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Overhasty glee for the new pressurizer

Thursday, April 15, 2010

MEDIA PLAUDITS HAVE RAINED upon President Barack Obama in the wake of this week’s nuclear security summit.

A generally expressed determination by the 47 attending countries, to tighten up on “loose” nuclear material around the world, hasn’t been counted - probably rightly - to be quite as impressive as getting China to at least now consider putting pressure on atomically-ambitious Iran.

Obama’s special one-on-one session with President Hu Jintao in Blair House (above left) had doubtless helped this new level of apparent Chinese helpfulness, but so had some behind-the-scenes softening-up by Obama Administration members – not to speak of self-censorship. 

A tough-talking document from the US Treasury that berates China for its unscrupluous currency manipulation was yanked from its allotted publication date (of today, March 15). Its non-appearance was signaled to Beijing well in advance, early last week, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner set off to Beijing for an unscheduled April 8 meeting with Vice Premier Wang Qishan.  (The Treasury report of course blames China - like just about every other analyst does - for artificially depressing the exchange-rate value of the yuan and so boosting Chinese exports in the global market.)

Also due today, by the way, though in no way being diplomatically soft-pedaled, is a report from the Chinese government itself, reveling in a post-recession national economic growth spurt. That ever-rampant economy (destined inevitably now to overtake Japan within months as the world second-biggest) will continue to stun observers with its Gross Domestic Product leaping up by nearly 12% year on year. This may put extra pressure on the yuan, but China’s leaders are looking sanguine about that now - and we can, we're told, now expect the yuan to revalue upward.

These leaders are looking pretty sanguine about a lot of things these days (even, it seems, while the country takes its place on the list of the world's catastrophic earthquake sites – this time in the far western Qinghai Province). I would frankly be skeptical of any severe pressure being applied anytime soon from Beijing upon Teheran.

The word is not exactly encouraging out of the corridors of the United Nations, where details of new sanctions against Iran are being hammered out among the “Big Five” permanent members of the Security Council, plus Germany, who've been meeting for the first time since China made its commitment to Obama. My old contemporary Patrick Worsnip of Reuters news agency heard from one (anonymous, of course) diplomat who’s close to the talks, saying: "The Chinese want something much, much weaker and much, much narrower" than the US.

Of course they do.  The brute fact remains, after all, that China gets 12% (that totemic-sounding number again) of its oil supplies, so necessary for its spectacular industrial expansion, from deals with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear saber-rattling regime.

 

   

 

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I WOULD ALSO DRAW WESTERN MEDIA attention to Sudan, from where China gets a further, not inconsiderable, 6% of its oil.

World outrage about Sudan’s murderous treatment of its citizens - not least in the now-calmer, but still desperate region of Darfur - have made little difference to Beijing’s cosy, uncritical relationship with the criminally-indicted President Omar al-Bashir (above right, with President Hu). Remember the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the Darfur genocide protests? Maybe you don’t? I’m not surprised. The Chinese certainly don’t.

The heavy clout that China enjoys in Africa these days has become a repeated refrain in this column, I know. But this week, as Sudan’s controversial elections take place - indeed have been extended for two more days, in light of the oft-reported polling irregularities - it’s worth highlighting just how deeply into that country’s economy and politics Chinese influence has been woven. That 6% Chinese “dependency” upon Sudanese oil represents an extraordinary 60% of Sudan’s national output going solely to China. Who is dependent upon whom, here? 

And as we drill down a bit (to use terminology that’s spread commonly enough into internet searching – but here it's especially apt just staying within the petroleum business) we can also see just how such dependency works, as so often in developing countries, to serve an established power elite. And never - surprise, surprise - to serve the mass of ordinary people.

Researchers for the Global Witness advocacy group, based in Britain and the US, have discovered that, with the Chinese National Petroleum Company as the main oilfield operator, Bashir’s government in Khartoum (in the main ethnically Arab, and Muslim by religion) has been systematically bilking its largely black and Christian fellow-citizens in the country’s south of at least $700 million a year, and perhaps much more. These oil revenue-sharing funds are due under a peace agreement that ended the North-South civil war five years ago.

Distressingly, the international community’s largely uncaring eyes are now being averted from the ballot irregularities – largely because challenging these elections could derail progress toward next January’s planned referendum on southern autonomy. The trouble is, any resulting autonomy could end up being ceded to a disastrously under-funded entity. 

And a return to civil war in Sudan would not be far behind. But as ever, China will continue with its “non-interfering” but always self-interested, bargain-hunting ways.

 

AM I ALONE IN FINDING this year’s Pulitzer Prizes oddly unexciting? The winners were all appropriately worthy, but few offered exactly pulse-racing examples of journalism.

One rattling good innovation, though is the fact that Editorial Cartooning, that media mode that has always seemed so distinctive and peculiar to newspapers and magazines, has now truly leaped of the page. The cartoon prize went to Mark Fiore’s work at a website, SFgate.com, the San Francisco Chronicle’s internet outlet.

It really isn’t easy to transmute flat-print, still-frame conventions into an animated format that works (I know -  I tried enough times along with colleagues in British TV).  But I think Fiore pulls it off enough times to rightly qualify for the award. Here’s one of his best pieces, instructing readers/viewers/listeners in the important linguistic skill of “How to Talk in Teabag“.

                            

[If for any reason the video-player does not play via your browser, Click here]

I’m not sure I’d go all the way with the jury saying it displays “biting wit, extensive research, and ability to distill complex issues [that] set a high standard for an emerging form of commentary - online video cartooning”.

But it’s smart, it moves, and it’s funny.

 

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