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Commentary Week In Review
By Guy Taylor
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22 Sep 2007
The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week.
Hedging Against Democracy
Prompted by a recent New York Times article on the extent to which American companies and investors are involved in the creation and maintenance of China's increasingly sophisticated internal surveillance system, the past week saw more than one noteworthy op-ed about the progressively capitalist nature of China's big brother state.
Harold Meyerson mused in the Sept. 19 Washington Post that the "American economy may be teetering on the brink of a recession, but there's an industry our hedge fund gurus believe has an almost limitless future: the Chinese police state."
Meyerson summarized the Times article's claims that 660 Chinese cities have begun installing high-tech surveillance systems, and that by one estimate, high-end surveillance will expand from a $500 million industry in 2003 to a $43 billion industry by 2010.
Explaining that China Security and Surveillance Technology, a company soon to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, "has received $110 million in convertible loans from the Citadel Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund, which it has used to buy up smaller Chinese surveillance companies," Meyerson asserted:
Some Wall Street executives have even defended their investments by equating the Chinese surveillance system with the surveillance cameras of London and New York. To be sure, leading American companies have a long and sordid record of investing in totalitarian states, including Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia and axis-of-evil Iran (hello, Halliburton). ...Once China turned communist repression into an investment opportunity ... capitalism responded as capitalism is supposed to respond: It wanted in. There are mega-bucks to be made, the hedge funds concluded, in hedging against democracy.
American-Made Big Brother
In a Sept. 18 piece posted on the Web site of The New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick went a step further, arguing that "anyone shocked to hear that a Chinese surveillance company was raising capital in America just hasn't been paying attention."
"For years now, not only have big American Internet companies contributed to Internet censorship; smaller, lesser-known foreign firms have provided the technology that helped China, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian governments crack down on online dissent," he wrote. "Like other search engines operating in China, Google has agreed to filter out websites Beijing does not approve, like ones criticizing the Communist Party, discussing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, or featuring prominent figures critical of China like the Dalai Lama."
"Others have gone much farther," wrote Kurlantzick, who explained:
Yahoo reportedly gave the Chinese government personal information that may have been used to arrest Shi Tao, a leading Chinese journalist and activist. An Open Net Initiative study of Internet filtering suggests that Cisco Systems may have designed and developed a specific firewall for China.
"The stakes are much higher in closed societies like Saudi Arabia or China," he went on. "In those countries, Internet-based phone services and chat services have become almost the only secure ways for activists to communicate with each other and with the outside world."
China's Military Modernization
A technological evolution of another sort is also afoot in Asia these days, according to Robert D. Kaplan, who wrote in the Sept. 21 New York Times that "while the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, and our European allies continue to starve their defense programs, Asian militaries -- in particular those of China, India, Japan and South Korea -- have been quietly modernizing and in some cases enlarging."
Claiming that China's "production and acquisition of submarines is now five times that of America's," Kaplan wrote that Beijing has also been focusing "on naval mines, ballistic missiles that can hit moving objects at sea, and technology that blocks G.P.S. satellites."
"The goal," according to Kaplan, "is 'sea denial': dissuading American carrier strike groups from closing in on the Asian mainland wherever and whenever we like."
He mused further that:
The twin trends of a rising Asia and a politically crumbling Middle East will most likely lead to a naval emphasis on the Indian Ocean and its surrounding seas, the sites of the "brown water" choke points of world commerce — the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, the Bab el Mandeb at the mouth of the Red Sea, and Malacca. ...To wit, China is giving Pakistan $200 million to build a deep-water port at Gwadar, just 390 nautical miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing is also trying to work with the military junta in Myanmar to create another deep-water port on the Bay of Bengal. It has even hinted at financing a canal across the 30-mile Isthmus of Kra in Thailand that would open a new connection between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.
Less Opium in the Golden Triangle
Speaking of developments in Asia, Thomas Fuller wrote in the Sept. 16 New York Times that "after years of producing the lion's share of the world's opium, the Golden Triangle [Laos, Thailand and Myanmar] is now only a bit player in the global heroin trade."
Posing the question to himself of "What happened?" Fuller explained:
Economic pressure from China, crackdowns on opium farmers , and a switch by criminal syndicates to methamphetamine production, appear to have had the biggest impact. At the same time, some insurgent groups that once were financed with drug money now say they are urging farmers to eradicate their poppy fields. As a result, the Golden Triangle has been eclipsed by the Golden Crescent -- the poppy-growing area in and around Afghanistan that is now the source of an estimated 92 percent of the world's opium, according to the United Nations.
"A striking aspect of the decline of the Golden Triangle is the role China has played in pressing opium-growing regions to eradicate poppy crops," added Fuller, who noted that as "a major market for Golden Triangle heroin, China has seen a spike in addicts and H.I.V. infections from contaminated needles."
Lebanon at Historic Crossroads
Away from Asia, there is a major election coming in the Middle East, according to Eli Khoury, who wrote in the Sept. 20 Boston Globe that "Americans would be wise to pay attention" later this month when "the Lebanese parliament is supposed to choose a new president in a region of the world where American soldiers are fighting and where American interests are inextricably tied."
Noting that Lebanon "lives with interference by Iran and Syria ... borders Israel ... has a strong Hezbollah presence in the south, and an army that is fighting terrorism while also trying to spread its control over the country's territory," Khoury asserted that "today, Lebanon stands at a historic crossroads between being integrated into the international community or remaining under the influences of external forces."
"In one sense, Lebanese citizens have already voted with their feet," he argued, noting that "in the 'Cedar Revolution' of March 2005 over a million Lebanese marched to demand freedom from Syrian domination and control over their political lives."
But Khoury maintained that:
At any moment, Lebanon could be dragged back into chaos or full-scale war. The parliamentary process could be delayed by political maneuvering or manipulation by any minority party that fears it can't win. Violence and more terrorism may be part of the pre-election cycle. The United States and its European allies need to support Lebanon and protect the upcoming presidential elections from foreign intimidation, so that a freely elected president can consolidate Lebanese sovereignty, protect Lebanon from regional conflict, and secure Lebanon's fragile democracy.
The Commentary Week In Review draws from links aggregated every weekday morning in WPR's Media Roundup, which you can receive by email for free by registering now.