Macroeconomics 115
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
One of the biggest problems with Americans is their relative ignorance of the rest of the world. I know a good amount of people who resent Americans for even referring to themselves as Americans, because the term technically applies to everyone from North and South America. Although I’m sensitive to that in certain conversations, I don’t lose sleep over using it, because 1) it basically boils down to branding, something I wrote about at length last summer while internally debating if it was sexist to add “Lady” in front of high school mascots, and 2) there isn’t exactly a good alternative (I’m United States of American? I’m United Statesian? I typically go with “I’m from the United States”; I suppose a real Texan might say “I’m Texan” and leave it at that).
It’s frustrating to hear people complain about various things going on in our country as if the alternative is perfection. Yes, we have flaws, but it’s okay to admit that and work towards improvement, rather than act as if we are a complete failure as a nation. The other thing I see all the time is picking and choosing certain aspects of certain countries and using it to argue we suck as nation, as a whole. Both of these approaches to self-critique are ridiculous when you have even a halfway decent idea of how the world works beyond our borders.
[For all the non-Americans reading this and agreeing Americans are too self-absorbed, reign it in a bit—there are real reasons why Americans travel less than most developed countries, starting with this: oceans are a significant barrier to exit, and there is a lot to see and do in-house.]
Let’s talk about China.
I’ve been vaguely aware of how different China’s government is from ours for a while, things like its complete control over internet access, or its approach to (forcibly) selecting and training Olympic athletes. Everyone knows about the one-child policy, right? TL;DR? The Chinese government controls every aspect of internet access for its citizens, and it’s built a virtual wall around the country—nothing gets in or out that isn’t approved. You can go to jail for posting something the state regards as “damaging” to its image. / The Chinese government identifies potential Olympic athletes as young as 6 and takes them from their homes, and it habitually falsifies information if it will help them win. It is not the the athletes’ decision to start training, nor it is their decision to stop.
The event that grabbed my attention recently was the #freeHongKong scandal, particularly when it spilled over into the NBA.
Read this line from a Chinese state broadcaster CCTV regarding canceling the airing of two NBA preseason games being played in China: “We’re strongly dissatisfied and oppose Adam Silver’s claim to support [Daryl] Morey’s right to freedom of expression,” the statement read. “We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech.” Read that last sentence again. That is terrifying.
It was equally disturbing to watch the NBA and its players decide to fall in line and give statements to placate China. Why? It is an enormous source of revenue for both the league and individual players. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there are ~1,439,323,776 (1.4B) people in China, and they are obsessed with the NBA.
That is all background for this post, and I have no apologies for the sheer amount of information I have thrown at you so far. In fact, here’s one more thing. China’s treatment of Uighurs. How much of this were you aware of? Does this change how you view your own government?
Here is where I clarify these problematic stories are rooted in the decision-makers in the Chinese government, which is not the same as saying I have a problem with Chinese people—I don’t. The fact that we’re at a point where any claim or statement grouping people of other nationalities together can and will be denounced as “xenophobic” is evidence we may have it too good in America for our own good; we’re making up things to fight about.
That window of time where President Trump was going out of his way to call COVID-19 the Chinese Virus, or Wuhan Virus, was primarily part of a larger branding war—one China initiated, based on this timeline.
On March 12th, China’s foreign media spokesperson tweeted this, as part of a larger Chinese effort to shift blame and increase uncertainty:
Again, that’s a government official, not a random troll. Iran’s Supreme Leader took it a step further while rejecting U.S. aid. And by the way, if you think I haven’t seriously considered that this virus could be a human-engineered bioweapon, or given thought to the idea the U.S. was behind it, then you’re wrong. So far, nothing makes sense to me other than this is a horrible series of mistakes, one that originated in China.
I have never watched Bill Maher’s HBO show, and I don’t really know who he is or what he stands for, but I found this rant worth watching (language warning).
The biggest flaw I find in Maher’s logic is that it may not have been the “wet market” at all. Given that there were no horseshoe bat colonies within 500 miles of Wuhan, nor any evidence this type of bat being sold in the Wuhan wet market, it seems more likely the virus accidentally escaped from the government lab next to the wet market, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Tucker Carlson, who, again, I do not watch and don’t know much about, sums it up this “conspiracy theory” well here.
These takes are considered highly controversial in many circles, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth considering. I do think both men do a good job of predicting objections and addressing them, whether it’s Maher saying “we can’t stop telling the truth because racists might get the wrong idea”, or Carlson saying “the [Chinese] paper made a notable number of observations and claims that are worth knowing about; that’s why we’re telling you”, so I’m not going to spend more time on it.
How is all of this related to macroeconomics? Or TikTok?
The changing relationship between the U.S. and China could be the single biggest result of this outbreak. Once the virus is somewhat contained, and the immediacy of the internal response lessens, the next question is going to be assessing why this happened and determining who was responsible. Most of the discussion should, rightfully, center around China’s ongoing attempts to cover up their role. It’s possible this conversation could lead to a breakdown of relations between the two largest economies in the world and initiate a cold war, or worse. That would have a macro-macroeconomic impact, let me tell you.
Will Covid-19 Spark a Cold War (or Worse) With China?
In some ways, China has been acting like they are in an economic arms race against the U.S. for decades now. The United States has been stuck in the position of saying “hey, this isn’t a competition, right? We can both ‘win’ by cooperating, so let’s play nice”, while China has nodded along publicly but keeps breaking the rules when they think they won’t be held accountable. And they haven’t been held accountable, both because it’s easier to look the other way to avoid conflict, and because the rest of the world has been benefitting economically by China’s growth.
Examples from the podcast:
- China literally built islands in the South China Sea, which they promised not to militarize, then they definitely militarized
- China was caught lying about the SARS epidemic by the World Health Organization in 2003, and seemed to respond by buying control of the WHO before the next pandemic
- China limits which of their universities Americans can access, but American universities are completely unrestricted to students from China
- China bought 2.2 billion items of personal protection (P.P.E.), primarily masks, before the rest of the world realized the scope of the disaster, and has been selling their stockpile back to the countries they bought it from. They’ve also attempted to create positive headlines by donating supplies, which in many cases turned out to be defective
- China has disappeared its citizens who tried to get the truth out, and issued a document on Feb 3rd ordering research facilities to destroy samples
These are not actions that a “friendly global actor” takes.
To quote Michael Auslin, who is currently the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow in the Asia and National Security Programs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, “I think the real question is, does China believe it’s in a cold war with us?” If it does, that could change everything. The race for a vaccine becomes the new space race, for starters.
The rest of this isn’t the content you want, but it’s the content you deserve.
I downloaded TikTok last fall, and it is hands down the most addictive app I have ever used. It was mind-blowing how the hours melted away when I used it, and I never even posted anything or left the “For You” page. TikTok is a testament to the endless creativity and brilliance of crowd sourcing, as well as a chilling step towards having “Too Much Fun”, which David Foster Wallace spent 1,100 pages of Infinite Jest warning us about. What if it’s possible to create something so addictively entertaining that, once exposed to it, you never want to do anything else? Ever. When you think about the idea of giving up TikTok, which I’m obviously building to, how similar is your experience to that of a heroin addict facing withdrawal?
Whenever I see myself getting too addicted to something, I force myself to take a break, just to prove I’m still in charge. With TikTok, I was somewhat uncomfortable with the hours I was *wasting* on it, increasingly uncomfortable with the prevalence and popularity of provocative dancing by Lolita-esque girls, and then I saw this.
US Army bans soldiers from using TikTok over security worries.
After additional research, I deleted the app.
This is how wars are waged, now. Data collection. Misinformation campaigns. I can hear all the teens screaming and scratching and clawing to keep their unfettered access to their hits of dopamine, justifying it as harmless fun. But what if it’s not? What if it’s the Trojan horse? Pause for a second and consider that TikTok could be weaponized. Is that impossible? If you say yes, it doesn’t prove anything other than you’re an addict and need help.
And listen, I’m not saying the premise of the app is a national security threat. There’s no reason why another company can’t mimic it and let the party continue there, I mean, we’ve already been through this with Vine, right? Well, Byte just launched in January, and it’s the direct successor of Vine. Same people. It’s in it’s early stages, but there’s nothing stopping it from doing everything TikTok does, eventually. So I’m not saying you should give up on the concept of looping videos, just that you should reconsider TikTok.
My movie recommendation of the week is The Usual Suspects. It is rated R, and prominently features Kevin Spacey, so this is definitely not for everyone, but all through the process of writing this post, the same quote keeps coming back to me.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
-Roger “Verbal” Kint
I’m not saying China is the Devil, nor is TikTok. But I think it’s time to have a national conversation on our approach to both subjects, in light of the new data. I’ve been sitting on this take for several weeks, and Freakonomics covering it was my green light. Let’s talk about China.
