Ins and outs of a China courtship

Among United States-led like-minded alliances, a nascent China policy position has been formulated based on the idea of "international socialization" [1]. The idea is to enmesh states in a compound network structured by international organizations, conventions and norms. Accordingly, the process of socialization will push China to comply with the normative values of the international society.

For countries like the United States, an "internationally socialized" China has become a necessity for at least two reasons. First, international norms constraining any potential irrational behavior of this rising power will ease the threat perceptions emanating from its rise. Second, engaging China - rather than isolating it - in the near term may be more constructive and plausible to ensure greater transparency of a regional hegemony. The propositions reflect, undeniably, the universal anxieties over China's emerging threats and the uncertainty that its rise poses to regional and international regimes.

This "taming China's rise" strategy, however, overlooks the People's Republic of China's (PRC) "agency" of influencing world politics. Even though China evinces its appreciation of multilateralism, what really concerns China is not the matter of its "internationalization" to the status quo, but ways to improve Beijing's international reputation while securing its national interests. Beijing has been more practical in making strategic arrangements with partners and more flexible in attracting international supporters [2]. New policy initiatives such as "smile diplomacy" (weisiao waijiaou), "public diplomacy" (gonggong waijiaou), and "good neighbor diplomacy" (mulin waijiaou) have been instrumental in Beijing's pursuit of a benign hegemony. These initiatives have one thing in common: a sophisticated use of soft power resources.

Take China-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) relations, for instance: China and ASEAN established official links since 1991. For China, ASEAN is a close neighbor and encompasses a strategically important region for China's national security. ASEAN also serves as an ideal platform for China's participation in East Asian international politics, while China provides ASEAN states' an option to hedge its dependence on the United States and Japan [3]. This relationship had all the trappings of a win-win partnership.

Although ASEAN has been long aware of the possibility for China's potential dominance over regional issues, most of its members believe that a regional socialization process is capable of regulating this rising power [4]. Following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, however, it has become increasingly difficult for ASEAN states to resist China's overwhelming influence in economic assistance and soft power. Moreover, in recent years, most ASEAN states have been assuaged by Beijing's assertion of "peaceful ascendancy" and its image as an amiable supporter [5].

Soft power strategies
Soft power is an art of persuasion - and Chinese wielding of soft power has expanded its Western definition as well as extended its scope. Since the 1990s, China had advanced its relations with ASEAN states in fields of foreign aid, trade, finance, infrastructure, business, labor, environment, development as well as tourism. China's strategies for soft power diplomacy are intricate and comprehensive.

Beijing's soft power diplomacy can be broken up in three levels: first, establish solid political and fiscal connections with Southeast Asian governments via increasing foreign aid; second, explore a comprehensive cooperative framework through FTA-plus plans; third, enhance cultural attractiveness and promote pro-China understanding among ASEAN states through quasi-governmental projects. Foreign aid, comprehensive economic networking and cultural transmission form the core of its soft power resources.

China's transformation from a development aid recipient to a bilateral donor is a recent development and a significant mark of accomplishment for a nation of 1.3 billion people. According to Chinese official statistics, its annual aid figure is US$970 million, but the real number is probably more [6]. In Southeast Asia, the sum of Chinese foreign aid has surpassed the amount of the United States. For example, in 2002, China's aid to Indonesia was double that of the United States. In 2006, China's aid to the Philippines was four times that of the United States, while the amount to Laos was three times the US aid [7].

Most of this financial assistance contributes to local infrastructure and capacity-building programs. More recently, Beijing provided over $10 million to the government of Burma to assist regional reconstruction in areas that were devastated by Cyclone Nargis in 2008 [8]. Through foreign aid, China has set itself up as a reliable partner of its Southeast Asian neighbors. On the other hand, this government aid has facilitated Chinese state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) in commercial navigation within Southeast Asia, such as the exploration of Indonesian natural gas reserves, the investing in infrastructure in the Philippines, and the establishment of transportation links through Cambodia and Thailand to Singapore [9]. Ostensibly, these projects, based on Beijing's guideline of "going out", seem to align with local economic and developmental needs, but the lack of transparency casts a cloud over China's underlying motives as its geo-political and geo-economic interests expand.

Co-prosperity or economic mercantilism? A comprehensive economic network is another soft power resource of China since the substance of China-ASEAN relations is mainly based on trade. For ASEAN states, China is regarded not only as the center of economic gravity but a potential market with business opportunities as well. Therefore, China leverages its comparative advantage by employing economic diplomacy with soft power resources to formulate a multilateral framework based on free-trade agreements.

Beijing attempts to chart a win-win partnership based on the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (FTA) for the purpose of easing regional anxieties about the intensified competition in the export market (ie high-valued manufacturing goods) [10], and foreign direct investments. In 2007, the GDP of the China-ASEAN FTA has exceeded $2 trillion while its total trade figure was more than $200 billion. According to China's official statistics, from January to September 2008, bilateral trade between China and ASEAN has reached $180 billion, an increase of 23% compared to last year. These large numbers are used by Beijing to demonstrate China's crucial role in regional integration.

China's economic diplomacy toward ASEAN is highly sophisticated. It straddles business investment, tourism and new development initiatives. Within the business realm, expanding China's business network is correspondent to Beijing's economic and strategic interests in Southeast Asia. In October 2008, China held the 5th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business & Investment Summit, fruitfully inviting 1,154 ASEAN-based companies to participate in the exhibition, signing 1,372 investment agreements, and attracting a turnover of $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, people-to-people interactions among young leaders and business elites from ASEAN and China are conducted through 16 different forums and meetings.

Strategically, this annual China-ASEAN Expo promotes various business links with the goal of helping Chinese SOEs and small and medium enterprises invest in and cooperate with the Southeast Asian business community. This expo, as with other PRC government backed initiatives, is very important for Beijing's soft power diplomacy. By linking with local business in Southeast Asia, these bottom-up efforts have successfully drawn more attention from ASEAN states, promoted China as a window of commercial opportunities and expanded Beijing's sphere of economic influence in the ASEAN markets.

Besides business and investment, promoting tourism is another way to bolster Chinese soft power. In the 1980s, there were only tens of thousands of Chinese (per year) traveling to Southeast Asia. However, China's rapid economic growth has resulted in more than 15 million arrivals/per year in the ASEAN region (especially in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia) during the 2000s. Over the last decade this figure has experienced an annual growth of 30%. In 2007, there were 3.4 million Chinese tourists visiting the ASEAN region, a number that, for the first time, has surpassed the amount of Japanese tourists [11].

Although such a rapid influx of Chinese tourists has created problems for ASEAN, the increasing amount of voyagers represent capital flows which have become important income sources to the region. Moreover, a flourishing tourist industry will provide a sound basis for ongoing projects such as the Open Sky Initiative, ASEAN Common Area, and ASEAN Cruise Tourism. For China, its activism in tourism cooperation seems to create a win-win situation of co-development.

Currently, several China-ASEAN cooperative programs are proceeding. For example, an ASEAN-China Center for Trade, Investment and Tourism promotion is currently being negotiated and will be established in the near future [12]. This center is expected to work within the current ASEAN+3 track in order to upgrade the quality and collaboration of tourism. Otherwise, initiatives of cultural and eco-tourism are emerging domains of further cooperation. In the region of the Mekong River basin, for instance, China says that it will comply with ASEAN states in the project of ADB-GMS-Xishuangbanna Biodiversity Conservation Corridors. This corridor project will connect nine ecological zones scattered in the Indochina Peninsula to ensure economic, cultural and environmental development in a sustainable manner. Beijing, having abundant economic and political resources in hand, keeps reminding Indochinese states of its importance in shaping the network of the eco-tour complex.

As bilateral relations progress and recession in the advanced economies elongates, ASEAN states will need more Chinese participation in its economic development. Take Singapore for instance: Singapore has worked upon an "eco-city" project with China since 2007. This ongoing project aims to build a modern town in Tianjin based on the idea of ecological sustainability. This new initiative represents an integral plan of economic, environmental and investment collaboration for both sides.

For Singapore, this joint project will both gain considerable profits and consolidate political partnership with China. For Beijing, the Singaporean experience in economic advancement is of particular interest to its enthusiastic investment in sub-regional economic zones. The increasing amount of similar proposals not only accounts for a closer relationship between China and the ASEAN region, but also illustrates China's practice of "economic first" approach which integrates geo-economic strategy and domestic needs.

In 2008, the global financial crisis caused, in part, by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis has resulted in financial and market turmoil in Asia. Leaders from ASEAN states such as Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines have called upon China to invest more in ASEAN to stabilize the economic growth of the region. Such appeals from ASEAN states signify that a rising China has been regarded as a promising land of many economic opportunities.

Whether Beijing can guide this regional bloc through the global financial tsunami is still in question, but the demand from ASEAN, nevertheless, delineates that one cannot overlook the growing influence of China's soft power in Southeast Asia.

Soft power core
For China, the core of soft power is the promotion of Chinese culture and language. Since 2004, China has built more than 295 "Confucius Institutes" in 78 countries. A total of 500 will be established before 2010. Just in Southeast Asia, there are 21 Confucius Institutes providing language courses. Thirteen of these institutes are located in Thailand, with others scattered throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Philippines, and Singapore [13]. These institutes perform as sites for cultural transmission, intercultural exchange, and Chinese learning, thereby enhancing China's soft power capabilities.

Specifically, the overseas Confucius Institutes have at least two purposes. For educational ones, the institute has a function similar to that of Alliance Fran็aise, Goethe-Institute, British Council, and Insituto Cervante, which mainly deal with language and culture learning. Although Beijing carefully heralds that the institute operates as a non-profit and non-governmental organization, its principle and budget are guided and sponsored by "the Office of Chinese Language Council International" affiliated with the PRC's Ministry of Education. Such an orientation would naturally draw the association with the underlying strategic implication of Confucius Institutes, that is, an attempt to promote Chinese culture and thereby increase China's soft power influence. Some thinkers have referred to such a policy as "cultural imperialism" [14].

In terms of cultural imperialism, a great power will both employ its cultural commodity to exploit an economic market, and aim to reconstruct a popular culture in pursuit of ideological hegemony. Undoubtedly, the statement reminds us of the US foreign policy since the 1950s. The US government advocated public diplomacy by the United States Information Agency (USIA). The USIA exerted influence on information sharing and made efforts in broadening dialogues between the US and the rest of the world. Moreover, it has sponsored exchange programs, such as the Fulbright Scholarship, to nurture overseas grantees with American cultures and values.

Thus, public diplomacy and cultural promotion is another mission of the Confucian Institutes. There are at least three kinds of soft power resources employed. First, the very notion of Confucius Institute is to nurture a worldwide cordial atmosphere which favors Chinese learning. Second, this instrumental appeal for language learning will shape a popular culture characterized by Chinese art, cinema, cuisine, fashion and lifestyle. The pop culture itself may forge a sensational pro-China ambiance (ie the fervor with Chinese language learning, with supporting the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, etc) and reinforce the influence of Chinese soft power.

The institute also provides the "Chinese Bridge Fund," sponsoring the college student exchange program and supporting the research and development of overseas Chinese education. These funding programs and activities will intensify Beijing's international cultural attractiveness and magnify its influence of soft power at the grassroots level. Third, since 2004, China has dispatched more than 2,000 volunteers and teachers in 35 countries to work on Chinese education abroad, inclusive of ASEAN states such as Indonesia, Lao, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam [15]. These "civil diplomats" become vital human resources in wielding cultural and social influence in the region.

Beijing has continually reiterated the politically neutral standing of the Confucius Institutes. However, political and ideological strings continue to remain evident in organizational governance, relevant activities and publications. For example, the grantees of the "Chinese Bridge Fund" may reflect Beijing's strategic consideration based on national interests. In addition, the disposition of 21 Confucius Institutes and hundreds of volunteers in Southeast Asia are also decided in accordance with cultural intimacy and political amity. China has made great efforts to project cultural transmission to its neighbors in Southeast Asia in order to increase China's centrality in this region. It is plausible that the "China Fervor" intensified by the Confucius Institutes and relevant projects will continue to lay the solid foundation for the perception of a "benign China" and foster an even closer relationship between China and ASEAN states.

Conclusion
The discussion above unveils China's sophisticated soft power diplomacy toward Southeast Asia. Beijing's non-military inducement to ASEAN states, encompassing comprehensive cooperation and collaboration between different sectors and policy areas, seems efficacious. By providing foreign aid, Chinese government has maintained its indispensable leadership in cooperating with Indonesia, Philippines, and Laos. In addition to assistance aid, China's economic foreign policy with the help of the Chinese business community has triggered a large scale economic and market integration with ASEAN strengthening China's importance in this region. More critically, the Confucius Institutes and thousands of language teachers demonstrate Beijing's flexible cultural diplomacy of promoting Chinese social and cultural values to its southeast neighbors.

Carefully employing these soft power resources, China will obtain more policy choices to engage with ASEAN and its members, develop more channels of communication with Southeast Asian people, and assiduously participate in various issue-areas of regional affairs without sacrificing its economic and political interests. China is no longer a "clumsy elephant" to its southeast neighbors, but an "agile dragon" in the quest for restoring its regional hegemony.

Notes
1. Alastair Iain Johnston, "Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory," in G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, eds., International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p 110.
2. As Dominic Ziegler argues, the main concern of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is to secure peaceful development of China which needs stable relations with its neighbor states. Without achieving these objectives, the legitimacy of CCP will be questioned, see Dominic Ziegler, "Asia's Great Game: ‘Soft' Power Counts for More Than Hard," The Insight Bureau, No. 16 (2007).
3. Herman Joseph S Kraft, "Japan and the United States in ASEAN-China Relations," in Saw Swee-Hock, Sheng Lijun, and Chin Kin Wah, eds, ASEAN-China Relations: Realities and Prospects (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), pp 90-109.
4. S D Muni, "China's Strategic Engagement with the New ASEAN," IDSS Monoraph, No. 2, (2002), p 17; Alastair Iain Johnston, ibid, p 110.
5. Eric Teo Chu Cheow, "ASEAN+3: The Roles of ASEAN and China," in Saw Swee-Hock, Sheng Lijun, and Chin Kin Wan, eds., ASEAN-China Relations: Realities and Prospects (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), pp 61-63.
6. Thomas Lum et al, "Comparing Global Influence: China's and US Diplomacy, Foreign Aid, Trade, and Investment in the Developing World," CRS Report for Congress (2008), p 33.
7. Joshua Kurlantzick, "China's Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Policy Brief, No 47 (2006), p 3.
8. Pang Zhongying, "Playing By the Rules? China's Growing Global Role," Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, (2008).
9. Elizabeth Economy, "China's Rise in Southeast Asia: Implications for Japan and the United States," The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, (2005).
10. Rahul Sen and Sanchita Basu Das, "ASEAN's FTA Negotiations with Dialogue Partners Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses in Business Opportunities," in Dennis Hew, ed, Brick by Brick: The Building of an ASEAN Economic Community (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), pp 186-187.
11. www.aseansec.org/Stat/Table29.pdf (accessed on 2008/11/18).
12. www.aseansec.org/21346.htm (accessed on 2008/11/13).
13. www.hanban.edu.cn/en_hanban/kzxy_list.php (accessed on 2008/11/13). 14. A recent discussion on China's advocacy of Chinese langue, see Sheng Ding and Robert A. Saunders, "Talking Up China: An Analysis of China's Rising Cultural Power and the Global Promotion of the Chinese Language," East Asia: An International Journal, Vol 23, No 2, (2006), pp 3-33.
15. www.hanban.edu.cn/en_hanban/content.php (accessed on 2008/11/13).

(This article first appeared in The Jamestown Foundation. Used with permission.)

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Author: H H Michael Hsiao and Alan Yang
Original Source: Asia Times
Date Published: Dec 4, 2008
Web Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JL04Ae03.html
Date Accessed Online: 2008-12-04

Cut Staff, or Cut Salaries?

"Raise pay? Impossible!" Zhang Qiang (pseudonym), who runs a large chemical business in Yantai, Shandong province, told the Economic Observer.

A sharp decline in export orders were forcing him to make the hard choice between cutting staff or compensation.

His plight was not unique: An EO investigation revealed that the overwhelming majority of Chinese firms were facing pressure to reduce their labor costs as a result of the global economic slide.


Nineteen years ago, Mr. Zhang resigned from his engineering post at a State-owned chemical company to set up a bleaching powder company in Shandong. His company's assets recently exceeded one billion yuan, and his products can be found in markets in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Europe and the US.

But Zhang said the pressure had lately reached unprecedented levels. "The main oversea clients have either gone broke or slash their orders, which is a big blow to our sales performance," said Mr Zhang, adding that his total export orders have already declined by nearly 35%.

He said that only when absolutely necessary he would cut salaries, starting with top managers down to the production line. "If I started with the production line wages first, it would affect morale too much and hurt product quality and safety."

The EO learned that the same trend was also manifesting itself in private smelter, cement, textile, logistics, construction and real estate industries.

"Most chemical fertilizer, plastics and other petrochemical-concerned industries are facing the same ordeal. Under such conditions, it’s not easy for companies to retain staff," Feng Shiliang, vice-general secretary of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, told the EO.

State-owned companies are also feeling the pressure.
Shanxi Yangchang Petroleum Group, a state-owned oil firm in Shanxi province, recently published a salary cut scheme according to one staff member who wishes to remain anonymous.

That staff member's salary was reduced by a few dozen yuan per month. He told EO that compared with other departments, he was much luckier, as salaries for staff in the Group's sale department were slashed by an average of 500 yuan per month.

Wuhan Iron and Steel Group, also a state-owned enterprise, cut salaries between 15% and 50% in order to reduce costs by 2.5 billion yuan in the fourth quarter.

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Author: Li Ping Kang Yi
Original Source: Economic Observer
Date Published: Dec 1 2008
Web Source: http://www.eeo.com.cn/ens//Industry/2008/12/03/122365.shtml
Date Accessed Online: 2008-12-04

China’s six-to-one advantage over the US

America outspends China on defense by a margin of more than six to one, the Pentagon estimates. [1] In another strategic dimension, though, China already holds a six-to-one advantage over the United States. Thirty-six million Chinese children study piano today, compared to only 6 million in the United States.[2] The numbers understate the difference, for musical study in China is more demanding.

It must be a conspiracy. Chinese parents are selling plasma-screen TVs to America, and saving their wages to buy their kids pianos - making American kids stupider and Chinese kids smarter. Watch out, Americans - a generation from now, your kid is going to fetch coffee for a Chinese boss. That is a bit of an exaggeration, of course - some of the bosses will be Indian. Americans really, really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pike. The present shift in intellectual capital in favor of the East has no precedent in world history.

"Chinese parents urge their children to excel at instrumental music with the same ferocity that American parents [urge] theirs to perform well in soccer or Little League,” wrote Jennifer Lin in the Philadelphia Inquirer June 8 in an article entitled China's 'piano fever'.

The world’s largest country is well along the way to forming an intellectual elite on a scale that the world has never seen, and against which nothing in today’s world - surely not the inbred products of the Ivy League puppy mills - can compete. Few of its piano students will earn a living at the keyboard, to be sure, but many of the 36 million will become much better scientists, engineers, physicians, businessmen and military officers.

Whether this will happen for good, evil or neither is impossible to predict. Classical music is beautiful, but it is not necessarily good. Germany had the world’s best musicians in 1939, but put them in service of an evil cause, as can be seen in this Nazi propaganda newsreel of Germany’s best conductor, Wilhelm Furtwangler, performing for weapons-industry workers under a giant swastika. It is encouraging that China has even more Christian converts than pianists (Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia Asia Times Online, August 7, 2007.)

There is little doubt that classical music produces better minds, and promotes success in other fields. Academic studies show that music lessons raise the IQs of six-year-olds.[3] Elite American families still nudge their children toward musical study. At Brearley, New York’s most exclusive girl’s school, playing in the orchestra is a requirement. American medical schools accept more undergraduates who majored in music than any other discipline (excepting pre-med).

Any activity that requires discipline and deferred gratification benefits children, but classical music does more than sports or crafts. Playing tennis at a high level requires great concentration, but nothing like the concentration required to perform the major repertoire of classical music. Perhaps the only pursuit with comparable benefits is the study of classical languages. It is not just concentration as such, but its content that makes classical music such a formative tool. Music, contrary to a common misconception, does not foster mathematical ability, although individuals with a talent for one often show aptitude for the other.

Western classical music does something that mathematics and physics cannot: it allows us to play with time itself. It is a commonplace that our perception of time depends upon the pace of events (so that time in graduate school seems to proceed slower than time in prison). Classical music, though, gives the composer the tools to extend or elide time in the service of beauty and irony.

Take any popular song and compare it to any aria by the Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835), for example. Bellini expands and elides musical phrases, so that the musical content breathes in a different time frame than the verse. This seems simple but takes great skill to accomplish. In fact, Bellini was one of Frederic Chopin’s favorite composers. Far more complex is Mozart, who writes what seems to be an irregular phrase structure on the surface, which transforms a hidden regularity. Mozart keeps the listener continuously off-balance; he is an imp and trickster, the patron saint of practical jokes, as it were.

Few musicians nowadays get Mozart's jokes, but one of them is China's most famous musician, Lang Lang. The 26-year-old virtuoso has an undeserved reputation for mugging. "Like a hammy actor," wrote New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini on November 27, Lang Lang "has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations".

Another way to look at the matter is that Lang Lang gets the joke, and Tommasini does not. Deadpan seriousness is a tradition among Western performers (the great pianist and teacher Josef Hoffman told his students to evoke the memory of emotion rather than emotion itself). But whatever makes Lang Lang so beloved among audiences, in a field where thousands of other pianists evince perfect technique, surely includes his own enjoyment of what he does. He is not the greatest interpreter of Mozart, surely no Murray Perahia or Radu Lupu. But he is an engaging personality whose connection to the music is manifest.

A case in point is Lang's reading of Mozart's C Minor Concerto K 491, with Long Yu conducting the China Philharmonic, available on Youtube). This work presents a famously enigmatic theme that immediately chases itself into a chromatic sequence, only to be interrupted by yet another chromatic sequence in a different voice, before it stumbles into a concluding cadence. Underneath this, the informed listener senses, there must lurk the familiar four-bar phrase of popular music, but Mozart never once spells this out. He leaves us off-balance at every point. It is a romping-ground for musical surprise, an enchanted forest of tricks and track-backs in which the true path always is obscure.

When the Mozart C Minor Concerto is performed properly, there shouldn't be a dry seat in the house. In the version available at Youtube, Lang Lang smiles and sometimes grimaces in appreciation of Mozart's jokes. One may fault him for losing the comedian's dead-pan, but surely that is preferable to not getting the jokes at all. The pianist is beset by a sense of wonder at Mozart. That is a very good thing, because the Chinese nation that looks to Lang Lang as one of its heroes is learning the high culture of the West with a collective sense of wonder.

Something more than the mental mechanics of classical music makes this decisive for China. In classical music, China has embraced the least Chinese, and the most explicitly Western, of all art forms. Even the best Chinese musicians still depend on Western mentors. Lang Lang may be a star, but in some respects he remains an apprentice in the pantheon of Western musicians. The Chinese, in some ways the most arrogant of peoples, can elicit a deadly kind of humility in matters of learning. Their eclecticism befits an empire that is determined to succeed, as opposed to a mere nation that needs to console itself by sticking to its supposed cultural roots. Great empires transcend national culture and naturalize the culture they require.

China's commitment to classical music will have effects that are at once too subtle and too powerful to categorize easily. It is not that classical music helps to train good scientists, for example. Music and the sciences are different disciplines to begin with. Mathematicians who learn music, though, are more likely to cast an ironic eye upon their craft, and look for flaws and opportunity in its cracks and crannies. It is not Mozart's sense of order, but his sense of irony that refines the mind of the mathematician. Mozart goes unerringly toward what is not mathematical in music, but instead is asymmetrical, strange and ambiguous. He can be inspiring, or frightening. Years of instrumental practice, knowledge of repertoire and study of theory are necessary to approach this sort of genius.

It is hard to explain what is important about something that most people never will understand. That is what makes America's music gap with China so difficult to remedy. Except in a vague way, one cannot explain the uniqueness of Western classical music to non-musicians, and America is governed not by musicians, but by sports fans (the lone recent exception was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is both). Hearing music is a skill somewhat like understanding a foreign language, and to appreciate music is like getting jokes told in a foreign language. Rare is the listener who can do this without having been reared in the language.

American musical education remains the best in the world, the legacy of the European refugees who staffed the great conservatories, and the best Asian musicians come to America to study. Thirty to 40% of students at the top schools are Asian, and another 20 to 30% are Eastern European (or Israeli). There are few Americans or Western Europeans among the best instrumentalists. According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don't have the discipline to practice eight hours a day.

As a practical matter, though, American policy-makers might think about it this way. Until now, the West has tended to dismiss China's scientists as imitators rather than originators. As a practical matter, China had little incentive to innovate; an emerging economy does not have to re-invent the wheel, or the Volkswagen, for that matter.

This was not true in the remote past, of course. China invented the clock, the magnetic compass, the printing press, geared machines, gunpowder, and the other technologies that began the industrial revolution, long before the West. When it comes time to develop the next generation of anti-missile radar, or electric car batteries, Chinese originality may assert itself once again. Chinese who have mastered the most elevated as well as the most characteristically Western forms of high culture will also think with originality. Anyone who doubts this should watch Lang Lang's performance of the Mozart C Minor Concerto once again.

Notes

[1] Military budget of the People's Republic of China, Wikipedia.
[2] According to the Bluebook of Pianos.
[3] See Psychological Science, Music Lessons Enhance IQ.


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Author: Spengler
Original Source: Asia Times
Date Published: Dec 2, 2008
Web Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JL02Ad01.html
Date Accessed Online: 2008-12-02

Patterns: Better Health for Religiously Observant

Many people believe that going to religious services may be good for the afterlife. But researchers have found that it may not be so bad in the here and now.

A new study, which followed the health of more than 90,000 women over an average of more than seven years each, found that those who attended services were one-fifth less likely to die than those who did not.

The subject has been controversial, and the authors of the study, which appears in Psychology & Health, were at pains not to appear to be making a link between religion itself and health.

“I don’t want to go beyond what the facts are showing us, and I want to be cautious,” said the lead author of the study, Eliezer Schnall of Yeshiva University.

Whatever the explanation, the researchers found a significant difference over the course of the study in the death rate of women who reported attending the services of Christian, Jewish and other faiths at least once a week.

The researchers used information from the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-term study looking at women 50 to 79 at 40 locations around the United States.

The researchers also looked to see if religious observance played a role in reducing heart disease. Though the findings did not support that, they did show a lower rate of death from all causes.

The reason is not clear, although earlier studies have suggested that people who are part of strong social networks tend to be healthier. Some religious people may also be more likely to refrain from tobacco or alcohol.

Those who are moved by the findings to make their way to church, temple or mosque should note that the researchers did not provide the answer to one question: which religion had the healthiest members.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 28, 2008
A report in the Vital Signs column on Tuesday about a study of religious observance and health misstated the name of the journal that published the study. It is Psychology & Health, not Psychology.
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Author: ERIC NAGOURNEY
Original Source: New York Times
Date Published: November 25, 2008
Web Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/research/25patterns.html
Date Accessed Online: 2008-11-03

A 'Wealth Effect' in Reverse

The stock market is nothing if not a psychological barometer. The present signal is unmistakable: fear. It's not just that the market has dropped by more than half; that decline parallels some previous post-World War II bear markets (48 percent in 1973-74 and 49 percent in 2000-02). More revealing are the day-to-day movements. From mid-September to Nov. 21, there were 50 trading days; on 25, the market moved 4 percent or more (16 down, nine up), reports Wilshire Associates. In the previous 25 years, there were just 25 daily moves of 4 percent or more. We've gone from one a year to one every other day.

The wild stock swings confirm the palpable fear and uncertainty. On average, households expect to spend only $418 on holiday gifts this year, down 11 percent from last year's $471, reports the Conference Board. Unemployment remains well below the average peak of post-World War II recessions (7.6 percent). What terrifies Americans is the prospect that the slump will become much worse than average -- and that the government has lost control of events.

This last occurred in 1979 and 1980, when inflation reached 13 percent and government seemed incapable of suppressing it. No one knew what might happen. By 1980, interest rates on 30-year mortgages neared 13 percent. Would inflation go to 15 or 20 percent? (The brutal 1981-82 recession ended the high inflation.) There is a comparable foreboding today. Perhaps Barack Obama will change that, but so far, government officials, business leaders and economists seem overwhelmed. They're constantly playing catch-up and losing. Americans feel unprotected against accumulating misfortune.

The hyper-anxiety is not irrational pessimism, though it may prove unfounded. Every major episode of this crisis -- from Bear Stearns's failure to General Motors' possible bankruptcy -- has come as a surprise. Similarly, the crisis's three main causes have repeatedly been underestimated: the burst housing "bubble"; fragile financial institutions; and a reversal of the "wealth effect." Of these, the last is least recognized.

The "wealth effect" refers to the tendency of people to adjust their spending as their wealth -- concentrated heavily in housing and stocks -- changes. When wealth rises, spending strengthens; when wealth falls, spending weakens. For the past quarter-century, higher stock prices and home values propelled the economy forward by inducing Americans to spend more of their incomes and to borrow more. In 1982, the personal saving rate was 11 percent of disposable income; by 2006, it was almost zero. The lowered saving rate added about $1 trillion annually to consumer spending -- more shoes, laptops, books -- out of a total of about $10 trillion.

But now the wealth effect is reversing. As stock and home values drop, Americans are scrambling to increase savings and curb spending. The plausible math is daunting. Since September 2007, Americans' personal wealth has dropped about $9 trillion, says economist Nigel Gault of IHS Global Insight. A common estimate is that every dollar's change in wealth causes people to change their spending by 5 cents. If so, the hit to consumer spending would be $450 billion ($9 trillion times .05). Gault thinks the effect would occur over several years.

Even this might be too optimistic. Everywhere, financial commentators urge "belt tightening" and more thrift. If the swing toward saving is too sharp, consumer spending wouldn't just weaken; it would collapse. Vehicle sales have already plunged. In 2005, they totaled almost 17 million; Global Insight's 2009 projection is 12.2 million. And these problems feed on each other. Lower consumer spending depresses profits and stock prices, which corrodes confidence, further dampens spending, raises unemployment and increases loan defaults. Credit card losses could be the next big blow to financial institutions.

The case for a sizable economic "stimulus" package is that it would temporarily compensate for the erosion of consumer spending. But if the positive "wealth effect" is now giving way to a lasting negative or neutral "wealth effect" -- as people try to replenish savings and offset lost wealth -- then even a recovery would be sluggish. A new source of demand is needed to sustain faster growth. An obvious solution is for high-saving Asian countries, led by China, to consume and spend more so that their imports increase. Whether they have the political capacity to reduce their dependence on export-led growth is unclear.

The scary words "depression" and "deflation" are bandied about because an economic free fall seems possible, even if it is unlikely. With time, economic slumps correct themselves as borrowers repay debts, surplus inventories are sold, industries consolidate and government policies promote recovery. They may now. But the mechanics of this cycle are sufficiently different from any since World War II as to raise doubts. Americans are less upset by hardships they've experienced than by those they imagine.

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Author: Robert J. Samuelson
Original Source: Wall Street Journal
Date Published:
November 25, 2008
Web Source: http://wsjofharryliuhao.blogspot.com/2008/11/wealth-effect-in-reverse.html
Date Accessed Online: 2008-11-30