Critical Comments On ‘US Policy Toward China: Recommendations For A New Administration’

Posted on February 10, 2017 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 2017

President Xi Jinping flanked by Chinese soldiers. The President is walking down stairs on a red carpet.

President Xi Jinping flanked by Chinese soldiers. Source: Kremlin via Wikimedia Commons.

James E. Fanell
U.S. Navy (ret)

Below are the critical comments I provided to Dr. Orville Schell, the co-chair of the recent Asia Society and University of California, San Diego report US POLICY TOWARD CHINA: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A NEW ADMINISTRATION. While there are sections of the work that I agree with, I still fundamentally disagree with the overall foundation of the document’s recommendations which I believe are designed to sustain the past 40 year of a policy that promotes unconstrained “engagement” with the PRC. As such, I’ve gone through the entire document and extracted several statements and paragraphs that I disagree with and a few that I agree with. While I will provide comments for each specific reference issue, I can summarize my dissent of the report in the following major themes:

1. Unconstrained Engagement. Engagement with China is asserted to be the primary goal of US relations with China without providing evidence for that assertion. Or worse, suggesting things are actually going well, contrary to all objective evidence.

2. “The Relationship” is the #1 Priorty. “The relationship” is prioritized as being equal to or more important than U.S national security. There is no clear articulation that U.S. National security should be the #1 national security priority for the US and that our relationship with China should be judged through that lens, not through the lens of sustaining “the relationship” at all costs.

3. Do Not Provoke. America should not “provoke” China, but again, there is no evidence to support why this position will benefit U.S. national security interests.

4. Dissent Not Welcome. While I appreciate inclusion of Ambassador Lord’s dissenting opinion on North Korea, clearly the study did not value, or include, dissenting opinions, especially in the Asia-Pacific Regional Security and Maritime Dispute sections.

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The Three Oppositions: Chinese Dissident Groups Holding Mass Demonstrations Since 2012

Posted on February 8, 2017 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 2017

Falun Gong practitioners are photographed seated cross legged on the floor.

Falun Gong practitioners before the annual July 1 protest march in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, China. Source: Remko Tanis via Flickr.

Tom Stern

As President Donald Trump takes command 28 Years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, there are three prominent groups which are considered by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to be dissident and subversive to its ideals, posing a danger to political stability. Each of these could potentially become the backbone necessary for the expansion of freedoms in China.

the Tuidang Movement, [1]
the New Citizens’ Movement [2], and
the practitioners of Falun Gong [3].

Tuidang Movement

The 退黨運動 (Tuìdǎng yùndòng), or Tuidang movement for short, is one that seeks the abolition of the CPC. Literally meaning “to withdraw from the Communist Party,” its members are bound by their desire to end the corruption tied to the Party. Caylan Ford, in his dissertation “Tradition and Dissent in China: The Tuidang Movement and its Challenge to the Communist Party” notes a key difference between the movement and those before it in that, rather than drawing from western principles and ideals of democracy and free expression, it seeks to act as a mirror to the nation’s idealized past. In its reflexive approach, the movement employs exigent and distinct Chinese language and ways of thought, such as Confucianism. Ironically, Ford also notes that the movement views the Communist ideology as a largely foreign and detrimental one, “which is portrayed as antithetical to true Chinese values, human nature, and universal laws.” Rather than using a geopolitically-charged force behind its espoused arguments, the Tuidang movement draws from both history and morality in its efforts to compel the Chinese public to recognize their unified, and wholly unnecessary, suffering under the Communist Party.

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Trump’s Unfair Ban: An Iranian View

Posted on February 7, 2017 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 2017

An urban landscape is photographed from above. Trees are visible in between buildings.

Tehran. Source: Jabiz Raisdana via Flickr.

Nabi Sonboli
Instituted for Political and International Studies

On January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorists”. The order reflects three critical concerns regarding immigrants and those who come to the US in the new administration: Security, ideology, and contribution. These concerns are valid for any country, but the questions remain, which one of these concerns are legitimate with regards to Iran and Iranians? and what is the main target in this order?

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Boom in the Iran Crude Tanker Business

Posted on October 9, 2016 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 4, No. 10, October 2016

Oil-tankers docking in Rotterdam, Holland. Source: Creative Commons/Public Domain.

Reza Yeganehshakib, Ph.D
University of California, Irvine (UCI)

The oil industry has experienced numerous fluctuations in crude prices during its history. Falling prices in 2014 developed into a historic downturn by 2016, reaching lows that were last seen in the 1990s. As a result, several oil giants were forced to decommission almost two thirds of their rigs, while also dramatically decreasing their investment in the upstream oil industry.[1] Counter-intuitively, the crude shipping industry did not go through the same catastrophic loss as its upstream counterpart. Iran, one of the world’s biggest oil exporters and crude shipping operators, experienced this firsthand.[2] While the country’s oil revenue sharply declined, its crude shipping industry grew. This situation was not without problems, however, as explained herein.

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Reconsidering Political Risk In Developed Economies

Posted on August 11, 2016 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 4, No. 8, August 2016

Julian M. Campisi

Introduction: A Macro Analysis of Political Risk

Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party laughs as he points to a UKIP poster, before delivering a speech on the forthcoming EU referendum, in London, Friday, April 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

The concept of political risk has landed at the forefront of media and scholarly outlets in the fields of international politics and economics after a turbulent first half to 2016. Exposure to a number of recent global ‘shocks’, including the latest waves of terrorist attacks, Brexit, and a failed coup d’état in Turkey, has led to a renewed sense of political and economic instability across the globe. However, until recently, the majority of scholars and practitioners working in the sub-field of political risk have mainly engaged with the political and economic factors that affect investments in developing economies—albeit for good reason. In many such countries, the stability and profitability of foreign investments or business ventures is more difficult to guarantee and to predict due to concerns related to political volatility, social upheaval, expropriations, and regulatory uncertainties. Yet developing nations are at the forefront of political risk analysis precisely because of the potentially lucrative business opportunities that accompany fairly rapid economic growth and development in frontier markets. Indeed, recent global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to developing countries, spurred by growth in Asia, significantly outweighed those to developed ones as table 1 shows below.

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