english Beijing briefing: China’s wish for 2023? An end to lockdown By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 29 Nov 2022 16:12:17 +0000 Beijing briefing: China’s wish for 2023? An end to lockdown The World Today mhiggins.drupal 29 November 2022 Xi Jinping will try to beef up Global South relations in 2023, but weary Chinese and the business sector need pandemic restrictions to end, says Yu Jie. This past year in Chinese politics was capped by a highly anticipated 20th Party Congress in Beijing in October which marked the beginning of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term. Xi stacked the all-powerful Politburo with male loyalists and left the rest of the world to sift through the implications of his leadership reshuffle. Meanwhile, Xi made headlines at the G20 summit in Indonesia, maintaining a largely positive tone with President Joe Biden and being caught on camera chiding Canada’s Justin Trudeau for leaks after their talks. So, what can we expect Xi to pull out of the hat in 2023, the Chinese Year of the Rabbit? In February and March, the conversations around Beijing dinner tables will focus on the composition of the new central government – the important seats within the Chinese State Council. This body must deliver Xi’s ‘security-oriented’ economic agenda as well as his much-promoted ‘Common Prosperity’ initiative. The ‘Zero-Covid’ strategy has exacerbated youth unemployment and tested the patience of China’s upwardly mobile middle-class Pundits will be paying particular attention to who is put in charge of economic planning, who the new foreign minister might be and who will govern the central bank. I will offer my reading of these tea leaves as the year unfolds. In April and May, speculation may turn to whether China will finally open its borders to foreign visitors and those compatriots who want to be reunited with loved ones after enduring the pandemic lockdown. While some loosening of restrictions began in November 2022, China is still balancing its twin aims of containing the spread of Covid and re-engineering its economy along similar lines to Europe. Beijing’s controversial ‘Zero-Covid’ strategy has intensified economic pressures, exacerbated rising levels of youth unemployment and tested the patience of China’s middle class, which has led to unprecedented civil disobedience. Those not employed by the state have been hit particularly hard. It is difficult to see how China’s economy can crank up again until Beijing reduces its internal restrictions and reconnects with the world. A pivot to the Global South June and July will be prime season for Beijing’s diplomacy with the Global South. Xi recently announced that China would host the third Belt and Road Forum in 2023 – a meeting of heads of states from predominantly developing countries to discuss his flagship foreign affairs initiative. As seen in the Political Report of the 20th Party Congress, Xi has abandoned the ‘new type of great power relations’ language he previously used to describe relations with the US-led western world. In its place, Xi is stressing that China should develop its ties with the Global South through his Global Development and Global Security initiatives which were announced in 2021 and 2022 respectively. These aim to reshape the global governance agenda in multilateral forums and project Beijing’s influence on to the developing world. Sport will dominate throughout August and September. While Beijing’s spending spree on football promotion might have failed to see the national side qualify for the World Cup, its table tennis team has proved invincible and continues to cheer up the nation. I will offer my own verdict on why there is such a stark contrast between the success of the two men’s teams and explain the meaning of sports in modern Chinese society. In October and November, young graduates will begin their careers while new university students start to arrive on campus. Chinese students are constantly subjected to strenuous testing. And like their western peers, they face the inevitable pressures of finding a job, repaying the mortgage and other everyday facts of life. The burnout of China’s Generation Z The term ‘involution’ – neijuan – has been adopted by China’s Generation Z to describe their feelings of burnout at the ever-increasing expectations associated with high performance. Equally, they have strong opinions about their own government as well as western liberal democracies. China’s leaders of the future will come from their ranks so it will be worthwhile spending some time trying to understand what makes them tick. Billions will want a return to normal life without the fear of having the wrong colour – yellow or red – on their Covid health QR code Whatever the Year of the Rabbit holds for China, billions of its people will want to have their life return to normal without the fear of having the wrong colour – yellow or red – on their Covid health QR code. Only a green code shows a person is healthy and free to move around. The Covid threat has hovered over people for three years and as borders reopen, they may be holding their breath. A slowing economy dimming consumer confidence and a precarious international environment make it look even harder for President Xi to pursue the agenda outlined in October 2022. As the Year of the Rabbit dawns, China doesn’t need a Mad Hatter or a March Hare, instead it urgently needs a sound path to economic recovery and a plan to reopen its borders that works for everyone. Full Article
english The G20 will survive but needs major repair By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 15 Nov 2022 11:57:21 +0000 The G20 will survive but needs major repair Expert comment NCapeling 15 November 2022 Russia’s attack on Ukraine is the biggest challenge to the existence of the G20 since its foundation. The leader-level version of the G20 was founded in 2008 to coordinate the international response to the global financial crisis across advanced and major emerging economies. At the outset it was judged a great success. The 2009 London Summit demonstrated a high degree of unity among the world’s largest economies on a comprehensive action plan to tackle the crisis. The group’s subsequent performance has disappointed. Particularly during the pandemic and the Donald Trump presidency in the US, the group made only a limited additional contribution to policies which national governments were pursuing in any case. The existing G20 approach for tackling debt distress in low-income countries, the ‘Common Framework’, is progressing far too slowly Nonetheless, its members continued to see it as an essential forum without which it would be even harder to tackle a growing list of global economic challenges. This faith was partly repaid when, following the election of the Joe Biden administration in the US, agreement was reached on the $650 billion special drawing rights (SDR) general allocation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in summer 2021. Impact of the war in Ukraine Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine earlier this year, leading western members of the group called for Russia to be suspended from the G20 as Russia’s action ran directly against the key principles of the rules-based international system on which the G20 was founded. Western countries also walked out of meetings of the G20 Finance Ministers’ and International Monetary and Financial Committee this spring rather than sit at the same table as Russian representatives. This contrasted with 2014 when Russia was suspended indefinitely from the G7 for its takeover of Crimea but no action was taken against it in the G20. However, China and India, supported by several other emerging economies declined to suspend Russia, creating a standoff which could have resulted in a rapid collapse of the G20, particularly as its informal structure means that, in contrast to the international financial institutions (IFIs), there are no legal principles or procedures to determine how to address such a situation. It appears the West has now concluded (rightly) that the G20 is too important as a forum for working with China and the other major emerging economies to be allowed to disappear. This is likely to be because there are no straightforward alternatives. The G7 is too narrow to fill the role and China is now highly unlikely to attend a future G7 Summit as a guest. The boards of the IFIs are not equipped to coordinate across institutions, which is a vital role of the G20, and the United Nations (UN) system does not offer the scope, speed, leader-level engagement, or flexibility of the G20. Moreover, as evidenced by the chair’s summary of the third G20 Finance Ministers’ and Central Bank Governors’ meeting in July, once the group gets past the dispute over how to handle Russia, there is a worthwhile agenda of issues which can be agreed on. Russia is unlikely to play a disruptive role as preserving its membership of the group will be its key objective, and it will not want to undermine support among other emerging economies As the 2022 president of the G20, Indonesia has been determined to produce a final communique for the leaders’ summit and it looks increasingly like this will be achieved, even though it was impossible to agree concluding statements for some earlier G20 ministerial meetings. The key will be to deal with the differences over Ukraine between the West and emerging economies with a short opening paragraph reflecting both views. This would then be followed by a consensus text on all the areas where the two groups do agree. Russia is unlikely to play a disruptive role as preserving its membership of the group will be its key objective, and it will not want to undermine support among other emerging economies by blocking issues that all agree on. However, even with a final communique achieved, returning to a fully functioning agenda setting, coordination, and decision-making role for G20 will be very challenging, particularly while the war in Ukraine continues. Tackling sovereign debt distress should be a top priority There are critically important issues on which G20 action is urgently needed. Top of the list is the acute problem of sovereign debt distress. Some 60 per cent of low-income countries are now judged to be in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress. But the existing G20 approach for tackling debt distress in low-income countries, the ‘Common Framework’, is progressing far too slowly, and there is no agreed mechanism for handling the growing list of emerging economies in debt distress. Without tackling debt distress, it is extremely hard to see how it will be possible to generate the vast flow of private sector climate finance necessary to help the developing world progress to net zero. And yet the G20 is one of the few forums in which a high-level approach to debt distress can be defined because China – along with the IFIs and the western-based private sector – is a key player in any solution. Urgent repairs needed However, there is a critical lack of trust among G20 participants which, although in part a reflection of the disagreements over handling Russia, is also about longer-term factors such as the growing geopolitical tensions between China and the US on trade and investment in high tech. An example of how this has played out was the action China and India took at the Rome G20 Summit in 2021 in blocking Italy’s efforts to establish a new ministerial task force designed to address the threat of future pandemics – a subject which all G20 countries agree is important. Full Article
english Climate justice with Chinese characteristics? By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 07 Nov 2022 11:36:21 +0000 Climate justice with Chinese characteristics? Expert comment NCapeling 7 November 2022 China’s latest grand concept, the Global Development Initiative (GDI), claims to be making sustainability a key feature of the programme. Since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China has regularly unveiled a grand new strategic concept every four years or so. Each has been deeply rooted in the Chinese political system and communicated via ambitious slogans, such as A Harmonious World, or New Types of Great Power Relations. And all have reliably generated both excitement and confusion abroad and within China. China’s latest grand concept, the Global Development Initiative (GDI), is no exception. When Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced it at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2021, it made hardly any splash in the West, perhaps because China has already signalled its determination to shape international development in the post-COVID era. But the GDI is more than just a new label for an ongoing project. One of its core political functions is to deflect some of the fierce criticism directed at its older sibling, the gigantic Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has a tarnished reputation for being neither transparent nor sufficiently ‘green’. Focus on grants and capacity-building According to the Chinese government’s initial description of the GDI, sustainability is a key feature of the programme. Unlike the BRI, the GDI will focus less on physical infrastructure projects – such as roads, bridges, digital networks, and coal-fired power plants – and more on sustainable-development grants and capacity-building. China may be ruled by one party, but that doesn’t mean its central administration system can always speak with one voice in supporting sustainable development abroad In his remarks about GDI in 2021, Xi placed special emphasis on advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and helping developing countries manage the transition to a low-carbon economy. On paper, then, the GDI appears a laudable initiative. While ongoing geopolitical tensions have deepened divisions between China and the US, derailing collaboration on combatting climate change, China at least is adjusting its diplomacy and aid programmes to position itself as a more attractive partner for those seeking climate security. Since launching the GDI, it has already created the China-Pacific Island Countries Climate Action Cooperation Centre to help some of the world’s most vulnerable countries mitigate the damage from climate change. But the GDI is still very much in line with China’s past grand initiatives. Its implementation is opaque and there is considerable flexibility in how it will deliver projects and offer grants. This approach is well understood and frequently practiced by Chinese political elites, following Deng Xiaoping’s famous reform ethos of ‘crossing the river by feeling the stones’. Xi has clearly adopted this approach in introducing the GDI. But whereas Deng was steering China’s domestic economy during a period of isolation after the Cultural Revolution, Xi needs to involve many other countries in his vision. That will not be easy now that Russia’s war in Ukraine and other recent developments have complicated many of China’s international relationships. China’s leaders recognize the BRI was not warmly received in global development circles, owing partly to its role in increasing both climate and financial risks. In implementing the GDI, they need to rethink some basic assumptions. Although gigantic infrastructure investments drove China’s own economic miracle, the same approach is not necessarily applicable everywhere. Nor should China’s development aid be relentlessly used to seek diplomatic endorsement from other countries. Instead, producing a clear, concrete action plan with specific regional and thematic points of focus would enhance the GDI’s clarity and credibility. Consider Xi’s recent pledge to add $1 billion to the $3.1 billion South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund, which will be renamed the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund. If China is serious about the GDI’s green credentials, this money should go towards supporting the clean-energy transition in response to the current oil and gas price crunch. But the GDI’s success ultimately depends on how China deploys not just financial but political capital. It needs to show it can cooperate constructively with countries in the ‘GDI Friends Group’ launched at the UN in January 2022. Producing a clear, concrete action plan with specific regional and thematic points of focus would enhance the GDI’s clarity and credibility For many group members, the pandemic showed that existing development assistance programs urgently need to be updated to account for their recipients’ specific interests and priorities. After years of hollow diplomatic rhetoric, there is a craving for more meaningful assistance to help countries build resilience against climate-driven natural disasters and other growing threats. China could help meet this demand, but it also will need to manage expectations. Many in the Global South assume a grand-concept policy such as the GDI will be meticulously planned from within Xi’s cabinet and thus executed to deliver large-scale, rapid results. But the GDI will require broad coordination across a wide range of ministries, agencies, and state-owned banks. One party but not one voice China may be ruled by one party, but that doesn’t mean its central administration system can always speak with one voice in supporting sustainable development abroad. Since launching the BRI in 2013, China has showered the Global South with hundreds of billions of dollars in physical infrastructure investment. With the global climate debate increasingly focusing on the need to mobilize international financing for climate mitigation and adaptation in low and middle-income countries, many will be looking to both China and the advanced economies to provide the necessary support. Full Article
english Xi Jinping prepares the Communist party for new reality By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 08:23:03 +0000 Xi Jinping prepares the Communist party for new reality Expert comment NCapeling 20 October 2022 Political report reflects a worsened economic and diplomatic position as Xi knows his unprecedented third term as leader will be judged on results. In stark contrast to the aura of triumphant glory that greeted Xi Jinping at the last National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2017, this week’s convocation opened with an air of sobriety. Amid a domestic economic downturn and a return to enmity with Western liberal democracies, Xi offered his own recipe for party legitimacy and the country’s economic survival in the lengthy executive summary of his political report to the CCP congress. The prime keyword was security, with some 73 mentions, underscored with a message of self-reliance. The periodic report acts as a summary of the party’s achievements and of its future plans, with both expressed as the lowest common denominator of consensus between competing voices in the CCP. It thus typically sheds some light on relationships among senior party members and insights into the political fortunes of important intraparty groups. Beijing is indeed turning to domestic consumption and homegrown technological prowess as the means to provide the rising wealth that the Chinese people have come to expect Most portions of the new report combined Xi’s personal preferences with concessions to the reality of what is necessary for China’s economic survival. Both ends point to an urgent prioritization of economic and political self-reliance for Xi’s third term as party general secretary. Holistic concept of security On the domestic front, much emphasis was given to enhancing national security and promoting equitable growth. Since even before COVID-19, Xi has advocated a holistic conceptualization of security that includes food, the internet, energy and manpower. Reflecting Beijing’s deep anxieties about high-tech development and its frustrations with dependence on overseas suppliers vulnerable to the vagaries of geopolitical tensions, the political report noted the need for China’s supply chains to become more “self-determined and self-controlled.” Xi, though, went further to stress the importance of improving scientific education and grooming and attracting the necessary talent to accelerate China’s quest to achieve breakthroughs in semiconductor production and overcome development choke points created by Western technological monopolies. As China has traditionally relied on connectivity with the rest of the world to support innovation and attract talent, a turn toward autarky is not a viable option, given Xi’s technological priorities. Yet the renewed mention of his ‘dual circulation’ strategy in the report signals that Beijing is indeed turning to domestic consumption and homegrown technological prowess as the means to provide the rising wealth that the Chinese people have come to expect from the Communist Party. Worsening Sino-US relations and tightening access to overseas markets for Chinese companies have prompted party leaders not only to reconsider the country’s sources of economic growth but have also forced them to reconfigure their approach to foreign affairs. Judging by his report summary, Xi has completely abandoned the ‘new type of great power relations’ concept used repeatedly in the last two editions of his congressional update to refer to his preferred approach to relations with the US-led West. The omission shows that Beijing has concluded that its fraught relationship with advanced developed nations is here to stay, with little prospect of improvement soon. To this end, China needs to prepare for the worst of decoupling and become more self-reliant in terms of markets and technologies. With the central government grappling with the country’s domestic economic woes, its spending spree on development assistance has had to come to an end In place of the discarded concept, Xi stressed that China should further develop its ties with the global South through the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative he announced earlier this year. These efforts aim to reshape the global governance agenda in multilateral forums and to project Beijing’s influence on the developing world. Meanwhile, the party’s latest official rhetoric about the Belt and Road Initiative shows it is no longer a one-size-fits-all slogan but on its way to becoming a genuine tool of trade and investment promotion with China’s near neighbors but with provincial governments taking the lead rather than Beijing. With the central government grappling with the country’s domestic economic woes, its spending spree on development assistance has had to come to an end. The new political report clearly signals this change. A modern socialist society is still the aim The current economic downturn and dangerous geopolitical tensions have not dented the CCP’s ambitions to build a modern socialist society by 2035 and thus join the world’s club of upper middle-income countries, but this is easier said than done. Full Article
english Xi Jinping shows the world he is taking a tougher line By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 15:28:37 +0000 Xi Jinping shows the world he is taking a tougher line Expert comment NCapeling 16 October 2022 Xi opens the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party with a political report which demonstrates both change and continuity in the approach of his leadership. The 20th Party Congress report is significantly shorter than the 19th, which is a clear indication of Xi’s success in centralizing power. The report acts as a summary of the party’s achievements and its plans – expressed as the lowest common denominator of consensus between competing factions. A shorter political report would seem to represent fewer factions now seeking consensus. In the 20th Party Congress report, the language on Taiwan has been revised, reflecting the changes in tone and the policies of the CCP senior leadership. In addition to the conventional ‘peaceful reunification’ term, there is also an addition of more hawkish language on Taiwan to ‘not exclude the use of force as a last resort’. Xi also suggested that ‘resolving Taiwan Question should be in hands of the Chinese’, sending a further warning to the US and other Western allies which are perceived as interfering in Taiwan affairs. In his remarks, Xi suggested the ‘zero-COVID’ strategy has worked for China although he gave no clear timeline on when the policy will end. He also proposed building a healthcare system able to cope with future pandemics. This implies that China is still in short supply of sufficient healthcare resources to cope with a disease like COVID. Economic policy reveals anxiety On economic policy, much of the emphasis is given to the extent to which security and economic growth should go hand in hand, which illustrates Beijing’s deep anxieties on supply chains and the high-tech sector. These supply chains need to become more ‘self-determined, self-controlled’, voicing frustration that the highest value-added elements of the Chinese tech sector remain reliant on overseas suppliers and vulnerable to geopolitical tensions. Much of the emphasis is given to the extent to which security and economic growth should go hand in hand, which illustrates Beijing’s deep anxieties on supply chains and the high-tech sector Also, he expected the Common Prosperity Initiative will further adjust uneven income distribution to increase the amount of middle-income population. He gave little favours for financial services and fin-tech companies but insisted that China should remain as a manufacturing-led economy with qualitative growth. That implies Beijing will tolerate much slower growth so long as the income gap between the rich and poor is closing. On foreign affairs, Xi has completely abandoned the ‘new types of great power relations’ – instead he has stressed that China should further develop its ties with the Global South through the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative. Full Article
english Why a more inward-looking China is bad news for the world economy By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Sun, 16 Oct 2022 14:22:52 +0000 Why a more inward-looking China is bad news for the world economy Expert comment LToremark 16 October 2022 The increased role of geopolitics and ideology in Beijing’s economic decision-making is bad news not just for China but for the world. We should adhere to self-reliance, put the development of the country and nation on the basis of our own strength, and firmly seize the initiative in development. To build a great modern socialist country in an all-round way and achieve the second Centenary Goal, we must take the road of independent innovation. President Xi Jinping, August 2022 This quote by President Xi clearly outlines the inward tilt of Chinese economic policymaking that is now becoming increasingly obvious to the rest of the world. But it actually has deep roots. Ever since the 2008 global financial crisis, when the West’s reliability as a trading partner was thrown into question, self-reliance has become a more decisive organizing principle for Chinese officials. As a result, the export-dependent growth model on which China built its economic rise in recent decades has been fraying. Exports as a share of China’s GDP peaked at 35 per cent in 2007 but had fallen to around 20 per cent by last year, a level not seen since before China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. This shows that net exports no longer make any meaningful contribution to Chinese GDP growth. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provided another geopolitical impetus to China’s pursuit of self-reliance. Although China’s inward tilt may have started out as a response to purely economic phenomena – the post-crisis global recession, belt-tightening in the West, the eurozone crisis, and a general softening of global trade growth in the post-crisis years – geopolitical considerations are now dominant in shaping this shift toward self-reliance. The role of geopolitics in pushing China towards a more inward-looking development path became clear in China’s response to the aggressive tariffs and export controls introduced by the Trump administration in the US. Because of these new constraints on China’s access to international markets and technology, Beijing sought to limit its dependence on the rest of the world. The most obvious result of this was the introduction of the ‘dual circulation’ strategy in May 2020, which sets out a rebalancing of China’s economy away from a reliance on external demand as a stimulus to growth (‘international circulation’) towards increased self-dependence (‘domestic circulation’). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provided another geopolitical impetus to China’s pursuit of self-reliance. Since it is not far-fetched to think that China, like Russia, might one day also face coordinated sanctions, Chinese authorities must be thinking hard about how to respond to such a risk. Within China itself, a new emphasis on the role of the state is increasingly apparent – and seemingly rooted in ideology. The only credible strategy that China can adopt is to reduce its economic dependence on the West by creating, in effect, a kind of economic fortress, as its dependence on imported technology, food, and fossil fuels in particular, has created a substantial strategic vulnerability. Over the next few years, Chinese policymakers will likely attempt to build up the country’s ability to supply its own semi-conductors, food, and green energy sources. This new approach to economic policymaking isn’t just about China’s relationship with the rest of the world. Within China itself, a new emphasis on the role of the state is increasingly apparent – and seemingly rooted in ideology. The previous National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in October 2017, made a push for ‘stronger, better, and bigger’ state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the past five years have indeed seen a measurable rise in the role that SOEs play in the Chinese economy. These firms now account for more fixed investment in the economy than private firms, for the first time since 2005. Full Article
english 20th CCP National Congress: Five issues to watch By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 10:01:35 +0000 20th CCP National Congress: Five issues to watch Expert comment LJefferson 13 October 2022 Interpreters of the Chinese Communist Party’s tea leaves will be paying close attention to the issues that will shape China’s trajectory for the next five years. Xi Jinping’s expected anointment for an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is likely to generate global headlines when the party’s five-yearly National Congress begins on 16 October. But with that outcome so widely forecast, interpreters of the CCP’s tea leaves will be paying closer attention to a range of more contested – and sometimes byzantine – issues that will shape China’s trajectory for the next five years, and reverberate around the world. These are five key issues to watch out for during Xi’s political report, a dry but authoritative account of the CCP’s policy priorities for the next five years, and the subsequent deliberations over personnel appointments. 1. From market economy to ‘common prosperity’ As the world grapples with the economic impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese economy is entering particularly choppy waters. China is forecast to grow at a slower rate than the rest of Asia for the first time in more than 30 years, according to the World Bank, as the impact of Xi’s COVID zero policies compounds a growing list of structural and cyclical challenges. Xi is under pressure to offer some new prescriptions for the world’s second biggest economy, and he is likely to signal further shifts away from the market economics that propelled Chinese growth for decades toward his vision of ‘common prosperity’. China is forecast to grow at a slower rate than the rest of Asia for the first time in more than 30 years. His ambition is to redefine progress, not in terms of producing double-digit growth, but in tackling long-standing challenges such as demographic decline, social inequality and high property prices – thereby meeting ‘people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’. China’s leader may have arrived at the right diagnosis, but he has so far failed to find measures that deliver common prosperity. He will use the Party Congress to redesign some policy measures, likely putting a stronger focus on the development of rural areas to promote economic dynamism and generate employment opportunities. 2. COVID zero to endure? While most of the world has opened up and learned to live with COVID-19, China is still pursuing a COVID zero policy that requires frequent lockdowns, stringent movement controls and closed borders. This approach has intensified economic pressures, exacerbated high youth unemployment, and is testing the patience of China’s upwardly mobile middle classes. Those not employed by the state have been particularly hard hit and it is difficult to see how China’s economy can start to crank up again until Beijing reduces internal restrictions and reconnects with the world. COVID zero has intensified economic pressures, exacerbated high youth unemployment, and is testing the patience of China’s upwardly mobile middle classes. Xi has championed the COVID zero policy, which Beijing continues to insist is vital to protect vulnerable people and support economic and social stability. So, observers will be playing close attention to his political report for any signs of a possible softening or indications of alternative future pathways for managing the pandemic. But a wholesale shift does not appear to be on the cards. 3. Xi Jinping’s team Sinologists’ enthusiasm for predicting leadership changes in the CCP is not matched by their ability to do so. The party’s roots as a secret organization ensure that it keeps a tight lid on information about top leaders. Observers will be closely following appointments to the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power for the CCP and China’s supreme decision-making body. These choices will shape China’s future policy trajectory and give some signals about the extent of Xi’s concentration of power and his future plans. The party’s roots as a secret organization ensure that it keeps a tight lid on information about top leaders. Names to watch for possible promotion include Xi allies such as He Lifeng, currently head of the National Development Reform Commission, a key economic planning entity, and Zhang Qingwei, currently the party secretary of Hunan, an important and populous province. As Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, the only woman on the Politburo, reaches the retirement age, there is also likely to be a slot open for her replacement, with Shan Yiqin, the party secretary of Guizhou, one potential option. Tracking the fate of key Xi allies will also indicate how far he has managed to overturn the collective leadership system he inherited in 2012 and how comprehensively the CCP endorses this more centralized approach to governing China. 4. Taiwan After the escalating tensions of the last few months, analysts will be looking for any possible change in tone when Xi speaks about Taiwan, a self-governing island that China claims as a renegade province. During the past five years, Xi has approached the outside world with a mix of high-octane rhetoric with pragmatism and patience. Full Article
english China's Party Congress: a dose of foreign policy realism is needed By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 14:01:32 +0000 China's Party Congress: a dose of foreign policy realism is needed The World Today mhiggins.drupal 11 October 2022 In the final article of three on the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress, which opens on 16 October, Yu Jie argues that Beijing must show more pragmatism about Taiwan and the West. How important is foreign policy at the congress? The political reports delivered to the delegates of the week-long 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress, which happens every five years, follow a Marxist-Leninist formula. Economics and the means of production form the base, while politics and society fill in the superstructure. We can expect sections on the work of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), ideological discussion, economics, domestic politics, foreign affairs, cultural reform and social developments. Usually, the report prioritizes big domestic political issues. The political report typically sheds some light on the status of, and relationships between, senior party members. It can also provide insights into the political fortunes of various interest groups. The report acts as a summary of the party’s achievements and its plans – expressed as the lowest common denominator of consensus between competing factions. The congress will address foreign affairs issues with long-lasting implications for the rest of the world This year’s congress should be no different, and the political reshuffle that takes place is likely to signal how Beijing intends to rise to the many challenges at home and abroad. Given China’s growing power and its fraught relationship with the West, this year’s congress is expected to feature serious discussion on weighty foreign affairs issues affecting Beijing, and which will have long-lasting implications for the rest of the world. Which geopolitical issues will be priorities? When it comes to foreign affairs, China’s priorities rarely change. The CCP seeks to create a stable external environment to foster its domestic economic development. This conservative maxim was advocated in the 1980s by China’s then-paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, and it will continue to guide Beijing’s relationships after this congress. While we don’t know the exact details of this year’s political report, we can expect discussion on relations with the US-led West, a possible shift in the relationship between Beijing and Moscow, and elaboration on China’s ties with the Global South. Notably, it’s likely that a separate chapter of the political report will see Taiwan treated alongside the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, signalling the party’s commitment to its claims over the contested island. Despite a chorus of nationalistic rhetoric surrounding the issue of Taiwan, Beijing will be careful not to stumble into an international conflict which risks causing colossal damage on all fronts. The choice of language on the so-called ‘Taiwan question’ in this political report will serve as a bellwether as to how, if at all, the party might fundamentally shift its views regarding Taiwan and deviate from the principle of ‘peaceful reunification’, the policy stated at every congress since 1979. How have China’s relations with the West worsened? President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the first by an American president to the Communist nation, kicked off five decades of relative stability. However, as China’s global influence has grown, so have Washington’s fears. US-China relations, once stable and cooperative, are now volatile and competitive The relationship has transitioned from the cooperation and relative stability that existed under President George W. Bush and President Hu Jintao in the early 2000s, into one characterized by volatility and competition under Xi Jinping, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. These tensions are almost certain to continue in Xi’s likely third term. Elements of China’s relationship with the West, such as cooperation over military and aviation technology, are becoming far more competitive. At the same time, trade and investment, once viewed as strong ties, have been rapidly deteriorating – as seen, for example, by several major publicly listed Chinese state-owned enterprises and large private companies withdrawing from the New York Stock Exchange. Will Beijing stand by the Kremlin despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? At the same time, Beijing’s close relationship with Moscow and its lack of opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine have put China in an awkward position. The CCP has realized that cooperation with its long-standing ally and neighbour must come with substantial limits to avoid undermining its own political priorities and interests. Russia’s recklessness may spur Xi and the CCP’s senior leadership to minimize the economic, financial and political risks associated with the Kremlin’s pursuit of war against a country aligned with, and supported by, the West. Will China continue to support its regional partners? On its ties with the Global South, Beijing began to rethink its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy gained geopolitical momentum. Regions of Southeast Asia and South Asia received a lot of funding and resources for BRI projects, as seen with Chinese support for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Xi also recently introduced the Global Development and Global Security initiatives, which the political report should flesh out. Beijing is fully aware that it can only prosper if its regional partners prosper Beijing is fully aware that it can only prosper if its regional partners prosper, and it can only achieve resource security and border stability if its southern and western neighbours in Myanmar and Afghanistan cease to fight over land and resources. Chinese foreign policy over the last five years has been a strange combination of high-octane rhetoric and patient pragmatism. To respond to this contradiction, the congress could be used as an opportunity to inject a dose of realism. Read the two further articles in this series: the first is a guide to why the Chinese Communist Party Congress matters; the second discusses the key domestic policy themes that Xi Jinping is expected to outline at this year’s congress. Full Article
english Book preview: Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2022 By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 15:52:14 +0000 Book preview: Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2022 20 October 2022 — 10:00AM TO 11:15AM Anonymous (not verified) 28 September 2022 Chatham House and Online Join authors David Sandalow and Michal Meidan to discuss their upcoming book. China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and a key player in tackling the global climate crisis. Its stated climate policies, namely its high-level targets to peak emissions by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, are significant. But while national-level ministries, local governments and businesses are setting climate roadmaps, implementation is challenging at times. In the current context of the global energy market and geopolitical turmoil, China’s need to maintain energy security can seem at odds with its climate pledges. The authors will present the book, which examines Chinese emissions, the impacts of climate change in China, as well as China’s domestic and international climate change policies and the main implementation challenges these policies face. Full Article
english China’s high-stakes incursion in the heights of Bhutan By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 11:18:27 +0000 China’s high-stakes incursion in the heights of Bhutan The World Today mhiggins.drupal 28 September 2022 Why is Beijing establishing settlements over the Bhutanese border? To undermine India’s strategic security, say John Pollock and Damien Symon. A confrontation is fomenting on the roof of the world in a country that rarely warrants international attention. In the tiny Kingdom of Bhutan, China is building villages in isolated, mountainous regions, upping the pressure on the capital Thimphu to yield contested areas to Beijing. In doing so, China risks a collision with South Asia’s largest state and Bhutan’s principal security guarantor, India. Sitting on top of fragile geopolitical fault lines in the Himalayas, China’s Central Military Commission has seemingly authorized a series of incursions into the Bhutanese regions of Doklam, Jakarlung, and Pasamlung. Beijing has also announced fresh claims in the east towards Sakteng. Taken together, these amount to 12 per cent of Bhutan’s total territory according to Nathan Ruser, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. India is wary of Beijing’s increased assertiveness in the Himalayas following a large-scale incursion by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into Ladakh two years ago when dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers were killed in a stand-off. The appearance of Chinese roads, villages and a host of other infrastructure projects within largely uninhabited areas of Bhutan close to Tibet, have, for sections of India’s national security establishment, confirmed their worst fears – Beijing is altering the status quo across the Himalayas in a bid to undermine India’s strategic security through territorial alterations. As a country of only 780,000 people, Bhutan is greatly influenced by New Delhi when it comes to its foreign affairs. In exchange, India guarantees the defence of the kingdom and trains the Royal Bhutanese Army. The appearance of Chinese villages on its territory risks Bhutan becoming a victim of the wider regional tensions. The trauma of China-Bhutan border relations Bhutan is no stranger to the territorial aspirations of its northern neighbour. Thousands of refugees fled into the country after China annexed Tibet, damaging longstanding cultural and religious links between the Tibetan and Bhutanese people – a trauma still being felt today. Now, Beijing is laying claim to three areas within Bhutan, including Doklam in the west. This plateau is close to the Siliguri Corridor which connects to the ‘Seven Sister’ states in northeast India. Indeed, such is India’s concern over any Chinese presence near Doklam that in 2017 local Indian commanders sent troops into Bhutan to prevent PLA engineers building a road near the Doka La pass, resulting in a 72-day stand-off on Bhutanese soil between India and China, an experience Thimphu is unwilling to repeat. Once again, China is looking to force the border issue unilaterally, altering the status quo and building villages and outposts on Bhutanese soil. On the available evidence, it has been doing so for at least three years. The presence of Chinese villages in uninhabited areas of Bhutan serves a strategic purpose. They appear to be intended to pressure Bhutan into accepting an earlier version of a border deal that concedes Doklam to the Chinese. Bhutan’s increasing concern is that China now views the Sino-Bhutanese border dispute as a way of unravelling India’s strategic position by stealth. Here we see a growing pattern of behaviour across the Himalayas. China is testing the boundaries in isolated and contested areas of India to attain local advantages that ensure New Delhi’s gaze remains fixed on the Himalayas. The costly choice facing Bhutan Bhutan for its part has very deliberately opted to remain silent, despite clear violations of its border deal with Beijing. Thimphu has made no public comment on any of the Chinese incursions. The choice now facing Bhutan is a costly one. To concede Doklam would devastate relations with India, its closest partner. But to ignore China’s ambitions would be to risk further violations of its sovereign territory. Bhutan may yet agree in principle to a land swap but then delay its implementation in the hope China limits any further advances. Thus Bhutan, India and China stand at a crossroads, with an impending confrontation that has not yet arrived and one that through Thimphu’s delicate diplomacy, Bhutan hopes never does. China’s incursions into Bhutan — Key to map: 1 - Pangda; 2 - Dramana and Shakhatoe; 3 - Menchuma Valley. Areas of incursion are circled; the red shaded areas are disputed. The star is the capital Thimphu, and the international airport lies to the west. 1. Pangda — Aerial image of Pangda, a village of some 124 people established by China which sits 2km over the border with Bhutan. Image: Maxar (March 2022). The most high-profile incursion is in the disputed areas in Doklam. Running adjacent to the previous Doka La stand-off site, a series of Chinese projects are visible, following the Amo Chu River that runs from the Chumbi Valley in Tibet into Bhutan. The most well-known of these xiaokang – meaning peaceful and prosperous – border projects is Pangda, a village of 124 people that sits roughly two kilometres within Bhutan from the border. First spotted by open-source intelligence analysts in October-November 2020, Chinese state media says that 27 households were moved from the Shangdui village to Pangda in September of that year and that the village is located in Yadong County, Tibet. Pangda, however, lies on territory internationally recognized as belonging to Bhutan. Since Pangda was first identified, two more villages and an additional excavation site have been noted through satellite photographs taken in March this year, steadily following the river further into Bhutanese territory. In recent reporting by journalist Vishnu Som, a connecting road is also visible that runs 9km into Bhutan. Given the geopolitical sensitivities of the area vis-a-vis India, speculation points to Chinese attempts to increase pressure on the Jampheri ridge overlooking the 2017 stand-off site, which according to journalist Tenzing Lamsang, is currently occupied by a small Royal Bhutanese Army detachment. As ever in the Himalayas, small tactical alterations have strategic implications. Chinese control of the Jampheri ridge would command views towards Sikkim, increase the scope of China’s surveillance operations near the border and place India’s Eastern Theatre Command at a terrain disadvantage were it to intervene as it did at Doka La. 2. Dramana and Shakhatoe — Aerial image showing one of several villages recently built by China in the Dramana and Shakhatoe region of Bhutan. The Chinese military is said to be patrolling this area aggressively. Image: Maxar (2022). Further north of Doklam, at Dramana and Shakhatoe, more villages have been identified, with recent photographs taken in November 2021 showing a collection of structures nestled between snow-capped mountains. Varying in size, the largest village identified by journalist Devjyot Ghoshal comprises more than 84 buildings with construction having been started in December 2020 and seemingly completed by December 2021. Little is known about the nature of these villages or their occupants other than their size and location. However, the Chinese PLA has patrolled these areas aggressively, warning away Bhutanese herders and challenging counter patrols by the Royal Bhutanese Army. A permanent PLA presence in the area would be a significant change to the status quo. Informed speculation suggests that these may house either civilian contractors brought in from Tibet to oversee construction projects in the area, Tibetan or Chinese citizens brought across the border, or they could even be barracks for the PLA to help facilitate increased patrols in these contested areas. 3. Menchuma Valley — Aerial image of one of several Chinese-built settlements in and around Menchuma Valley in Bhutan; the area is home to holy sites important to both Bhutanese and Tibetan culture. Image: PlanetLabs (2022). Amid the sustained activity in the west of Bhutan, we are seeing similar levels of activity mirrored in the northern contested areas in Jakarlung, Pasumlung and the Menchuma Valley, a well-known entry point into Tibet for Bhutanese pilgrims. In May 2021, a team of researchers led by Robert Barnett from the London School of Oriental and African Studies discovered three additional villages in these contested areas, alongside a series of infrastructure projects, sitting between 3km and 5km south of the Chinese border in Bhutan. Barnett identified what appears to be police and military posts near these villages, as well as a communications tower. While the building efforts at Doklam are seen as having a geopolitical intent towards India, these villages and their locations are seemingly aimed to maximize China’s leverage over Bhutan. They are considered sacred in Tibetan Buddhist teachings as the birthplace of ancient Himalayan cultural heroes, with strong links to the Bhutanese royal family. Today they are the home to holy sites and temples, such as the Singye Dzong. For China to intrude on this area, and in some cases even deny entry to parts of it, is suppression of Bhutanese history, culture and traditions. By design or by default, Beijing is managing Tibetan religion and culture beyond the borders of the Tibetan Administrative Region. Full Article
english China Party Congress: Xi’s political blueprint By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 10:45:51 +0000 China Party Congress: Xi’s political blueprint The World Today rescobales.drupal 28 September 2022 In the second of her three-part series on the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Yu Jie outlines two key policy themes we can expect Xi to define: ‘common prosperity’ and ‘self-reliance’. What can we expect from the Party Congress? In mid-October five years ago, the 19th Party Congress opened with Xi Jinping delivering a political report lasting three-and-a-half hours. He will repeat the performance on October 16, the opening day of this year’s 20th Party congress. Bland as its name may be, this political report is one of the Party Congress’s core items of business. It remains the most authoritative public account of the Chinese Communist Party’s path on all major policy fronts, containing a laundry list of policies undertaken by the outgoing Central Committee in the past five years, while putting forward guidance for future policy. It represents the view of the current Politburo Standing Committee and that of the CCP. The 20th Congress report is a collegial effort and should not be considered Xi’s personal manifesto, nor should it be counted as another of his speeches to his comrades. However, as general-secretary of the party for the past decade, it will most probably reflect many of the elements that Xi has influenced. What are China’s political priorities? No matter how complicated the geopolitics of the world becomes, Xi sticks to the conservative approach that has served his country well for past centuries: that China prioritizes the management of its own affairs. Since the Cold War ended, two recurring themes have dominated the political report: the economy and security. For the 20th session, Xi will use the phrases ‘common prosperity’ as shorthand for the economy and ‘self-reliance’ for security. Xi introduced the slogan ‘common prosperity’ at the start of his third term in August 2021. His aim was to close the income gap, address regional economic inequality and improve social welfare provision. Rebalancing social inequality was seen as essential to avoid the social disruption witnessed in other parts of the world. Xi’s concept of ‘common prosperity’ was influenced by his childhood experiences living in exile in a remote village in Shanxi Province, in northwest China, during the Cultural Revolution. The ensuing upheaval was to prove a tragedy for his family and a disaster for the country. His ambition is to define progress not in terms of producing double-digit growth but in dealing with the long-standing challenge of scarcities across different sections of society to meet ‘people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’. This direction was indicated at the 19th Party Congress by the term ‘shifting the principal contradiction’. What state is the Chinese economy in? Xi may have arrived at the right diagnosis but he has so far failed to find a cure that invokes ‘common prosperity’. After sweeping regulatory measures, the CCP has clamped down on its most successful private companies and spooked investors. While providing 80 per cent of China’s jobs, private enterprises are worried that the ‘common prosperity’ initiative may jeopardize their business. Equally, Beijing’s zero-Covid policy has discouraged much-needed investment and failed to win the hearts and minds of Chinese youth, who have suffered most, both economically and socially. The challenge facing Xi over the next five years will be to manage the financial risks in downsizing China’s property sector while coming out of a rigidly imposed Covid lockdown without reducing economic growth to such an extent that it damages the personal wealth of millions of people. One hopes that Xi’s policies in future will be based on an innovative reading of the first-century phrase ‘seeking truth from facts’ adopted by Mao Zedong and last promoted as the political philosophy of Deng Xiaoping in the Seventies. A healthy market economy is not only essential for China’s development but as the only means of maintaining the party’s legitimacy, something vital for Xi. Does China need more security? China’s weakened export markets and less-friendly relations with the United States have encouraged it to become more self-reliant. Expect an emphasis on greater self-sufficiency in sectors of strategic importance to form a substantial part of this year’s political report. In view of increased international hostility, Xi and his lieutenants have publicly recognized the need to take control of production and supply chains. These supply chains need to become ‘self-determined, self-controlled’ they have said, voicing frustration that the highest value-added elements of the Chinese tech sector remain reliant on overseas suppliers and vulnerable to geopolitical tensions. Equally, on food and energy security, Russia’s invasion in Ukraine has exacerbated China’s already fragile food supplies as both countries are vital sources of food imports. Xi has already called for a ‘comprehensive thrift strategy’ to manage China’s food and energy needs. Beijing is equally worried about the increase in oil and commodity prices which is driving up the cost of living. This may push parts of Chinese society out of ‘common prosperity’ and into ‘common poverty’, as it threatens to in some parts of Europe. For the next five years, Xi needs to strike a balance between ‘common prosperity’ and ‘self-reliance’ to mitigate the storms ahead. He cannot afford to lockdown the world’s second largest economy indefinitely. The hope is that the 20th Party congress will bring much-needed course corrections. Read the two further articles in this series: the first provides a guide to why the Chinese Communist Party Congress matters; the third analyses the foreign policy issues likely to be discussed at the congress. Full Article
english Interview: Steve Brooking By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:35:28 +0000 Interview: Steve Brooking The World Today mhiggins.drupal 27 September 2022 The Afghanistan expert tells Mike Higgins the Taliban are reneging on their promises and that the region’s powers must intercede. Steve Brooking is the former chargé d’affaires at the British Embassy in Kabul and was special adviser to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2021. How has day-to-day life become worse for Afghans since the United States and its allies withdrew abruptly from Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021? That depends on where those Afghans are living and what they were doing. Life for lots of ordinary rural Afghans hasn’t changed much, it is still subsistence farming. Until last year, the success stories of girls in education, new hospitals, schools and clinics were concentrated in the towns and cities. When the Americans left, there was a mass exodus of the educated middle class In fact, there has been a shortage of teachers and medics for years. Many Afghans left those jobs to work for the coalition forces or the international development presence in the country. When the Americans left last year, along with them was a mass exodus of the educated middle class from the country, which affected the cities and towns. The emerging middle class was also hit by the disappearance of the jobs that went with those foreign troops. Spending power has collapsed. Many Afghans in cities support a dozen or more extended family members, but now they don’t have the money. Afghans are relying on external humanitarian aid but the agencies are only getting about half what they are asking for because there are competing humanitarian crises – in the Horn of Africa, Syria, Ukraine. In September, Washington announced it would transfer $3.5 billion into a Swiss-based trust fund to try to stabilize Afghanistan. How far will that money go and are the US wise to avoid Afghanistan’s central bank? It is enough to make a significant humanitarian difference. Bypassing the Afghan central bank indicates that the US government is keen the money does not fall into the hands of the Taliban, or international terrorists. The American assassination of the Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul in July showed the Taliban have not kept to their promise to prevent the country being used as a terrorist base. Also, it is clear the US doesn’t want to be seen to be supporting the Taliban government or to start recognizing it or getting anywhere near recognizing it. It remains concerned about all sorts of violations of basic rights – the most egregious being girls not allowed in secondary schools and women not being allowed to work except in certain sectors. The Americans and other donor countries were paying teachers’ salaries through the UN but that stopped when the new Afghan school year began in March and girls still weren’t allowed back to school. The Taliban need to show a responsible level of governance and ability before people will trust them with their money. But it’s difficult to see the Taliban making the necessary concessions to move beyond humanitarian aid to receive development funding. As the attention of the US is focused on Ukraine and further eastwards towards China, what will be the cost if the West doesn’t engage with Afghanistan seriously? You could argue the costs will be minimal. The Americans tried a lot over 20 years, they failed and then left overnight. It caused complete shock around the region. To be fair, though, the Americans warned the region’s powers that they were leaving and that this would be a problem in the region unless they got help from those same powers. The Taliban complain about sanctions, travel restrictions and the freezing of assets. But they have made no attempt to honour the Doha Agreement Europe and the UK are more likely to experience the fallout from a deteriorating Afghanistan. The refugee flows will continue. To stem that, they want to persuade the Taliban to make a more inclusive government. There are few levers to pull with the Taliban, unfortunately. They complain about sanctions, travel restrictions for various leaders, the freezing of assets. But they haven’t made any attempt to speak to the political opposition or honour the terms of the Doha Agreement, let alone engage in other issues. I think the onus to act falls on the regional powers because they will feel the first effects of instability in Afghanistan. China, Russia, India and other regional powers are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which had its summit in Samarkand last month. Some have been arguing that the SCO should take a more active role in Afghanistan, which has SCO observer status. Iran is worried about the persecution of Shia minorities in Afghanistan, but they are trying to have constructive relations with the Taliban because they need water from Afghanistan to feed the southeast of Iran, which is very dry. Pakistan has not been able to control the Taliban, but has succeeded in establishing a regime in Kabul that is hostile to India. China would like to see stability in Afghanistan to access its natural resources, but otherwise it largely follows Pakistan’s lead. Russia is preoccupied with Ukraine, but is worried about the spread of narcotics and Islamic extremism up through central Asian states. None of those regional powers, it should be said, is willing to recognize a Taliban government. How secure is the Taliban government? Cross-border trade continues, with revenues from mining, timber, coal and natural resources. The Taliban are still involved in heroin production, which they tax heavily despite having said they would suppress it. A senior Afghan woman told me recently: ‘We feel more secure, but less certain about our future than ever before.’ They don’t want to upset the poppy farmers who helped return them to power. There is a level of security that has bought the Taliban some time. Previously, in the south there was a lot of fighting and there were daily car bombs and attacks in some cities. Now, on the whole, mothers know they can send their kids to the water pump. A friend, a senior Afghan female in the country, told me recently: ‘We feel more secure, but less certain about our future than ever before.’ They can see that the economy is going downhill. One scenario is a disintegration of the country along regional lines, in which, say, the people of Badakhshan decide they will no longer let the central government take all the revenue from their lapis lazuli and ruby mines. Local warlords may re-emerge whom the Taliban would find it more difficult to deal with. As for the terrorist threat in Afghanistan, the Taliban never broke their ties to Al-Qaeda, and at one point the Americans were saying that there were more than two dozen terrorist groups in Afghanistan. I’m sure the Taliban will be able to rein in most of these, the exception being Islamic State – that is a battle of extreme ideologies. Another problem is a lot of these international terrorists have married Afghans and are now well enmeshed into local society. You paint a bleak picture of Afghanistan’s future. What, if anything, gives you hope for the country? Ordinary Afghans are resilient and entrepreneurial. They also have a strong sense of being Afghan and that their country is one of the longest-existing countries in that part of the world. But the Taliban need to make people feel they are included in that national identity. Sadly, I think it will take war, famine, plague and disaster in order for the Taliban to unbend sufficiently to realize that they need better ethnic and gender representation in government, as well as economic expertise. I hope the Afghan diaspora will be asked to come together to forge a better future for the country. Full Article
english The new geopolitics of nuclear power By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:05:33 +0000 The new geopolitics of nuclear power The World Today mhiggins.drupal 27 September 2022 States may be looking to build or restore nuclear plants, but they will need to bypass Chinese and Russian sector dominance, says Sung-Mi Kim. Against the backdrop of a worldwide energy crisis, the global nuclear market may be seeing a renaissance with growing interest in nuclear energy. Sceptics are being compelled to rethink the trade-off calculus of nuclear power for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which prompted countries to postpone or phase out nuclear power. The nuclear option is again being seen as a way of boosting a nation’s energy autonomy and its ability to weather the volatility caused by unpredictable Russian gas supplies. Russia supplies more than a third of global nuclear fuel-related services Adoption or expansion of nuclear energy capability will not allow a country to be free of Russian influence entirely given its dominant presence in the global nuclear sector. Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled power corporation, and its subsidiaries, make Russia the leading exporter of nuclear power plants. Russia also supplies more than a third of the global fuel-related services, namely uranium conversion and enrichment. Notably, Russia has been capable of building these into an attractive financial package for importing countries, backed by generous state support. Like Russia, Chinese government-owned nuclear corporations have started to make forays into export markets as part of its Belt and Road Initiative and ‘Go Out’ policy, which encourages companies to invest overseas. Both China and Russia have a strong comparative advantage in offering competitive state-backed financing schemes for nuclear products and services. In the meantime, nuclear investment in advanced economies in the West have tended to remain stagnant. The International Energy Agency reports that of the 31 reactors built in the past five years, 27 are of Russian or Chinese design. Given current market conditions and the technological complexity of the nuclear fuel cycle, new entrants will find it difficult to acquire energy autonomy through nuclear power. They will have to rely on foreign suppliers to build, operate and maintain their nuclear plants and supporting infrastructure. It typically takes a decade to build a nuclear plant and start generating electricity, and nuclear plant deals are built on a decades-long commitment of the parties to forge a political, technical, regulatory and scientific partnership that goes beyond purely commercial terms. Nuclear export, therefore, is often a long-term, whole-of-the-government effort involving diplomatic skills and geopolitical calculations, and is subject to global oversight to ensure the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The US is building strategic nuclear partnerships In response to the Russian and Chinese dominance of the civilian nuclear sector, American nuclear industries are asking the government to streamline the export-licensing process and provide them with support. The US government is also establishing strategic partnerships with nuclear-capable allies such as South Korea to win procurement contracts. South Korea has recently made a U-turn in its nuclear policy. Its new president Yoon Suk-yeol intends to revive the role of nuclear power to help meet the country’s climate targets and has vowed to export 10 nuclear power plants by 2030. In Japan, where nuclear energy production was halted after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, a new policy platform was launched in 2019 to enhance public-private collaboration for nuclear research and development. Intensifying geopolitical tensions between the US and its allies on one side, and Russia and China on the other, will inevitably affect nuclear market dynamics. Domestic economic slowdowns and international sanctions will be a stress test for the export potential of Russia and China. For instance, in May 2022, Finland eliminated Rosatom from its consortium to build a nuclear power plant, citing delays and increased uncertainties stemming from the invasion of Ukraine. In 2020, Romania cancelled its nuclear deal with China, instead securing an agreement with the US to build two more reactors for its Cernavoda plant. The decision was seen as a move to align Romania with US intentions to sideline China. In March 2022, when the Czech Republic officially launched a tender to build a new reactor at the Dukovany nuclear plant, Rosatom and Chinese state-controlled nuclear exporter CGN have been excluded from the tender on security grounds. As countries try to wean themselves off price-volatile gas and decarbonize their economies to meet climate targets, new commercial opportunities are opening up for the nuclear industry. At least 15 countries are building reactors, according to the World Nuclear Association. Some, such as China, are building more than one. More than 30 countries are considering, planning or starting a nuclear programme. There is also a growing need for replacing or extending the lives of ageing reactors. It is in this context that the commercial, geopolitical and regulatory aspects of nuclear energy will play an increasing role in the geopolitical contest for money and influence. Full Article
english Beijing briefing: Party power remains a male preserve By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 27 Sep 2022 14:43:37 +0000 Beijing briefing: Party power remains a male preserve The World Today mhiggins.drupal 27 September 2022 Yu Jie explores why so few women have won leadership roles in Communist China. UPDATE: Since this article was published at the end of September, the incoming members of the Politburo and the Standing Committee were announced at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress on October 22. The party broke more than two decades of convention by not appointing any women to the Politburo or its Standing Committee. The sole woman among the outgoing 19th CCP Politburo, Sun Chunlan, will retire. Only 33 women rank among the 376 members of the 20th CPC Central Committee, which elects the Politburo - less than one in 10. As the curtain of the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress gets ready to rise, the lack of female representation in Beijing’s corridors of power attracts international attention once again. Female participation in Chinese finance, science, sports or other aspects of society is relatively healthy. Yet there has never been a single woman at the apex of power in the party nor any who has held a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, the supreme decision-making body for the party and the state. Historically, China has been run by a number of powerful women starting in 307BC during the first imperial era of the Middle Kingdom. In the Qin Dynasty the Queen Dowager Xuan held de facto power for 35 years during the Warring States period. Mao Zedong proclaimed that ‘women hold up half of the sky’ More than 2,000 years later, Empress Dowager Cixi wined and dined her European visitors at the Imperial Summer Palace. She was also responsible for the demise of the late Qing Dynasty. Their legacies continue to fascinate and inspire stories in contemporary China. In modern times, Mao Zedong, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaimed that ‘women hold up half of the sky’. While Chinese law states that women and men should have equal rights in all aspects of political life, the reality is that women remain marginalized in politics, even after the economic and social transformation seen in the past few decades. Chinese men continue to dominate political power. The top three party, military or state leadership positions have never been filled by a woman and none of China’s 26 ministers is female. There is only one woman among the 31 party bosses that control China’s provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and only one woman among the 25 members of the all-powerful Politburo, and she oversaw the government’s response to the Covid pandemic. She is Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, a former party boss of Fujian Province. Among the 371 members of the Central Committee, which elects the Politburo, there are only 30 women, which is less than one in 10. Women are less likely to join the Communist Party It is difficult to explain why female participation in the Chinese elite politics is so low but social convention certainly plays its part. Despite increasing financial independence and much improved career prospects, Chinese women are still expected to run the household and look after the children while holding down a full-time job. This surely reduces opportunities to seek public offices. Although unspoken, China’s experience of handing power to a woman may be another reason why the party is hesitant to put a female in charge. Jiang Qing, better known to the outside world as Madame Mao, was China’s de-facto First Lady until 1976. She was one of the architects of the ‘Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution’, which ushered in a decade of chaos and political upheaval and brought the country to a standstill. Successive leaders have been determined to prevent a repeat of this misfortune so no woman has been chosen for a top leadership role. But perhaps the main reason for the absence of women in top positions is the way people move up the party ranks. Women make up around 49 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion population, yet they account for only about 30 per cent of the Chinese Communist Party membership. Once inside the party they are often handed less competitive positions. Rising through the ranks requires party members to achieve certain career breakthroughs. Such success makes them eligible to participate in high politics. The majority of China’s top leaders have served as a party chief of a province or municipality, a position women rarely achieve. Consequently, few female candidates are considered eligible for more senior roles. By the time they qualify for Politburo membership, too often they are fast approaching the retirement age for Chinese women politicians: 55. As it is rare to secure a spot on the Politburo under that age, women are virtually ruled out from joining this exclusive group of 25 people. The Iron Lady of China There has been one exception since the early 2000s. Vice-Premier Wu Yi, who is known as the Iron Lady of China, was described by Forbes magazine as the third most powerful woman in the world. She led China into the World Trade Organization and successfully bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, her success has been an exception, not a rule. While Chinese women have been given a nominal egalitarian status with female astronauts, female Olympic champions and female Nobel Prize laureates in place, beneath the surface older practices of patriarchy still hold firm. Liberated or not, the quest for a Chinese female leader under the Communist Party is a long way off. Full Article
english A guide to the Chinese Communist Party's National Congress By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 21 Sep 2022 13:08:23 +0000 A guide to the Chinese Communist Party's National Congress The World Today rescobales.drupal 21 September 2022 In the first of a three-part series examining the global importance of the CCP’s 20th National Congress, Yu Jie explains how it makes its big decisions. Why does the CCP National Congress matter? The world’s most populous country and its smallest state have little in common with one exception: how they select their leader. Like the Vatican, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shrouds its leadership selection process in secrecy. Every five years, a week-long conclave – the Party Congress – is held and at its end a new cohort of leaders is presented that will steer the world’s second largest economy for the next five years. October’s Congress will reveal the depth and breadth of Xi Jinping’s power The congress is the most important date in China’s political calendar. It not only selects China’s leadership team but acts as a signpost indicating the direction the country will be heading in the near future, with implications for decades to come. It also reveals the breadth and depth of power held by Xi Jinping, the party’s general-secretary. The 20th CCP National Congress, opening on October 16 and expected to last a week, is taking place during unsettling times. While Xi Jinping is expected to embark on his third term as general-secretary of the party after the removal of a two-term limit in February 2018, it is hardly a crowning glory. Xi’s China is battling an economic maelstrom at home while juggling fraught foreign relations abroad. What does the National Congress do? Quite simply, the CCP National Congress is the gathering that defines China’s political leadership and sets the tone for its relationship with the rest of the world. It serves to fulfil three primary functions: First, it sets the party’s principal agenda across all policy sectors, from macroeconomics to the price of food. During the week, it draws up a consensus-based evaluation of the party’s work over the past five years, which includes a detailed examination of the party’s current situation. Second, it introduces any revisions to the party constitution deemed necessary, for instance on changes to the criteria for leadership recruitment or amendments to the party’s ‘guiding ideology’. Third, it selects the leadership team that will steer China for the next five years, a function that attracts the most international attention but is not the sole purpose of the congress. How is the party leadership team chosen? The congress comprises 2,300 delegates representing all levels of the party hierarchy across 34 provinces and regions – from the governors of towns and cities, to Olympic champions, astronauts, and even the odd stand-up comedian to mark the ‘inclusiveness’ of the party. The votes that decide the next cohort of party leaders come from three committees only: the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, with 205 members and 171 alternate members (alternate members are simply substitutes to replace a member if they die, retire or are dismissed); the Central Committee, with 204 members; and the Politburo, with 25 members, only one of whom is a woman. Unlike multiparty elections in liberal democracies, neither the full 25 members of the Politburo nor the seven members of its Standing Committee are nominated by or directly voted for by constituents. A procedure known as ‘democratic recommendation’ is essentially a straw poll that includes all congress participants. They are then given a ballot listing the names of around 200 Politburo candidates in stroke order – the Chinese equivalent to alphabetical order. This short-listing process is completed in the run-up to the congress. Some pundits asserted that this process was put on hold after 2017, yet this has not been formally confirmed within the party constitution. A few senior delegates may express their preferences to their colleagues anonymously during this process. All the shortlisted candidates must meet the criteria for Politburo membership, which means serving at either a ministerial rank or above or in the People’s Liberation Army at military region level or above and being younger than 62. Based on the result of this straw poll, and more importantly on the preferences of current Politburo members, the incumbent Politburo and its Standing Committee will approve the nominees, conclude the Seventh Plenum of the 19th Party Congress and call for the 20th Congress. The delegates at the Party Congress then ceremonially cast their votes for the Politburo at the Party Congress although the result is pre-agreed, a procedure somewhat similar to the US Electoral College. What are the rules for choosing Politburo members? The Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) consists of between five and nine members, with seven selected at the 19th Congress. It is the supreme decision-making body of the Communist Party as well as the People’s Republic of China. If the 20th Congress follows convention, there are three de-facto rules to be followed: First, Politburo and Standing Committee members must retire at 68. This age limit is known as ‘Eight down, Seven up’. Second, new appointments to the PSC are drawn exclusively from regular Politburo members. The only exceptions to this rule have been Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who were appointed at the 17th Party Congress in 2007. Standing Committee members must retire at 68, but it is highly unlikely that 69-year-old Xi Jinping will stand down This exception follows the third convention, under which PSC appointees are among the youngest senior party leaders eligible. Potentially three vacancies could arise in 2022, as Xi himself is 69 but it is highly unlikely that he would step down. That would be a radical departure from past precedents. The extent to which past procedure is applied could act as a signal as to whether Xi Jinping is consolidating his power, while the size of the standing committee will be scrutinized to assess how much power Xi wields. If the procedure for leadership appointments at the 20th Congress deviates from these conventions, it could indicate two things. First, the CCP faces a new set of challenges and requires the introduction of new rules to shape the top leadership. Or, second, Xi has gained substantial personal power that allows him to bypass the collective leadership system endorsed by Deng Xiaoping and choose appointees to suit his own taste. There has thus far been little evidence from the official media to reflect on any changes. Changes in party institutional constraints, however, raise the danger of undermining governance at home and China’s relations abroad. Read the two further articles in this series: the second discusses the key domestic policy themes that Xi Jinping is expected to outline at this year’s congress; the third analyses the foreign policy issues likely to be discussed at the congress. Full Article
english Russia-China Defence and Security Relations By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 05 Sep 2022 11:16:50 +0000 Russia-China Defence and Security Relations This project explores the military and security linkages between Russia and China. jon.wallace 5 September 2022 The project seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of Russia-China relations in the defence and security realms. It also seeks to understand Russian political and security perceptions regarding Chinese inroads into what Russia considers its ‘near abroad’, as well as other sources of irritation and tension in the bilateral relationship. It offers recommendations to guide NATO policy responses. Full Article
english Russia–China defence and security relations: Insights from the expert community By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 31 Aug 2022 13:22:13 +0000 Russia–China defence and security relations: Insights from the expert community 13 September 2022 — 3:00PM TO 4:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 31 August 2022 Online Experts share insights on Russia–China military, defence, and security relations. In the defence and security realms, Russia–China relations resemble more pragmatic cooperation based on shared, calculated interests than an alliance. This event presents and discusses key findings from a recent expert survey conducted by Chatham House with the aim to gather insights on Russia–China military, defence, and security relations. Survey responses helped identify areas of bilateral cooperation but also crucial friction points and obstacles that prevent the relationship from developing further, as well as policy pathways for the West. Full Article
english China’s political chessboard: The 20th party congress By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 30 Aug 2022 08:37:13 +0000 China’s political chessboard: The 20th party congress 14 October 2022 — 1:00PM TO 2:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 30 August 2022 Online As the CCP gathers for its quinquennial political event, experts analyse its national, regional and global relevance. In October, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) assembles to appoint new leaders and discuss political, social, economic and foreign policy priorities for the coming 2022–2027 period and beyond. One of the key outcomes of the meeting of China’s political class is the future of current President Xi Jinping. Technically, as he is at the end of his second five-year term, Xi was due to step down this year. The next generation of leadership was supposed to step in, as the next stage of the party’s evolution takes place. However, this is unlikely to happen. The president has consolidated his power, manoeuvring allies into key positions and developing a faction of support in the party. With ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ added to the party charter and China’s constitution and term limits removed, Xi shows no intention of stepping down. However, the president is not all-powerful. Critics and alternative factions operate within the party. His second term has also had to contend with the botched early handling of the pandemic, worsening ties with the US, and a slowing economy. In an increasingly unpredictable world, events in the 2022 Party Congress will be hugely impactful for China’s and global affairs. What trajectory will Beijing take? Key questions the panel discuss include: How does the Party Congress function and what does it mean for domestic Chinese politics? Will President Xi’s political and economic legacies continue under new political leaders and policymakers? What does President Xi’s next role in China’s government tell us about his power? As the 20th CCP Party Congress takes place, is there unity and cohesion at the top of the political structure? Will the Party Congress have any impact on China’s international relations? Particularly the US? As with all Chatham House member events, questions from members drive the conversation. Read the transcript. Full Article
english Cracking down on kleptocracy By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Thu, 04 Aug 2022 14:51:30 +0000 Cracking down on kleptocracy Interview LJefferson 4 August 2022 In the third of a series of interviews with the Queen Elizabeth II Academy faculty, Alex Cooley examines the challenges of reigning in kleptocratic networks. Recently you spoke at the Queen Elizabeth II Academy about kleptocracy, and the impact of the individual sanctions used to target kleptocrats since the war on Ukraine began. As you can imagine, the problems of dark money and kleptocracy are familiar to Londoners. People tend to associate kleptocracy with Russia; why is that? Is its rise linked to the global decline of democracy that has taken place over the past 15 years? This is a great question. Kleptocracy literally means ‘rule by thieves’, and in contemporary usage refers to the plundering of economies and societies by political elites for their own personal gain. It does not necessarily have to track with democratic backsliding, but in many countries, it has for a couple of reasons. First, over the last 30 years, as globalization has expanded, with more integrated financial markets and greater provision of services to support this expansion (accountants, shell company providers, lawyers), transnational kleptocracy networks have also become more expansive as there is now a more sophisticated co-mingling of licit and illicit funds through these networks of globalization. Second, like the illiberal norms and practices that are promoting democratic backsliding, kleptocracy networks should be thought of as global in scale and reach. Corruption tends to be framed as an illegal act that takes place within states, while international rankings of levels of corruption by watchdogs like Transparency International tend to reinforce this view. Kleptocracy literally means ‘rule by thieves’, and in contemporary usage refers to the plundering of economies and societies by political elites for their own personal gain. However, corrupt acts that may initially occur domestically are facilitated by a number of transnational actors and processes, many of them operating out of so-called ‘clean’ countries. At the end of the day, for a kleptocrat to profit from his or her stolen loot, they must store those funds where their value will be guaranteed by strong property rights protections. That means that the destination for kleptocrats is often the West, jurisdictions that enjoy rule of law, that have good financial services, and that guarantee privacy to client services. To give a brief example of a hypothetical kleptocrat, take a regional official in China who has skimmed money off a state contract; that money will be booked into by an accounting firm in Hong Kong, then will be used to purchase an offshore vehicle – another tool of globalization – a shell company that is registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) but is sold, as part of a complex structure of nested companies, by a shell company provider, such as the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, at the centre of the Panama Papers exposé, which specialized in selling complex shell company structures to conceal the true owners. Then, that entity will open an actual corporate bank account in a global financial centre, say in Switzerland. Finally, that account from a ‘clean’ jurisdiction may purchase a luxury asset, such as a condominium in New York, without having to disclose the actual beneficial owner. That is a relatively simple transaction, but it includes jurisdictions from Hong Kong, the BVI, Panama, Switzerland, and New York to abet this initial act of local embezzlement by a mid-level Chinese official. You’re telling the story of why this has become transnational and global, but this is very much a supply-driven story. Is there a demand-side to this story? Sure, and this is the other side of globalization. You asked initially why so many Russians and former Soviet individuals were associated with kleptocratic schemes. This is because in the 1990s, as these institutions and tools of globalization proliferated, there was a chaotic economic transition underway in the former Soviet Union. Economic transition in places like Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan andTajikistan, transpired at the time of this financial deregulation, where there was a general perception that all capital account openness was good and that the international community assisted these countries with financial liberalization. The offshore dynamic is particularly pronounced in the post-Soviet countries because the state-building, regime consolidation, and reform of these economies coincided with this era of financial globalization. Why has the UK government turned a blind eye to this problem for so long? Is there profit that has been made? Is it too difficult? This is a really good question. First, the UK is the centre of many of the service providers that are absolutely critical for the operation of kleptocratic networks. There are two sides to being a kleptocrat. One is the money-laundering side, where dubiously acquired loot needs to be turned into legitimate assets that are safe and protected by the rule of law – this requires Western-based wealth managers, bankers, lawyers, real estate brokers and accountants. The UK is the centre of many of the service providers that are absolutely critical for the operation of kleptocratic networks. The second is reputation laundering. How do you recast yourself in the global spotlight from a controversial figure who made money in controversial transactions into an internationally respected, global business and philanthropist? Doing so requires that you donate to philanthropic causes, secure appointments on corporate and non-for-profit boards, support higher-education institutions and retain lobbyists, advisors, and cultivating allies within your residing country’s political system. These are all ways in which you can try and manage your image. Also, because of the UK’s strict libel laws, you have leaders in public relations and reputation management industries that are retained to closely monitor all media mentions of that individual, and to challenge or quash any negative characterizations about them. It is easy to see why the UK is attractive to kleptocrats, but why has it taken the UK government so long to respond? Is it just a simple calculation: this is money that is hard to turn down and there is at least plausible deniability of its more nefarious sources? It is really good money and kleptocrats engage in various legitimate business and cultural activities in order to obscure their sketchy pasts. It is very difficult to prove that their original wealth was actually obtained illegally. And, until now, there has not been a strong international norm and cooperation against kleptocrats the way there is with illicit actors such as terrorists or drug traffickers. Is it also because it is not strictly speaking illegal? Is there a sense that there is ‘money from uncertain sources being put to good purposes’? Many will make this argument too! If the source of funds is not strictly illegal, then why not actually use this wealth to ‘do good’? For example, why not have scholarships for students who need them at the university? As long as there is no overt interference in the terms of these donations, what is the harm? Kleptocrats’ acts of charity can be leveraged in legal proceedings or in public opinion to burnish their reputations and establish track records of being good citizens. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it allows kleptocrats to create positive profiles. Indeed, these acts of charity can be leveraged in legal proceedings or in public opinion to burnish their reputations and establish track records of being good citizens. It also creates supportive constituencies in society. For example, if you buy, even with your questionably acquired wealth, a major football team and you take it to the peak of success, you are revered and now have a platform to even contest previous critical accounts of you. Do you think that the war in Ukraine will prove to be an inflection point in terms of how other advanced democracies in Europe and North America treat this problem, and not only the UK? I hope so – I have seen some hopeful trends. For instance, some countries have expedited the implementation of important anti-corruption legislation that they already passed. And there is a broader understanding that it is now a matter of national security to actually know who owns what in your country, whether it’s a company, commercial property, a bank account, or a holding company. I also think the Russian oligarchs themselves have been fatally stigmatized.. They can no longer control the overwhelmingly negative image and association with the Kremlin that this ghastly war has brought. Also, we are seeing push in the UK for reform on SLAPPS, while the National Crime Agency has established a dedicated ‘kleptocracy cell’ designed to investigate the hidden wealth of oligarchs and possible sanctions avoidance. Russian oligarchs have been fatally stigmatized. They can no longer control the overwhelmingly negative image and association with the Kremlin that this ghastly war has brought. But the latter will require sustained funding and staffing. Unfortunately, most of their assets are not in luxury yachts that are relatively easy to seize, but embedded in complex webs of opaque global transactions. It will be challenging to even identify these assets, let alone freeze and confiscate them. We have talked a lot about Russia for obvious reasons, but if you go down the list, who’s next when it comes to the source of this problem? Countries with especially powerful ruling families that have been in power for a long time, and that have some sort of rentier economy, either extractives, natural resources, or big former state-operated enterprises that perhaps have been privatized. For example, oil-exporting countries like Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan have incubated classic kleptocrats along with transnational reputation laundering schemes involving Western institutions. During your talk with the Academy fellows at Chatham House, you suggested that the pressure on kleptocrats would also have broader geopolitical effects. Can you say more about this? Is there a risk that measures intended to excise kleptocrats from our economies leads to greater divisions globally? Whether there will be comprehensive anti-kleptocracy reforms in the US, London, Canada and Switzerland remains an open question, but already kleptocrats are shifting away from Western jurisdictions and going further Eastward; they are going to Singapore, and they are also going to the Gulf, especially the UAE. There are a number of reports now of Russian oligarchs relocating and residing there and taking their assets with them. The UAE is not part of the sanctions regime even though it is a US security partner, and in fact it has scored very poorly on illicit money laundering rankings and watchdog lists. Full Article
english Beijing briefing: is the Belt and Road going nowhere? By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 29 Jul 2022 18:14:17 +0000 Beijing briefing: is the Belt and Road going nowhere? The World Today mhiggins.drupal 29 July 2022 Scaling back infrastructure plans and investment in the Global South could cause China problems, says Yu Jie. Over the past two decades, China specialists around the world have tried to analyze Beijing’s approach to developing countries in the Global South, including Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia and the Pacific islands. China’s relationships with nations in these regions vary considerably. In some, ideology or geography are the biggest influencing factors; for others, economic and commercial gains matter most. However, many of Beijing’s recent engagements have attracted more criticism than praise. A domestic economic downturn means that Beijing has tightened its belt, spending less on overseas development. When President Xi Jinping came to power, he was keen to highlight how China’s power could shape and dictate the global agenda across multilateral platforms. His vision was for China to project discursive power and become an agenda-setter rather than a rule-follower. The Global South is the route to fulfilling his proposal. To this end, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the latest Global Development Initiative are the means to Beijing’s ends. The former, launched in 2013, focuses on building physical infrastructure linking Global South countries; the latter aims to allow development through grants and capacity-building in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. China’s engagements with Africa and Latin America seem characterized by the rapid extension of Chinese finance to resource-rich African states, particularly oil producers, since the early 2000s. From 2003, for example, oil-backed infrastructure loans were made to the Angolan government for reconstruction after decades of civil conflict. By 2016, they totalled some $15 billion. However, Beijing’s appetite for offering cheap loans in exchange for natural resources has shrunk. It faces a dilemma between protecting the value of its investments while also defending its strategic interests and maintaining its self-image as a partner, not a predator, of Africa. Some of China’s Global South investments include serious climate and financial risks Beijing has historically preferred bilateral relationships for its development finance and investments over multilateral ones. This allows China control over the terms and conditions, while demonstrating its unwillingness to accept without question rules and frameworks devised years ago by western countries. China has already realized that some elements of its engagements with the Global South are no longer the flavour of the day, partly because some of its programmes include serious climate and financial risks without proper third-party due diligence in place. Growth through gigantic infrastructure investments of the sort that drove China’s own economic miracle is not a panacea applicable everywhere. Nor is relentlessly seeking endorsements from its neighbours and other countries from afar. China wants to be a ‘brother’ to the Global South Ideologically, China wants to be seen and respected as a leader of the Global South. Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic has maintained a ‘brotherly’ relationship with developing countries, notably in the UN context, where it remains a member of the G77 group of developing nations. The West has responded to China’s development agenda with its own infrastructure programmes, such as Washington’s Build Back Better World and the European Union’s Global Gateway. Great power rivalry should not be ignored, but it shouldn’t blind world powers to the need for collaboration in tackling global poverty and sustainable development. Nor should Beijing’s efforts to adjust its diplomatic and aid programmes to become a likeable partner of choice in search of a better economic future, be disregarded. Developing countries recovering from the pandemic crave meaningful assistance rather than diplomatic rhetoric Since launching BRI, China has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into building infrastructure in the Global South. And many developing countries hope that advanced economies and China can continue to act to alleviate poverty. But the brakes have been applied to Beijing’s spree as a result of China’s domestic economic slowdown. It has no wish to continue spending its foreign reserves. To go forward, China must remain open to what others want – or fear – from Beijing’s development initiatives and infrastructure investments. Many developing countries, facing insurmountable costs and damage exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, crave meaningful assistance rather than diplomatic rhetoric. The ultimate test of Beijing’s economic statecraft is whether it can engage with the Global South beyond relationships built on financial resources and political capital. It must also become more self-aware of how its words and deeds are received – and then act accordingly. Showering dollars and renminbi is not always guaranteed to win hearts and minds. In this respect, Beijing has more bridges to build. Full Article
english A feminist and postcolonial approach to nuclear politics By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 20 Jul 2022 14:53:36 +0000 A feminist and postcolonial approach to nuclear politics Expert comment NCapeling 20 July 2022 The July issue of International Affairs includes eight articles on the global nuclear order and eight more covering Chinese lending, abortion rights, and global security. Disarmament and arms control has been a consistent area of debate in this journal for the past century, as underscored in our recent archive collection of research on a century of war and conflict. The July edition moves this debate forward with a collection of papers guest-edited by Shine Choi and Catherine Eschle. The section ‘Feminist interrogations of global nuclear politics’ includes work by nine authors exploring seven global case-studies that help rethink nuclear politics and feminism. As the guest editors note in their introduction, the section brings together research on nuclear power and nuclear weaponry to ‘begin the process of decentring 1980s white, western experiences of the global nuclear order in feminist IR’. The articles speak to three core themes: they provide evidence of the ongoing destructive nature of nuclear technologies, extend understanding of the gendered, racialized, and colonial dimensions of nuclear discourses, and unearth the impact of colonialism on the global nuclear order. Global nuclear politics Anne Sisson Runyan examines the gendered effects of uranium mining and nuclear waste dumping on North American Indigenous women, showing how the nuclear cycle tends to have a disproportionate effect on certain communities but also that the area of disposal remains problematic. This is a global problem – for example, the Royal Navy has yet to successfully dispose of a single redundant nuclear-powered submarine and is rapidly running out of space to store further vessels. Hebatalla Taha goes back to the early years of nuclear development and, using Egypt as a case-study, her article argues the early visualizations of the atomic age were fluid and ambivalent. She concludes – perhaps controversially – that feminizing nuclear politics and nuclear images will not lead to disarmament but rather reinforce the nuclearized world. The piece is a welcome addition to the emerging field of visuality within international relations. Gendered images, symbols and metaphors play a key role in narrating, imagining and criticizing, but also sustaining, the nuclear-armed world. Hebatalla Taha, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Department of Political Science, American University in Cairo Anand Sreekumar brings together feminist and Gandhian thinking to suggest a way for Narendra Modi’s government to move beyond the possession of nuclear weapons as symbols of power. In doing so, he also critiques the binary labels of ‘West’ and ‘non-West’ that often frame our understanding of the world. Lorraine Bayard de Volo revisits the Cuban missile crisis – a point in time where nuclear war looked likely. She compares the actions of Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy and finds the pursuit of masculinity led to the rejection of approaches considered more feminine, such as diplomacy and negotiation – the crisis was exacerbated by what might be referred to now as toxic masculinity. Sweden’s and Finland’s recent application to join the nuclear alliance NATO lends a particular urgency to Emma Rosengren’s article on the original Swedish decision to renounce the development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Her article concludes much of the emphasis on power in international relations has contributed to a gendered and racialized nuclear order. Similarly, Laura Rose Brown and Laura Considine’s article on the Non-Proliferation Treaty finds that ‘gender-sensitive’ approaches focus almost exclusively on women’s inclusion as opposed to feminist policy analysis. They end by making recommendations for future policymaking. Finally, Rebecca Hogue and Anais Maurer look at the anti-nuclear poetry of Pacific women. This article raises fundamental questions about what is currently considered to constitute evidence. They point to the role of oral history in many communities and the tendency of policymakers and social scientists to ignore this source of understanding. National politics with international implications This edition’s ‘Editor’s Choice’ is Jeffrey A. Friedman’s article which questions whether US grand strategy is dead in a post-Trump world. Running counter to much of the existing literature, he suggests there is a strong bilateral commitment to existing partnerships and alliances within the US political establishment. Bipartisan support for deep engagement is at least as strong today as it has been at any other point since the end of the Cold War. Jeffrey A. Friedman, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College; Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Toulouse Following the US Supreme Court decision over Roe vs Wade, it is important to note the issue of abortion rights can have an international dimension. Megan Daigle, Deirdre N. Duffy, and Diana López Castañeda reveal that, although Colombia now has the most progressive legal framework for abortion in Latin America, intense backlash persists as legacies of the civil war overshadow the issue and lead to barriers to safe abortion care. China Ric Neo and Chen Xiang look at Chinese public opinion and finds that citizens can be upset by foreign policies of other states even when they have no impact on their daily lives. It reminds us of the potency of nationalism and the importance of who controls the prevailing narrative. It was not the Chinese party-state’s grand strategy, or even a purposeful effort, to indebt Zambia. Deborah Brautigam, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and Director, China Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Deborah Brautigam examines China’s role in creating Zambia’s debt crisis, arguing this has not been brought about by a centralized master plan which would give China control over Zambia. Instead, the crisis has been caused by the failure of Chinese bureaucracy with too many state organs offering funding in an uncoordinated fashion. Security and defence Using Iran as a case-study, Henrik Stålhane Hiim argues the development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles is a key indicator when looking for potential nuclear proliferators. Eray Alim demonstrates the impact of an external great power interacting with local states. Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has allowed it – sometimes through restrictive and punitive measures – to ensure Turkey and Israel do not harm its interests in the region. Nina Wilén draws on fieldwork in Niger to study how Security Force Assistance (SFA) impacts on Niger’s security sector and compares this to global trends in security. She finds these developments contribute to blurred borders and confusion regarding labour division in the security sector and points to wider questions for intervenors in developing local units. Full Article
english Instapaper 4: Deciding to Read By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:37:45 +0000 Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone The lede here is that my pal, Marco, has just released the stellar new 4.0 version of his Instapaper suite. This is fantastic news, and–as if you needed one more of Marco’s beta testers to say so–I do sincerely hope you’ll mark the occasion (and support his hard work) by purchasing the Instapaper iOS app(s). I promise you’ll be treating yourself to a massive update to an already excellent product. Now, it’s fortunate and appropriate that you’ll be hearing this advice at length from a lot of people this week. Because, if it’s not already obvious, Marco’s little app (and its associated services) enjoys a rabid fanbase of sundry paragraph cultists who are as eager as I am to spread the word; and, yes, we do want you to join the Reading Nerd cult. But, I also want to mark the occasion by adding a few thoughts on exactly what Instapaper has done, and continues to do, for me. (As you may already know, I’m a big Marco fan.) Thing is, I want to tell you how Marco has made a magical machine for people who have decided to read. Long-Time Fan For years, Instapaper has been one of the best made, most used, and most beloved apps in my iOS ecosystem. It’s always lived on my iPhone’s home page, and, as you can surmise, that’s because I use Instapaper a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Specifically, I use Instapaper a lot because it helps me do four things extremely well. Four things that work together to make my life a little better. In that typically annoying mixed order I can’t seem to stop doing, here goes. 2. Deciding WHEN to read Second, and most obviously, I use Instapaper maybe five to ten times a day to catch up on my reading. Which is great. This is what Instapaper is actually for, right? You read stuff. Long articles, smaller features, short books, big piles of documentation, and really just anything that I would like to read…later. More saliently, these are things that I have decided to read. This decision part’s important, but more on that in a couple minutes. But, how does all this “stuff” I’ve decided to read get in to Instapaper? 1. Deciding WHAT to read See, this is the really important first part. Because as much as I use Instapaper for all manner of reading, its use as an ephemeral destination for mostly ephemeral content wouldn’t be nearly so useful if I didn’t have so many ways to collect all that stuff. So, that flexibility in collecting material is where I end up using some form of Instapaper dozens of times each day. Examples? I have a bookmarklet for adding items to Instapaper in 4 browsers on 7 devices. I have (and use the hell out of) the “Send to Instapaper” services that are built in to everything from Google Reader to Reeder to Flipboard to Instacast to Tweetbot to Zite to you name it. I can automate in or out of Instapaper with If This Then That, I can email items directly to Instapaper–hell, I can even just copy a URL from iOS Safari, and paste it directly into the motherscratching Instapaper app. Suffice it to say, there are many ways to get “stuff” into Instapaper. E.g.: But, that banner dump only tells part of the story. Yes, a big part of this is about ubiquity and ease-of-use. But, the practical result is that all those little entrees to Instapaper are available to me everywhere I might need them, and they each represent a single little click that silently adds an item of “stuff” to my Instapaper pile. Each button is one more simple opportunity for me to decide to read. 3. Deciding WHERE to read Now, the third part of this magic is less immediately obvious, not least because the reading experience of the Instapaper iOS apps is, for my own purposes, perfect. But, there’s more. Because, all that support for getting stuff into Instapaper is mirrored by an endless number of ways to get stuff back out. To, in fact, read. That thing I decided to read is now everywhere. However I ended up deciding to read something, seconds after that *click*, the real magic starts happening, and–through whatever inscrutable black art and transmogrification is happening inside the fearsome celestial engine Marco has made–that decision to read is expressed in the most elegant of results and in a startlingly broad variety of convenient places. It’s readable on a website; it’s readable on an iPhone, and 2 iPads; it’s readable on a Kindle 3; it’s readable on the crazy number of apps and services that display Instapaper items. And, it’s even preserved for posterity in my private Pinboard archive. So, for practical purposes, this stuff that I’ve decided to read can now go whooshing through a network of customized tubes, and gently land practically anywhere that well-formed bits may reside. 4. Just…Deciding to Read I know most of you know these things. I know you’re familiar with the many “Features and Benefits” of Instapaper. And, I even know that most of you reading this are probably already using Instapaper–perhaps even to read this very article. So, the point here is not simply that Instapaper is flexible, idiot-proof, and sanity-savingly redundant. Although it is all those things and many more. The point is that my life always gets better when I decide to read things–and then actually read those things I decided to read. This is not a trivial point. We’re all busy, and we’re all bombarded with 10,000 potential calls on our attention every day. Some days, we handle that better than others. Some days, we don’t handle it all. All I know, is that, throughout my life, deciding to read has made that life better. It made my life better at 7 with Henry Huggins. It made my life better at 16 with Slaughterhouse-Five. It made my life better at 20 with Absalom, Absalom!. And, it made my life way better at 25 with A Confederacy of Dunces (cf.). And, now, for the past few years–following over a decade during which I read way more href tags than actual prose paragraphs–my life has gotten better, in part, due to Instapaper. I’ve finally gotten my hands around this “too much stuff” issue, at least insofar as it relates to words of theoretical interest. Now, I know where it goes. It goes into Instapaper. Because, now? Yeah. Twenty-some years after a college career sucking down over 1,000 pages a week, I am finally returning to reading a lot more. Because, I am deciding to read a lot more. Instapaper means there’s no excuse for not reading a lot more. Period. How about you? What Are YOU Deciding? When you’re in line at the ATM or the professional sporting event, what do you do? If you’re like a lot of people, you hit your mobile device like a pigeon on a goddamned pellet. Then, you decide what happens. You can decide to throw birds at pigs. You can decide to check in on which strangers are pretending to like you today. You may even decide to see what you would look like if you were really fat. Thing is, you could also decide to read. Just for a couple minutes. Maybe more. Maybe less. Who knows. It’s your decision. A Nudge Towards “Better” But, if you have followed the circuitous skeins of yarn comprising this little sweater you’ve been reading, it comes down to this: If you’ve decided that you want to read, Marco’s app will really help you. He’s removed any phony barriers you’ve built about “not having time” or “not having it with you” or “not knowing where to put it.” There are no excuses, apart from the superficial animated ones you’ve constructed out of cartoon birds. As for me? In the last week alone, I decided to read a lot of things in Instapaper. A small sampling: I decided to read about an American family’s educational experiment in Russia. I decided to read about what Heidegger means by Being-in-the-World. I decided to read about why toasters are so bad. I decided to read about responsive web design. I decided to read about why Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich. I decided to read about how Open Data could make San Francisco Public Transportation better. I decided to read about how John Siracusa remembers Steve Jobs. I decided, and then I read. I read, and I read. So, thanks, Marco. You’ve made my life better by making it easier to decide to read. Then, you made it way easier to do the actual reading. And, to you–the kind readers-of-prose-paragraphs who were inexplicably patient enough to decide to read this long article–please consider supporting Marco’s work. Please get an account at Instapaper and, if you have an iOS dingus, please do buy the Instapaper app. In addition to having exquisite taste in app icons and a lovely speaking voice, Marco’s just a very good human. And, good humans more than deserve our support. Buy Instapaper 4.0 by Marco Arment. ”Instapaper 4: Deciding to Read” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 17, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Decision-Making Instapaper Marco Arment reading
english Cranking By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 21:38:56 +0000 1. Nothing wrecks your living room decor quite like a giant, rented hospital bed. The one my Dad laid in for a couple months in the fall of 1974 was an alarmingly stiff and sturdy affair, the frame of which was forged of impossibly heavy iron, with half a dozen jaggy coats of putty-flesh latex paint doing a shit job of concealing the dings and dents kissed by dozens of clutches of burly rental guys trying to navigate unaccommodating residential doors. Jammed cattywampus between a teddy-bear brown sectional, an antiqued rococo credenza, and what had until recently been my Father's favorite armchair, the hospital bed left little room for easy socializing, let alone aesthetic speculation. This was a living room where a very ill person would mostly die soon. The hospital bed's defining feature was the theoretical ease with which the human trunk slumped in its top half could be raised or lowered by turning a shitty little crank at the foot of its lower half. Like the bed itself, the shitty little crank was ugly and obtrusive and hard to live with. Mom and I tripped over the crank a lot. The theoretically useful but ultimately shitty little crank made the hospital bed look like those old-timey cars we'd see in the bad silent movies they showed down at Shakey's Pizza. Mom and Dad despised the saltines-and-ketchup style of pizza served at Shakey's. To them, LaRosa's over on Cheviot had way better pizza plus a pretty good jukebox. But, I really liked Shakey's. They gave away cool styrofoam boater hats with a red paper band that said, "Shakey's Pizza Parlor." Which I thought looked smashing. So, they used to take me to Shakey's. In practice, the hospital bed's shitty little crank functioned mostly as a recalcitrant and pinch-inducing mechanism for eroding my father's dignity. Dad would lay in the hospital bed that filled our living room while my Mom slowly cranked. He'd try to make jokes. (Dad had always been the funniest person any of his friends knew.) The hospital bed creaked. Mom cranked. Dad's tired upper half would haltingly rise and bob with reluctant help from the bed's upper half. Mom sweated at the crank. Dad laid there and watched. Dad couldn't help. He watched. He was in the hospital bed. Mom did all the cranking. Dad watched. He watched while his wife turned a shitty little iron crank, trying impotently to make her best friend just a tiny bit more comfortable as his body worked to finally finish eating itself. But, he couldn't help out. I think he wanted to help out. But, he couldn't help out. She couldn't really help my Dad. My Dad couldn't really help her. But they sure tried. She cranked and cranked. I was seven. I didn't know how to help anyone. 2. The last time I saw my Dad, he was in a different hospital bed. That one was a much more functional and aesthetically appropriate unit neatly fitted into an overlit semi-private room in the highly-regarded Jewish Hospital located on E. Galbraith Road. We weren't Jewish. We were just sick. Frankly, I forget what the crank on the second hospital bed looked like, but I seem to recall that it worked just fine. This was maybe a week before my Dad died. From what I can gather, he and my Mom had wanted to time things so that I could be with him as long and as late as possible--but not so late that I'd have to see him in the kind of condition I have to assume he was in during the full week he was too ill for his boy to visit him. Pretty bad condition, I'm guessing. In the almost forty years since Dad's last week in any hospital bed, my Mom and I haven't talked much about it. If there are things to say about that week, I'm not sure even forty years is long enough to prep for them. I know I'm still not ready. I should ask my Mom if she's ready. She was forty then. Just under half her life ago. What I do know is my Mom lived by that second hospital bed most every minute of Dad's last week. Just like she'd been by the first hospital bed in her living room for the months before. Only now she was the one sleeping on the wrong bed. There are limits to the physical comforts you can offer a woman who's determined to stay by her husband's second hospital bed until it's time. But she was there that whole time. Up to the last time my sweet Dad ever said anything to anyone. As he laid in that second hospital bed, I'm told that the last thing my Dad said to anyone was something he said to my Mom. He told my Mom: Take care of The Big Guy. That was me. I was "The Big Guy." My Dad always called me "Big Guy," and I always loved when he said that. It made me feel strong. It made me feel tall. It made me know that my Dad and I were best pals. I still love knowing I was my Dad's best pal. 3. I don't specifically remember the day our particular clutch of burly rental guys came out to remove the first hospital bed from our living room. I do remember thinking it was weird how quickly the space filled with huge floral arrangements, covered dishes and casseroles, and a pack of outdoorsy men with giant red hands who were new to sobbing inconsolably in front of each other. But, that hospital bed had been heavy. Really heavy. And even though the bed's wheels had been thoughtfully nested in plastic casters, the raw tonnage of the iron motherfucker left permanent dents in our ugly, broccoli-green carpeting. Six breadplate-sized dents that were still there a year and a half later on the day my Mom and I moved out. We didn't need a house that big for just the two of us. Plus, the living room wasn't much fun to hang out in any more. Way too big. Way too big. 4. I don't currently have a hospital bed. I have a modest but very comfortable regular bed in a regular bedroom where I sleep with my regular wife. She's my favorite part of the bed. To my knowledge, our modest but very comfortable bed is not fitted with a shitty little crank. Which is nice for everyone. And, every single morning at almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time, my three-year-old daughter wakes up, jumps out of her crank-free, regular, big-girl bed, tears out of her regular bedroom, and--even before she gets her hot milk or takes off her pull-up or tells us to turn on Toy Story 2--she dashes into our regular bedroom, runs up to our regular non-hospital bed, and screams, "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!" until I wake up and say, "G'mornin', Sweet Bug! Did you have nice sleeps?" Sometimes she tells me whether or not she had nice sleeps. Often as not lately, she tells me to make her hot milk and turn on Toy Story 2. Both of which I'm totally fine with. Thing is, she screams "DAD-dy!" like the most impossibly great thing in the world has just happened. Every single morning. Right by my bed. Without a crank in sight. And, you know what? Something impossibly great has happened. Because an annoying, rambling, disagreeable little man like me gets to have this alarm clock in piggy-patterned footie jammies run up to a regular, crank-less, healthy-Dad, non-hospital bed and make him feel like he's The Greatest Thing in the Universe. Just like I think she's The Greatest Thing in the Universe. Just like I thought my Dad was The Greatest Thing in the Universe. And, although I'm confident that I will always think my daughter is The Greatest Thing in the Universe, I'm also all too aware that this feeling will not always be reciprocated in quite that same way or with quite that same enthusiasm that we both enjoy right now. She won't always run to my bed in footie jammies. I'll only get that particularly noisy and personalized wake-up call for a little while. And, I only get a shot at it once a day. At almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Then one day? I won't get it any more. It will be gone. 5. Many mornings over the past six months or so, at almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time, I was not in my regular bed. I was not even at home. I was sitting in another building, typing bullshit that I hoped would please my book editor. Who, by the way, is awesome. And, if I noticed what time it was, I'd always wonder whether my daughter had run into our bedroom yet. I'd wonder whether she had seen my side of the bed empty again. And, when I thought about my empty spot on the bed and how disappointed she'd be to scream "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!" then see I'm not even there, I'd die a little. I'd die a little, because as I thought about her, I'd think about my Dad. And as I thought about my Dad, I'd start thinking about hospital beds with cranks--then on to dents, and covered dishes, and rooms full of sobbing outdoorsy guys, and so on. But, by then it might be 6:10 am Pacific Time. And I didn't have time to think about my family. Not now, right? No, I had to keep working. I had to stay in that other building and keep typing bullshit that I hoped would please my editor. Who is awesome. So, I'd type and type. I'd crank and crank. I'd try and try. I'd want very much to go home, make hot milk, and watch Toy Story 2. So much, I'd want this. 6. Anyhow, this has been my on-and-off job for the past two years. I type. And, I try to type things that will help and comfort people, but mostly I try to type things that will please my editor. Who is awesome. Sometimes I do my job at 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Sometimes I do my job at 5:30 PM or 11:30 AM or really any time in between. Sometimes I do my job while my family goes to birthday parties and holiday dinners and a couple vacations and I don't even know how many (non-Shakey's) pizza nights--all without me. Without Dad. In fact, a depressing amount of the time--really up until this week--I would do my job until I hadn't the slightest idea what time it was or what bullshit I was typing or what my crank was ever meant to be attached to in the first place. But, even when my shitty little crank was not attached to anything, I did keep cranking. Because, Dads do their job. It's what they do. They crank. They crank and crank and crank and crank. Sometimes the cranking made something special that will be really useful to people who badly need the comfort and help. But, a staggering amount of the time, my cranking has produced joyless and unemotional bullshit that couldn't comfort, help, or please anyone. Especially my editor. Who is awesome. There's no point in doing anything if it doesn't eventually please my editor. Who is awesome. This has constantly hung over my head. For two fucking years. But, this has been my job. It's a job I often did late. It's a job I often did poorly. And, it's a job where I often didn't pull my load or live up to even my own expectations and standards. Which is far from my editor's fault. She's been awesome. 7. Anyhow, I've tried to do my job. But, I've often failed. I've sometimes failed to make things that will help and comfort people. And, God knows I've failed to please my editor. And, worst of all, more often than my heart can bear at 2:34 pm Pacific Time on Friday April 22nd, I know I've failed to be home for several of my daily shot at "DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!" It's now become unavoidably clear to me that I've been doing each of these things poorly. The job, the making, the pleasing, and, yeah, the being at home. And I can't live with that for another day. So, I've chosen which one has to go. At least in the way it's worked to date. Which is to say not working. I'll let you guess which. Because, that? That choosing? That's what my book needs to be about. Not about pleasing people. Not about cranking on bullshit. Not about abandoning your priorities to write about priorities. My book needs to be about choosing a hard thing and then living with it. Because it's your thing. But, that part's gone missing for just a little too long now. Certainly not missing from my handsome and very practical rhetoric--it's been missing from my actual life and living. In a quest to make something that has increasingly not felt like my own, I've unintentionally ignored my own counsel to never let your hard work fuck up the good things. Including those regular people. Including, ironically, the real work. Including any good thing the crank is supposed to be attached to. So, I'm done fucking that up. I'm done cranking. And, I'm ready to make a change. I'm not sure precisely what that change will look like, but, at the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, I have a pretty good idea that this particular performance of "Edelweiss" you're enjoying right now may immediately be followed by a dramatic chase, a hopeful escape attempt, and only if I'm extremely lucky, maybe an eventual stride over the Alps. As I'll explain in a minute, it most likely means I don't have My Book Contract any more. Who knows? We'll have to see. 8. All I know is tonight's Friday. And, that's Daddy-Daughter Night. And, my book agent says my editor (who is awesome) will probably cancel My Book Contract if I don't send her something that pleases her…today. Now. By tonight. Theoretically, I guess...uh...this. See: my agent very helpfully suggested I send my editor a chapter full of "email stuff." My editor really likes "email stuff." And, it was theorized by my agent that sending this "email stuff" might please my book editor just enough that she might not cancel My Book Contract. For now. Well. If you've made it this far, you, like my editor (who is awesome), will have realized that this is not a chapter of "email stuff." It's a very long, wooly, histrionic, messy and uncomfortable story about hospital beds, piggy jammies, and styrofoam hats. I seriously doubt it will please my editor. Who is awesome. So, no, I really hope she doesn't cancel My Book Contract. But, it does occur to me that said contract is the last and only thing my publisher has to intimidate me into doing things I don't want to do. Things I think will harm my book, my integrity, and my life. Once that threat is made good, the game ends. They can sue me and yell and stuff. Which would suck, but at least no one would be demanding my book have fucking pussy willows on the cover. Which, as I sit here, feels more and more unbearable to me. In any case, I don't control anything that anyone does. It took a long time for me to really get that. It's such a funny thing. Threats--like hurricanes and rectal exams--are only scary until they arrive. Once they're over, they're just the basis for funny stories. But, you do nearly always survive them. And, if you didn't survive? It wasn't because of a lack of fear. Like I say, the universe doesn't particularly care whether you're scared. Oh, well. I like my editor. She's awesome. I hope she doesn't cancel My Book Contract. I hope we keep working together. But if it goes away today, tomorrow or further on? Well. As a favorite novelist of mine used to say: "So it goes." I'll figure this out tomorrow. Or Monday. Or later. Tonight is Daddy-Daughter Night. And, no fucking way am I missing two in a row. 9. Now, as far as My Goddamned Book? Truthfully? Wanna hear the really complicated part? This is not me quitting the book. No fucking way. This is me doubling down on the book--on my book. I will finish my book very soon. Not because of (or in spite of) any contract, and not because of (or in spite of) any editor, and certainly not because of (or in spite of) any tacit demand for empty cranking. I will finish my book because I want to finish it. Because it is very, very important to me to finish it. But, again, let's be clear-- what I finish will be my book. And, it will be done my way. And, yes--you Back to Work fans knew this one was coming--my book will have my cover that I choose. It will not have fucking pussy willows or desert islands or third-rate kerning. It will be, to quote my editor (who is awesome), "messy." My book will help and comfort the people that I want to reach. And, yes, much like my editor, my book will be awesome. I truly hope my book pleases her. 10. So, there you have it. An article that's clearly not a chapter of "email stuff." Me? I'm off to prep for "Daddy-Daughter Night." And, tomorrow morning, unlike last Saturday morning and countless other days before it, at the crack of 6:00 am Pacific Time, I will be available in my regular crankless bed to ask my daughter whether she had nice sleeps. And I will tell her and my regular wife that I think they're the Greatest Things in the Universe. And, maybe after I make hot milk and watch Woody worry about cowboy camp, I may even think to myself about how proud my funny Dad would be of his pal, The Big Guy. For doing what needed to be done. To be someone special's Dad for as often and as long as he can. Just like he did. Even when it gets hard. Even when it gets really hard. -- 30 -- Thanks for listening, nerds. You'll hear more when I hear more. ”Cranking” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 22, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article family Inbox Zero Personal
english Scared Shitless By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:51:05 +0000 Merlin Mann - "Scared Shitless: How I (Mostly) Learned to Love Being Afraid of Pretty Much Everything" Download MP4 Video of "Scared Shitless" This is the video of a talk I did last month at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand. It's pretty different from a lot of stuff I've done. It's about being scared. As I mentioned on Back to Work, Webstock is—what? Well. Webstock is unique. Truly. If you get the chance, you should go. Really. I could not and would not have done this talk in this way had I had not been so inspired (and, frankly, so terrified) by the awesomeness of the other speakers, by the quality of their talks, and by the astounding graciousness and empathy of the audience that this particular event attracts. Tash and Mike and their crackerjack team have made something really special here. I'm honored that they even invited me, and I'm insanely grateful for the care and hospitality that they showed to the speakers and to the attendees at every step of the way. Seriously. Thank you. So, yeah. I did something really weird at Webstock. Weird for me and, honestly, just plain weird for "a talk." I'm not sure if it succeeded. But, I did the best I could to make myself (along with some really heroic friends and fellow speakers) into a legitimate guinea pig for a concept that means the world to me: You can be scared and still do it anyway. Regardless of whatever it is. And, you can. No. Really. You. You can do this. You can run toward the shitstorm, let it cover you with shit, but, still never let it stop you from running. Because, like Crazy Bob says: "They can't eat you." And, they can't. And, they won't. Okay? Well, okay, then. ”Scared Shitless” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 28, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Elsewhere Fear Merlin Speaks Webstock
english Nerdiest Interview Ever: MPU Workflows Part II By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:34:26 +0000 MPU 046: Workflows with Merlin Mann II « Mac Power Users Download MP3 Huffduff It I have the life that I have because I've made a lot of weird decisions, and they've worked out well. Not gonna lie to you. I'm a huge nerd. Surprised? Yep. I can recite big chunks of The Big Lebowski from memory. I can argue for an hour on the merits of Dick York over Dick Sargent. And, I can—and frequently do—catch myself thinking Catwoman, Batgirl, Princess Leia, and Emma Peel should have a light-hearted pillow fight that ends with an hour of genial french-kissing. Pretty much like you, probably. I dunno, maybe your version includes Kitty Pryde. Po-tay-to/Po-taht-o, right? Perhaps most saliently, by virtue of having spent a solid 2,399 days as a Fake Productivity Guru, I have been provided with an unquestionably Janusian monkey's paw of a gift; I now know a lot about workflows. Nerdy, nerdy workflows. I can tell you a few things that almost always work, I can tell you a handful of things that almost never work, and—best or worst of all—I can tell you thousands of things that might work. Sometimes. Maybe. Kinda. For some people. For now. And, at the risk of gay-marrying my arrogance to my hypocrisy, I can tell you that I also know enough about the unholy diarrhea of potential options for Theoretical Productivity to share two big patterns: Getting your workflow right matters. Getting your workflow right to the exclusion of the actual work is a fool's game. But. Managing to get the most useful and most elegant and least fiddly mix of 1 and 2 right is super-hard. Especially for nerds. Especially for me. So, as I type this today, I believe there can be no greater testament to these claims—or, at least, no greater place to test the veracity of these claims for yourself—than in this TWO AND A HALF HOUR-long interview for Mac Power Users. It is reeeeeeeeally nerdy. Almost intolerably nerdy. Just…overwhelmingly nerdy. But, man, is it ever really good, and really fat with the most insanely granular details of How I Work. Lo, even these 928.5 days after officially retiring from productivity pr0n, my desire to not "vend stroke material for your joyless addiction to puns about procrastination and systems for generating more taxonomically satisfying meta-work" is tempered by a (widely under-reported) practical streak. Yes: I continue to despise empty advice about rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic. But, yes: I do also still very much enjoy talking about how all the tips and tricks can or can't work in the context of work you care about. That matters. It really does. So. Here goes. A one hundred and forty six minute-long, Joyce-ian amble through the Big Stuff and the Little Stuff. David and Katie were very patient. How I name text files. Why I break iOS apps. Why I love the letter "x." Why I won't row out to islands any more. How a 115,000 word book manuscript is "like a house full of confederate money." How "The Cloud" broke in New Zealand. How I use MultiMarkdown, Scrivener, TextExpander, OmniFocus, TextMate, Notational Velocity, Dropbox, and an explosive combination of Elements, Notesy, Nebulous, Simplenote, CF Outliner, iThoughts, Instacast, Good Reader, and wow wow wow. How I try not to fiddle—how I sometimes succeed and often don't. But, how I try. Anyhow. There you go. A perfectly nerdy bookend to last year's first Magnum Opus MPU interview on these same topics, Mac Power Users Episode 46 is just insanely nerdy. And, what have you. I hope you like it. I hope it's useful. I hope you don't use it to replace real work. And, as ever, I really hope Batgirl starts having more sexy pillow fights. Enjoy. And, God save you. MPU 046: Workflows with Merlin Mann II « Mac Power Users Download MP3 Huffduff It ”Nerdiest Interview Ever: MPU Workflows Part II” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 27, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Elsewhere Interviews Productivity Pr0n Workflows
english Fear By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:54:51 +0000 So, yeah. I'll be speaking at Webstock pretty soon. Which is insanely intimidating. I think I may have my topic. ”Fear” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 05, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Fear Merlin Speaks
english Video: John Roderick on String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:51:26 +0000 [jump to video] Long story (not very) short? One night in 2003--after killing it in front of audience of about 30 lucky people in Oakland--The Long Winters needed a place to crash, and my wife and I were happy to oblige. So, they drove their Big Stinky Blue Van over the bridge, slept on our floor, and by breakfast the next morning, it'd become clear to me that I'd provided lodging to a man who was not only very likely a member of my karass--he was also one of the smartest bullshit artists I'd ever met. Almost eight years later, although I don't see him nearly as much as I'd like, I still count the guy as one of my best pals ever. That's John Roderick. And, I think you need to know about him. John doesn't read this site--he's more of a Twitter person--so I don't risk feeding his astounding excess of dignity by saying he's one of the most gifted writers and bon vivants of our generation. He's just the best. In large part because he's congenitally incapable of suffering bullshit. This was never more apparent than the Saturday morning in 2007 when we sat in my back yard and talked about a lot of stuff. Playing guitar, advertising on the web, the evil work of promoters, and why everyone is always trying to shortchange everyone on copper pipe. That talking became a four-part interview I ran on the late and occasionally lamented The Merlin Show, and, to this day, it's one of my favorite things I've been lucky enough to post to the web. So, y'know how I'm definitely "not for everyone?" Well, John is really "not for everyone." He's opinionated and arrogant and undiplomatic and unironically loves Judas Priest--meaning everyone will find at least one thing not to like about him. Despite being hairy and enjoying laying on your bed, John is not exactly a teddy bear. But, John's also right a lot. And, he never sands off the edges of his personality or opinions to make you theoretically "like" him. Which, it will come as no surprise to you, is a big reason I love the guy more than a free prime rib dinner. So, why the jizzfest about that awful jerk, John Roderick? Because, as I noted the other day on the Twitter, in our first episode of Back to Work I misattributed a line that should have been credited to John. Which in itself is unimportant, except inasmuch as finding that link to correct the error got me watching our 50-some minutes of chatting again. I also received some at-responses and emails that reminded me how much people enjoyed our chat. But, really it made me realize how much that rambling morning in my back yard still resonates so much with stuff I care a lot about. Independence. Agency. Directness. And, never apologizing for wanting to get paid. Also, guitars and talkative hippies. So, anyway. John. I edited all four parts of the video into one big (streamable/downloadable) movie that should make it way easier to watch at a sitting. Should that interest you. Which it may not. Which, as ever, is totally fine, and kind of the point. But. If you like Dan and my new show (and, seriously—God bless you magnificent bastards who helped briefly make B2W the most popular podcast in the world [gulp]), I think you'll really like this interview a lot too. I hope so, anyway. Thus, submitted for your disapproval, permit me to present my four-year-old visit with the acerbic, opinionated, and reportedly unlikeable bullshit artist whom I respect and adore more than just about anybody. Meet Hotrod. Vimeo Page Direct Download Link (589 mb, requires login) ”Video: John Roderick on String Art Owls, Copper Pipe, and Bono's Boss” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 21, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Brady's Bits John Roderick The Merlin Show video
english "Back to Work" - Merlin's New Thing with Dan Benjamin at 5by5.tv By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:15:15 +0000 [update 2011-01-18 @ 16:07:40: We're up!] 5by5 Live Before Christ was a corporal, Dan Benjamin was already a bit of a hero to me. Since the early aughts–long before his insanely great 5by5.tv podcast network–Dan’s Hivelogic Enkoder was saving us millions of spam messages. His thoughtful tutorials on OS X (including unmissable advice on doing sane installs of MySQL and Rails, among others) are among the best on the web. His CSS has been widely stolen and reused without acknowledgment by thieves as diverse as other people and me. And his polymath posts on everything from Buddhism to The Paleo Diet to how to record a “Double-ender” have shown a charming combination of curiosity and empathy that, amongst numerous other reasons, clearly makes Dan a better human than me. A propos of nothing, Dan’s also the guy who conducted one of (mp3) the three best interviews with me in which it’s been my good fortune to participate.1 Today, I’m honored to say that Dan and I are starting a thing together. If it suits you, drop by 5by5.tv/live in about 35 minutes–at Noon Eastern/9am Pacific–to find out what we’re up to. I think it might be good. I’ll just say I’m as excited about this as I’ve been about any new project I’ve started in the past year or so. Anyway. You can judge for yourself. Whether you can tolerate me or otherwise, definitely do not miss the work Dan’s doing at 5by5. Because it really is outstanding and very polished stuff. As for our thing? My own goal, to paraphrase a bit from that interview with Dan, is to help you get excited, get better–and then?–Back to Work. More soon. Thanks. Favorite interviews. Just for the sake of completion, my all-time favorite interview was conducted by Colin Marshall for The Marketplace of Ideas (mp3); Dan’s “The Pipeline” eppy with me was a close second; and David and Katie’s recent nerderrific interview on my Mac workflow (mp3) on Mac Power Users has turned out to be a lot of peoples’ favorite thing I’ve done in years (love LOVE David’s stuff). ↩ And...we're up Back to Work | Ep.#1: Alligator in the Bathroom Download MP3 of "'Back to Work,' Ep. 1" In the inaugural episode of Back to Work, Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss why they’re doing this show, getting back to work instead of buying berets, the lizard brain, and compare the Shadow of the Mouse to San Francisco, and eventually get to some practical tips for removing friction. It's a start. Sexy Audio RSS Feed Sexy Subscription via iTunes Episode Links Welcome to BrettTerpstra.com, home of Brett Terpstra and his nerdery carlhuda/janus – GitHub practically efficient — technology, workflows, life MacSparky – Blog The Brooks Review And now it’s all this Dan Rodney’s List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes 43f Podcast: John Gruber & Merlin Mann’s Blogging Panel at SxSW | 43 Folders waffle software · ThisService One Thing Well html2text: THE ASCIINATOR (aka html2txt) The Conversation #27: Missionless Statements – 5by5 ”"Back to Work" - Merlin's New Thing with Dan Benjamin at 5by5.tv” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 18, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article hacer pimping Podcasts
english No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:10:32 +0000 Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. […] Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. None of us should ever have to face death to accept the inflexible and, too-often, novel sense of scarcity that it introduces. In fact, it'd be great if we could each skip needing outside permission to be awesome by not waiting until the universe starts tapping its watch. A simple start would involve each of us learning to care just a little more about a handful of things that simply aren't allowed to leave with us--whether today, tomorrow, or whenever. Because, I really believe a lot of nice things would start to happen if we also stopped waiting to care. A whole lot of nice things. If that sounds like fancy incense for hippies and children, perhaps in a way that seems frankly un-doable for someone as practical and important and immortal as yourself, then go face death. Go get cancer. Or, go get crushed by a horse Or, go get hit by a van. Or, go get separated from everything you ever loved forever. Then, wonder no longer whether caring about the modest bit of time you have here is only for fancy people and the terminally-ill. Because, the sooner you care, the better you'll make. The better you'll do. And the better you'll live. Please don't wait. The universe won't. ”No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 17, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article caring hacer Steve Jobs
english Resolved: Stop Blaming the Pancake By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:22:44 +0000 In a classic bit from an early Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine are at the airport, trying to pick up the rental car that Jerry had reserved. As usual, things go poorly and get awkward fast: Seinfeld - "Reservations" JERRY: I don't understand...I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation? AGENT: Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars. JERRY: But, the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation. AGENT: I know why we have reservations. JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation--you just don't know how to hold the reservation. And, that's really the most important part of the reservation...the holding. Anybody can just TAKE them. [grabs chaotically at air] And, how weirdly similar is that to our conflicted relationship with New Year's resolutions? In Seinfeldspeak? See, you know how to make the resolution, you just don't know how to keep the resolution. And, that's really the most important part of the resolution...the keeping. Anybody can just MAKE them! Oversimplified? Probably. But, ask yourself. Why this? And, why now? Or, why again? Welcome to Resolvers Anonymous: I'm 'Merlin M.' A few years ago, I shared a handful of stories on the failures that have led to my own cynicism about the usefulness of life-inverting resolutions. Because, yeah, I've historically been a big resolver. Here's what I said when I first suggested favoring "Fresh Starts and Modest Changes" over reinventions: Download MP3 of "Fresh Starts & Modest Changes" Five years on, I think I probably feel even more strongly about this. Partly because I've watched and read and heard the cyclical lamentations of folks who decided to use superficial totems (like new calendars) as an ad hoc coach and prime mover. And, partly because, in my capacity as a makebelieve productivity expert, I continue to see how self-defeating it is to pretend that past can ever be less than prologue--that we can each ignore yesterday's weather if we really wish hard enough for a sun-drenched day at the beach. It simply doesn't work. Companies that think they'll be Google for buying bagels. Writers who think they'll get published if they order a new pen. Obese people who think they'll become marathon runners if they pick up some new running shoes. And, regular old people with good hearts who continue to confuse new lives with new clothes. Has this worked before? Can you look back on a proud legacy of successful New Year's resolutions that would suggest you're making serious progress by repeatedly making a list about fundamental life changes while slamming prosecco and wearing a pointy paper hat? My bet is that most people who are seeing the kind of change and growth and improvement that sticks tend to avoid these sorts of dramatic, geometric attempts to leap blindly toward the mountain of perfection. I'll go further and say that the repeated compulsion to resolve and resolve and resolve is actually a terrific marker that you're not really ready to change anything in a grownup and sustainable way. You probably just want another magic wand. Otherwise you'd already be doing the things you've resolved to do. You'd already be living those changes. And, you'd already be seeing actual improvements rather than repeatedly making lists of all the ways you hope your annual hajj to the self-improvement genie will fix you. Then, of course, we make things way worse by blaming everything on our pancakes. Regarding "The First Pancake Problem" Anyone who's ever made America's favorite round and flat breakfast food is familiar with the phenomenon of The First Pancake. No matter how good a cook you are, and no matter how hard you try, the first pancake of the batch always sucks. It comes out burnt or undercooked or weirdly shaped or just oddly inedible and aesthetically displeasing. Just ask your kids. At least compared to your normal pancake--and definitely compared to the far superior second and subsequent pancakes that make the cut and get promoted to the pile destined for the breakfast table--the first one's always a disaster. I'll leave it to the physicists and foodies in the gallery to develop a unified field theory on exactly why our pancake problem crops up with such unerring dependability. But I will share an orthogonal theory: you will be a way happier and more successful cook if you just accept that your first pancake is and always will be a universally flukey mess. But, that shouldn't mean you never make another pancake. So Loud. Then, So Quiet. I offer all of this because today is January 7th, gang. And, for the past week, all over the web, legions of well-intentioned and seemingly strong-willed humans have been declaring their resolved intention to make this a year of more and better metaphorical pancakes. And, like clockwork--usually around today or maybe tomorrow--a huge cohort of those cooks will begin to abandon their resolve and go back to thinking all their pancakes have to suck. Just because that first one failed. And, as is the case every year, online and off, there won't be nearly as many breathless updates to properly bookend how poorly our annual ritual of aspirational change has fared. Which is instructive. Not because new year's resolutions are a universally bad idea. And, not because Change is Bad. And, not because we should be embarrassed about occasionally falling short of our own (frequently unreasonable) aspirations. I suspect we tout the resolution, but whisper the failure because we blame the cook. Or, worse, fingers point toward the pancake. Instead of just admitting that the resolution itself was simply unrealistic or fundamentally foreign. And, that's a shame. Remember, there's no "I" in "unreasonable" Granted, I'm merely re-repeating a point I've struggled to make (to both others and myself) for years now. But, it will bear repeating every January in perpetuity. Resist the urge to pin the fate of things you really care about to anything that's not truly yourself. The "yourself" who has a real life with complicated demands. The "yourself" who's going to face a hard slog trying to fold a new life out of a fresh calendar. Calendars are just paper and staples. They can't make you care. And they can't help you spin around like Diana Prince, and instantly turn into Wonder Woman. Especially, if you're not already a hot and magical Amazon princess. First, be reasonable. Don't set yourself up for failure by demanding things that you've never come close to achieving before. I realize this is antithetical to most self-improvement bullshit, but that's exactly the point. If you were already a viking, you wouldn't need to build a big boat. Start with where you are right now. Not with where you wish you'd been. Also, accept that the first pancake will always suck. Hell, if you've never picked up a spatula before, be cool with the fact that your first hundred pancakes might suck. This is, as I've said, huge. Failure is the sound of beginning to suck a little less. And, finally, also be clear about the sanity of the motivations underlying your expectations--step back to observe what's truly broken, derive a picture of incremental success that seems do-able, and really resolve to do whatever you can realistically do to actually get better. Rather than "something something I suddenly become all different." At this point, you have logistical options for both execution and troubleshooting: Make a modest plan that you can envision actually doing without upending your real life; Build more sturdy scaffolding for sticking with whatever plan you've chosen; Make a practice of learning to not mind the duds--including those messed-up first pancakes; Or--seriously?--just accept that you never really cared that much about making breakfast in the first place. Care is not optional. Otherwise, really, you'd never need to resolve to do anything. You'd already just be cooking a lot. Instead of being all mad and depressed about not cooking. But, please. All I really ask of you. Don't blame the pancake. It's not really the pancake's fault. Like me, the pancake just wants you to be happy. This and every other new year. ”Resolved: Stop Blaming the Pancake” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 07, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article change is hard resolutions self-improvement
english A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:31:36 +0000 Being a Parable for the Edification of Independents Seeking Independence THE PARABLE THE OSTENSIBLE CUSTOMER enters a deli and saunters up to the counter. The deli is tended by its rakishly handsome owner, THE SANDWICH GUY. "Hi," says The Sandwich Guy. "What looks good to you today?" "Slow down," says The Ostensible Customer, as THE LUNCH RUSH starts trickling in. "Lots of delis want my business, so, first I need to really understand what you can do for me." "Well," says The Sandwich Guy, "I guess I can try to do what I do for everybody here and make you a customized version of any of the 15 awesome sandwiches you see on my menu. What're you hungry for?" "Easy, easy, Ricky Roma! Before I make any decisions here I'm going to need to know a lot more about my options. Why are you so obsessed with 'what I want?'" "Okay, sorry," says The Sandwich Guy, uneasily eyeing the growing queue of The Lunch Rush now piling up behind The Ostensible Customer. "What else can I do to help here?" "That's better," says The Ostensible Customer. "Let's start by sitting down for a couple hours and going over all the ingredients you have back there." The Sandwich Guy laughs congenially and hands The Ostensible Customer a menu. "Friend, I can make you whatever you want, but, if it helps, the 15 sandwiches listed here show all the ingredients--right there between the name and the price..." "Whoa, whoa, whoa! The price?!? Already you're reaching for my wallet? Jeez, I barely just arrived." The Lunch Rush is getting restless and grumbling audibly. "Well. You know. I do sell sandwiches for a living," says The Sandwich Guy. "Did you have a certain budget in mind for your lunch?" "Oh, God, no. I'm nowhere near that point yet. I still need to learn a lot more about how you work, and so, obviously, I have no idea what I want to pay. Obviously." "Okay," says The Sandwich Guy, "but...I can't do much for you here without knowing either what you want to eat or how much money you want to spend. You get that, right?" The Ostensible Customer is miffed. "Listen, here. What I 'get,' so-called Sandwich Guy, is that you're not going to rush me into some tricky lifetime sandwich commitment until I understand precisely who I'm working with. And, so far, I do not like what I see. Still. I intend to find out more. So, meet me in Canada tomorrow to talk about this for an hour." The Lunch Rush begins waving their wallets as they lob their completed order forms at The Sandwich Guy's face. "Sorry," says The Sandwich Guy. "I can't do that. How about I just make you a Reuben. It's really good, it's our most popular sandwich, and it only costs eight bucks." "WHAT! EIGHT DOLLARS! 'Dollars' with a 'd?' That's way too much!" "I thought you didn't have a budget," says The Sandwich Guy. "Well, I don't. And, besides, I don't really 'need' a sandwich at all. Now, kindly fly to Canada." "That's not going to happen, sir." "Also," says The Ostensible Customer, "if I do decide to get a sandwich from you--and it's looking increasingly less likely that I will--I'll absolutely expect your deeply discounted price to reflect the fact that I'm not particularly hungry right now." The Lunch Rush begins lighting torches and chanting a guttural chant, not unlike the haunting overtone singing of Tuvan herdsmen. "Look," sighs The Sandwich Guy, "it sounds like you need a little more time. Here's a free Coke and a complimentary bowl of pickles. Please have a seat, take all the time you need, then just come on up whenever you're ready to order, okay?" "‘READY?!?’ TO...‘ORDER?!?’ Are you out of your mind?" "Mmmm...apparently." Presently, The Ostensible Customer turns beet-red. "This is an outrage! I can't even imagine how you stay in business when you treat your customers like this." The Lunch Rush grows silent as The Sandwich Guy slowly leans over the counter and smiles--his nose one slice of corned beef from The Ostensible Customer's nose. "Sir. First off: you aren't my customer yet. Right now, you're just some dude holding a bowl of free pickles." "Buh?" fumbled The Ostensible Customer. "And, second, the way I 'stay in business' is by making great sandwiches and having as few conversations like the one we're having as possible," The Sandwich Guy coos. "Because, the truth is, my real customers are actually all those nice people standing behind you. They're the people who buy my sandwiches with real money over and over again. I really like them, and so I give them almost all of my attention." The Sandwich Guy waves at The Lunch Rush. The Lunch Rush waves back. The Ostensible Customer looks stunned. "Sir," says The Sandwich Guy "enjoy your Coke and your pickles with my compliments. But, please step aside. Because right now, there's a whole bunch of hungry people trying to buy sandwiches that won't require me flying to Canada. Next, please!" The Lunch Rush roars approval. The Ostensible Customer is still stunned. Which is unfortunate. Because, several men from the back of the line spontaneously rush forward to drag The Ostensible Customer, screaming and grasping, onto the busy sidewalk outside, where they proceed to devour his flesh like those street urchins who eat Elizabeth Taylor's cousin in Suddenly, Last Summer. Meanwhile, The Sandwich Guy goes back to making sandwiches. And, The Lunch Rush goes back to eating them. THE MORAL(S)? The Sandwich Guy can't do much for you until you're hungry enough to really want a sandwich. Once you're hungry enough, you still have to pay money for the sandwich. This won't not come up. Few people become "a good customer" without understanding both 1 and 2. Few companies become "a smart business" without understanding 1, 2, and 3. Basing his business on an understanding of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 doesn't make The Sandwich Guy a dick; it makes him a smart business. If you vacation with Elizabeth Taylor? Seriously. Avoid provoking the cannibalistic rent boys. THE HOPE Me? I just very much hope it takes you far less than 15 years to see and accept these sorts of things. Both as a customer and as a business. Guys, avoid working for anyone who's not hungry enough to compensate you for your sandwich. It literally doesn't pay. THE RESERVE READING Bloodhounding Budgets - Cognition: The blog of web design & development firm Happy Cog Tell them nicely that your price is a sucky $200K. The key here is to do so candidly, like you’re sitting on their side of the table and have to approve the budget with them. Admit that you’re way over the mark, and essentially apologize for it. I’ve said, “If you want to tell us to get lost, we understand”. Basement.org: Negotiation And Speculation: The Risk Of Selling Low All those variables can change except your worth. That can’t change. It’s an undeniable fact beyond subjectivity and beyond the reality-bending rhetoric of your client-to-be. You are worth what you are worth and unless you’re feeling charitable something else has to give. Project Budgets and Secrets (thedesigncubicle.com) Within the first few minutes of contact — in my effort to be as open and detailed on how I work as possible — the client counteracted by lying about not having a budget to clearly having a budget. Mule Design Studio’s Blog: Presenting Design Like You Get Paid For It Unspoken expectations unmet lead to seething unspoken frustration which ultimately bursts forth in an ugly mess when you’ve run out of budget. Don’t Be Afraid of the S-Word :: Tips :: The 99 Percent Remember that client who said that we were “pretty expensive” for them? A qualifying question in the first phone call could have saved us many hours of working on this deal. If you decide that the deal is unqualified, you just save it under another bucket: the unqualified deals bucket. ”A Sandwich, A Wallet, and Elizabeth Taylor's Cousin” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 04, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Business Freelancers Independence Money
english Video: "Broken Meetings (and how you'll fix them)" By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:40:08 +0000 A couple weeks ago, my pals at Twitter were kind enough to invite me in to visit with their (rapidly growing) team. The topic was meetings, so I used it as an opportunity to publicly premiere a talk I've been presenting to private clients over the past few months. I hope you'll enjoy, Broken Meetings (and how you'll fix them). Slides: Supplementary links and commentary forthcoming, but I wanted to go ahead and post the talk as quickly as the video was available. Special thanks to Michelle, Jeremy, and the crackerjack Twitter crew for a swell afternoon. I really like this talk and sincerely hope you will find it useful in helping to un-break your own meetings. ”Video: "Broken Meetings (and how you'll fix them)"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 06, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Meetings Merlin Speaking Twitter Videos world of work
english “Distraction,” Simplicity, and Running Toward Shitstorms By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:49:56 +0000 It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. —Albert Einstein, “On the Method of Theoretical Physics” (1934) Context: Last week, I pinched off one of my typically woolly emails in response to an acquaintance whom I admire. He’s a swell guy who makes things I love, and he'd written, in part, to express concern that my recent Swift impersonation had been directed explicitly at something he'd made. Which, of course, it hadn’t—but which, as I'll try to discuss here, strikes me as irrelevant. To paraphrase Bogie, I played it for him, so now I suppose I might as well play it for you. (n.b.: Excerpted, redacted, munged, and heavily expanded from my original email) There are at least a couple things that mean a lot to me that I'm still just not very good at. Make nuanced points in whatever way they need to be made; even if that ends up seeming “un-nuanced” Never explain yourself. I want to break both these self-imposed rules privately with you here. [Editor’s Note: Um.] Because, I hope to nuance the shit out of some fairly un-nuanced points. And, to do that, I'll also (reluctantly) need to explain myself. But, here goes. First [regarding my goofing on “distraction-free writing environments”] I think there are some GIANT distinctions at play here that a lot of folks may not find nearly as obvious as I do: Tool Mastery vs. Productivity Pr0n – Finding and learning the right tools for your work vs solely dicking around with the options for those tools is just so important, but also so different. And, admittedly, it’s almost impossible to contrast those differences in terms of hard & fast rules that could be true for all people in all situations. But, that doesn’t make the difference any less qualitatively special or real. Similarly… Self-Help Vs. “Self”–“Help” – Solving the problem that caused the problem that caused the problem that caused the symptom we eventually noticed. Huge. Arguably, peerless. Viz.: How many of us ignore the actual cause of our problem in favor of just reading dozens of blog posts about how to “turbocharge” its most superficial symptoms? Sick. Focus & Play – Yes, focusing on important work is, as Ford used to say, Job 1. But, that focus benefits when we maintain the durable and unapologetic sense of play that affords true creativity and fosters an emergence of context and connection that’s usually killed by stress. BUT. Again, what conceivable “rule” could ever serve to immutably declare that “THIS goofing-off is critical for hippocampal plasticity” vs. “THAT goofing-off is just dumb, distracting bullshit?” Impossible. Because drawing those kinds of distinctions is one of our most important day-to-day responsibilities. Decisions are hard, and there’s no app or alarm gadget that can change that. Although, they certainly can help mask the depth of the underlying problem that made them seem so—what’s the parlance?—“indispensable”. Think: Elmo Band-Aids for that unsightly pancreatic tumor. Reducing Distraction through Care (Rather than braces, armatures, and puppet strings). Removing interruptions and external distractions that harm your work or life? Great. Counting on your distraction-removal tool to supplement your non-existent motivation to do work that will never get done anyway? Pathetic. Frankly, this is a big reason I'm so galled when anyone touts their tool/product/service as being the poor, misunderstood artist’s new miracle medicine—rather than just admitting they've made a slightly different spoon. Because, let’s be honest: although most of us have plenty of perfectly serviceable spoons, everybody knows collecting cutlery is way more fun than using it to swallow yucky medicine. Using a System Vs. Becoming a System. Having a system or process for getting work done vs. making the iteration of that system or process a replacement for the work. This is just…wow…big. But, maybe most importantly to me… Embracing the Impossibles. Getting past these or any other intellectual koans by simply accepting life’s innumerable and unresolvable paradoxes, hypocrisies, and impossibilities as God-given gifts of creative constraint. Rather than, say, a mimeographed page of long division problems that must be solved for a whole number, n. I just can’t ever get away from this one. For me, it’s what everything inevitably comes back to. The very definition of our jobs is to solve the right problem at the right level for the right reason—based on a combination of the best info we have for now and a clear-eyed dedication to never pushing an unnecessary rock up an avoidable hill. YET, we keep force-feeding the monster that tells us to fiddle and fart and blame the Big Cruel World whenever we face work that might threaten our fragile personal mythology. “Sigh. I wish I could finally start writing My Novel….Ooooooh, if only I had a slightly nicer pen…and Zeus loved me more….” All that stuff? That there’s a complex set of ideas to talk about for many complex reasons—not least of which being how many people either despise or (try to) deny the unavoidable impact of ol' number six. But, here’s the thing: as much as saying so pisses anybody off, I think the topics we're NOT talking about whenever we disappear into Talmudic scholarship about “full-screen mode” or “minimalist desks” or whatever constitutes a “zen habit”—those shunned topics are precisely the things that I believe are most mind-blowingly critical to our real-world happiness as humans. In fact, I believe that to such a degree that helping provide a voice for those unpopular topics that can be heard over the din is now (what passes for) my career. I really believe these deeper ideas are worth socializing on any number of levels and in many media. Even when it’s inconvenient and slightly disrespectful of someone’s business model. So, that’s what I try to do. I talk about these things. Seldom by careful design. Often poorly. But, always because they each mean an awful lot to me. […] But, no matter how I end up saying whatever the hell I say, I believe in saying it not simply to be liked or followed or revered as a “nice guy” who pushes out shit-tons of whatever to “help people.” Because, believe me, friend, a great many of those apparently “nice guys” swarming around the web “helping people” these days are ass-fucking their audience for nickels and calling it a complimentary colonoscopy. And, while I absolutely think that in itself is empirically wrong, I also think it’s just as important to say that it’s wrong. Sometimes, True Things need to be said. Which in this instance amounts to saying, a) selling people a prettier way to kinda almost but not really write is not, in the canonical sense, “nice”—but, far worse, b) leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided impression that their “distraction” originates from anyplace but their own busted-ass brain is really not “helping.” Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful. “Helping” a junkie become more efficient at keeping his syringe loaded is hardly “nice.” It’s the opposite of nice. And, it’s the opposite of helpful. These are my True Things. And, to me, saying your True Things also means not watering down the message you care about in order to render it incapable of even conceivably hurting someone’s feelings—or of even conceivably losing you even one teeny-tiny slice of that precious “market share.” Well, that’s the price, and I'm fine paying it—best money I've ever spent. But, it also means trusting your audience by letting each of them decide to add water only as they choose to—by never corrupting the actual concentrate in a way that might make it less useful to the smartest or most eager 5% of people who'd like to try using it undiluted. Because, at that point, you're not only abandoning the coolest people you have the honor of serving—you risk becoming a charlatan. And, that’s precisely what you become when you start to iteratively inbreed the kind of fucktard audience for whom daily buffets of weak swill and beige assurance are life’s most gratifying reward. Sure. Those poor bastards may never end up using any of that watery information to do anything more ambitious than turbocharging their most regrettable symptoms. But, who’s the last person in the universe who’s going to grab them by the ears and tell them to get back to work? Exactly—that same “nice guy” whose livelihood now depends on keeping infantalized strangers addicted to his “help.” Holy shit—no way could I ever live with that. It’s so wrong, it’s not even right. ESC, ESC, ESC! […] Okay. So anyhow, there’s a really long-winded, overly generous, and extremely pompous way of trying to say I don’t know how to do what I do except how I do it. But, I do genuinely feel awful when innocent people feel they have been publicly humiliated or berated simply because I'm some dick who hates people. Which has to be my favorite irony of all. When I was a kid, I thought my Mom was “mean” not to let me play in traffic on busy Galbraith Road. Today, I'm not simply grateful that she had the strength and resolve to be so “mean”—I actually can’t imagine how sad it would be to not have people in your life who care enough about your long-term welfare to tell you to stop fucking around in traffic. To where you eventually might start even seeking 12x-daily safety hacks from some of the very same drivers whose recklessness may eventually kill you. Wow. […] Admitting when life is complicated or things aren’t shiny and happy all the time strikes me as a wonderfully sane and adult way to conduct one’s life. That there are so many folks offended by even the existence of this anarchic idea is not a problem I can solve. No more than I can wish useless email away or pray hard enough that it never rains on anyone’s leaky roof. All out of scope. And, then, I jizzed on at length about how much I admire the recipient’s work. Which I do. Good work doesn’t need a cookie I may admire your work, too. Especially if you care a lot about that work and don’t overly sweat peoples' opinions of it. Most definitely including my own. For these purposes, it doesn’t really matter whether we're friends and, honestly, it doesn’t even matter whether I love, use, or agree with everything you do, say, or make in a given day. It doesn’t matter because good work doesn’t need me to love it. Like tornadoes and cold sores, good work happens with total disregard to whether I'm “into it.” But, conversely, let’s stipulate that the points-of-view undergirding our opinions—again, including mine—will and should survive either agreement or lack of agreement with equivalently effortless ease. Because, like really good work, a really good point-of-view doesn’t require another person’s benediction. Guess we'll have to disagree to agree Now, to be only vaguely clearer here, I'm not posting this circuitous ego dump in the service of altering your opinion of either me, my friend, his work, or practically anything else for that matter. But, I would love it if we could all be more okay with the fact that real life means that we do each have a different, sometimes incongruous, and often totally incompatible point-of-view. Yes. Even you have a point-of-view that someone despises. Ready to change it now? Jesus, I sure hope not. Then, to be only slightly more clear, I'm also not advocating for that fakey brand of web-based kum ba ya that gets trotted out alternately as “tolerance” or “inclusion” or some styrofoam miniature of “civility.” I'm absolutely not against all of those things when authentically practiced, but I'm also really skeptical of the well-branded peacemakers who are forever appointing themselves the Internet’s “Now-Now-Let’s-All-Pretend-We're-Just-Saying-the-Same-Useless-Thing-Here” den mothers. Because we're not all saying the same things. Not at all. And, it infantalizes some important conversations when we tacitly demand that any instance of honest disagreement be immediately horseshat into a photo opp where some thought leader gets to hoist everyone’s hands in the air like he’s fucking Jimmy Carter. Nope. Not saying that. Who will you really rely on? What I AM saying is that alllllll this seemingly unrelated stuff is absolutely related—that the pattern of not relying on other people for anything you really care about is arguably the great-grandaddy of every useful productivity, creativity, or self-help pattern. Where’s this matter? Pretty much everywhere you have any sort of stake: Don’t rely on other people to remove your totally fake “distractions.” Don’t rely on other people to pat your beret, re-tie your cravat, and make you a nice cocoa whenever that mean man on the internet points out that your “distractions” are totally fake. (Which they are) Don’t rely on other people to tell you when or whether you have enough information. Don’t rely on other people to define your job. Don’t rely on other people to “design your lifestyle.” Don’t rely on other people to decide when your opinions are acceptable. Don’t rely on other people to tell you when you're allowed to be awesome. Don’t rely on other people to make you care. Don’t even rely on other people to tell you what you should or shouldn’t rely on. Yes. I went there. Because that’s the point. These hypocrisies, paradoxes, and ambiguities that people get so wound up about—that many of us are constantly (impotently) trying to resolve—cannot be resolved. Because, yeah: all of these harrowingly unsolvable problems are immune to new notebooks and less-distracting applications and shinier systems and “nicer” self-“help” and pretty much anything else that is not, specifically, you walking straight into the angriest and least convenient shitstorm you can find and getting your ass kicked until the storm gets bored with kicking it. Then, you find an even angrier storm. Then, another. And, so on. “Get the fuck off of my obstacle, Private Pyle!” Doing that annoying hard stuff is how you grow, get better, and learn what real help looks like. Even if that’s not the answer you wanted to hear. You get better by getting your ass out of your RSS reader and fucking making things until they suck less. Not by buying apps. You don’t whine about distractions, or derail yourself over needing a nicer pencil sharpener, or aggravate your chronic creative diabetes by starting another desperate waddle to the self-help buffet. No. You work. And, for what it’s worth, just like you can’t get to the moon by eating cheese, you'll also never leave boot camp with your original scrote intact by telling your drill sergeant to try using more honey than vinegar. No. That sergeant’s job is to make you miserable. It’s his job to break down your callow conceits about what’s supposed to be easy and fair. It’s his job to emotionally pummel you into giving up and becoming a Marine. You? You're not there to give the sergeant notes; you're there to sleep two hours a night, then not mind getting beaten for 20 hours until a decent Marine starts to fall out. Who knows? He may even surprise you by introducing a surprisingly effective “distraction-free learning environment.” “Tee ell dee ahr, Professor Brainiac.” Like most humans, I like things I can understand. Like most readers, I love specificity. Like most thinkers, I love clarity. Like most students, I love relevance and practicality. And, like most busy people, believe it or not, I actually do really like it when someone gets straight to the point. But, here’s the problem. If my 2-year-old daughter asks me about time travel, and I blithely announce, “E=mc2”, I will have said something that is entirely specific, clear, relevant, practical, and/or straight-to-the-point. For somebody. But, not so much for my daughter. And, to be honest, not even to any useful degree for me. She'd probably either laugh derisively at me (which she’s great at), or she'd pause and ask, “Whuh dat?” (which she’s even better at). Thing is, her understanding that jumble of characters less than me—and my understanding it WAY less than Professor Al—has zero impact on the profundity, truth, beauty, or impact of the man’s theory. Sure. You could quite accurately fault me for being a smartass and a poseur, and you could even berate my toddler for her unaccountably shallow understanding of Modern Physics. But, in any case, you can’t really blame either Albert or his theory. You're turbocharging nothing Specifically, Albert can’t begin to tell us what he really knows if we don’t understand math. So, let’s say this theory you've been hearing about really interests you. And, let’s also pretend, just for the sake of the analogy, that you haven’t completed Calculus III (212) or Quantum Mechanics (403) or even something as elementary as, say, Advanced Astrophysics II (537). I know you have. Obviously. But, let’s pretend. Where do you start? Well, you could read some tips about learning math. You could find a list of 500 indispensable resources for indispensable math resources. You could buy a new “distraction-free math environment.” Heck, there’s actually nothing to stop you from just declaring yourself a “math expert.” Congratulations, Professor. Thing is: you still don’t know math. Which means you still can’t really understand the theory—no more than a pathetic Liberal Arts refugee like me or a dullard Physics ignoramus like my kid can really grok relativity. Difference is, you will have blown a lot of time hoping that actual expertise follows non-existent effort—while my daughter and I get to remain total novices without charge. Only, we don’t get all mad at the theory as a result; a staggering number of fake math experts do. I mean, be honest—after all that recreational non-work and make-believe dedication almost trying to kinda learn math sorta—you might actually get frustrated at how brazenly Al defies your fondness for shortcuts by continuing to rely on so many terms and proofs and blah-blah-blah that you still just don’t understand. So annoying. You may simply decide that Albert Einstein’s a huge dick for never saying things that can be completely understood solely by scanning a headline. EPIC EINSTEIN FAIL, amirite? You never really know what you didn’t know until you know it But, Al just told the truth. Problem is, Al’s truth not only requires fancy things in order to be truly understood—the more of those fancy things you take away from his truth, the less true it gets. And, by the time it’s been diluted to the point where you're comfortable that you understand it? You'd be understanding the wrong thing. Even I can understand that. But, not one bit of any of this is Al’s fault. Al doesn’t get to control who uses, abuses, gets, or doesn’t get what he said or why it matters. Especially since he’s been dead for over fifty years. All I know is, regardless of who has ears to hear it on a given day, it would be to Al’s credit never to mangle something important in order to get it into terms everybody’s ready to handle without actually trying. And God bless him for never agreeing that your “distractions” to learning math are his problem. So, yeah, if you only need to hand in a crappy 5-page paper, you could certainly Cliff’s Notes your way through Borges, Eliot, or Joyce in an afternoon, and feel like you haven’t missed a thing. Trouble is, if you did care even a little, it’s impossible to even say how much you're missing since you can’t be bothered to soldier through the source text. The text itself is the entire point. Even the wonderfully cogent and readable layman’s explanations Einstein himself provided don’t really get to the nut, the application, and the implications of his real theory. That all takes real math. That “single datum of experience” matters Sometimes, complex or difficult things stop being true when you try to make them too simple. Sometimes, you have to actually get laid to understand why people think sex is such a thing. Sometimes, you need to learn some Greek if you really want to understand The Gospel of John. And, yeah, sometimes, you're going to have to just work unbelievably hard at whatever you claim to care about before anyone can begin to help you get any better—or less “distracted”—at it. The part I really know is what doesn’t work. Reading Penthouse Forum won’t help you CLEP out of Vaginal Intercourse 101. Watching a Rankin-Bass cartoon about the Easter Bunny will teach you very little about the intricacies of transubstantiation. And, if you can’t be troubled to care so much about your work that you reflexively force distractions away, dicking around with yet another writing application will merely aggravate the problem. Ironic, huh? These quantum mechanics of personal productivity are rife with such frustrating “paradoxes.” These are True Things. Achieving expertise and doing creative work is all horribly complicated and difficult and paradoxical and frustrating and recursive and James Joyce-y—and any guide, blog, binary, guru, or “nice guy” that tries to suggest otherwise is probably giving you a complimentary colonoscopy. Do the math. Want a new syllabus? Sure: Run straight into your shitstorm, my friends. Reject the impulse to think about work, rather than finishing it. And, open your heart to the remote possibility that any mythology of personal failure that involves messiahs periodically arriving to make everything “easy” for you might not really be helping your work or your mental health or your long-standing addiction to using tools solely to ship new excuses. Learn your real math, and any slide rule will suffice. Try, make, and do until you quit noticing the tools, and if you still think you need new tools, go try, make, and do more. If you can pull off this deceptively simple and millennia-old pattern, you'll eventually find that—god by dying god—any partial truth that’s supported your treasured excuses for not working will be replaced by a no-faith-required knowledge that you're really, actually, finally getting better at something you care about. Which is just sublimely un-distracting. Dedication This article is dedicated to my friend, Greg Knauss. No, he’s not the app guy–he’s just a good man who does good work, who accidentally/unintentionally helped me write this rant. He also happens to be a fella who could teach anyone a thing or two about writing with distractions. Thanks, Greg. ”“Distraction,” Simplicity, and Running Toward Shitstorms” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 05, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Creative Work Distractions Features
english My Faith in Nerds: Stronger Than Any Gelatinous Cube By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:01:57 +0000 dConstruct 2010: Merlin Mann - "Kerning, Orgasms & Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks" (NSFW) ME - Kerning, Orgasms And Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it Let's be honest. I don't go...mmmm...places very often. I sit in this chair. I go to the Safeway with my daughter. Sometimes, I take the train downtown to get a haircut. I check the mail. But, by and large, like most nerds, I'm without question, a bit of a shut-in. Which makes it more than a little ironic that my first trip off the North American continent brought me all the way to Brighton, England's wonderful dConstruct Conference. Which wonderful conference placed me inside a very royal complex, alone on a very large stage, 90 seconds after being informed I'd better be entertaining, because I'd be conducting my oration on the same spot where, a scant 36 years earlier, ABBA had become international stars by singing an up-tempo number about giving up. So, y'know. No pressure. Commanded to this location by two of my web heroes, I was told I could speak about whatever I wanted. So, wow, to quote the ladies of ABBA, how could I ever refuse? Thus, I stood on that stage for over 35 minutes, rambling to 800 talented, creative people about Dungeons & Dragons, japanese toothpicks, torrenting Photoshop, as well as what I used to find myself doing after a long evening of shooting mutants in Stargate.1 But, mostly? Yes. Mostly, I stood on a stage thousands of miles from the chair from which I barely move, and I told a lot of really smart people that they were nerds. I also told them they should get out more. I swear: it made sense at the time. Some Serious Talent My talk about the challenges and opportunities of being a giant nerd seemed well received. Honestly, I'm very happy with how it turned out. But--oh, brother--was I ever up against some heavy hitters. Serious Lou Gehrig shit. I'll leave it to other, more eloquent folks to tell you what a wonderful day this was. But I will very much suggest you learn this for yourself by listening to the audio of the fantastic talks. Because every one of them is a corker. Additionally, like I said, Tom Coates put on one of the loveliest slide decks it's ever been my pleasure to see (56MB PDF). Great speakers, great hosts, wonderful attendees (who aren't above buying a yank a pint [thanks, everybody]). And, Thanks, dConstruct I have to admit, I'm kind of over conferences as a thing, which makes it even more crazy when I go to one, and it blows me out of the water with the care and quality of the event, the speakers, and the attendees. dConstruct was absolutely one of those blown-out-of-the-water events. (photo: happy.apple) As I learned over and over again--yes, like me--these folks are nerds. But, brother are they ever talented nerds who care and care. Which I just love so much. I'll take a nerdy bunch of fontdorks and cellists over a splashy mega-conference full of VC pitches and skanks pushing free Red Bull anytime. Anytime. dConstruct was simply a top-notch operation from end-to-end, and I'm insanely grateful that I was invited to participate. Thanks, Clearleft. And, you, the reader? If you get the chance next time, go. Heck, I might even leave this chair and go there, myself. Maybe. I suppose when Dr. Who's over, I could just let these 20-sided dice decide for me. Lemme see...what's my Armor Class and Hit Points...? Listen for Yourself2 dConstruct Podcast MARTY NEUMEIER - The Designful Company The Designful Company on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it BRENDAN DAWES - Boil, Simmer, Reduce Boil, Simmer, Reduce on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it DAVID MCCANDLESS - Information Is Beautiful Information Is Beautiful on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it SAMANTHA WARREN - The Power and Beauty of Typography The Power and Beauty of Typography on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it JOHN GRUBER - The Auteur Theory Of Design The Auteur Theory Of Design on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it HANNAH DONOVAN - Jam Session: What Improvisation Can Teach Us About Design Jam Session: What Improvisation Can Teach Us About Design on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it JAMES BRIDLE - The Value Of Ruins The Value Of Ruins on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it TOM COATES - Everything The Network Touches Everything The Network Touches on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it Kerning, Orgasms And Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks ME - Kerning, Orgasms And Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks on Huffduffer Download the audio | Huffduff it Hint: Number Three. ↩ Code for these was stolen wholesale from the dConstruct site. Jeremy, et al - don't hesitate to tell me if that's a problem.Srsly. ↩ ”My Faith in Nerds: Stronger Than Any Gelatinous Cube” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 10, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article dConstruct Geeks Knowledge Workers Nerds Speaking
english Watching the Corners: On Future-Proofing Your Passion By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 18 May 2010 00:59:56 +0000 On May 16, 2010, at 10:02 AM, "Xx" wrote: You mentioned you gave a talk at Rutgers about future proofing your passion. Is this available as a podcast? I'd love to listen! This poor kid emailed me to ask a really simple question. And I went and saddled him with the world's most circuitously long-winded answer. Surprise, surprise. Hey, Xx, Thanks for the note, man. No I'm sorry its not up as audio AFAIK. FWIW, it's a talk I'm asked to do more often lately so I wouldn't be surprised if it turns up sooner or later. Since you were kind enough to ask, the talk—which comes out super different each time I do it— consists of a discursive mishmash of advice I wish I'd had the ears to hear in the year or five after graduating from college: primarily, that we never end up anywhere near where we'd expected, and that most of us would have been a lot happier a lot faster if we'd realized that we were often obsessing over the wrong things—starting with how much the world should care about our major. ("Liberal Arts," with a concentration in [ugh] "Cultural Studies," thanks.) The talk started as a way to encourage students to learn enough about what they care about that any temporary derails and side roads wouldn't scare their horses too badly. But, today, I see it as something a lot bigger that's demonstrably useful to anyone who hopes to survive, evolve, and thrive in this insane world. A handful of bits I'm (obviously) still synthesizing into something notionally cohesive: My Kingdom for Some Context! For myself, I wish I'd known the value of developing early expertise in interesting new skills around emerging technologies (rather than just iteratively pseudo-honing the 202-level skills I thought I "understood"). Alongside that, I wish I'd learned to embrace the non-douchier aspects of building awesome human relationships (as against "networking" in the service of landing some straight job that, as with most hungry young people, locked me into a carpeted prison of monkey work at the worst time possible). Also how I wish I'd paid more attention to events, contexts, relationships, and change that were happening outside my immediate world —rather than becoming, say, the undisputed master of fretting about status, salary, and whether I was "a success" who had "arrived". Hint: I was not a "success," and I had not, by any stretch, "arrived." To my mind, "success" in the real world is much more the equivalent of achieving a new personal best; it's not about whether you won the "Springtime in Springfield SunnyD®/Q105™ 5k FunRun for Entitilitus," and got a little ribbon with a gold crest on it. Truly, pretty much anyone who feels they've "arrived" anyplace is about to learn a) how much more they could be doing outside the narrowness of an often superficial ambition and b) the surprising number of things they had to give away through the opportunity costs and trade-offs that lead up to every theoretical milestone. It's a real goddamned thistle, and it's more than a little depressing. Do You Still Really Want to be a Fireman? [N.B.: I really hope you're taking bathroom breaks here, Xx] Related, I think this is about how being an adult is not only unbelievably complicated in ways that you can't begin to imagine—that it's frequently defined by impossible decisions and non-stop layers of "hypocrisy"—but that there's an invisible but entirely real risk to doggedly chasing the theoretically laudable notion of "following your dream." Especially if it's a dream you first had while sleeping on Star Wars sheets in a racecar bed. Not because it's a bad idea to want things or to have ambitions. Quite the opposite. More because, for a lot of us, the "dreams" of youth turn out to be half-finished blueprints for wax wings. And not particularly flattering ones at that. By starting adult life with an autistically explicit "goal" that's never been tested against any kind of real-world experience or reality-in-context, we can paradoxically miss a thousand more useful, lucrative, or organic opportunities that just…what?…pop up. Often these are one-time chances to do amazing and even unique things—opportunities that many of us continue to reject out of hand because it's "not what we do." It took me a full decade to learn to embrace the unfamiliar gifts that kismet loves to deliver on our busiest and most stressful days, and which gifts might (maybe/maybe not) even end up bringing the real-life, non-racecar-bed, now me a big step closer to something that's 1000 times more interesting than a hollow, ten-year-old caricature of "what I wanna be when I grow up." Finding Your "Old Butcher" Also related, it strikes me that the indisputable wealth of information and options that are provided by the web often comes with a harrowing hidden tradeoff. While we can certainly learn a lot on our own and become (what feels like) an instant expert on any topic in an afternoon, we usually do so in the absence of a mentor and outside the context of applying expertise to solve actual problems. In my opinion, a cadet should have to survive more than a few Kobayashi Maru scenarios before he gets to declare himself, "Captain." Call it a guru, a wizard, an old butcher, or what have you, the mad echo chamber of a young mind often benefits from the dampening influence of an experienced grownup who can help you understand things that raw data, wikipedia entries, and lists of tips and tricks can't and wont ever do. We benefit from a hand on the back and a gentle voice, reminding us: "Try not to obsess over implementation until you really understand the problem," or "Worry more about relationships than org charts or follower counts," or "Don't quit looking after you've found that first data point," or—my favorite— "Spend less time fantasizing about 'success' and way more time making really cool mistakes." Conversely, though, I think this means that everything we think we know, as well as all the fancy advice that gets thrown around—absolutely including the material you're reading now—is the product of what one person knows and what another person has the ears to hear. For us. For now. For who really knows what. But it is a transaction that takes place in a very specific time and within the bounds of a set of "known" "facts." So, fair warning, doing your own due diligence never hurts. What's Almost Not Impossible? [N.B.: I swear to God this ends at some point, Xx] One big pattern for "future-proofing" your passion? Keep your eyes open and your heart even "opener." And, be more than simply tolerant of the notion of change—sure, take it as read that nothing is ever fixed in place for more than a little while. But, to the extent that your sanity can bear it, always keep an eye on the corners, the edges, and especially learn to watch for those infinitesimally tiny figures starting to shuffle around near the horizon. Because a lot of the things that seem ridiculously small and inconsequential right now will eventually cast a shadow that people will be chasing for decades. It's just that we're never sure which tiny figure that will turn out to be. So, yeah. It really is true that no one but you cares about your major. But, trust me: everybody is interested in the person who repeatedly notices the things that are about to stop being impossible. Be the curious one who soaks in all that "irrelevant" stuff. And, even as you stay heads-down on the "now" projects that keep the lights on, remember that the guy who invented those lights made hundreds of "failed" lightbulbs before fundamentally upending the way we think about time, family, industry, and the role of technology in how we live and work. But, yes, first he "failed" a lot a lot at something which more than a few of his contemporaries thought was pointless in the first place. Ask: What's out there right now that's about to stop being impossible? Where will it happen first? Who will (most loudly and erroneously) declare it's total bullshit? Who will mostly get it right—but possibly too early? Who will figure out what it means to our grandkids? Who will figure out how to put it in everyone's front pocket for a quarter? Y'know who? I'll tell you who: practically anybody BUT that guy in the racecar bed who wants to talk about his major. Important: Merlin's Advice is Only Future-Proof to 10 Meters A few years back, most watch manufacturers decided to come clean and stop categorically declaring that their timepieces were "waterproof." Instead, today, the more credible vendors admit their product is merely "water-resistant"—and, even then, they'll only guarantee the underwater functionality at so many meters, and for so long, and under thus and such conditions. Truthfully, the same applies here. Nothing can actually "future-proof" anything. Anyone who claims to know the future is either a madman, a charlatan, or, often as not, both. Thing is, regardless of the passions (or goals or values or priorities or whatever) that we hope to protect or defend, we'd all do well to remember that it is still ultimately OUR passion that's at stake. That means we're the only one responsible for seeing that its functional components survive and adapt in a world in which each one of us has just north of zero control. If we embrace the fact that no one can or should ever care about the health of our passions as much as we do, the practical decisions that help ensure Our Good Thing stays alive can become as "simple" as a handful of proven patterns—work hard, stay awake, fail well, hang with smart people, shed bullshit, say "maybe," focus on action, and always always commit yourself to a bracing daily mixture of all the courage, honesty, and information you need to do something awesome—discover whatever it'll take to keep your nose on the side of the ocean where the fresh air lives. This is huge. Anything else? Yeah. Drink lots of water, play with your kid every chance you get, and quit Facebook today. No, really, do it. Thanks again for the note, Xx, and sorry for the novella. I'll ping you if the audio ever turns up. Til then, forget your major, and break a leg! yr internet pal, /m ”Watching the Corners: On Future-Proofing Your Passion” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 18, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Careers Knowledge Workers world of work
english Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk (Improvised Rutgers Edition) By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:57:09 +0000 Video: Merlin Mann - "Time & Attention Talk (improvised)" Audio (mp3): "Merlin Mann - 'Rutgers Time & Attention Talk'" This is a talk I did at Rutgers earlier this month. I kinda like it, but for a weird reason. Something something, perfect storm of technology Ragnarok, and yadda yadda, I had to start the talk 20 minutes late with no slides. Nothing. So, I riffed. And, I ended up talking about a lot of the new stuff you can expect to see in the Inbox Zero book—work culture, managing expectations, the 3 deadly qualities of email, and one surprising reason email's not as much fun as Project Runway. Some people liked it. I think. I liked it. I hope you do, too. Here's the slides I would have shown. ;-) Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time & Attention Many thanks, again, to my great pal, Dr. Donald Schaffner, for bringing me in for this visit. I had a great time and met some fantastic, passionate people. Much appreciated. Hey—know anybody who should hear this talk? Hmmm? I’ll bet. Lucky you, you can hire me to deliver this or any of my other talks to the time- and attention-addled people you work with as well. Current topics include email, meetings, social media, and future-proofing your passion. Drop a note if you have an upcoming event where you think we two might be a good fit. update 2010-04-27_13-50-00 Apologies—my friends at Rutgers (inexplicably) have placed this video under lock and key. Fortunately, I have a lock-picker called Firefox. Samizdat video available soon... update 2010-04-27_14-42-24 Yay, fixed! Many thanks to my hero, Jesse Schibilia. ”Video: Merlin's Time & Attention Talk (Improvised Rutgers Edition)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 27, 2010. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?" Full Article Time and Attention Videos world of work
english Alphabet games By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 EDT Write out each letter of the alphabet. Cut them out in squares and tape them to your clothes and body. Call out a letter for your child to peel off of you until they are all gone. Full Article
english More on Hanford: Phonics Reform and Literacy Levels By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 06 Feb 2023 12:08:57 EST Recently, I posted commentary on Emily Hanford’s reporting and the critical response it received from some in the literacy community. I defended the major thrust of her work and called out criticisms I thought to be illogical, ill conceived, or ill intended — criticism more aimed at maintaining status quo than promoting literacy. Full Article
english Beyond Labels and Agendas: Research Teachers need to Know about Phonics and Phonological Awareness By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 10 Jan 2023 16:16:51 EST This article describes the current findings on phonics and phonological awareness instruction. It uses a question & answer format to explore 10 common questions that teachers ask about teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. Here are a few key questions addressed in the article: What are phonics and phonemic awareness? Should phonemic awareness be paired with print and taught together? Should phonological awareness be coordinated with phonics instruction? What is the best sequence for teaching phonics? Full Article
english Print-to-Speech and Speech-to-Print: Mapping Early Literacy By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 14 Dec 2022 11:00:57 EST The “Reading Peaceniks” The authors of this article are a group of researchers and practitioners who are looking to end the divisiveness of the “reading wars” — and help children learn to read and write with competence and pleasure. See the list of contributing editors as well as the 25 nationally recognized colleagues who support this effort. Full Article
english Letting Hero-Worship Go By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 28 Nov 2022 12:00:42 EST As discussion of Emily Hanford’s new podcast builds, teachers are questioning stories we were sold by people we trusted. For some teachers, this is the first time they’ve doubted instructional materials that are ubiquitous in elementary and reading intervention classrooms. When we question the tenets of Balanced Literacy, teachers can unearth a trove of information. But how to make sense of it all? Full Article
english Shared Reading in the Structured Literacy Era By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 13:46:38 EST Teacher question: Can you provide clarification on how to promote shared reading in the structured literacy era and how that differs from shared reading in the balanced literacy era. I would think a teacher could certainly initially read the text aloud to students to model fluency and expression, but then must ensure students can get the words off the page and reread by decoding the words, rather than parroting the teacher or memorizing the shared reading text that may be a rhyme/song that is catchy. Shanahan's response: Full Article
english Comprehension Instruction That Really Helps — Teaching Cohesion By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Mon, 07 Nov 2022 13:51:53 EST Teacher question: One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We’re using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he’s our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He’s really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? Shanahan’s response Full Article
english Teaching Students to Use Context By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:42:53 EDT I’m writing this blog because of the disarray I see over the topic of context instruction and the poor instructional practice that it seems to manifest. One confusion is already well recognized, but merits some mention here. The other befuddlement usually goes without remark, and yet it, too, has unfortunate consequences for young readers. Full Article
english Differentiation Done Right: How “Walk to Read” Works By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 09:46:39 EDT When we’re asked to switch to explicit, systematic instruction, many teachers worry that we’ll no longer be able to tailor our teaching to the students in front of us. Calls for whole-class phonics instruction lasting 30-45 minutes, for example, summon fears that our students will be bored by concepts they already know or aren’t yet ready for. Full Article
english Won’t Student Motivation Be Damaged If We Teach with Complex Text? By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 09:31:58 EDT Teacher question: I understand your claims that teaching students with grade-level texts instead of instructional level texts increases children’s opportunities to learn. However, what about children’s emotional needs, self-esteem, motivation, and self-starting skills when text is challenging. Children who struggle with sight words or sounding out words who are given a hard piece of text will shut down and refuse to try or will act out in the classroom. Full Article
english The Role of Word-, Sentence-, and Text-Level Variables in Predicting Guided Reading Levels of Kindergarten and First-Grade Texts By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:54:00 EDT Texts classified according to guided reading levels (GRL) are ubiquitous in U.S. beginning reading classrooms. This study examined features of texts across three grade bands (kindergarten, early first grade, final first grade) and the 10 GRLs within these bands. The 510 texts came from three programs with different functions in beginning reading instruction: core, intervention, and content areas. Full Article
english Engaging, Explicit, and Elaborated: An Initial Trial of Media-Enhanced Preschool Vocabulary Instruction By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Fri, 16 Dec 2022 13:12:12 EST Children from backgrounds of poverty often lag behind more advantaged peers in early language skills, including breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. We report the results of a pilot study of an explicit and elaborated vocabulary intervention in preschool classrooms serving children from lower-income backgrounds. The intervention used multimodal instruction, including segments from public television children's programs and interactive games, to build children's knowledge of and semantic connections for 128 words across 18 weeks of daily lessons. Full Article
english Current State of the Evidence: Examining the Effects of Orton-Gillingham Reading Interventions for Students With or at Risk for Word-Level Reading Disabilities By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:40:37 EDT Over the past decade, parent advocacy groups led a grassroots movement resulting in most states adopting dyslexia-specific legislation, with many states mandating the use of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach to reading instruction. Orton-Gillingham is a direct, explicit, multisensory, structured, sequential, diagnostic, and prescriptive approach to reading for students with or at risk for word-level reading disabilities (WLRD). Evidence from a prior synthesis and What Works Clearinghouse reports yielded findings lacking support for the effectiveness of OG interventions. Full Article
english Getting Your First Grader Off to a Good Start: Tips for Families By feeds.feedburner.com Published On :: Wed, 28 Sep 2022 12:36:22 EDT First grade can bring a lot of changes! Even if your child had a great kindergarten year, there can be lots of new routines and expectations for first graders that can feel really different for students (and families). Here’s what you need to know. Full Article
