China's Military Not a Realistic Threat

Occasionally RealClearDefense carries something of interest to COTTonLINE readers. Today it's a discussion of China's military.

The folks at the satirically named War Is Boring website have an excellent long article arguing that China's large People's Liberation Army is vastly overrated by the militarily naive MSM. The huge numbers of Chinese troops deflect attention from the antiquated weapon systems most of those troops operate.

For example, more than half of China's air force is flying 1980s vintage jets. Most of its many tanks are from roughly the same era and are copies of Soviet models. It's soldiers are mostly so-called "leg infantry" that is unmechanized and immobile as a consequence. Even China's Navy which has some modern equipment is mostly a littoral defense force.

Understanding the role of the PLA requires grasping the insecurities plaguing Chinese leadership. In fact the PLA mainly exists to hold together modern China, including restive Muslim Xinjiang and Buddhist Tibet. While the PLA's equipment is elderly it would be effective in suppressing internal dissent against crowds armed with sticks and rocks.

A final note concerning the PLA's questionable effectiveness: PLA corruption is rampant with rank for sale and government funds diverted into generals' pockets. And the most insidious difficulty China faces is the demographic outfall from their one child policy:

China will grow old before it gets rich.

If you would understand what the U.S. faces in Asia, reading this comprehensive WIB article is an excellent beginning.

Cold War 2.0

Admit it. You've been missing the Cold War, the simplicity of a bipolar world, in which people are either for us or against us. Pine for the Cold War no longer, those good, old days are baaaaack!

Minus Cold War 1.0's Marxist ideological trappings, Cold War 2.0 features the national interests of the U.S. and its allies versus those of Russia allied with whomever in the world wishes the U.S. ill.

Let's examine who may make common cause with Putin's Russia. The most interesting possibility is China, Russia's next-door neighbor. In terms of lack of concern for human rights and political freedoms, China and Russia tend to agree. Also, the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" idea draws them together.

On the other hand, the largest market for Chinese manufacturers is the U.S. and China values U.S. luxury goods more highly than Russian goods. I expect China to be an on-again, off-again ally of Russia, but an ally with its own independent interests and goals.

Worried about an aggressive China, many of its Asian neighbors cling to U.S. skirts. It isn't clear if this alignment is of aid to the U.S., or merely a burden. Ditto a Europe worried about Russian expansionism.

If the Islamic world could ever get past the on-going Sunni-Shia "civil war" it would probably align with Russia. The confessional conflict, however, shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Today the Shia align with Russia while many Sunnis side with the U.S., albeit weakly and with mixed feelings.

Latin America is similarly divided, the economic winners are to varying degrees U.S. friends: Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica. The others - Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina - tend to see the U.S. as "the problem" and are thus potential Russian allies.

A Quality Issue

The Washington Examiner reports education spending is up dramatically but pupil achievement is flat or declining slightly. Author Andrew J. Coulson summarizes the key finding thus:

The correlation between spending and achievement is among the lowest I have ever seen in social-science research: 0.08 on a scale from 0 to 1.

N.B.: As a social scientist, I generally consider any correlation smaller than 0.30 to have no practical significance, even if it is statistically significant. The 0.08 correlation they observed would have to be four times as large to achieve practical significance, that is, to explain a non-trivial amount of variation in student outcomes.

Why are outcomes so disappointing? Try thinking of a K-12 public school as an odd type of factory where the raw material is not chosen by the management, public schools teach whoever shows up each fall. The additional spending the article describes is putting more energy, resources, etc., into the "process" by which the raw material is transformed into graduates (or too often drop-outs).

Historically, many of the high achievers in public schools have come from middle and upper middle class homes. As we spend more on education, the quality of the feedstock - the students - is declining. Ever larger proportions of public school students come from subcultures whose attitudes toward education range from indifference to antagonism, at the same time that ever larger proportions come from one-parent homes and/or poverty.

Another factor in declining public school performance is the requirement that public schools "mainstream" any student who can arguably profit thereby. In practice many students of limited ability who in the past would have been kept home or sent to special needs schools are now in regular public school classrooms, using disproportionate amounts of resources and teacher time and pulling down average achievement scores.

Middle and upper middle class parents are having fewer children, on average, than formerly. Dismayed at public school conditions, these parents if financially able are diverting many of their children into private or charter schools. Such schools often do have some control over who they choose to teach. Other potential achievers are being home schooled.

To summarize, public schools now educate more students who for a variety of reasons are not traditional achievers and fewer students who would be expected, a priori, to do well. So we spend more to try to make educated graduates out of youngsters with whom we have traditionally not succeeded very well. We'd like to think that this different "mix" makes no difference, but of course it does.

Liberal Cities

The New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall writes that city mayors are enacting the liberal agenda at the local level. NYC's df Blasio is the best-known example.

What Edsall overlooks is that these policies drive away the employers upon whom such programs rely for tax revenue funding. Does the mayor of Plano, Texas, have these ambitions? I'm certain Toyota has received assurances nothing of the sort is in the offing for Plano, it's new North America corporate home.

Meanwhile Torrance, CA, which Toyota is leaving, will have to trim expenditures as its tax revenues fall. Cities normally have to balance budgets, live within their means.

MoDo Notices

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd has noticed that our President is playing "small ball" these days, particularly in foreign policy. I don't often recommend a MoDo column but this one is good.

She puts me in mind of a Shakespeare quote from King Lear:

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.

MoDo here pretty much fits the description of a thankless child of the liberal MSM. She is a long-time Obama supporter who finally notices her idol's clay feet extending up past the knee. As she notes, we've seen too many Obama speeches and too few Obama actions.

Quote of the Day

PJ Media's David P. Goldman, who channels Oswald Spengler at least tongue in cheek, writes four short sentences that distill the wisdom of conservatism.

Appeasement invites aggression.
Handouts increase dependency.
Coddling terror-states like Iran elicits megalomania.
Big government stifles the economy.

Could anything be more obviously true? COTTonLINE readers certainly agree.

A Law of Nature

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why literally every American president feels he must try to bring about a rapprochement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. It seems to be a law of nature.

The Washington Post reports the inevitable failure of the latest exercise in futility, the Kerry-Obama round. Wouldn't it be refreshing to someday have a president who could resist this ridiculous urge?

The image that comes to mind is Lucy holding the football for poor, innocent Charlie Brown to kick, only to jerk it aside at the last moment leaving Charlie lying on his back feeling like the sap he has just been shown to be, again for the nth time.

Has Uncle Sam never heard the adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?" Every president back to Nixon has believed he had the magic to make it happen, they've all been wrong. This problem deserves what Sen. Pat Moynihan called "benign neglect."

Philippine Fantasy

The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports breathlessly that 800 Filipino opponents of the U.S./Philippines defense pact demonstrated in Manila. Golly, eight hundred protest in a nation of 107 million.  Manila alone has over 11 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook.

A protest of 800 is a joke in that populous nation. You could probably find that many who would protest Sunday, or ice cream or even eating chicken. Polls likely show most Filipinos approve of the limited steps taken.

Vast, Right-wing Conspiracy

Politico has a column by Chris Lehane who claims to have authored the memo introducing the phrase "vast, right-wing conspiracy." Asked if he still believes it, of course he does.

What Lehane describes, however, is the Internet giving conservatives a place to read material that told the truth as they perceived it, in contrast to the fanciful, unrealistic stuff in the MSM. What Lehane calls "a conspiracy" I define as the end of media censorship and the beginning of a freer press, describing political reality in more than one way.

Monopolists never welcome competition.

Churchill on Islam

In his book The River War, Sir Winston Churchill wrote the following opinion:

Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

My source for this quote is the U.K.'s Daily Mail online. A Brit was arrested for repeating that quote in public.

Toyota Bails

Reuters reports Toyota Motors is moving their North American headquarters from California to Plano, Texas. One is tempted to echo the sentiment appearing on a Seattle billboard during a big Boeing layoff: "Would the last person leaving California please turn out the lights?" Of course the original said "Seattle" instead of "California."

I hope no COTTonLINE reader finds the Toyota move surprising. We've been following CA's sad story for some years, TX continues to eat their lunch.

Travel Blogging XI

Osaka Airport: The drive from Osaka Cruise Port to this airport lasted about 45 minutes on uncrowned tollways, at speed in the rain. We drove alongside various docks and harbors the entire way, it is an enormous port complex, very spread out.

The ship sent our luggage to the airport where it arrived intact without incident. We've put our "wets" in the to-be-checked luggage and are waiting for the United counter to be opened so we can check in and head for the business class lounge. It is now about 12:30 and our flight doesn't go until 4:45, lots of time to kill.

This was a nice cruise, we particularly enjoyed the day on Guam. It was a mite long at 26 days but not unbearably so. It had more back-to-back sea days than I'd ever experienced ... not a problem, more of a benefit if you take my meaning.

Travel Blogging X

At sea, enroute to Osaka, our destination port: Yesterday we visited Kagoshima, which has a dramatic setting on a bay across which rises a still-active volcano. At the southern end of the south-most of Japan's four main islands, Kagoshima would like you to believe it is tropical.

To that end they've planted palm trees at the cruise port. In summer it may be quite warm, yesterday it was gray, overcast, and cool without being cold. Luckily it did not rain. 

We did a shore excursion to two museums, a temple, a garden, and the mountaintop where the last samurai died. Our guide had a masters degree from a British University and her English was good. 

The Japanese esthetic was much on display at the temple, it is nicely understated and highly distinctive. Tomorrow we fly home Osaka to San Francisco nonstop, we will literally arrive in SF earlier than the time we depart Osaka, on the same day and date. 

Travel Blogging IX

At sea, enroute to Kagoshima, Japan: Walking down to my morning reading room I had a strange thought. More often than not a modern cruise ship is a floating retirement village. Especially on longer cruises if you see a young person the odds are high that person is crew or an entertainer (or both).

The ship gathered the children on board for an Easter treat and there were about five. Unusually, one couple at our supper table actually have jobs to return to. 

A common question is "What did you do? What were you (implicitly ... when you actually amounted to something)?" While retirement is a great leveler socially, a cruise ship has few passengers retired from menial occupations as they'd normally not be able to afford the fares.

Walkers are somewhat common and a few pax have powered chairs to zip around the ship in. I started to call those "electric chairs" and realized that term has another, more sinister meaning that I didn't intend.

This cruise has many Asian pax who can be noisy, loud and sometimes boisterous in inappropriate settings. I predict Princess will find their Japan-based ships draw fewer-than-expected non-Asian pax after an initial period when "the word" hasn't gotten out. 

When travel agents hear negative reports from their clients they'll recommend cruises based in the U.S. or Europe, or even Singapore. Posters on the Cruise Critic boards will also be influential. The DrsC have wondered if the basing-in-Japan experiment Princess is trying may turn out the way Norwegian's experiment in Honolulu-basing did ... overly optimistic. 

This post written two days ago.

Travel Blogging VIII

Shanghai, China: The DrsC have been here before and chose not to go ashore this visit. There isn't a whole lot to see here, Shanghai doesn't have the imperial relics that are most of what we enjoy about Beijing. Shanghai's role in China roughly parallels that of New York City in the U.S., a financial center.

As a major city it probably only dates back to the colonial period. The famous Shanghai Bund dates to that era and was constructed by Westerners on the riverfront.

We are one of two cruise ships tied up here today, the other is Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas. Shanghai has a shiny new cruise terminal to welcome ships like ours. It's a busy port, much ship traffic in and out, though not as busy as Singapore.

Tomorrow we'll set our clocks for Japan, which is not in the same time zone as China. Tonight we will watch local acrobats perform on board before we depart. The cruise is winding down, GIs call what we have left "three days and a get-up."

Travel Blogging VII

At sea, enroute to Shanghai: Yesterday we returned to Okinawa, this time we visited the peace memorial, which honors everyone on both sides who died during the 1944 Okinawa invasion. Maybe 13,000 Allied troops died, most of them GIs. Something like 90,000 Japanese troops were killed, and that many more Okinawan civilians. 

Some number of both latter groups may have been suicides who preferred death to surrender. I understand that horrifies many Westerners, but not me. My view: your life is your own, to end if you choose to do so. 

The museum associated with the peace memorial is interesting but was hard to enjoy since it was overflowing with Japanese schoolchildren in matching t-shirts. Our guide says they are here on a school fieldtrip from "the mainland" which means something different to Okinawans. To them it means the four major islands of Japan, not the continent of Asia.

On our way back to the ship we visited a glass factory and its associated factory store. Watching the glassblowers was fun but they don't make decorative paperweights, the one thing we might have been tempted to buy. Interestingly, all of their glass was labeled as not safe for dishwashers or for boiling water.

Okinawa's capital Naha looks prosperous, apparently tourism is the number one "industry" for this southernmost prefecture of Japan. I suspect most of those are Japanese tourists who come south in winter to warm up. 

Speaking of which, as we've gone north the temperature keeps dropping. I'm wearing a light jacket today for the first time since we approached Hawaii. Japan may still be quite cool.

Underwater?

The Daily Mail has an interesting article concerning the impact of a rise in sea levels on inhabitable land. No question, many coastal cities are near sea level and could be inundated.

The maps show the central valley of  California as a giant bay. I'd hope we'd be smart enough to build a dam across the Golden Gate, install locks to facilitate shipping, and pumps to maintain internal water levels. The Dutch have shown the way on such projects.

Travel Blogging VI

Keelung, the port of Taipei, Taiwan, ROC: We took a tour into Taipei this morning, visited an elaborate temple with many worshipers, most of them not young. The local religion is Taoism with a smattering of Buddhism added.

Worship here appears to consist of purchasing several incense sticks, lighting them, holding them upright in a grouping such that the backs of your hands either touch, or nearly touch the forehead, while bowing repeatedly before one of the several highly ornamented altars. Those are the outward manefestations of worship, what was in the worshipers' minds is another matter.

Worshipers bring flower arrangements and decorative food displays which they leave briefly on one of several very shiny tables. The food later goes home with them, if I understood the drill.

We also revisited the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial that occupies roughly 50 acres in downtown Taipei. It is a spectacular area with three major buildings: the Memorial itself, the national theater, and the national concert hall. These latter two are highly decorated in the classical Chinese style, and quite large. The Memorial by contrast is beautifully simple, and even larger. We saw part of the changing of the guard ceremony therein ... wow ... the precision was outstanding.

Our third stop was the Handicraft Center which we first visited 28 years ago. We found the merchandise much less enticing this time around, you could call the current inventory "jewelry and junk." It was a letdown.

Our final stop was Taipei 101, a unique-looking skyscraper that is ... 101 stories tall and supposed to be the second tallest building anywhere. I can't independently verify that particular claim. We just did a photo stop, we didn't have time to queue for the elevator trip to the top.

Our guides were a multilingual Dutchman and his Chinese wife who reside here. They confirmed the Taiwanese fondness for the Japanese; it is probably the only place in Asia where the Japanese are well-liked. 

I learned why this is so. For their own selfish reasons the Japanese encouraged the Taiwanese to be a unique people whereas the Chinese want Taiwan to be purely Chinese. Can you guess which approach the locals prefer? Many aren't enthused about the Sinification of Taiwan. 

Like South Korea, Chile and the Philippines, Taiwan is a former military dictatorship that peacefully became over time a multi-party democracy. Meanwhile the island is more mountainous than Switzerland (local claim, not independently verified) so its many residents are jammed together in the valley bottoms where they await the frequent earthquakes and occasional typhoon while hoping the PRC won't invade ... so far it hasn't. That crowding probably contributes to the shrinking population.

The first time we were here we stayed at the Lai-Lai Sheraton Hotel, it was relatively new and modern. It was strange today to hear our guide describe it as one of the older hotels; it no longer uses the "Lai-Lai" appellation. I wonder if the Grey's Tailor shop is still in the basement? We were staying at that Sheraton when we learned the tanks were rolling into Tienamin Square to squelch the nascent freedom movement. 

This post written yesterday in Keelung, today we are at sea enroute to Okinawa, where we'll be tomorrow.

Travel Blogging V

A day's sailing east of Keelung, the port of Taipei: Earlier I was online and noted that whereas it is Easter Sunday here, it is still Saturday in the States. The Internet's instantaneous access makes one aware of such anomalies. We once confronted that apparent paradox every time we called home from Guam, when it was "home" for a year in the mid-1980s.

The part of our cruise which consisted of many back-to-back sea days is past. Tomorrow we're in Taipei, followed by a single sea day, and another port day. From here on we're in port literally every second day until the cruise ends at Osaka. As an old hand at cruising, I prefer the sea days but a port day I don't go ashore is as good.

As a cruise to Asia this trip on the Sapphire Princess has many ethnically Asian passengers, and a surprising number of couples where only the woman is Asian. There are two such couples at our dinner table. 

Modern cruising is largely a "couples" thing, single or widowed ladies are here but not in big numbers. The couple aboard with the most days on Princess has spent over 1300 days traveling with the company, that's close to four years. 

Film Review: Elysium

Earlier this evening the other DrC and I watched the Matt Damon, Jodie Foster science fiction film Elysium. It is a highly dystopian future (aren't they all for Hollywood?) set a hundred years from now in a Los Angeles that looks worse than but sounds the same as the back streets of Ensenada. The poor live dirtside.

The wealthy live on a space station shaped like a giant wheel which spins to simulate gravity. The station is named Elysium, and it looks much like Beverly Hills. Apparently current trends have continued, essentially eliminating the middle class.

Damon plays slum-dweller Max whereas Foster plays Elysium's Defense Minister. The rest of the cast are talented unknowns. The film has a fully-realized "look" that isn't pretty but definitely "works."

This isn't the cute Matt Damon of the Bourne trilogy, here he's ugly and spends much of the film wearing a cyborg rig that makes him both more-than-and-less-than-human.

The film Elysium isn't as bad as some reviews have alleged, but it probably won't win many prizes either. We liked it, but didn't love it.