Journal (Online) is the property of Dow Jones & Company Inc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Green supply chain management, risk-taking, and corporate value—Dual regulation effect based on technological innovation capability and supply chain concentration

With the promotion of carbon-peak and carbon-neutral strategies and the increase in green awareness, green development is gradually gaining attention, and the green supply chain management (GSCM) derived from traditional supply chain management is gradually becoming a path to promote green development. At the same time, enterprise, as an important source of pollution, how to consider social responsibility, such as environmental protection, in the process of ensuring efficiency improvement has become an important issue. To study the impact of GSCM on enterprise value and its path of action, this paper examines the impact of GSCM on enterprise value, explores the moderating effect of the risk-taking level, and further analyzes the dual moderating effect played by technological innovation capability and supply chain concentration. Based on the micro data of 131 Chinese listed enterprises from 2014 to 2021, a panel-regression model is used to illustrate how GSCM affects enterprise value, and the results show that: (1) GSCM can promote enterprise value;(2) the level of risk-taking strengthens the promoting effect of GSCM on enterprise value enhancement;and (3) the technological innovation capability negatively regulates the moderating effect of risk-taking, while the supply chain concentration positively regulates the moderating effect of risk-taking. The research results of this paper enrich the path of the effect of implementing of GSCM on enterprise value enhancement, i.e. the process of GSCM to enhance enterprise value is regulated by the level of enterprise risk-taking, while technological innovation capability and supply chain concentration will also regulate the level of enterprise risk-taking and thus promote enterprise value enhancement. This research not only extends the research perspective and enriches the existing research, but also provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to implement GSCM to promote value enhancement and improve the level of GSCM implementation and the green development of enterprises.

The Economic Consequences of Xi Jinping

In the aftermath of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping’s principal focus will be on state and national security, while an entirely new economic- and financial-policy team, with little experience, will take charge of China’s troubled economy. Its members will have to manage several systemic problems – a debt mountain, a property bust, a rapidly ageing population, zero-COVID policies – and develop a viable new economic-development model. This would be a demanding agenda anywhere, but Xi’s China has to tackle it guided by an ever more devoutly Leninist approach to economic management, industrial policy and governance, at a time when China faces the most hostile external environment it has known since Mao Zedong, as exemplified by foreign decoupling. Although Xi’s China is capable of important accomplishments in science and technology, and of flexing its diplomatic and military muscles in defence of its interests, China’s politics may be much less capable of fixing the country’s systemic economic and financial weaknesses. The consequences of Xi Jinping’s economic programme, including an emphasis on self-reliance, promise to extend beyond China’s borders to foreign actors and countries that once benefited from its economic rise.

Análise da tradução portuguesa do Discurso de Ano Novo de 2021 do presidente da China Xi Xinping

Este trabalho debruça-se sobre a tradução portuguesa do Discurso de Ano Novo de 2021 do presidente chinês Xi Jinping. O ano de 2020 foi um ano anormal devido ao aparecimento da pandemia da covid-19, pelo que o resumo desse ano ocupa uma grande parte do discurso de Ano Novo de 2021. O objetivo deste trabalho é perspetivar a construção da força discursiva na tradução portuguesa do Discurso de Ano Novo de 2021 do presidente chinês Xi Jinping, incluindo a análise das opções na tradução que comprometem a equivalência semântico-pragmática, nomeadamente omissão, acrescento, e distorção, assim como as influências resultantes na força ilocutória (Searle, 1969);as modalidades e modalizações (Campos e Xavier, 1991) ocorrentes no texto original, nomeadamente modalização de atenuação e modalização de reforço e, por fim, uma análise quantitativa do corpus com a ferramenta computacional de análise de discurso VISL. Este trabalho contribuirá para a análise de discursos políticos chineses e para o estudo da sua tradução entre os pares de línguas Chinês/Português europeu.

The Trump Administration's Policy Changes on China and Their Destructive Ramifications for US-China Relations

This article analyzes the change in policy discourse of the Trump administration and its destructive effects on US-China relations. It begins with a retrospective look at the China policies of two prior US administrations, those of President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, in order to show just how significant the shift is. Following the review are analyses of the new policy discourse on China and how China has responded to it, especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The last section of this article discusses a popular theme in recent academic circles: Is a new Cold War inevitable?

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Estrangement of US-China Relations

This article assesses US-China relations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, the US-China trade war created an atmosphere of bitterness and mistrust in bilateral relations and also prompted the Chinese leadership to seek to enhance its "discourse power" through "wolf warrior" diplomacy. This atmosphere hampered US-China communication and cooperation during the initial phase of the pandemic. The unleashing of "wolf warrior" diplomacy as the pandemic spread round the world, especially in the United States, has exacerbated US-China relations and served to accelerate the transition of US policy toward China from constructive engagement to strategic competition.

Global Development Initiative: An International Public Goods to Promote Common Development

The world today is facing turbulence and change, and global development is at a crossroads. At this critical juncture, President Xi Jinping put forth the Global Development Initiative (GDI) with the theme "implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda for more robust, greener and healthier global development" at the 76th General Assembly of the United Nations, which sheds light on the direction of global development. The GDI, proposed by China, has galvanized support from the international community as an international public goods to promote common development. Following the historical trends of human development, the GDI breaks through the limitations of the hegemonic stability theory and the free-riding curse to expand and innovate the theoretical perception of international public goods with the right approach to principles and interests. With a people-oriented approach and the basic principles of green and innovative development, the GDI both addresses urgent challenges and attaches importance to enhancing development capabilities and creating supporting conditions to offer a holistic solution to global challenges. Through the implementation of multiple pathways under international cooperation, the GDI will build a consensus on global development, increase the momentum of global development, and play an important role in creating a community with a shared future for mankind.

Wolf Warriors and Diplomacy in the New Era: An Empirical Analysis of China's Diplomatic Language *

[...]after Zhao posted a computer-generated image of an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child and condemned Australia's violation of human rights in Afghanistan, the Australian prime minister called a media briefing and demanded an apology from the Chinese government.3 The wolf warrior actions of some Chinese diplomats have gone beyond rhetoric. [...]there is still debate about whether this form of diplomacy represents an official foreign policy line or, rather, the more limited tactics of the MFA or even individual diplomats.6 Global Times, a Chinese state-controlled daily newspaper, has praised the wolf warrior diplomacy for reflecting the interests of the Chinese people and attributed Western concern over it to the ongoing shift in the relative positions of China and Western countries.7 At the same time, some long-serving and high-profile career diplomats, such as Cui Tiankai (S¾M) and Fu Ying (#?), have publicly condemned and tried to tamp down the wolf warrior diplomacy.8 International relations scholars in China, such as Yan Xuetong (l¾??.), have also urged the world to stop treating diplomats' personal statements and social media posts as China's official foreign policy.9 How does wolf warrior diplomacy relate to Xi Jinping's diplomacy? [...]Xi's diplomacy also stresses China's responsibility to assist developing countries and the importance of going beyond the narrow pursuit of its interests. While these conflicting strands of Xi's diplomacy might seem incoherent to the international audience, they allow for great flexibility, in that the aggressive wolf warrior style satisfies the domestic nationalist audience, and the egalitarian and liberal rhetoric creates the foreign policy space for China to deescalate international tensions.

Legitimation Strategies in Political Rhetoric: Examples From Presidential Speeches on Covid- 19

Heads of states are currently focusing on containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemiccommonly called Covid-19, and grappling with a series of strategies for addressing the pandemic. Political discourse concerning Covid-19 can be examined to better understand the ideology of the speaker and its impact on the audience. In this paper, we use Van Leeuwen's (2007) and Van Leeuwen and Wodak's (1999) legitimation strategies that social actors use to justify courses of action/political decisions in a critical discourse analysis approach. Drawing on presidential speeches specifically made by Donald Trump (USA) and Xi Jinping (China), this paper elucidates how legitimation strategies are linguistically constituted and fashioned to justify the leaders' particular policy decisions and actions for controlling and containing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, thus achieving their political goals.

The Economic Effects of China’s Distribution Industry: An Input-Output Analysis

This study contributes by analyzing the economic effects of China’s distribution industry based on China’s 2012 and 2017 input-output data. It analyzes changes in the forward and backward linkage effect over a five-year period in accordance with the Chinese government’s distribution industry policy. The coefficients of the effects of the Chinese distribution industry, using Input-Output Tables and a comparative analysis of the sensitivity of dispersion, were determined. In terms of the coefficient of influence, most of the sectors that ranked high in 2012 are related to manufacturing, except for lodging and catering. The sensitivity and influence coefficients indicate that the top-ranked sectors in 2012 were more affected by the raw materials and energy essential for manufacturing development than by the services sector.

The Economic Effect of the Steel Industry on Sustainable Growth in China—A Focus on Input–Output Analysis

The purpose of this study is to analyze the economic ripple effects caused by the supply-side reforms on China’s steel industry. To this end, using the 2012 and the 2017 China Input–Output Tables, this study analyzes the economic ripple effect of the Chinese steel industry caused by its supply-side reform. In this study, the influence coefficients (rear-linked effect) and the sensitivity coefficients (forward-linked effect), conceptualized by Leontief, are used as research tools to analyze the ripple effects of the Chinese steel industry. The analysis results are as follows. First, the fact that 2012 ranked high in professional equipment and meter manufacturing shows that the Chinese government’s supply-side reforms are effective and creating the required shift from traditional manufacturing to qualitative growth. Second, in terms of the sensitivity coefficient, in 2012, most of the top industries contributed significantly to the development of the Chinese economy. The originality of this study is as follows. The input production analysis used in this paper is a methodology mainly used in the steel, coal, automobile, and petrochemical industries, which clearly distinguishes the front and rear industries. Additionally, this study is a novel attempt at comparative research on the Chinese steel industry between 2012 and 2017.