China steps up as US steps back from global leadership

By Flynt L. Leverett, Pennsylvania State University and RH Sprinkle, University of Maryland

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s appearance at last week’s World Economic Forum shows global leadership is shifting, not drifting, toward Beijing. The most vigorous defense of globalization and multilateral cooperation was mounted not by an American statesman, but by the president of the People’s Republic of China.

“The problems troubling the world are not caused by globalization,” Xi declared. “Countries should view their own interest in the broader context and refrain from pursuing their own interests at the expense of others.”

Flynt L. Leverett

Speculation is mounting that the United States, with Donald Trump cast in the role of president, will ignore international challenges, renounce global responsibilities and abandon friends and allies.

As Washington greets a new administration disinclined to play a worldwide role, Beijing increasingly accepts opportunities to lead. Xi and his colleagues understand that their country’s domestic development and global ascendance require steady engagement and honest efforts abroad.

Yes, China has “done the right thing” before. It has restricted antibiotics in food-animal agriculture, created a new infrastructure-development bank for Asia, aided previously exploited African countries and promised to end its internal ivory trade.

But never before has China so forthrightly stepped up when the United States appears to be stepping away. As scholars of Chinese strategy and the intersection of science and politics, we see how Beijing’s ambitions and interests will affect its engagement on a range of important international issues.

The case of climate change

Climate change policy is one good example of this trend. Commentators warn that Trump’s pledge to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement would let China “off the hook” for curbing carbon emissions. In fact, China put itself “on the hook” in Paris for reasons having little to do with the United States.

China’s most urgent atmospheric problem is not carbon dioxide. It’s combustion toxicity from burning coal, oil and biomass. The Chinese these days don’t look through their air; they look at it. And what they see, they breathe.

Combustion toxicity has degraded China’s air quality so much, by Chinese assessments, as to destroy 10 percent of GDP annually since the late 1980s and cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year. And air pollution has become China’s single greatest cause of social unrest.

In response, China is closing its old coal-fired power plants, and the new ones it’s building are much farther away from its prosperous and politically influential eastern cities. Other fossil-fueled industries are being put farther away, too. China has also contracted with Russia to buy huge amounts of natural gas, whose combustion emits lots of CO2 but not a lot of toxic air pollutants.

These moves will expose fewer people, especially prosperous urban dwellers, to toxic air pollution. On their own, though, these moves will not do much to meet carbon targets and restrain warming.

In an even better bet to clear its air, China is moving to add more nuclear, hydroelectric, solar and wind turbine generating capacity. Greenpeace estimates that during every hour of every day in 2015, China on average installed more than one new wind turbine, and enough solar panels to cover a soccer field.

China is already the world’s leading producer of renewable energy technologies. More remarkably, it is also the leading consumer. And in January, it announced plans to invest an additional US$360 billion in renewable power between now and 2020. That’s $120 billion a year.

These renewable power measures are being taken to fight China’s number one problem – air pollution – but they will also automatically cut China’s carbon emissions. If it can manage political rivalries among local power companies and upgrade its electrical grid to handle all that solar and wind capacity, then China is likely to meet its Paris commitments earlier than currently required.

Defecting from Paris would not help China address its air pollution problem. Defection would, however, reinforce the presumption that U.S. leadership is indispensable – a presumption Beijing is loath to perpetuate.

A savvier and more probable move is for China to assert – for the first time on a major global issue – moral authority. Chinese diplomats are already reassuring the world that China will keep and even expand its climate commitments. This message conveys Beijing’s resolve not to let to let multilateral greenhouse gas mitigation collapse, and show the way out of a crisis whose agreed solution is threatened by others’ malfeasance.

National interest in global leadership

If sustained, such action will mark a critical inflection point in China’s global role. It will become less a challenger to an established order, and more a champion of a common cause. The United States will risk being regarded as aloof and unreliable and, following its 2016 election, even politically unstable.

Likewise, Beijing is asserting greater leadership in other areas once led by Washington. With the demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Washington negotiated with 11 Asian countries excluding China, Beijing is promoting its own Pacific trade-and-investment framework excluding the United States.

Even more grandly, Xi is articulating an alternative vision for global economic growth. The model focuses on physical investment, especially in transportation and IT infrastructure. In this, it is linked to the new Silk Road project, through which China is expanding linkages across Eurasia by integrating railways, ports and information networks into transnational corridors. The Chinese approach also does not rely on portfolio investment and central banks exertions to drive growth – a sharp contrast to Western policies.

Ceding global moral authority to China would be a high price for America to pay for the pleasures of political posturing. Yet a China leading by example would have a greater stake in its own reputation, and the greater that stake becomes the more engaged China becomes. Such a China, we believe, could profoundly benefit the world.The Conversation

Flynt L. Leverett is a professor of International Affairs and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University and RH Sprinkle is an associate professor at University of Maryland. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Experts available to media for presidential inauguration analysis

Screenshot of the Presidential Inauguration Committee website (58pic2017.org).

As Donald Trump prepares to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Penn State experts will be watching along with the rest of the nation, and they’ll be available to give their analysis to media.

Penn State experts are available to comment on the inauguration are listed by topical expertise:

GENERAL POLITICS:
— Robert Speel, associate professor of political science, can speak generally about politics, elections, the inauguration and political transition. His research interests include elections and voting behavior, state and urban politics, Congress and the Presidency, and public policy. Contact: rws15@psu.edu

 

WOMEN IN POLITICS/WOMEN’S MARCH
— Nichola Gutgold, professor of communication arts and sciences, is an expert on women in politics. She is in Washington, D.C. observing inauguration activities with a group of students. She can speak about past female political candidates and barriers women face today. She is the author of “Madam President: Five Women Who Paved the Way” and the forthcoming expanded edition of the book: “Paving The Way for Madam President.” Contact: ngutgold@psu.edu

Lee Ann Banaszak, Penn State professor and political science department head, is an expert on women in politics and political protests. She will be in Washington, D.C. at the Women’s March on Washington. She recently conducted a survey study of protesters at the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions. Contact: lab14@psu.edu

 

RURAL SOCIOLOGY:
Shannon Monnat, assistant professor of rural sociology, demography and sociology, can speak to the demographic information of presidential election voters. Her recent analysis of data from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that Donald Trump found significantly more support in areas with high drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates during the 2016 Presidential election. Contact: smm67@psu.edu

 

PRESIDENTIAL POWERS:
Mark Major is a senior lecturer in the department and the author of “The Unilateral Presidency and the News Media: The Politics of Framing Executive Power.” He specializes in the American presidency and political communication. He recently wrote an article for The Conversation about President Obama’s use of unilateral powers compared to other presidents. Contact: mgm26@psu.edu

 

MEDIA STUDIES:
Matthew Jordan, associate professor of media studies, teaches media studies, cultural studies, film studies and critical theory. He can speak to the media coverage of the presidential election, the ongoing coverage of government and politics and the proliferation of “fake news.” Contact: mfj3@psu.edu

 

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
— Dennis Jett, professor of international affairs, can speak to the topics of securing America and international relations. He is a former American ambassador who joined the Penn State School of International Affairs after a career in the U.S. Foreign Service that spanned 28 years and three continents. His research focuses on American foreign policy, ambassadorial appointments, the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy and peacekeeping. Contact: dcj10@psu.edu

 

For more information or direct phone numbers for the experts, please contact News and Media Relations at 814-865-7517 or hrobbins@psu.edu.

Poll: Americans hopeful/hopeless post-election

penn-state-mccourtney-poll_hope
By Michael Berkman | director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy

 

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey last month, First Lady Michelle Obama somberly reflected on the country in the aftermath of the presidential election.  Winfrey was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the current president who built his campaign on hope. “Now,” the First Lady told her, “we’re feeling what not having hope feels like.”

But is America really feeling hopeless? The Penn State McCourtney Institute for Democracy “Mood of the Nation Poll” allows ordinary citizens to tell us what is on their minds. In particular, the poll allows us to ask 1,000 Americans what it is that they are hopeful about.

Michael Berkman

Michael Berkman

Before the election, in September, Americans were not particularly hopeful. Only 34 percent indicated that they felt very or extremely hopeful. And 40 percent said “nothing” made them hopeful. In contrast, 77 percent of Americans felt very or extremely angry and 81 percent felt very or extremely worried. In sum, before the election, Americans felt very little hope, lots of anger and considerable concern.

Elections have a way of making people feel better about politics. Even those who voted for the losing candidate tend to feel a greater sense of political efficacy, a belief that their concerns are understood and can influence political affairs. Further, the end of the long campaign brings the tumult and the uncertainty to an end. Along with the peaceful transfer of power, this normally improves Americans attitudes about politics.

This was not a normal election: With its intensely negative tone, unpopular candidates and foreign interference, one might expect that things are different this year. But that is not the case. Rather, the end of this election, too, has made the overall mood of the public somewhat more positive.

The overall sense of anger and worry has decreased, while the percentage of people who were either very or extremely hopeful has increased from 34 percent to 44 percent. At the same time, the total percentage of people who said there was “nothing” they were hopeful about decreased to 28 percent.

However, the numbers also support the notion of a divided nation. Just like the First Lady, those who supported Hillary Clinton do not feel better. In fact, they have lost hope.

The figure below breaks down the percentage of people who said “nothing” makes me hopeful by the candidate they supported. Hope increased among those who supported third party candidates, Trump supporters and even those who did not vote. Only among Clinton supporters has there been a noticeable drop in hope.

For them, the percentage saying “nothing” made them hopeful increased by more than 10 percentage points. Nearly half of Clinton supporters are not hopeful about anything in our politics today.

But Trump supporters are hopeful that things are going to get better, and in particular that the economy will get better. Here are some quotes directly from Trump supporters about why they are hopeful:

– A 36-year-old white female homemaker from Texas with a high school degree said, “HOPEFULLY, America will go back to the way it was intended to be. There must be something good about it……there must be a REASON why so many people are scrambling to come here.”

– A 58-year-old white female in West Virginia working part-time emphasized the President-elect’s promises to bring back jobs, saying, “Trump is already keeping jobs here such as Ford and is going to be so good for the economy that the nation’s kids will have a choice of great jobs.”

– A retired 61-year-old white man in Massachusetts emphasized the change that he sees coming is “a bright new future with new ideas. President Trump will change the way things are done in Washington.”

– A 33-year-old African-American man with a high school degree living in Mississippi put it most succinctly: “Mr. Trump gives me hope beyond hope!!”

While the Penn State McCourtney Mood of the Nation Poll was not around in 2008, these words by Trump supporters do appear to echo feelings expressed by Obama supporters when he was first elected in 2008. In the liminal time between the election and inauguration day, so close to the exultation of triumph, when all is possibility, hope is easy to come by. Of course, once the hard slogging of governing kicks in, hopes are likely to modify, as they did for Obama’s supporters.

For now, hope is indeed in the air. But while the supporters of the presidential loser never feel good, the hopelessness for Clinton’s supporters, including that of the First Lady, does not have any clear referent.  Will their despair dissipate as Trump moves into the day-to-day world of governing? Or will his decisions as president cause their feelings of hopelessness to continue? This is an important question for our nation going forward — one that we will be watching closely.

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