freelanceintellectual.com

China is chasing the wrong kind of dream

kenyee/CreativeCommons

I'm not a great fan of the Olympics generally (I wish they weren't coming to London, and can't understand why anyone wants them), and of the Beijing Olympics I am very much an unfan. What's there to like? The people of China may be enthusiastic about the games, but the truth is, we can't really know what they think. I sat next to a Chinese student in Cambridge at a dinner last year - she was young, about 25 I think, and studying business with the aim of working in the City of London. She was pleasant and talkative, but everything she said might have been scripted in Beijing. Unflagging on the excitement of the Olympics (and this was last year, remember) and on the Chinese economic miracle, her good English suddenly became useless - she in fact became silent - if I mentioned anything about democracy in China, or even the situation in Hong Kong. On subjects like that she really did say absolutely nothing.

That doesn't of course tell you all you need to know about a vast and varied country like China. But it does tell you the most important thing, the most salient fact from which so much else flows. China ain't a free country. Yes, the opening ceremony of these games was magnifique in its bizarreness, impressive like those interminable military parades in Red Square used to be, but I found its aggressive coordination of collective effort both ominous and oppressive. Only a dictatorship can achieve something like this, I thought. And of course it turned out to be fake, the pretty little girl not only having mimed, but having mimed to another girl's singing. Why wasn't the world shown the girl who really could sing? The fireworks, too, were faked. It's not true that all the tickets have been sold, either. That lie has been exposed because it's obvious the organisers have bussed people in to support the games. And they're not the only achievements the Chinese regime is going to fake. The other night there was an excellent programme on BBC Radio 4 explaining how new versions (made among other places in China, as it happens) of the popular performance-enhancing drug EPO, which is especially helpful to endurance athletes, is nearly impossible to detect and probably won't be detected given the pathetically lax standards applied by the International Olympic Committee. That's not China's fault, but you have to be naive in the extreme to think that the Chinese athletic system will not do everything it can to top the medal table at these games. The Chinese political system is not unlike that of Russia and East Germany in the 1970s. Remember how those countries wowed us with their athletic achievements? I certainly remember Marita Koch, Marlies Göhr, Bärbel Wöchel and those others who blew the Americans away, as well as Donna Hartley and Verona Elder, sadly. I expect to see many a smiling Chinese gold medallist at these games, and I wonder whether we'll ever know the truth about the Chinese training systems, as we now know what happened in the old Soviet bloc. Have we learned nothing? I've learned enough to say that Tirumesh Dibaba is the fastest woman ever over 10,000 metres, having broken Paula Radcliffe's world record in winning the gold today. I doubt you'll hear that on the BBC, although I suspect people like Brendan Foster agree with me and Wikipedia rather than the version put out by the BBC's website.

Incidentally, I think our media is being craven about the clear abuses by the Chinese regime right now. Only a few days a former American athlete was refused a visa because of his views about Tibet. Why is this scandal not the story of the games? Since then, an ITN journalist was arrested simply for reporting a protest. Again, why isn't that a big story? It should be.

One more thing. Everyone says and thinks just now that China is the coming world superpower, economically at least, if not politically too. It's undeniable China is becoming richer and more integrated into the world economy. But I'm not convinced about the great Chinese future. For one thing, I don't think statistics coming out of China are likely to be reliable, any more than Olympic ticket sales figures were honest. More fundamentally, though, if you wanted to dominate the world economically, you wouldn't start by having a one-party state. China's progress is bound to be limited, its opening painfully slow and excessively cautious , its treatment of workers and innovators high-handed and counterproductive, as long as it is run by the Chinese Communist Party. One day the Chinese people will say goodbye to the CCP - and then we'll all really be able to celebrate one dream for the world.

Irakli Gedenidze/GFDL

I wrote yesterday that it wasn't clear to what extent Russia was pulling back from Georgia. But it's quite clear now that they are not doing so, but are making sure they destroy as much as possible of Georgia's miliatry capability, for example its navy's equipment at the port of Poti. The Americans are right to demand that Russia pulls out of Georgia immediately - and to condemn Russian bullying.

Russia's foreign and security policy at the moment, as well as unattractive, reckless and lethal, is simply incoherent. The Kremlin may not like the deal between the US and Poland about missile defence, but its own actions have made it imperative for Poland to tie the Americans into its own security. Russia is pushing its neighbours into Washington's embrace, because without US guarantess they have no security. Georgia proves that if any proof was needed, and the logic of Georgia's situation, and Ukraine's , is to want NATO membership even more desperately than they did before. If the Russians had any sense they'd be cooperating with Washington over missile defence (the Americans have offered to cooperate and both have an interest in protecting Europe from mad regimes) and would be guaranteeing the security of their neighbours rther than threatening them. Clearly, Medvedev doesn't have that sense. Or Putin doesn't. Or both don't.

What more can be done? Not a great deal, but some things. I think the French and the Americans having been doing the right things; the deal Sarkozy cam up with is sensible, and unpalatable as it might be for Georgia I think there have to be talks about the status of South Ossetia as part of any solution. So insisting on that plan being implemented is the first thing. If that doesn't happen, then the US should call off the joint military training it's apparently planning with Russia, Russia should be excluded from the G8 for the next meeting at least (perhaps they could be replaced by India - that might annoy them nicely) and the US and EU should review their backing for Russian membership of the WTO. But this Polish deal is the best retaliation for what Russia has done so far. I wonder if they'll get the message.

Burn's love poems are full of sentiment but not sentimental, in the current usage of the word. John Anderson My Jo is one of my favourite ever love poems. Perhaps Paxman got his Scottish poets mixed up, hinkie pinkie, and confused Burns with McGonagall. Or then again maybe Paxman was using the word sentimental to mean a poet who mixes feelings with thoughts. But there's no elevating doggerel – unless you are McGonagall. Anyway, whatever anybody thinks of To a Haggis or To a Louse or To A Mouse or Tam O'Shanter, Burns's poetry has survived because it's memorable, quotable, it touches people.

I don't think Jackie Kay's right that Jeremy Paxman got mixed up. I think he's got Burns bang to rights. It's not that he's rubbish; he's certainly not that, and some of his stuff is memorable and touching, as she says. He's just not in the major league of poetry, not by a long way. The North of England's bard, Wordsworth, is about twenty times better.

It's good to see poetry stirring up a bit of passion, though.

Gleb Garanich/GDFL

This is one of those conflicts in which you only feel like offering opinions tentatively. Are you simply swallowing a biased Georgian and media line if you side with Georgia and complain about Russian brutality and aggression? What about the South Ossetian civilians who have undoubtedly been killed by Georgian forces? Perhaps there's some truth in Russian complaints that what happened to them has been ignored. On the other hand, is even having such thoughts a sign of having been successfully got at by Russian propaganda, which would paint Georgia as a kind of renegade fascist state and its own actions as those of an innocent, humanitarian liberator? The Russian view conveniently ignores the fact that South Ossetia is actually part of Georgia. If that weren't enough, it's difficult for anyone writing from Britain to have any idea what's actually going on in Georgia - to what extent are Russian troops pulling back, for instance (footage of Russian tanks on roads in itself shows little) and to what extent are they, frankly, taking the piss, their masters in Moscow wanting to show they can do what they like regardless of what George Bush says? What reliable information do we have about the historic background - about why South Ossetia and Abkhazia are "breakaway" republics (in the TV Newsspeak) in the first place, about what kind of politician Mikheil Saakashvili is and how truly democratically elected he is?

But it's not good enough simply to offer no view at all. The first thing I want to say is that it's not enough either simply to ask who "started" this. I'm not one of those who thinks history is the key to every social conflict - how does it help? Does it mean protestants should all be deported from Northern Ireland? - but this summer's conflict is not isolated, but the result of a sustained policy in the Kremlin of undermining and destabilising Russia's neighbours; at least those who cosy up to the west. If Russia really wanted to show solidarity to ethnic Russians in South Ossetia and coexist peacefully with its neighbour it'd make it clear there's no question of the region being anything but Georgian. But it's chosen another path. I'm perfectly prepared to believe Saakashvili's claims that his invasion of South Ossetia - that's what it was in effect - followed provocation from Russia and its proxies on the ground.

I can't spare Saakashvili criticism, though, so this post inevitably has a "plague on both houses" feel. Whatever provocation there was did not justify a large-scale military incursion which, let's not forget, has led to many deaths. I realise Georgia is in difficulties trying to get Russia to behave by diplomatic means, when Russia has a veto on the UN Security Council. Its pleas for help in New York would probably have had little effect. But to raise the stakes, hoping somehow to draw the Americans in by using tanks, was foolish and immoral. Foolish, because surely it's obvious the US doesn't want military confrontation with Russia and is unlikely to risk it over one small area where the majority backs Russia - however artificially created that majority is. Foolish too, because Georgia has ended up with its armed forces destroyed and Russia has ended up strengthened on the ground and, short-term, in the region. Immoral, because people died for the sake of Saakashvili's unwise gamble. He's lucky, I think, to be getting the support that is he is, now, from America.

Russia's behaviour, though, is bullying, brutal and stupid. As I've already said, it should anyway have been trying to calm and resolve this issue, not to stir it up and exploit it. But to have in effect annexed two parts of Georgia, to have attacked its citizens in places nothing to do with the causes of conflict, to be trying to dictate what its neighbour does and to be trying to unseat its president - all of this is unacceptable. What I don't fear, as some might, is that this strengthens Russia significantly in global politics, though. On the contrary, I think it weakens it. Medvedev may feel that he has succeeded in sending a message to Ukraine and to any other former Soviet republic, that throwing your lot in with Washington and ignoring Russian wishes is an unsafe foreign policy. He has succeeded in that. But to compound your neighbours' hatred of you, conceived in the Stalinist years but maturing now, so that all your regional policy depends on being feared - this is seriously ill-judged. Nothing could be more sure to drive republic like Georgia definitely towards the west. And nothing could be more calculated to make the west disengage from Russia. For all Russia's machismo, it needs the west much more than the west needs it, and it's already throwing away its future by giving governments like Britain's good strategic reasons to invest in nuclear power rather than risk energy blackmail from Moscow. Russia may be rich now, but it'll be poorer before long because it just can't be trusted.

A final point on the wider picture. A tiresome but popular wisdom is how awful and mercantile American foreign policy is and how much of a problem it is that it's the world's only superpower. But this crisis shows how lucky we are to live in world run if not solely by the Americans (even they're nowhere near that powerful) then at least run more by them than anyone else. Russia is a long, long way away from running the world - this conflict shows in fact how regional its power it is, rather than global - but if Russia did run the world, that world would see much more chaos, petulance, war, imperialistic greed and stupid Machiavellianism than we see now.

I'm in Glasgow for a few days, staying at my friend Kate's place in the West End. I first came here a couple of years ago, hardly ever having been to Scotland (incredible!) and never having been to Glasgow (shame!), but I really liked the city as soon as I landed - which is why I'm back.

Glasgow's one of those underestimated cities people are surprised to hear you're visiting: Liverpool, Lyon and Hamburg are another three I'd put on the list. The reason? It's exactly the same psychology that makes people dislike the Glasgow, Liverpool and Birmingham accent - pure snobbery, and a deep unconscious belief that places associated with the old industrial working class must be inferior places. To be fair, there's some ugliness about Glasgow - the M8 tearing through the city, the nasty high-rises jutting out of the skyline. But there's a lot to admire, too. The rows of solid, square-looking sandstone tenament houses appeal to the eye much more than the average street in England, for instance. Glasgow is much greener than strangers might expect, too - my walk through Kelvingrove Park to the fantastic Mitchell Library to write this post is as nice a walk as I could hope for. And the West End alone has nice things to offer when it's wet (which, just now, is most of the time) like the two cosy second-hand bookshops off Otago Lane (Voltaire & Rousseau is a mad place full of stacks of books lying on their sides) and the funky, hippy tea shop Tchai-Ovna, which has its own Wikipedia entry and flickr group. I'm taking it easy today, ignoring the Georgia crisis and the Olympics and having lots of lie-downs, so off I go now for a Yogi Yogi Chai before a hard evening with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

...in this programme, we got a tired professor whose intellectual courage went as far as challenging a bunch of 15-year-olds, and even then he still didn't manage to persuade them. What makes this a shame is that there clearly is a need for an accurate and evidence-based portrayal of evolutionary theory. I'm an evangelical Christian, but I have no difficulties in believing that evolution is the best scientific account we have for the diversity of life on our planet. I would welcome a clear and accurate demonstration of why we should all accept it, not least because it might help me to persuade some of my fellow believers why they should consider it.

The problem with Dawkins, though, is that he fails in his task because he seems unable to prevent himself from argumentative overreach. So, for instance, he tells the young people that evolution "is the explanation for our existence … everything we know about life is explained by it." Really!? Music, art, literature, love, beauty and ethics are all explained by evolution.

I haven't seen the programme myself (I must try to see it on the web) so in a nit-picking sense I can't really disagree with Justin Thacker at Comment is Free. But everything he says has the smell of wrongness about it. Christians love to attack Dawkins, their preferred approaches being to accuse him of arrogance, simple-mindedness (as opposed to their own implied sophistication) and of being a fundamentalist in his own way. Libby Purves tried that last one in the Times yesterday. They all seem to me to resort to playing the man rather than the ball.

How can Thacker complain about the intellectual courage of a man who wrote his arguments about God in a book, to be shot at by any Christian who dares argue on the merits? How can he stoop as low as simply to describe Dawkins as "tired"? That's pure invective masquerading as argument. And just after the bit I've quoted,  Thacker deliberately misconstrues what Dawkins said in order to score an obviously bad point. We know he must know Dawkins does not and would not argue that evolution explains the big bang; but Thacker pretends Dawkins did argue just that. That, to me, shows a lack of intellectual courage. The argument that "Christians who accept evolution exist, therefore..." is purely an argument from authority. To argue that the existence of Christian scientists disproves Dawkins' view about God is no more sensible than to say Dawkins' mere existence proves him right. And the way Libby Purves uses the same argument is equally objectionable. Her view, that "no one can really know whether God exists, therefore no one should use science to argue for atheism" (and her argument surely does amount to saying that) is pessimistic about reason, relativistic and self-serving. By the same standard, shouldn't believers refrain from evangelising because "no one really knows"? Finally, to glory in a tactical threat: "don't argue against God, or our kids will reject science" is itself an encouragement of the idea that children will choose one over the other. At least, it accepts science only on condition that it shows appropriate deference to God.

I think the reality is that these writers are committed to their views regardless of the evidence. Dawkins is dangerous to believers, and must be undermined, precisely because he does dwell on detailed evidence like the thickness of various birds' beaks.

What on earth are they up to on stamp duty?

Anyhoo/CreativeCommons

The current uncertainty about stamp duty is ridiculous. If Alistair Darling is going to suspend stamp duty or defer its payment so as to boost the housing market, then he needs to do so right now; otherwise he should have dampened all speculation with a firm denial he was even thinking about it. And Treasury officials should have been instructed to give those same firm denials. To float the idea as something that may happen in a few months, as he has done, is bound to have the opposite effect, if any, to the one Darling would like, as the handful of potential buyers with mortgages decide to sit on their hands until autumn in the hope of saving themselves a couple of grand. One has to wonder about competence at the top of government when this kind of thing happens. Darling needs to achieve complete clarity, within days.

I want to look at some broader issues, though, First, would suspending or deferring stamp duty actually have much if any effect on the housing market? I doubt it. The real problem with the housing market right now is that prices are still punitively high, added to which, hardly anyone can actually get a mortgage to cover those prices. I doubt that fiddling with stamp duty will do anything to make houses more affordable (in fact of course the idea would be to support prices) or encourage lending during this credit crunch. Potential buyers would still find it difficult to buy, and attractive to wait until prices fall yet further; many would gamble that any suspension would be likely to last for some time, so that waiting for price falls is still the most sensible thing to do. And deferral of stamp duty would surely have no effect whatever. How on earth does it make you feel better off to delay paying a couple of thousand pounds? The bill will come eventually, and you know it will. All it would do is create a temporary illusion that buying a house is cheaper than it really is - but that's the kind of thinking that got us into the housing bubble in the first place.

I'm not convinced that any subsidy for the housing market is sensible: even schemes such as the special one for key workers seem to me likely to have a marginally inflationary effect, and the heart of our housing problem is price inflation. Except for those people who will go into negative equity, house price falls should be welcome, and the government should do nothing to try to prevent them. So I think tax breaks to prop up the market are a mistake.

What's more, suspending stamp duty would be an unfair mistake. If Darling decides to suspend it for properties sold for under £250,000, say, then fair enough: most people, but only the majority for whom £2,500 is significant, would benefit. But if he decides to suspend the 1% rate on all properties, then the very well off will benefit, too - but why should you be spared £2,500 if you can afford to buy property costing a million? That'd be putting money in the pockets of the rich, without any real effect on the market. And if Darling suspends stamp duty entirely, or even defers it on all purchases, then the super-rich will benefit massively more than anyone else. There are still houses in London for sale at over £20,000,000: you could save something like three quarters of a million on one of those if stamp duty is suspended, or save a really welcome bit of interest if it's merely deferred.

A Labour government should simply be trying to help those at risk of repossession.