South Korea, Climate, Imperialism

While reading about how China's hegemony could be influential in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I discovered that I was probably looking at the wrong spot. Then I decided to look at South Korea. Here are my notes.

The world context

First a couple of reminders from my readings on China.

Biden builds on the tension created by Trump, towards a new cold war on China. The plan is not to contain but to constrain it, and then dissolve through internal conflicts (Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong). The US discourse is "rules-based international order" while China insists on the "UN-based order of sovereign states". *

For the US, two Koreas is better than a unified Korea because it can militarize one and put defense missile units (THAAD) in the region without neighboring China. For this, the US needs controlled tension between the two Koreas. *  

History of South Korea

The border between China and Korea is intact since 11th century. As Korea was under Japanese rule from 1910 until 1945, it was pulled into World War II, which then resulted in two Koreas. During the Korean war (1950-53), around 75% of all productive capacity was destroyed and around 10% of the population (2 million people) was killed. *

South Korea is one of the few countries where "catching-up development" worked. With active US support and under extremely dictatorial regimes (they count a total of 6 republics, interrupted by coups *), the state invested in education and manufacture, and then shifted to high-value technological manufacture. * This they did by direct, consistent state support to specific, family-owned conglomerates, called chaebols.

Economy of South Korea

South Korea today has a population of 50 million people (compared with 25 million in North Korea). It has the world's 10th largest GDP, ranks 3rd in automobile production and 1st in ship production. (Seoul alone has 10 million inhabitants and is the world's 4th largest metropolitan economy.)

The biggest chaebols, Samsung, Hyundai, LG and SK make up more than half of the sales. There are some 20 more chaebols, and they all together control two thirds of the economy. There are no small or medium-sized enterprises as chaebols do not leave space for such a thing.

Around 70% of university graduates apply to chaebols, which have their own entrance exams a couple of times a year, for which there are specific preparatory classes.

In courts, there is an informal "chaebol negotiation rule", which is that prison-time is commuted to probation (such as the reduction of their three-years jail-time due to massive scandals of tax evasion to five-years probation).

In short, the economy is mostly chaebols, which are - for all practical purposes - untouchable. * *

Current social situation of South Korea

After a center-left government under Moon, in March 2022 the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol won presidential elections. * This is interpreted as a shift to a hard-line position on North Korea as well as closer ties with the US. (I am following this. *) Yoon also ran a bold anti-feminist campaign.

 

Major social issues are increasing housing prices * and youth unemployment.*  

These are accompanied by a more structural issue: incredibly low birth rates. The expected babies per South Korean woman fell to 0.84 in 2020. * This puts pressure on social security and the state budget. The Moon government was experimenting with universal basic income *, while IMF suggests the usual spending cuts of public services and increased retirement age, which Yoon may follow. * 

Climate policy in South Korea

The direct impacts of climate change are heatwaves, increased rainfall and the sea level rise, together with air pollution.

The Moon administration had launched the Korea's Green New Deal which promised 650 thousand green jobs and around €50 billion in investments, in construction, renewable energy and mobility. The plan did not have emission cuts and carbon neutrality targets, so it's a green growth plan rather than a transition plan. * * And we can verify it with the news of the public energy company KEPCO's plan to build coal power plants in Indonesia. * 

In COP-26 in Glasgow, the government announced a target to reduce emissions by 40% below 2018 levels by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

It's unclear what would happen to the GND under Yoon administration.

The overall rating of South Korean climate policy is "highly insufficient", leading us to a 4ºC warming. *

In the Global Climate Strike in September 2019, around 5.000 protesters took the streets in Seoul. * In October 2021, Korean unions, led by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, staged a general strike across the country for workers’ rights and Just Transition. *

Summary of relevance

• South Korea will remain a geopolitical hot-spot of the tensions between the US and China.
• South Korea is crucial for the world economy, not only due to its size but also because of its strategic role in high-tech production.
  
• The conservative governmental history and the corporatist economy make social movement intervention harder.

 

China, Climate, Imperialism

There is a phenomenon I discovered rather recently that I call "whataboutChinaism". On any discussion on any political or economic topic, it's a kind of a moo-point where all previous discussion is supposed to become irrelevant because China is so big and everything else is so insignificant in comparison.

It's a very comfortable position because it implies that people outside of the Central Committee of CCP don't have to do anything about anything, ever.

I saw this with my own eyes during a presentation on a new airport near Lisbon being built by a French multinational. We were explaining that the project was a climate suicide, and someone in the audience mentioned China. Absolutely off-topic as it was, I managed to get it: the impotence culture feeding climate denial deep into our psyche.

Similar situations happened around conversations related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "What about China?", I was told, as if the EU had no influence on the matter at any point.

So I decided to read a bit on the subject (a total of twenty articles). Here are my notes.

Basics

China's "market socialism" is not state capitalism nor Keynesian. It's an extended NEP policy. *

China is transferring a greater amount of surplus-value to the core countries than it receives from the periphery (average labor terms of trade + balance of international labor transfer), even though it did establish an exploitative relationship with South Asia and Africa. Therefore, China is a semi-peripheral country. * 

China identifies as Global South and takes "peaceful coexistence" as an ideological stance. Therefore, it will not do political, social or military intervention to another sovereign state (didn't even send help against ISIS). On the other hand, it does have an economic hegemony plan: zero-interest loans for infrastructure, credits repayable in resources, direct investment, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. * The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), connected to the Belt and Road Initiative, is China's counter-hegemonic initiative to IMF and the World Bank. *

Current trends

Biden builds on the tension created by Trump, towards a new cold war on China. The plan is not to contain but to constrain it, and then dissolve through internal conflicts (Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong). The US discourse is "rules-based international order" while China insist on the "UN-based order of sovereign states". *

For the US, two Koreas is better than a unified Korea because it can militarize one and put defense missile units (THAAD) in on without neighboring China. For this, the US needs controlled tension between the two Koreas. * 

Ukraine crisis and Russia

To begin with, Russia does not classify as an imperialist country. 

• It has only 25 companies in the Forbes 2000 list, corresponding to 1,45% of total sales and less than 1% of collective assets. 
• Labor productivity (GDP per working hour) is 25.4, in comparison to EU=53.4 and US=69.9 , which means surplus-value does not flow towards Russia. 
• It ranks 15thin manufacturing, providing 1% of world output. Over 82% of its exports are raw materials, and it is 32th in exports of high-tech goods. 
• There is only one Russian bank in top 100 (and it ranks 66). There are zero Russian corporations on top 100 based on their investment abroad. Of financial and non-financial wealth in the world, the US has 31% share, China 14.4%, and Russia 0.7%. 
• No branch of Russian manufacturing is competitive on the international market except for the armaments industry. The US accounts for 34% of global military sales, Russia 22% . The recent yearly increase in Pentagon's budget was greater than the whole Russian military budget ($66B, 2017), which ranks 4th (after China and Saudi Arabia.) *

China and Russia are strongly allied but there is no military component to this currently, not even under discussion. * 

Seizure of Russian $300B foreign exchange reserves in the US, EU and UK may accelerate the running-away from dollar in the world. *

Climate policy

China has no absolute cap on emissions in its targets, consumes more than half of world coal and is building more coal plants. It started carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) in July 2021 but price is too low to be effective. * It installed 16.9 GW of offshore wind capacity in 2021 became world's number one with 26.4 GW total offshore wind capacity. * 

From 2019 to 2021, China increased its emissions by 750 Mt, more than offsetting the aggregate decline in the rest of the world of 570 Mt. *

The 14th five-year plan for the energy sector was launched in March 2022. It reasserts the role of coal to support renewable expansion. * Although this sounds strange to me, Chinese policy experts defend that the government is building more capacity on coal so that there would be enough energy security to deal with renewable variability. (China imports oil and gas.) So they say that coal capacity would increase but coal consumption would decrease. *