PRUDENT CAUTIONS

from Marcus Noland who, in "The black hole of North Korea," reveals that what we think we know about the DPRK economy is most likely based on less than solid foundations. A couple of interesting snippets:

The most widely cited source on North Korean trade, the South Korean government agency KOTRA, carefully screens the mirror data for such obvious anomalies. But KOTRA excludes the North's trade with South Korea on the constitutional grounds that inter-Korean trade is domestic. Because of budget cuts, or a desire to downplay North Korea's Middle East connections, KOTRA also ignores trade with many Middle Eastern countries like Algeria and Saudi Arabia, both of which report trade with North Korea to the U.N. statistical agencies. As a result, KOTRA greatly exaggerates the prominence of the trade partners that it does record, with important geopolitical implications. The New York Times and the Washington Post, for example, have both reported that China accounts for about 80 percent of North Korea's trade. The actual figure is roughly half as much, which means North Korea is a lot less economically dependent on China than those figures imply.

...
Sadly, we don't even know how many North Koreans there are, how many serve in the armed forces, how many died in the famine, or how many have fled their country. For some purposes this is fine -- we can count their tanks even if we don't know how they pay for them. But for others -- how much aid should we provide, are sanctions likely to work, and ultimately, is time on our side or theirs -- we would be wise to ask the questions "what do we know" and "how do we know it" when formulating policy on North Korea.

The whole thing is worth a read.

NOW TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THINK

The homepage of the KCNA includes an interesting declaration (hat tip to NKNews):

"Anyone hurting the dignity of the DPRK supreme leadership will find no breathing spell in this land and sky"

(click to enlarge)

Consider yourself warned.

WOW!

Who knew that Vladimir Putin is all that stands between Russia and (if I am following this very entertaining video correctly) social dissolution and chaos, hyperinflation (and not very appetizing loaves of bread), domination by foreign business interests, domination by Western powers (U.S., France, and Germany), attacks by Islamic terrorists and separatists, and, my favorite, attacks by Asian powers, China and (if I saw the flag posted in the Russian Maritime Province correctly) Japan?!?

This makes me reconsider my perceptions of negative ads in the U.S.!

"HOW I'LL RESPOND TO CHINA'S RISING POWER"

If I found Mr. Li's analysis of China's superiority to be a bit simplistic and wanting, the same must be said of Mitt Romney's latest in the Wall Street JournalWhile an op-ed isn't necessarily the place for detailed nuance, this one doesn't even come close to being consistent or demonstrating any sort of clear path to get to Romney's stated goals. Examples:
--Blame Obama for the fiscal crisis and government debt but insist on greater military spending to counteract China's rising might.
--Criticize Obama for resorting to "empty pomp and ceremony" but promise to designate China a currency manipulator, an empty ceremonial declaration if there ever was one.
--Criticize the "pivot to Asia" but then promise even more pivoting.
--Raise the perennial (and very real) issue of human rights in China but provide no workable solution save from yelling at the Chinese about the issue.

I could go on but this will suffice for now.

Nearly every U.S. presidential candidate talks tough on China on the campaign trail but most find it prudent to be much more realistic when actually in office. One can only hope that a President Romney will do the same.

'WHY CHINA'S POLITICAL MODEL IS SUPERIOR"

is explained by Eric X. Li a venture capitalist from Shanghai in the New York Times.

Li engages in some pretty simplistic invocation of a monolithic "China" that can "see" things and move on a path predicated by "larger national ends" (who defines these ends? are the terms of this debate any less elite dominated than the money-dominated democracies that Li is so quick to castigate?) and can't avoid the temptation of comparing the relatively short-lived democracies of Greece and the West with what he sees as the broad unbroken continuity that is "China." Of course in such a comparison, the West comes off as "far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China’s dynasties." I expected him to trot out the Zhou Enlai "too soon to tell" canard next.

Nonetheless, Li raises some interesting questions and issues. He cogently points out some of the shortcomings of a representative system, particularly one in which money can wield so much power and in which all too many people clamor for benefits without cost. He also correctly notes that the Western faith in democracy as the be all and end all of human existence can hardly be said to be rooted in long-term experience. It may very well be the case that humans will look back in a century our two on our time as a brief, atypical one in which the Enlightenment-inspired democratic experiment turned out to be a short-lived success or perhaps even an out and out failure.

But at this point I remain unconvinced that the PRC's track record is any better of an indication of the "superior" model, whether one limits one focus to China alone or considers the issue more broadly. Li praises the stability and growth of the last two decades:

The resulting stability ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity that propelled China’s economy to its position as the second largest in the world.

Fair enough (and it should be noted that Li does acknowledge Tiananmen Square and appears to conclude that it was a high but justified price to pay for the ensuing stability and growth).

But Li, the putative Oriental who takes the long view, appears to have suffered from some short-term historical amnesia and neglects to consider the disastrous Great Leap Forward (which, if Frank Dikotter's recent book is to be considered, was even worse than we thought it was) or the Cultural Revolution. Where was the far-seeing, national-interest promoting Chinese nation during the early PRC? Perhaps 200+ dead in and around Tiananmen might be, in a cold realpolitik sort of way, an accetpable price to pay for the next two decades of growth and development. But forty million dying of famine? Not to mention hundreds of millions brutalized and dehumanized with almost nothing to show for it.

Many in the PRC (not to mention on the op-ed pages of the NYT) favor an authoritarian system that can make the tough decisions and get things done. Perhaps, but without the Enlightenment-based checks on the power of the state, the possibility of Mao-era madness seems much greater, at least to me.

My last, off the cuff, thought on this op-ed is the observation that Mr. Li surely feels much more secure and confident in his ability to publicly criticize the democratic system of the West without any fear of punishment or repercussion than he would if he were to level a similar criticism of his own system. If the marketplace of ideas has any relevance or salience in the world (and perhaps Li would dismiss this too as a parochial, fleeting Western chimera) then a system that accepts and even encourages disagreement, criticism, and dissent will likely end up faring better than its closed counterpart.

Time will tell.

CELL PHONES IN THE DPRK

Perhaps you might think that a totalitarian (or Stalinist, or despotic, or insert your favorite adjective here) regime such as North Korea's wouldn't tolerate difficult to control individual media devices like cell phones. Well, think again.

Smuggled mobiles have been used on Chinese networks near the border for years, but now business is booming for Koryolink, the North’s only official cellular network, based in the capital, Pyongyang.

The service—75%-owned by Orascom, an Egyptian firm, and 25%-owned by the North Korean state—has gone from 300,000 to 1m subscribers in 18 months.

Of course the state does try to limit the potentially liberating nature of cell phones:

Koryolink is a walled garden: users are not able to make or receive international calls, and there is no internet access. It would be hard to imagine that calls and text messages are not monitored. As in China, the network is even becoming a means by which the state disseminates propaganda. Rodong Shinmun, the government mouthpiece, sends out text messages that relay the latest news to phone subscribers.

North Korea will likely be an interesting case study for the ongoing debate about whether information/communication and the technology that increases one's access to it is inherently liberating or whether the same technologies can be used to monitor and control.

GLOBALIZATION

in action. Today's exhibit: Valentine's cards in India.

Interesting images.