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China street style
China moves to ban funky clothes
It’s been decades since China has felt the need to roll out new security laws, but in a post-COVID moment of sluggish economic growth, Chinese authorities are placing new emphasis on rules meant to keep people from rocking the boat. One proposed law in particular has drawn a big reaction across Chinese social media. Apparently, clothes really can hurt a nation’s feelings.
The draft of this law makes it a crime to wear, or force others to wear, clothing that “undermines the spirit or hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation.” Wearing clothes that authorities consider insufficiently Chinese could land you a 15 day jail sentence and a fine of the yuan equivalent of $680.
The first problem here is that there is no published description of what the new dress code demands, leaving citizens to guess what kind of tee-shirt, dress, or other clothing item might set off the alarm. Nor is it clear how police will decide whether the nation’s feelings have been hurt – and whether a young girl’s Korean boy band tee-shirt or a boy’s purple suit is the main culprit.
The larger problem is that the law signals yet again that the state neither knows nor cares what young people, those most likely to wear unconventional clothing, want. In a country where consumers have seen the value of the money in their pockets plunge to 16-year lows against the dollar, and where youth unemployment has surged to levels that persuaded authorities to stop publishing stats on the subject, new clothing restrictions that appear targeted at young people have set off waves of scorn online.
Gang members wait to be taken to their cell after 2000 gang members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement Center, in Tecoluca, El Salvador. Handout distributed March 15, 2023.
What We’re Watching: El Salvador’s lingering state of emergency, Northern Ireland on alert, Alibaba’s breakup, Greek election matters
El Salvador’s state of emergency one year later
This week marks one year since El Salvador’s bullish millennial president, Nayib Bukele, introduced a state of emergency, enabling his government to deal with the scourge of gang violence that has long made his country one of the world’s most dangerous.
Quick recap: To crack down on the country’s 70,000 gang members, Bukele’s government denied alleged criminals the right to know why they were detained and access to legal counsel. The arrest blitz has seen nearly 2% of the adult population locked up.
Despite these draconian measures and Bukele’s efforts to circumvent a one-term limit, he enjoys a staggering 91% approval rating.
Bukele has also sought to distinguish himself as an anti-corruption warrior, which resonates with an electorate disillusioned by years of corrupt politicians (Bukele’s three predecessors have all been charged with corruption. One is in prison; two are on the run.)
Externally, relations with the Biden administration have been icy under Bukele, with San Salvador refusing to back a US-sponsored UN resolution condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine.
What matters most to Salvadorans is the dropping crime rate, which is why Bukele will likely cruise to reelection next year.
Fears of domestic terror attack in Northern Ireland
Britain's MI5 intelligence agency has raised the domestic terror threat in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” amid fears of an imminent attack in the British-run region. This follows a series of attacks by Irish nationalist groups, mainly against police, in Northern Ireland in recent months.
The New Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary group with roots in the original militant group of the same name, has taken responsibility for a series of crimes against law enforcement and journalists.
For context, the IRA dominant in the 20th century disbanded with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that put an end to decades of violence between pro-British unionists wanting to stay part of the UK, and Irish nationalists calling for the unification of Northern Ireland with Ireland.
This warning comes as US President Joe Biden is preparing to travel to Belfast next month to mark the 25th anniversary of the peace deal, which put an end to the conflict, known as the Troubles.
Indeed, tensions have risen since Brexit, which revived age-old questions about the status of Northern Ireland’s borders. The threat level in Britain, meanwhile, remains “substantial,” meaning that an attack is still a strong possibility, according to authorities.
Alibaba breaks up … itself
Now we know the real reason Alibaba founder Jack Ma resurfaced in China this week. On Tuesday, the Chinese e-commerce giant announced it would spin off its different businesses into six units with separate CEOs under a single holding company. Each unit will be allowed to seek outside capital or go public independently.
Alibaba claims that the Chinese government did not order the restructuring, but it's an open secret that Xi Jinping thought the company had become too rich and powerful. The restructuring plan was unveiled the day after Ma made his first public appearance in the country since late 2020 to boost confidence in the tech company and within the broader sector. (His public criticism of regulators set off a broader crackdown against China's tech sector that hit Alibaba hard.)
Politics aside, Alibaba is just following in the footsteps of its main rivals, Tencent and JD.com, which showed earlier they got the memo from Xi: Break yourself up before you become too big to fail, or it'll be worse if we have to do it for you. The question is, would this ever happen in the US to curb the power of Big Tech?
Greek PM calls spring election
PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose popularity has dipped in the wake of a train disaster last month that killed 57, has called for a general election on May 21. The train crash sparked national protests and strikes as angry Greeks pointed blame at the government for poor transport-sector investment and regulation.
In this election, Greece is transitioning to a proportional representation system, making it harder for any party to enjoy an outright win.
Mitsotakis, whose term was set to end in July, has been dogged by protests and allegations of wiretapping of political opponents by security forces. His reputational dent mixed with his New Democracy Party’s declining numbers – though they remain slightly ahead of the opposition Syriza Party – raise the likelihood of Greece soon being ruled by a coalition.
Syriza, meanwhile, says that even if it wins an outright majority, it will form a "government of cooperation." But the left-wingers have ruled out the possibility of working in a coalition with Mitsotakis’s conservatives.
Hugely popular TikTok unlikely to be banned by US Congress
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
Is Washington going to ban TikTok?
If you used the social media app TikTok over the past week, you've probably noticed that a lot of your favorite creators are starting to sound the alarm about a potential nationwide ban on the wildly popular application. Over half of US states and the federal government have already banned TikTok from some or all government-issued devices, and Congress is now mulling further actions, with Republicans and Democrats endorsing legislation that could directly or indirectly lead to a blanket ban on its operating in the United States.
A House committee hearing on Thursday featuring the TikTok CEO did not go well for the Chinese-owned company, with Democrats sounding the alarm about teenagers and mental health, and Republicans connecting it to a national security threat from China and drug trafficking.
Why has a social media app with over 150 million American users created so much controversy? Supporters of a nationwide TikTok ban argue that the app represents a threat to national security because its parent company ByteDance has connections to the Chinese Communist Party, who are accused of potentially using the app to collect massive amounts of data on American users. The US and China don't exactly have the best relationship right now, with lawmakers worried about Chinese data collection and the threat of China sending military aid to Russia.
The one area that has been consistently bipartisan in the United States in recent years has been countering China at every turn to prevent them from chipping away at America's economic and military dominance in the world.
TikTok has maintained that it keeps its user data private, and those who oppose banning the app argue that doing so would not actually help with data privacy, given them multitude of other companies who also collect and sell data on American users.
A big question for TikTok's critics is how China might be using the data it collects, which is primarily used for insights about which kind of cat videos users enjoy, to undermine American security, a question that was mostly left unanswered at the hearing.
Banning the app would be hugely unpopular. Nearly half of Americans use it. If TikTok is banned, it would be a major advantage for its American headquartered companies like Meta, which would likely see a surge of users to its imitator product Reels. Congress might not be willing to undergo this backlash, which means that the action may fall to President Biden, who is pushing for a nationwide ban unless ByteDance sells its shares of TikTok and keeps all its data here in the US. This seemingly harmless social media app could end up being one of the most high profile victims of the growing competition between the world's two largest economies.
TikTok is the ultimate propaganda tool, says tech expert Scott Galloway
Social media has revolutionized the way we connect with each other, but at what cost? On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to tech expert and NYU Professor Scott Galloway, who thinks that Facebook and Meta are the ultimate espionage tools, collecting vast amounts of data that even intelligence agencies couldn't have dreamed of. He also suspects that the reason Facebook hasn't been regulated yet is that there may be some secret deal between them and the government security guys.
But when it comes to TikTok, Galloway thinks that the widely popular app, developed by a Chinese company, is the ultimate propaganda tool. He thinks the Chinese Communist Party would be dumb not to "put their finger on the scales" and adjust the content to make the West look bad. The scary thing is, we might not even know we're being played.
Galloway fears the younger generation is slowly being manipulated without knowing it, and they're feeling worse about America without realizing the progress we've made in various areas. TikTok a key culprit behind this trend.
Learn more about Galloway's eye-opening insights on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, airing on US public television stations nationwide, starting this weekend. Check local listings.
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How China is overtaking the US as top world power (according to an investor)
The 21st century kicked off with a more open China, hungry for foreign investment in the heyday of globalization. Things have changed since.
For emerging markets investor Antoine van Agtmael, China has become "much more closed, and [...] developed to have a real sense of itself as a world power." Meanwhile, the US has become more defensive about its global superpower status.
That means we're moving from the American century to the Chinese century, he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Van Agtmael says that the US needs to get used to being No. 2 and China used to being No. 1. And that applies to military superiority, where America's edge is not as clear as before.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Chinese Power
Podcast: What if China’s power keeps growing?
Listen: As China's leader Xi Jinping begins an unprecedented third term in office, it's fair to ask: how much will China's future affect the whole world? On the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks to global markets expert and investor Antoine van Agtmael, who believes that this will be the "Chinese century."
They discuss the future of globalization and whether the term “emerging markets”— a term coined by Agtmael himself to describe nations transitioning to developed economies – still applies to much of the world. Some of those economies are in decline, but some like China have gone beyond that category. In fact, China is now the second largest economy in the world and is set to surpass the largest, that of the United States.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Xi Jinping tightens his grip on China
Who's the most powerful person on the planet right now? Xi Jinping, who just got a third term as boss of China's ruling Communist Party and got all his loyalists appointed to the CCP's top decision-making body.
But having so much power comes with big tradeoffs.
Zero-COVID is devastating the Chinese economy. And Xi is feeling the heat from his increasingly muscular foreign policy.
Xi's tightening grip has massive implications for China's future — and the world's, too.
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Xi Jinping shaping China's chilling future
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take to kick off your week. All sorts of things going on, but I want to focus on China because that is the most world-changing of the issues that are on our plate right now. Xi Jinping, breaking through term limits, securing for himself, not surprisingly, a third term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He is today, without question, the most powerful human being on the planet. And that should concern us in the sense that the system is incredibly opaque.
There are increasingly not effective checks and balances on his authority. It is also not aligned with the future that so many in the world are hoping for when it comes to the way that political and economic systems should function - rule of law, transparency, human rights. And I'm not suggesting that the United States has always been a shining example of all of those things, but certainly, you don't have the level of concentration of power in the US or any democracy that you presently have in authoritarian regimes, and particularly right now in China.
Now, there are a few things that are concerning about this development. One is that over time there had been a hope that China was going to economically reform to a greater extent and integrate itself more in the global economy. That is now becoming harder, in part because the Chinese are focusing much more domestically given their own economic challenges. Things like, for example, their dual circulation policy, given the demographic challenges, given the challenges and indebtedness, it is much more focused on Chinese supply chain. It is much more focused on Chinese consumption. But also the fact that you just aren't getting the same level of data out of China that you used to.
There's not publishing that data anymore, so it's fine. China has incredible amounts of data on their own population. The surveillance economy they have, which helps to drive Chinese political stability, but they're not willing to publish information on the second-largest economy of the world to the rest of the world. And of course, that creates a big black box for the rest of the world to invest. It creates more uncertainty, and over time, it potentially creates more uncoupling, the opposite of the globalization that endured so much human development and wealth over the course of the last 40, 50 years.
There's also the fact that Xi Jinping historically and the Chinese Communist Party for the last 50 years has been much more meritocratic than many other political systems. So yes, it's opaque, and yes, it doesn't have rule of law, and yes, it's not a democracy, but positions of authority. If you want to make it through the Communist Party, you have to be, of course, orthodox and loyal, but you also have to be really, really capable. And the smartest, most capable authorities were the ones that would make it through the top ranks.
That is absolutely not what we saw from the leadership that has just been unveiled around Xi Jinping, where a lot of very capable senior bureaucrats in the Communist Party were sidelined. And instead, it was much more about personal loyalty to Xi. In other words, China increasingly moving away from the top-level human capital that helped get them to where they are today and instead moving in a more Putinesque direction. Not a good thing for the future of China, not a good thing for the future of the planet.
So I do think that what we're seeing coming out of China over the last week are, generally speaking, a little chilling, a little concerning for the future of the planet. I haven't yet mentioned, of course, the most titillating moment of the Party Congress, which was when former President Hu Jintao, sitting right next to Xi Jinping as the closing ceremonies were getting started, was suddenly escorted out by Xi Jinping's personal security. And the Chinese state media said it's because he wasn't feeling well.
For a guy that wasn't feeling well, number one, he really didn't want to go. Number two, Xi Jinping didn't say boo to him on his way out, didn't try to calm the situation or act in a more human and engaged way with someone who was having a health problem, not what you would do if it was purely about health. And then the fact that all discussion of Hu Jintao shut down on Chinese social media, none of that coverage was available to the Chinese population. Those are all things that implied there's something else going on here.
We don't know what that something else is. Was it possible that Hu Jintao was planning on making some kind of an oppositional statement or vote against Xi in terms of securing his third term? We don't know. Is it possible that there was an effort to sideline him internally because of things he had said inside the Party Congress over the course of the past week? We have no idea.
What we know is doing this publicly is an incredible symbolic power move by the most powerful person on the planet. That if that can happen to him, it could happen to anyone, any person in that room, and they are all aware of it. That's pretty extraordinary to see play out on the global stage. And I think that Xi Jinping has no problem with the United States of America and American allies seeing and taking away exactly those messages.
Of course, none of this can be discussed inside China because inside Chinese state media, you have to go with whatever the official narrative happens to be until they change it, in which point, yes, you've always been at war with Oceania. Yes, that's a 1984 reference, increasingly relevant when we talk about the Chinese Communist Party.
That's it for me. Hope everyone's well. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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