Friday, August 5, 2022

China game theory

In the last Goodfellows, we batted around the question of how China would respond to Nancy Pelosi's visit. 

In this context, news just came in, announcing responses that we had not thought of: China is giving the US a big middle finger on climate. The announcement, from the Ministry of Foreign affairs, is short and clear: 

In disregard of China’s strong opposition and serious representations, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited China’s Taiwan region. On 5 August, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the following countermeasures in response:

1.Canceling China-U.S. Theater Commanders Talk.

2.Canceling China-U.S. Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT).

3.Canceling China-U.S. Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) meetings.

4.Suspending China-U.S. cooperation on the repatriation of illegal immigrants.

5.Suspending China-U.S. cooperation on legal assistance in criminal matters.

6.Suspending China-U.S. cooperation against transnational crimes.

7.Suspending China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation.

8.Suspending China-U.S. talks on climate change.

My emphasis. Slip the knife in at the end. (The others are also interesting.) 

What does this mean? If you can stay awake, you can read the State Department's post-Glasgow announcement of the US-China cooperation on climate, 

C.    China will phase down coal consumption during the 15th Five Year Plan and make best efforts to accelerate this work.

So much for that. Climate and CO2 emissions come down to one thing: how China, India and other developing countries manage the large increases in energy consumption they need to grow. The US and Europe may decide to de-fund fossil fuels, ban fracking, turn off or regulate nuclear to death, freeze in the dark and de-growth, or play games with hundreds of billions of dollars down green ratholes, but China is no longer going along. If you think there is an economic competition with China, you just learned a lot about how that's going to play out. 

Other fun items in the State Department report, 

The two sides intend to engage collaboratively in support of eliminating global illegal deforestation through effectively enforcing their respective laws on banning illegal imports.  

Not any more.

Both countries recognize the importance of the commitment made by developed countries to the goal of mobilizing jointly $100b per year by 2020 and annually through 2025 to address the needs of developing countries, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, and stress the importance of meeting that goal as soon as possible. 

Don't you love "mobilizing" money? It's interesting that the US was encouraging belt-and-road type China initiatives in developing countries. 

In the larger debate, as an  economist, I always first look at self-interest. How would China choose to respond? It could just ignore the whole thing after all. An event like this offers a chance to an actor to break out of commitments in a long running game, signal some future state, or change the state to its advantage. True to form, China first shot off some missiles and launched some military exercises around Taiwan. And we can see what China thinks its self interest is here.  

A colleague on the email thread that pointed this out, who opposes aggressive climate policies, commented wryly "All of you who thought nothing good could come from Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan have been proven wrong." Well, from one perspective!  



6 comments:

  1. Really? So what? China was never, ever, going to cripple its industrial base by adopting Net Zero or any of the other climate hysteria self mutilations so beloved by the mandarin classes in the US and the EU.

    Indeed they have completely taken over the market for the solar panels beloved of warmunists by undercutting western prices. Their secret? Refine silicon with coal powered electricity and use slave labor in their gulags to assemble them.

    When can either China them as what it is -- our mortal enemy or we can surrender. Cooperation is not on the table.

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    Replies
    1. "When can either China them as what it is"

      That got garbled. It should be:

      We can either see China for what it is

      Delete
  2. Good for them. As more countries decommission their nuclear and as electricity prices go through the roof, there needs to be competition we can point to as an alternative. When everyone buys into a monoculture, people start taking its dysfunctions for granted and unavoidable.

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  3. A P.R. problem for the State Dept. On the military co-ordination items 1, 2, & 3, the PRC leadership thinking is that it has learned as much as it needs to learn about the U.S. army, navy, air force and marine corps, to assess the U.S. forces preparation preliminary to commence of hostilities. This should shake the U.S. leadership out of its complacent lethargy viz. the P.R.C.

    As for the last item in the list, what was the Administration expecting from The People's Republic of China w.r.t. to GHG emission abatement? There was never any firm, or "bankable" commitment from the P.R.C. leadership, so nothing whatsoever has been lost. What then is the workaround? Short answer: Imputed "carbon" adjustment tariffs applied to imported products and semi-finished and raw materials originating from the P.R.C. Effectively, the imposition of a "carbon tax" on the P.R.C. This can usefully be applied in co-ordination with the E.U., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, along with other like minded non-communist countries.

    Downside? The U.S. wants for a war leader in the current commander-in-chief.

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  4. Would Pelosi travel to Germany? :-)

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  5. As an American who views the US foreign policy of the last 60 years, from Vietnam to today, a disaster, it is hard to see Taiwan as relevant to US interests.

    Climate change is also not an issue for the US either, and not worth the cost. Without massive immigration since the '65 act the US would have been fine. But once you pile a whole bunch of people together without a common culture then you get the social fraying we see now. Ancient Rome redue. Humans never learn . . .

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