I’ve been saying it for a long time. Krugman’s latest op-ed echoes the frustrations of dealing with a nascent superpower that has the mentality of a five-year-old pointing a taser at the neighbours to see how high they jump.

On the recent Senkaku imbroglio that belatedly brought rare earths to the world’s attention:

I don’t know about you, but I find this story deeply disturbing, both for what it says about China and what it says about us. On one side, the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials. On the other side, the incident shows a Chinese government that is dangerously trigger-happy, willing to wage economic warfare on the slightest provocation.

And the all too obvious questions now being asked:

You really have to wonder why nobody raised an alarm while this was happening, if only on national security grounds. But policy makers simply stood by as the U.S. rare earth industry shut down. In at least one case, in 2003 — a time when, if you believed the Bush administration, considerations of national security governed every aspect of U.S. policy — the Chinese literally packed up all the equipment in a U.S. production facility and shipped it to China.

Krugman’s frustration coming to the boil:

Then came the trawler event. Chinese restrictions on rare earth exports were already in violation of agreements China made before joining the World Trade Organization. But the embargo on rare earth exports to Japan was an even more blatant violation of international trade law.

Oh, and Chinese officials have not improved matters by insulting our intelligence, claiming that there was no official embargo. All of China’s rare earth exporters, they say — some of them foreign-owned — simultaneously decided to halt shipments because of their personal feelings toward Japan. Right.

And the lessons to be drawn?

First, and most obviously, the world needs to develop non-Chinese sources of these materials.

Second, China’s response to the trawler incident is, I’m sorry to say, further evidence that the world’s newest economic superpower isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with that status.

I could take a swipe at Krugman here for stating the bleedin’ obvious. Except it’s been obvious for some time and nobody has been paying attention. So I’ll give him a break for spelling it out.
Update

Only Sino novices will be surprised to learn that China today signalled more cuts in its rare earth exports: http://ow.ly/2WjkY

Liu Xiabo, co-author of Charter ’08 and long time activist for political reform and freedom of speech, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Better writers than me will be doing justice to this momentous development in the coming days. I’ll link to the best of them as they appear.

My hope now is that the Chinese government put aside their penchant for spite and retribution in the face of opposition, and take the opportunity to gain the international ground they lost when they chose to threaten Norway if they gave Liu the Prize. They can do this by releasing Liu Xiaobo and beginning a new chapter in China’s staggering progress of the last three decades.

Congratulations, LXB.

Links to articles on the NPP 4 LXB

First up, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers

The Economist’s take

And now James Fallows, who concludes:

There will be much to discuss over the months and years. For this moment, admiration for the courage, sacrifice, and endurance of Liu and the countless other Chinese people who have worked for a more liberal and mature society, and respects to the Nobel committee for a brave choice.

Evan Osnos at The New Yorker

President Obama:

I welcome the Nobel Committee’s decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Liu Xiaobo. Last year, I noted that so many others who have received the award had sacrificed so much more than I. That list now includes Mr. Liu, who has sacrificed his freedom for his beliefs. By granting the prize to Mr. Liu, the Nobel Committee has chosen someone who has been an eloquent and courageous spokesman for the advance of universal values through peaceful and non-violent means, including his support for democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

As I said last year in Oslo, even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal to all human beings. Over the last 30 years, China has made dramatic progress in economic reform and improving the lives of its people, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. But this award reminds us that political reform has not kept pace, and that the basic human rights of every man, woman and child must be respected. We call on the Chinese government to release Mr. Liu as soon as possible.

Exactly, bro.

Jeremiah Jenne takes a swipe at China’s ignoble response:

Not to take anything away from Liu’s obvious set of large brass ones or his and his family’s sacrifice, but this Prize is as much a testament to the CCP’s continued paranoia and basic stupidity when confronted with even the most mild of statements for systemic or institutional change as it is about any one man.

More on China’s reaction from Jason Miks at The Diplomat

A good, balanced view from Peter Foster at The Telegraph

Fang Lizhi articulates why this award is important in an NYT op-ed:

As the unfortunate history of Japan during the first half of the 20th century illustrates, a rising economic power that violates human rights is a threat to peace.

Thankfully, the courageous Nobel Committee has exposed this link once again in the case of a prospering China. The committee is absolutely right to make a connection between respect for human rights and world peace. As Alfred Nobel so well understood, human rights are the prerequisite for the “fraternity between nations.”

The party elders are involved now! Open letter written to Wen Jiabao (now ‘harmonised’ – English translation available here) calling for political reform and free speech. Could get ugly.

I’ve brought to the attention of readers on a number of occasions the dangers of letting children play with powerful weapons. If great and growing power is not accompanied by a commensurate degree of measured responsibility, then the shit hitting the fan is removed from the realms of improbable possibility and enters the domain of the inevitable.

Predictably, in the two weeks since the ‘Senkaku incident‘ China has amply demonstrated the extent to which her foreign policy is based on playground bullying and juvenile tantrum. This included: cancelling an Expo invitation previously extended to Japanese students; cutting diplomatic ties at the highest level, including Wen Jiabao’s refusal to meet his Japanese counterpart in New York; the dubious arrest of four Japanese nationals for carrying cameras; stopping the export of crucial rare earth metals vital to Japan’s economy (predicted here); and countless threats issued through the state media.

From The Economist:

[China's] actions have called into question its maturity as a responsible international actor and undermined its pretensions to a “peaceful rise”. Other states observe a host of traditions to help see them work through border disputes and express their displeasure with one another. The melodrama of China’s reaction, entirely disproportionate to the matter at hand, made it impossible for the two sides to find a mutually acceptable outcome.

Couldn’t have put it any better. Only I would have bet money on the strident, nationalistic petulance we’ve witnessed in recent days before it happened. And the really alarming point here is that China’s frenzy was whipped up over an event that helped define the word ‘trivial’. Just what the hell are China’s neighbours going to be subject to when – heaven forbid – a genuinely serious incident occurs? And what price an incident is orchestrated as an excuse to strengthen internal unity or chase territorial ambitions? More likely than not on current evidence.

Why?

Because there’s no vestige of maturity in the way China has dealt with alternative world views, and no prospect of them accepting a leading role as a responsible stakeholder. Such self-actualised behaviour does not fit with China’s zero-sum mentality which includes the wilful pursuit of a US demise coupled with a thinly-veiled desire to dominate both regionally and globally.

Unfortunately, China is the kid bully to whom all the aces have fallen rather too quickly; and the child monster is beginning to abuse the power of its hand to the ultimate detriment of all. Every time a nation weighs the pros and cons of appeasing China’s childish demands and aggressive territorial behaviour, they would do well to remember the lessons of Germany’s folly of the 1930s, which led the world to war. It is naive in the extreme to believe the potential for such calamity is a thing of the past. The difference is, this time around, the world is a more volatile and dangerous place by far.

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue saying it until I see evidence that the Chinese government is capable of displaying maturity in line with its power: GROW THE FUCK UP ! Now, someone wake me up when China’s leaders begin shaving.

Update

Another excellent article on the issue from McClatchy Newspaper’s Tom Lasseter.

And another from Mark Mackinnon.

BEIJING — Yu Jie has picked a fight with the Communist Party of China, and if state security forces haul him away in the dark of night, there will be no one to stop them. It’s a risk Yu took knowingly when he wrote a book published this month that slammed the country’s prime minister as an “actor” shilling for an authoritarian government.

His challenge is a rarity in a nation noted for its rough treatment of dissidents, and is made all the more remarkable by the fact that Yu, an unassuming author who looks like a Beijing office worker, has no prominent family or professional connections in China to bail him out of prison.

Via McClatchy’s excellent Tom Lasseter

China’s leaders are petty-minded, paranoid, intolerant, and filled with spiteful punitive intent when challenged. Such is the courage required of the dissenting voice in the Middle Kingdom.

Yu Jie, take a bow. China needs many more as brave as you.