Latest News Clips 2018.11.12

                    

1.      A Partisan War Awaits Trump. That Just Might Suit Him.

   

President Trump may have to choose between escalating the partisan warfare in Washington and trying to reach bipartisan deals.CreditCreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times        Nov. 7, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump will wake up on Wednesday morning to a radically new political environment as he confronts the prospect of a two-year partisan war with a Democratic-run House armed with subpoena power and empowered to block his legislative agenda.

Combative by nature, happier in a fight, the president may now have to choose between escalating the pitched conflict that has torn Washington apart in recent years and attempting the sort of reach-across-the-aisle conciliation that has rarely marked his presidency so far.

After waging a divisive and racially charged campaign, Mr. Trump signaled in the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote that he may soften his tone going forward, although past nods toward bipartisanship have never lasted long. With his party no longer holding all the levers of power in Washington, he cannot bypass the opposition if he hopes to transform his priorities into law.

[Mr. Trump claimed a “Big Victory” on Wednesday morning.]

Perhaps just as important, he will no longer have Republican majorities to guard his flank against investigations into all manner of issues that Democrats are eager to examine. The new House may press far more deeply into his personal and political affairs, demanding the tax returns he has kept secret, delving deeper into any ties with Russia and exploring any conflicts of interest.

At its most extreme, a Democratic House could even potentially pose an impeachment threat against the president depending on the results of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who has remained quiet during the campaign, although party leaders are wary of such a move.

“The administration will be under higher scrutiny and accountability by a Democratic House,” said former Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia. “Look for more investigations and subpoenas. The honeymoon is over. Voters voted to put a check on the president rather than giving him a blank check.”

Mr. Trump became the fourth president in a row to endure a major midterm setback. Bill Clinton’s Democrats lost both houses of Congress in 1994, George W. Bush’s Republicans lost both houses in 2006, and Barack Obama’s Democrats lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.

But Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama both bounced back from their first-term defeats to win re-election two years later, finding it useful politically to have an opposition to play off. In his time in politics, Mr. Trump has been at his most comfortable and confident when he has an enemy to joust with.

 “The subpoena process and investigations will be difficult,” said Marc Short, a former White House legislative director for Mr. Trump. “But there’s probably nothing that could help the president’s re-election prospects better than having Nancy Pelosi as speaker.”

Former Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, said the election results were a “mixed bag” for the president. “With a House Democratic majority, he has the foil he needs for his re-election campaign in 2020,” Mr. Israel said. “But no president wants the other party with subpoena power — certainly not this president.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump characterized the midterm elections as a referendum on his presidency, telling supporters that they needed to vote for Republicans to continue his policies and guard him against impeachment. He made clear that he would cast a victory as a personal vindication while pre-emptively insisting that if Republicans lost, it would not be a repudiation of him.

2.      The Global Impact of a Chinese Recession

The Project Syndicate   Nov 7, 2018 

 Most economic forecasts suggest that a recession in China will hurt everyone, but that the pain would be more regionally confined than would be the case for a deep recession in the United States. Unfortunately, that may be wishful thinking.

CAMBRIDGE – When China finally has its inevitable growth recession – which will almost surely be amplified by a financial crisis, given the economy’s massive leverage – how will the rest of world be affected? With US President Donald Trump’s trade war hitting China just as growth was already slowing, this is no idle question.

Typical estimates, for example those embodied in the International Monetary Fund’s assessments of country risk, suggest that an economic slowdown in China will hurt everyone. But the acute pain, according to the IMF, will be more regionally concentrated and confined than would be the case for a deep recession in the United States. Unfortunately, this might be wishful thinking.

First, the effect on international capital markets could be vastly greater than Chinese capital market linkages would suggest. However jittery global investors may be about prospects for profit growth, a hit to Chinese growth would make things a lot worse. Although it is true that the US is still by far the biggest importer of final consumption goods (a large share of Chinese manufacturing imports are intermediate goods that end up being embodied in exports to the US and Europe), foreign firms nonetheless still enjoy huge profits on sales in China.

Investors today are also concerned about rising interest rates, which not only put a damper on consumption and investment, but also reduce the market value of companies (particularly tech firms) whose valuations depend heavily on profit growth far in the future. A Chinese recession could again make the situation worse.

I appreciate the usual Keynesian thinking that if any economy anywhere slows, this lowers world aggregate demand, and therefore puts downward pressure on global interest rates. But modern thinking is more nuanced. High Asian saving rates over the past two decades have been a significant factor in the low overall level of real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates in both the United States and Europe, thanks to the fact that underdeveloped Asian capital markets simply cannot constructively absorb the surplus savings.

Former US Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke famously characterized this much-studied phenomenon as a key component of the “global savings glut.” Thus, instead of leading to lower global real interest rates, a Chinese slowdown that spreads across Asia could paradoxically lead to higher interest rates elsewhere – especially if a second Asian financial crisis leads to a sharp draw-down of central bank reserves. Thus, for global capital markets, a Chinese recession could easily prove to be a double whammy.

As bad as a slowdown in exports to China would be for many countries, a significant rise in global interest rates would be much worse. Eurozone leaders, particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel, get less credit than they deserve for holding together the politically and economically fragile single currency against steep economic and political odds. But their task would have been well-nigh impossible but for the ultra-low global interest rates that have allowed politically paralyzed eurozone officials to skirt needed debt write-downs and restructurings in the periphery.

When the advanced countries had their financial crisis a decade ago, emerging markets recovered relatively quickly, thanks to low debt levels and strong commodity prices. Today, however, debt levels have risen significantly, and a sharp rise in global real interest rates would almost certainly extend today’s brewing crises beyond the handful of countries (including Argentina and Turkey) that have already been hit.

Nor is the US immune. For the moment, the US can finance its trillion-dollar deficits at relatively low cost. But the relatively short-term duration of its borrowing – under four years if one integrates the Treasury and Federal Reserve balance sheets – means that a rise in interest rates would soon cause debt service to crowd out needed expenditures in other areas. At the same time, Trump’s trade war also threatens to undermine the US economy’s dynamism. Its somewhat arbitrary and politically driven nature makes it at least as harmful to US growth as the regulations Trump has so proudly eliminated. Those who assumed that Trump’s stance on trade was mostly campaign bluster should be worried.

3.      Alibaba Goes International to Hit New Singles’ Day Record

The Bloomberg    Nov.09, 2018  

This Singles’ Day to be the last with Jack Ma as chairman

Alibaba targeting Southeast Asia as it seeks global expansion

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is looking beyond borders to turn its annual Singles’ Day shopping celebration into a global phenomenon.

This Sunday, the Chinese internet giant is including sales from Lazada, the online shopping mall it controls. Southeast Asia’ biggest web retailer is becoming a key part of Alibaba’s plan to fuel growth, on top of the company’s efforts to move into shopping malls, convenience stores and food delivery.

Jack Ma, center, flanked by celebrities during the Alibaba Singles’ Day festival in Nov. 2017.

The challenge for billionaire Jack Ma’s online empire is to break another sales transaction record after a decade of exceeding prior results. With a brewing trade war, a cooling economy and rising competition from smaller platforms such as JD.com Inc. and Pinduoduo Inc., Alibaba is seeking to add new growth engines. The retail celebration on Nov. 11 dedicated to the nation’s unattached has become an important bellwether not just for the company, but also the world’s No. 2 economy.

“Singles’ Day has now become a stage for Alibaba to showcase its capabilities across all its platforms,” Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer, said at an October news conference in Beijing. He’s taking over after Ma steps down as executive chairman next year.

It was Zhang who came up with the idea of turning Singles’ Day into a shopfest a decade ago. Now that this year’s one-day bazaar will be Ma’s last as chairman, Zhang will need to prove he can carry on the legacy. “We think 1 billion packages will become a daily event in the future,” he said.

More than half a billion people are projected to visit Alibaba’s websites in search of Dyson hair dyers, infant formula and Gucci bags. Alibaba has been able to post breakneck growth for almost a decade, including a 39 percentjump in sales last year to 168 billion yuan ($24.2 billion).

Still, there’s some uncertainty this year, due to a slowing economy, real estate deflation and trade tensions with the U.S. that could impact on Chinese consumption. The weaker economy and rising household debt have, to some extent, dampened consumers’ confidence in China.

Online retail sales growth slowed to 24 percent, down 12 percentage points in the second quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Policy makers have made a slew of changes, including reductions in income tax and tariffs on goods. That indicates spending may pick up in coming months; the earliest proof could come from data during Singles’ Day.

Last week, Alibaba reported quarterly profit and sales well above analysts’ estimates, while trimming its prediction for full-year sales by as much as 6 percent, with Ma warning that the economic conflict between the world’s two largest economies could last 20 years.

To fuel growth, Alibaba is expanding its playbook. Ele.me, the startup it took control of this year, will provide delivery services for select Starbucks stores across 11 cities in China. Rural Taobao will offer coupons for goods across 800 counties, and Lazada will roll out promotions across six Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Although it’s been three years since Ma said he wants to make Singles’ Day a global shopping event, that hasn’t happened yet. International expansion will be a key part of Zhang’s plan to keep breaking sales records. Last year, Russia, Hong Kong and the U.S. were the top three regions outside of mainland China to buy goods during the annual event. Popular items purchased overseas included mobile phones, wool coats and knitted sweaters, according to the company.

At the same time, Alibaba’s efforts to push into the U.S. are sputtering. It discarded a pledge to create a million jobs in the country, lost its top U.S. dealmaker and jettisoned plans for affiliate Alipay to acquire MoneyGram. U.S. President Donald Trump said in October that he plans to withdraw from a 192-nation treaty that gives Chinese companies discounted shipping rates for small packages sent to American consumers, making it harder to push into the market.

Southeast Asia will give the clearest indication of Alibaba’s ability to go international. With Singapore-based Lazada now fully under its wing, the region remains one of the company’s relative bright spots.

The slump in China’s advertising sector is also hurting Alibaba. A significant chunk of revenue comes from merchants spending money across the e-commerce giant’s platforms to lure customers. That item, which falls under the category “customer management revenue,” rose 26 percent in the latest quarter, compared with 35 percent in the prior period.

“The macro slowdown has affected advertisers’ sales performances and thus their online ad spending budgets,” Ella Ji, an analyst at China Renaissance, wrote in a report.

Latest News Clips 2018.11.05

                      

1.      As Angela Merkel’s star dims, Europe is facing perhaps its biggest challenge since 1930s

Pragmatism and brave policies have sustained her so far, but her possible fall could have a dire impact on the whole EU

The Guardian    28 Oct 2018

      

Angela Merkel’s political obituary has been written many times since last year’s bruising federal election, when her centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) slumped to 33% of the vote. Since then, the fortunes of the CDU – and its sister party, Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) – have continued to decline. If today’s state election in Hesse goes as expected, it will be seen as another crushing, possibly fatal, rebuff for Germany’s chancellor.

Merkel has survived this long because she stands head and shoulders above her rivals. In office since 2005, and serving a fourth term, she is widely regarded, inside and outside Germany, as Europe’s de facto leader. Clear political principles, exemplified by her brave, open-door migration policy and willingness to stand up to Donald Trump, coupled with a pragmatic sense of what’s possible, have sustained her this far.

The fracturing of the German party system has also helped keep her in power – but it could yet prove her undoing. Her main coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), recorded its worst post-war result last year, attracting only 20% of support, while the Greens, the Free Democrats, Die Linke (the Left), and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) all gained ground. The SPD faces a repeat meltdown in Hesse. If that does happen, rising pressure within that party to quit the ruling coalition may be irresistible.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU general secretary, who is said to be Merkel’s preferred successor, warned last week the departure of SPD would trigger a general election. With the CDU polling at 26-27% nationally, the prospect of a drubbing in new federal polls could bring Merkel’s reign to an abrupt halt.

The end of the Merkel era could have dire implications for the future cohesiveness of Europe and the EU. The timing could hardly be worse, as political fragmentation and polarisation reach epidemic proportions. Of the two other leading regional powers, Britain, a traditional ally of Berlin, has become a liability, wholly preoccupied with a mutually damaging Brexit process that is setting a worrying EU precedent.

In France, meanwhile, the shine has come off Emmanuel Macron only 18 months after his insurrectionary electoral clean sweep. His unpopular labour market reforms have not produced the promised results: unemployment is rising again, towards 10%, and economic growth is falling. He has been damaged by high-profile resignations, his mishandling of an Elysée scandal, and his irksome, quasi-Napoleonic arrogance. His personal approval ratings are below 30%.

As a leader on the international stage, Macron is also proving a divisive figure, very different from Merkel. Casting himself as Europe’s champion against the rising forces of illiberalism and populism, he recently picked a fight with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist leader, and Italy’s hard-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.

Macron characterises the two men, and likeminded politicians in Poland and elsewhere, as a danger to cherished EU principles of open borders, open markets and open societies. “If they want to see me as their principal opponent, they are right. I will cede nothing to the nationalists and their language of hate,” he declared grandly.

As analyst Robert Zaretsky argues, Macron’s attempt to impose an either-or choice, in the manner of Charles de Gaulle, could engender even greater polarisation at a time when Europe’s established political order is breaking up. “Insisting upon the division between liberalism and illiberalism obscures the inconvenient truth that a range of alternatives exists between these ideological poles,” Zaretsky wrote. “As the French socialist Pierre Moscovici noted, ‘Not all pro-Europeans have the same ideas’.”

2.      Taiwan Train Accident Kills at Least 18 and Injures About 170 Others

         

The coastal Puyuma Express train was carrying more than 350 passengers when it derailed Sunday afternoon in eastern Taiwan, officials said.CreditCreditCentral News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The New York Times    Oct. 21, 2018

TAIPEI, Taiwan — At least 18 people were killed and 171 others injured after a passenger train derailed Sunday afternoon in northeastern Taiwan on a coastal route popular among tourists, railroad officials and local news reports said.

The Puyuma Express train was carrying 366 passengers to Taitung, a city on Taiwan’s southeast coast, from Shulin in New Taipei City in the north when it went off the tracks near Xinma Station in Yilan County about 4:50 p.m. local time.

Images on social media showed the mangled wreckage of the train carriages in a zigzag pattern near the tracks, and injured passengers lying on the ground. Five of the eight carriages were reported to have overturned.

Some passengers were crushed to death, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, Chen Chung-chi, said, according to The Associated Press. “Their train car turned over. They were crushed, so they died right away,” he said.

About 120 soldiers were called to the site to help remove bodies so that they could be identified, he added, but nightfall was complicating rescue work.

Video footage showed emergency workers pulling people from the wreckage in Yilan County. Most of the deaths were in the first car, which flipped over, a government spokesman said, according to The A.P.

On Sunday evening, as many as 30 people were still trapped in the wreckage, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

Local television reports said that passengers were trying to escape through train windows and that bystanders had gathered to help them before rescuers arrived, The A.P. said.

The country’s transport ministry said Sunday night that 22 people had died and 171 others were injured, but later revised the death toll to 18. It said a 43-year-old American woman was among those injured, CCN said.

The Taiwan Railways Administration said it had formed a disaster response team to investigate the cause of the crash. The injured were being treated at four hospitals.

A local official told United Daily News, a Taiwan newspaper, that the conductor said an unidentified object had been on the tracks and may have caused the train to derail.

Train accidents are fairly rare in Taiwan, with the last crash of a similar scale taking place in 2003, when a train serving the mountain tourist destination of Ali Mountain derailed, killing 17 people and injuring 156 others.

In 2011, at least six people were killed and more than 50 others injured after a tree collapsed into the path of a tourist train also serving Ali Mountain.

3.      Jin Yong, 94, Lionized Author of Chinese Martial Arts Epics, Dies

The novelist Jin Yong in 2002 with his book “Book and Sword, Gratitude and Revenge” at his office in Hong Kong. He was broadly popular with generations of Chinese readers.CreditCreditBobby Yip/Reuters

The New York Times   Nov. 2, 2018

HONG KONG — Jin Yong, a literary giant of the Chinese-speaking world whose fantastical epic novels inspired countless film, television and video game adaptations and were read by generations of ethnic Chinese, died on Tuesday in Hong Kong. He was 94.

His death, at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital, was confirmed by Ming Pao, the prominent Hong Kong newspaper that Jin Yong helped establish and ran for decades. Chip Tsao, a writer and friend, said the cause of death was organ failure.

Jin Yong, the pen name of Louis Cha, was one of the most widely read 20th-century writers in the Chinese language. The panoramic breadth and depth of the fictional universes he created have been compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and have been studied as a topic known as “Jinology.”

Jin Yong received his start as a novelist in the mid-1950s while working as a film critic and editor for The New Evening Post in Hong Kong, which was then a British crown colony. He had moved there in 1948 and lived there for most of his life.

From 1955 to 1972, Jin Yong wrote 14 novels and novellas and one short story in the popular genre known as wuxia, which consisted mainly of swashbuckling martial arts adventures.

His first wuxia novel, “The Book and the Sword” (1955), drew its inspiration from a legend that held that the Manchu emperor Qianlong was in fact a Han Chinese who had been switched at birth. The novel was serialized in The New Evening Post and became an instant hit.

By the time he began writing, the Chinese Communist Party had banned wuxia literature, calling it “decadent” and “feudal.” The ban reflected a centuries-old view of wuxia as a marginal genre within the Chinese literary tradition.

But in Hong Kong and other parts of the Chinese diaspora, Jin Yong’s novels helped spearhead a new wave of martial arts fiction in the 1950s and ‘60s.

 “Legends of the Condor Heroes 1: A Hero Born,” by Jin Yong.

Jin Yong elevated what had been a rather formulaic genre by blending in poetry, history and fantasy to create hundreds of vivid characters who travel through a mirror underworld that operates according to its own laws and code of ethics.

In tales of love, chivalry, friendship and filial piety, his characters are flawed, with complex emotional histories, making them all the more appealing.

“Writing about heroes was very easy,” Jin Yong said in a 2012 interview. “But as I got older I learned that these big heroes actually had another, more contemptible side to them, a side that was not shown to others.”

Translated into many languages, his books have sold tens of millions of copies, fueling a sprawling industry of film, television and video game adaptations.

Jin Yong used martial arts fiction as a vehicle to talk about Chinese history and traditional culture, forging his own fictional vernacular that drew heavily on classical expressions. His stories were often set at pivotal moments in Chinese history, like the rise and fall of dynasties. They made reference to Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist ideas, and positioned martial arts as an integral part of Chinese culture, alongside traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and calligraphy.

Jin Yong took a “marginal, even disreputable, form of popular fiction and made it both a vehicle for serious literary expression and something that appealed to Chinese readers around the globe,” John Christopher Hamm, an associate professor of Asian languages and literature at the University of Washington, said in a telephone interview.

Following the early success of his novels, Jin Yong established his own newspaper, Ming Pao Daily News, in Hong Kong in 1959. Soon he was publishing installments of his novels while writing daily social commentaries about the horrors of Mao Zedong’s

It was a subject he was intimately familiar with: In 1951, his father had been labeled a “class enemy” and was executed by the Communists.

In 1981, as China was beginning to open up economically and politically, Jin Yong traveled to Beijing to meet with Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor. Deng confessed that he was an avid fan of Jin Yong’s books.

Not long afterward, China lifted its ban on Jin Yong’s novels. At the time, many young Chinese were eager to read something other than the socialist propaganda they had become accustomed to under Mao.

“Reading his novels opened our vision,” Liu Jianmei, a professor of contemporary Chinese literature at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said in a telephone interview. “His way of thinking was so different from what was being cultivated in mainland China at the time. He helped us think beyond right and wrong, good and bad.”

In 1985, Jin Yong was appointed to a political committee charged with drafting Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the mini-constitution that would govern that semiautonomous city once Britain handed it over, ending colonial rule. He drew criticism for backing a conservative proposal to select the city’s leader without universal suffrage.

Jin Yong’s initial optimism about China’s political opening was dashed by the government’s bloody crackdown on the student-led democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

He resigned from the committee in protest. In a tearful interview, he said, “Students’ peaceful petitions should never be suppressed by military force.”

Cha Leung-yung was born the second of seven children on March 10, 1924, in Haining, in the central coastal province of Zhejiang. His father, Zha Shuqing, was an educated landlord. His mother, Xu Lu, was from a wealthy business family.

Jin Yong graduated from Soochow University’s law school in 1948. By then he had begun working as a journalist and translator for the newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai. In 1948 he moved with the newspaper to Hong Kong, which would become his home for the next seven decades.

He retired from writing novels in 1972. He stepped down as chairman of the Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation in 1993.

Jin Yong is survived by his third wife, Lam Lok Yi, and his children from his second marriage: a son, Andrew, and two daughters, Grace and Edna.

This year, the first installment of Jin Yong’s popular trilogy, “Legends of the Condor Heroes,” was translated into English, by Anna Holmwood.

Among readers of original Chinese versions, Jin Yong had no shortage of prominent fans. They include Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba, who at one point gave employees nicknames drawn from characters in the novels.