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. *

Balance sheet

 

Half way, says the poet. Doesn’t specify half way to what.

 

1 revolution. 1 coup. 2 casualties so far. Currently 2 active cases, of which 3 under intensive care.

 

Read not less than 1000 books, not counting Lucky Luke and Asterix. Life is an imitation of books. Good life is an imitation of good books. Good books are imitations of better books.

 

Have been intelligent enough to always surround myself with people more intelligent than me.

 

Haunted by regrets and mistakes that I did and will do.

 

Was told recently by a friend who sees me with a frequency of seven years that my look never changes. Answered that I change so fast that my look remains the same – this, in my head only; in real life, said it’s because of long curly hair that I always look young: dull enough an answer to be accepted at a coffee break stuck between skyscrapers.

 

Could have made money: didn’t. Could have made friends: did. Could have made love: didn’t know how to. Could have stopped saying could have: couldn’t.

 

Decided to make decisions. Don’t yet know which.

 

 

Hatırla

 

August 2021, Turkey

Thus we reach the end of our show. We’ll give a break for commercials before the next program.

 

Life is what you do while waiting for the skip-ad button to appear.

 

The forest fires swallowed entire villages, then moved on to a coal power plant as dessert. Yet it was still either terrorist groups, or else construction mafia opening up new areas, or else lack of airplanes, or else some broken glass. It was never the entire planet on fire. It was never that bad. Happily the news of fires were suddenly interrupted by news of flooding from three cities, which were for a change not due to terrorists but surely due to construction and bad city planning and dams. 80 people died but it wasn’t a climate crime. All of which was interrupted by a smoke coming from the forest fires in Greece. We then moved on to Afghan refugees, or else we could risk actually beginning to grasp the dimensions of the problem.

 

The best way to avoid a problem is to think about it just slightly less than the socially accepted minimum at a given moment.

 

We were born the same year. I judge we should be more or less the same age now. Told me about love and disappointment. Told me about despair and perspective. Told me about anger and depletion. Told me about effort and instability. Told me about loneliness and fear. In comparison to the emotional intelligence of most of them, I have the consciousness of an ant. So it’s an overstatement when I say I understood what they meant.

 

Did you ever give up on yourself? If I were a horse, I wouldn’t bet on me. If I were a rabbit, I wouldn’t bother reading the fortune paper I would pick for myself.

 

I want to ask if I have a right to remain silent. But I don’t know whom to address the question. 

 

Um dia de estado de emergência

Debaixo da minha cama estão pastas e caixas das minhas notas matemáticas, dum doutoramento desencaixado da minha vida, papelada duma inércia assumida. Centenas de folhas tornam-se hoje papéis de rascunho, rascunhos dum futuro que espero desesperadamente. Guardo ainda os meus favoritos, topologia diferencial e variedades suaves, que me ensinaram identificar beleza na clareza.

Dos onze anos de estudar matemática, cada vez mais pura e abstrata, levo comigo uma compreensão da importância do rigor no pensamento e na comunicação. Lembro-me da minha professora de física a inclinar a sua cabeça enquanto dizia “Not necessarily!”. O que uma definição diz e o que não diz, o que um teorema implica e o que não implica. Lembro-me dos meus amigos de sociologia a discutir militarismo depois da aula, e eu a entender muito pouco da conversa e a criar ainda mais confusão na conversa quando pedi esclarecimento das palavras e dos termos que estavam a usar. Lembro-me, ainda, dos espaços compact, countably compact, pre-compact, sequentially compact, limit point compact, paracompact, e pseudo-compact, como são todos diferentes mas alguns equivalentes em certas circunstâncias. Lembro-me de resolver muitos conflitos, simplesmente esclarecendo a comunicação entre as pessoas. Levo comigo uma disciplina mental que distingue brutalmente o que está a ser dito e o que não necessariamente. Deixo atrás uma profissão e uma boa parte da minha identidade, para criar uma outra que seja compatível com o que é preciso fazer aqui e agora.

Tenho um diário a que chamei Década Zero. Comecei a escrevê-lo no início de 2016, com um profundo luto e pânico face à lacuna entre a realidade social e a crise climática. Na primeira frase lê-se: “Com quem se vai fazer?” É um caderno que tem desabafos, críticas, auto-críticas, avaliações, previsões. Uma mistura de tudo e de nada, como todos os diários. Leio-o agora. Leio-o com medo, e meço as minhas incapacidades com as réguas dos futuros possíveis e impossíveis. Abro gavetas, busco mais réguas, colo-as uma depois da outra. O quarto fica coberto por réguas. As réguas agitam-se. As réguas do presente revoltam-se contra as réguas do passado. Levantam-se barricadas ao lado da cama. As réguas do passado usam gás lacrimogéneo. Todos – as réguas, a cama, a matemática e eu – começamos a chorar. O coro de choro cria um ruído insuportável e acorda o futuro. Ela entra no quarto a gritar. Nós, paramos. Ela diz que a nossa imaginação está cheia de pó e teias de arranhas. Abrimos as janelas para o ar circular. O futuro apanha frio e começa a espirrar. Ninguém sabe o que fazer a seguir. Convoca-se uma assembleia. A matemática e o futuro boicotam. Não há ordem de trabalhos. Ninguém facilita. Tudo fica cada vez mais difícil. Fecho o diário.

Inspiro. Espero. Expiro. O que falta é só tudo.

Vou para a cozinha. Tenho uma montanha de loiça acumulada. Os pratos e as colheres do jantar de ontem, a panela da sopa improvisada, os copos da noite anterior, todos cobertos de açúcar, de gordura, de molho, das minhas inseguranças e frustrações e falhas e faltas e derrotas e arrogâncias e desdéns que inundam o lavatório e o balcão e a cozinha inteira. Nado pela tralha toda e chego à casa de banho, para tomar um duche antes de começar o dia.

O que significa um estado de emergência climática para mim, pessoalmente?

Significa navegar à vela no meio dum furacão, sem qualquer experiência com veleiros, enjoado, em fuga dum fogo, com todos os meus amigos e todas as minhas amigas e toda minha família e todas as réguas e a cama e a matemática e a loiça a bordo, em busca duma terra que sei que existe mas que não sei onde fica. Em outras palavras, significa reavaliar todas as prioridades. Em outras palavras, significa procurar a coragem dentro do susto. Em outras palavras, significa imaginação ao poder.