foreignpolicy--2020-05-16--China Wants Workers to Stay in the Countryside

China Wants Workers to Stay in the Countryside As the coronavirus hit the central Chinese city of Wuhan early this year , officials took drastic action , shutting down much of China ’ s economy .
After two months of lockdown , including aggressive monitoring , the spread of the virus has dramatically slowed , and the country seems to be coming back to life .
But that recovery ignores a painful reality outside of the big cities , with their temperature checks and app-aided monitoring : the hit to the livelihood of the country ’ s some 300 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the countryside .
China ’ s measures came just before the Lunar New Year holiday , when the vast majority of migrant workers return to their hometowns .
The pandemic left them trapped back home for weeks , and they now face a critical question : Should they go back to cities where they have long worked , but where many of the jobs in factories , construction , and in restaurants they depended on are drying up ?
Already treated as outsiders , they almost certainly will face ever greater animosity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jams , pollution , crime , and now disease .
Building managers have forced out them out by cutting their heat and water , heavy-handed tactics used in many earlier instances , such as after the Daxing district fire in Beijing in late 2018 , when migrants were run out of their homes in cities across China under the guise of safety .
In recent research by scholars at Stanford University , more than three-quarters of migrants said they could not return to work , partly because they were unable to find housing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back workers so they can restart production , but that is unlikely to last .
There are reports that as many as hundreds of thousands of enterprises have already gone bankrupt .
One research house , Shandong-based Zhongtai Securities , estimated that 70 million people could have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic , putting unemployment at 20.5 percent .
In a measure of how sensitive the topic is , the head of research was removed and the company withdrew the report .
The firm ’ s crime was disputing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as of March , widely seen as wildly inaccurate , as it does not count migrants .
As export orders dry up , unemployment will soar further .
Hundreds of millions of people could lose their jobs , dwarfing the numbers during the 2008 global financial crisis and the mass layoffs during restructuring of state enterprises in the early 2000s .
The prospect of serious social instability frightens party cadres , but they have a plan of sorts .
In a new version of the same harsh logic that justifies the current structural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , health care , and pensions—they always have their plot of land back on the farm to support them , the argument goes—officials envision far more migrants returning permanently to villages and towns in the interior .
Indeed , long before the latest crisis , officials have hoped to see these people , sometimes referred to as diduan renkou , the “ low-end population , ” eventually return and stay in China ’ s hinterlands .
The national “ Develop the West ” plan , launched more than two decades ago by former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this aim .
Many migrants would be happy with eventually settling back in the countryside—on their own terms .
The restrictive hukou ( household registration ) policy ensures they can rarely get quality health care for their families or education for their children in the cities .
When in 2000 I first met the Mos—a group of young Buyi ethnic minority people working in export factories in Dongguan , Guangdong—and later when I visited them in the remote hamlet of Binghuacun in southeastern Guizhou , where they came from , they told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for good .
The inauguration of the Develop the West program and China ’ s entry into the World Trade Organization a little over a year later would bring investment , domestic and foreign , not just to the coast but perhaps all the way to their village .
A new road and a processing factory could be built allowing them to come back and profit from selling canned chili peppers , plums , and peaches , they told me .
While neither came to pass , today the village hopes to lure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s dramatic mountains , dozens of ethnic minorities with their own dress and customs , and spicy local cuisine , officials in Beijing have designated the province as a favored travel destination ; Binghuacun , with many of its crumbling two-story traditional wooden farmhouses still intact , has been designated a AAA historic tourist spot .
Officials have ordered the villagers to stop cultivating corn and peppers in the surrounding mountains and to plant them once again with trees , returning them to something close to their original state .
Tossing lit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fishing in which the explosions momentarily stun the fish , which float to the surface to be scooped up in nets—has been banned .
The rice paddies can stay , as they are deemed scenic .
The centuries-old reliance on subsistence farming is to end in favor of an economy built on a “ modern service industry , ” the classification now officially granted to Guizhou ’ s travel business .
Rather than Binghuacun being home to only elderly villagers and toddlers , the empty-nest phenomenon plaguing rural China , more and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They would open bed-and-breakfasts in the traditional houses , run river-rafting and mountain-biking operations in the rivers and hills , and organically raise ducks , eels , pigs , and mountain rabbits , all to cater to the wealthy city folk .
And as was the case in villages across the country , the transition was to be managed by the local party organization , which in Binghuacun is headed by Mo Bochun , an affable 45-year-old who had already been in the job for nine years when I met him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cadres much higher up , who were eager to see village economies grow to where they could lure back migrants .
And while that movement was already happening—plans to automate factories along the coast mean ever-fewer manufacturing jobs for workers , and better roads and high-speed rail across Western China mean more opportunities—officials want to ensure this happens even more quickly .
Reforms announced during a party plenum in late 2013 to loosen the hukou policy and allow migrants to more easily settle down where they wished has been cast aside in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more stringent population controls in large cities .
Authorities had , however , stuck with a pledge to convert 100 million more people with rural registration into city residents complete with urban hukou by 2020 , in the belief that urbanization would boost consumption .
Rather than let migrants decide where to go , the planners wished to guide them into smaller cities officially designated for population growth .
Each city , as per China ’ s tradition of five-year plans , set its own population targets and then went about trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or the stick : preferential policies , including offering training , tax breaks , and low-interest loans to lure back entrepreneurial migrants in some ; orders shutting migrant children ’ s schools and evicting workers from their apartments in others , including the showcase cities of Beijing , Shanghai , and Shenzhen , as well as many provincial capitals .
Behind the push is Chinese President Xi Jinping , who announced his “ rural vitalization ” strategy in 2017 , an ambitious master plan for managing the migrants ’ future : deciding where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do .
Going back to the countryside , whether voluntary or not , has been seen as necessary : Workers would revitalize stagnating local economies by starting businesses and buying homes—all the while , simply by their absence , alleviating the overburdened roads , hospitals , and schools of China ’ s cities .
The degree to which urban residents depended on them as restaurant cooks , waiters , dishwashers , delivery people , drivers of Didi Chuxing ( China ’ s biggest ride-hailing app ) , proprietors of small shops , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Meanwhile , officials ’ desire to see fewer migrants work in the coastal cities while more remained in the interior has already borne fruit .
In 2017 , over 40 percent of migrants worked in western and central China , a figure that was several points up from 2016 , while 55.8 percent worked in the east , a virtually unchanged number .
In the Pearl River Delta , the number of migrants fell by 450,000 , almost 1 percent .
Even before the pandemic , policymakers were concerned about how the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the countryside .
Based in part on a reading of the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics Edmund Phelps ’ s 2013 book Mass Flourishing , translated into Chinese and then heavily promoted by Premier Li Keqiang , top leaders believed that given the right mixture of support , migrants would rush to start their own businesses in the villages , serving others who were moving back and hungry to replicate the standard of living in the cities , thereby igniting a virtuous circle : Migrants return to villages ; they demand goods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to serve them ; local economy flourishes ; more people move back .
“ Migrants returning to their hometowns for employment , on the one hand can not only help grow local economies , expanding the tax base , and enhancing the development of towns , they can also help villagers by promoting employment and lead us out of poverty , ” a Guizhou labor official said .
Policymakers , too , were confident that the newly rejuvenated countryside could also provide products and services meeting the needs of the cities and become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And they had a weapon to ensure the migrants ’ success in far-flung villages : e-commerce , which had exploded in use in recent years .
According to their understanding , the countryside is full of rich resources , including fresh fruit , organic tea , and free-range poultry and pork , as well as more regionally specific fare such as Tibetan caterpillar fungus and specially dyed ethnic Miao batik cloth .
The challenge had been getting goods to customers across the vast geographic reach of China .
That is where online @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a remote farmer who harvested mountain morels to an upper-middle-class white-collar worker with a yen for obscure fungi or offer a rafting adventure to a risk-seeking urbanite .
But , as is so often the case in China , ensuring growth of what economists like to call the “ real economy ” was not grand enough .
Officials want the next chapter of Guizhou ’ s development , as with other provinces , to be in tune with the rapid technological changes related to the internet happening around the world , including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and video streaming—even if this focus would inevitably be capital-intensive but create few of the less-skilled jobs that migrants need .
This plan , which is by far the higher priority for officials , calls for making Guizhou into a big data storage center .
In an ironic twist , this new high-tech vision of the province ’ s future is supposed to benefit from some of the same characteristics that had long been seen as holding Guizhou back .
The excessive rainfall that fills its rushing rivers gives the province rich hydroelectric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , key for storing data in servers that need to be kept at a low temperature .
The remoteness of Guizhou makes its land cheap .
The climate means less need for air-conditioning .
Even the mountains , with their peculiar geology , are supposed to prove useful .
If IT companies brought giant servers to install , they could expand the often naturally occurring karst caves into secure , long tunnels .
The wind that blew through the giant cavities in the mountains would provide a natural cooling system for the thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mountains .
At the centerpiece of the nationally mandated strategy was the opening of a huge new investment zone in January 2014 , to house technology companies including Apple , which agreed to invest $ 1 billion into a facility to store its data , and Qualcomm , Huawei , Tencent , Alibaba , and China ’ s state-owned telecommunications giants , which together invested billions of dollars .
Forty-five minutes by car on a well-paved expressway outside the provincial capital city of Guiyang is the Guian New Area .
Billboards tout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Future ” as one enters the vast complex of almost 700 square mile , now still mainly mountains , but many with so-called data tunnels drilled into them .
This is where the tech giants will store the massive and growing data that each is collecting and managing .
Foxconn also decided to open a data center here , along with production facilities for tablets and smartphones , and founder Terry Gou came for a launch ceremony later that year .
A press conference drew dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters , eager @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s largest private employer , with over 1 million workers , to come to Guizhou .
In some ways it seemed surprising .
After all , it was over 500 miles away from Shenzhen , home to Foxconn ’ s biggest production facilities and the world ’ s largest electronics supplier network .
Guizhou is not known for having skilled workers or engineers .
And while Foxconn has been opening factories in China ’ s interior to tap more affordable labor , including in Zhengzhou and Chengdu , Guiyang is remoter and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frenzied attention—reporters surrounded him in a wild scrum of cameras and recording devices , yelling out questions as he entered the room .
He had the stern smile he favors and was dressed in a light blue suit with a blue-checked tie and well-polished shiny black shoes .
On his wrists were the two Buddhist bracelets he always seems to wear , one with big orange stones , the other dark brown wood beads .
He stepped up onto a small stage prepared for the event and grabbed a microphone .
Gou touted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ built a new speedway directly from the airport to Guian , ending near Foxconn ’ s facility .
“ We didn ’ t want to go through the city , so they did that for us—they built the highway so it came to us .
Good infrastructure is always key , ” he said .
“ To encourage the convergence of the big-data industry , they have done a very good job putting in a new fiber network , that all companies can utilize.
” The city government had been so eager to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the zone .
“ Government officials live on-site .
Normally you would have to apply on your own in the nearest city , ” Gou said .
“ Here they moved the agencies right onto our site , to encourage our development.
” Beyond the capital investment and taxes to be paid into local coffers , how many people did Foxconn expect to employ , one person asked .
The usually unflappable Gou seemed agitated for the first time , curtly nodding his head no , as if to dismiss the question .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this industrial park will not be shown by how many people we hire , ” he said , adding that Foxconn ’ s model this time was different .
The facility would increasingly rely on robots in its production .
“ We don ’ t want to go back to the traditional [ model ] , labor-intensive , simple and boring , ” he said .
“ We don ’ t know how many people will work here .
So I can ’ t give you this answer.
” Whether the other plank @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the area , tourism—a proven job-creator—can succeed is now uncertain .
Fewer people will be inclined to travel for pleasure after the COVID-19 crisis—or have the money to do so , although with borders uncertainly opening , domestic tourism may become more appealing to Chinese who once preferred Thailand or Mauritius .
Some of China ’ s largest enterprises including Wanda and Evergrande have been developing huge resorts in the countryside , leading some to predict a coming supply glut .
Guizhou faces the same problem as all of China ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a master plan from above that doesn ’ t always take into account the realities of people on the ground .
Mo Ruchun , whom I first met in 2000 , has become successful as a labor broker , securing workers for the lumber industry in neighboring Guangxi province .
But the 50-year-old former migrant is not sure the business will survive as China strengthens environmental regulations .
Going forward , Mo Ruchun hopes to convert some of Binghuacun ’ s rice fields into a resort with newly planted orchards that tourists can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I visited him in his apartment in Libo , a township not far from the village .
There would be a hotel with a restaurant specializing in fresh river trout , wild edible herbs , and locally raised rabbit meat .
This was not his first business scheme ; earlier he had told me about plans for a consulting company for migrants-turned-entrepreneurs .
A recent investment in 100 cows with a friend had ended badly ; the cows never grew as large as had been promised , and they had sold them at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There is nothing we can do but accept that fact , ” he said .
Meanwhile , Mo Ruchun had little faith in the party secretary ’ s ability to manage such a huge transition , dismissing Mo Bochun ( a distant cousin , who shares the same surname as many of the other villagers ) as someone who only carried out orders but took no initiative .
“ You know , all this talk , and still we don ’ t even have one hotel in Binghuacun .
We don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t even a store .
Not one of the house renovations has been completed , ” he told me .
“ How can we know whether we will actually ever be able to make our village into a tourist destination ?
” For migrants , returning to the villages after spending most of their lives far away will be difficult .
The pandemic that has already devastated existing manufacturing and service companies will make it doubly difficult for new businesses in China ’ s interior to succeed .
The deep divide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countryside has only become more apparent with the coronavirus ; as migrants age they will face new health problems , and the financial burdens on rural families and local governments will grow .
“ I am already poor , and for people like me who try to start a business in the countryside , the risk is we fail and end up even poorer , ” Yang Meng , a 30-year-old from another village , told me .
Already there are indications that the “ returning geese , ” the slogan used for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smoothly reassimilated .
On the road between Guiyang and Binghuacun , long after passing fancy new commercial and residential buildings and tall billboards proclaiming , “ Bright Future of Innovation , New Dream for E-Commerce , ” where the roads narrow and run-down farmhouses and heaps of trash and scrawny village dogs return , walls are painted with slogans exhorting returnees to find work and not slack off .
Says one red banner strung on a blue construction-site fence : “ Poor and backward isn ’ t honorable eating well and being lazy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ village and working is much more advantageous reduce tiredness and avoid rushing about only the industrious aren ’ t impoverished if you want to escape poverty , then act vigorously.
” This article was partially adapted from the author ’ s book , The Myth Of Chinese Capitalism : The Worker , the Factory , and the Future of the World , published by St. Martin ’ s Press , March 2020

As the coronavirus hit the central Chinese city of Wuhan early this year, officials took drastic action, shutting down much of China’s economy. After two months of lockdown, including aggressive monitoring, the spread of the virus has dramatically slowed, and the country seems to be coming back to life. But that recovery ignores a painful reality outside of the big cities, with their temperature checks and app-aided monitoring: the hit to the livelihood of the country’s some 300 million migrant workers and the families they support in the countryside. China’s measures came just before the Lunar New Year holiday, when the vast majority of migrant workers return to their hometowns. The pandemic left them trapped back home for weeks, and they now face a critical question: Should they go back to cities where they have long worked, but where many of the jobs in factories, construction, and in restaurants they depended on are drying up?
As the coronavirus hit the central Chinese city of Wuhan early this year, officials took drastic action, shutting down much of China’s economy. After two months of lockdown, including aggressive monitoring, the spread of the virus has dramatically slowed, and the country seems to be coming back to life. But that recovery ignores a painful reality outside of the big cities, with their temperature checks and app-aided monitoring: the hit to the livelihood of the country’s some 300 million migrant workers and the families they support in the countryside. China’s measures came just before the Lunar New Year holiday, when the vast majority of migrant workers return to their hometowns. The pandemic left them trapped back home for weeks, and they now face a critical question: Should they go back to cities where they have long worked, but where many of the jobs in factories, construction, and in restaurants they depended on are drying up?
Already treated as outsiders, they almost certainly will face ever greater animosity from urbanites who blame them for traffic jams, pollution, crime, and now disease. Building managers have forced out them out by cutting their heat and water, heavy-handed tactics used in many earlier instances, such as after the Daxing district fire in Beijing in late 2018, when migrants were run out of their homes in cities across China under the guise of safety. In recent research by scholars at Stanford University, more than three-quarters of migrants said they could not return to work, partly because they were unable to find housing.
In the Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World, Dexter Roberts, St. Martin’s Press, 288 pp., .99, March 2020
Factories may be anxious to bring back workers so they can restart production, but that is unlikely to last. There are reports that as many as hundreds of thousands of enterprises have already gone bankrupt. One research house, Shandong-based Zhongtai Securities, estimated that 70 million people could have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic, putting unemployment at 20.5 percent. In a measure of how sensitive the topic is, the head of research was removed and the company withdrew the report. The firm’s crime was disputing the official Chinese unemployment figure of 5.9 percent as of March, widely seen as wildly inaccurate, as it does not count migrants. As export orders dry up, unemployment will soar further. Hundreds of millions of people could lose their jobs, dwarfing the numbers during the 2008 global financial crisis and the mass layoffs during restructuring of state enterprises in the early 2000s.
The prospect of serious social instability frightens party cadres, but they have a plan of sorts. In a new version of the same harsh logic that justifies the current structural provision of rural residents with inferior education, health care, and pensions—they always have their plot of land back on the farm to support them, the argument goes—officials envision far more migrants returning permanently to villages and towns in the interior. Indeed, long before the latest crisis, officials have hoped to see these people, sometimes referred to as diduan renkou, the “low-end population,” eventually return and stay in China’s hinterlands. The national “Develop the West” plan, launched more than two decades ago by former President Jiang Zemin, was already explicit in this aim.
Many migrants would be happy with eventually settling back in the countryside—on their own terms. The restrictive hukou (household registration) policy ensures they can rarely get quality health care for their families or education for their children in the cities.
When in 2000 I first met the Mos—a group of young Buyi ethnic minority people working in export factories in Dongguan, Guangdong—and later when I visited them in the remote hamlet of Binghuacun in southeastern Guizhou, where they came from, they told me they hoped to someday return home for good. The inauguration of the Develop the West program and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization a little over a year later would bring investment, domestic and foreign, not just to the coast but perhaps all the way to their village. A new road and a processing factory could be built allowing them to come back and profit from selling canned chili peppers, plums, and peaches, they told me.
While neither came to pass, today the village hopes to lure urbanites to come vacation. With Guizhou’s dramatic mountains, dozens of ethnic minorities with their own dress and customs, and spicy local cuisine, officials in Beijing have designated the province as a favored travel destination; Binghuacun, with many of its crumbling two-story traditional wooden farmhouses still intact, has been designated a AAA historic tourist spot. Officials have ordered the villagers to stop cultivating corn and peppers in the surrounding mountains and to plant them once again with trees, returning them to something close to their original state. Tossing lit firecrackers into the river—a popular form of fishing in which the explosions momentarily stun the fish, which float to the surface to be scooped up in nets—has been banned. The rice paddies can stay, as they are deemed scenic.
The centuries-old reliance on subsistence farming is to end in favor of an economy built on a “modern service industry,” the classification now officially granted to Guizhou’s travel business. Rather than Binghuacun being home to only elderly villagers and toddlers, the empty-nest phenomenon plaguing rural China, more and more migrants would return to start small businesses. They would open bed-and-breakfasts in the traditional houses, run river-rafting and mountain-biking operations in the rivers and hills, and organically raise ducks, eels, pigs, and mountain rabbits, all to cater to the wealthy city folk. And as was the case in villages across the country, the transition was to be managed by the local party organization, which in Binghuacun is headed by Mo Bochun, an affable 45-year-old who had already been in the job for nine years when I met him.
Mo was taking his orders from party cadres much higher up, who were eager to see village economies grow to where they could lure back migrants. And while that movement was already happening—plans to automate factories along the coast mean ever-fewer manufacturing jobs for workers, and better roads and high-speed rail across Western China mean more opportunities—officials want to ensure this happens even more quickly. Reforms announced during a party plenum in late 2013 to loosen the hukou policy and allow migrants to more easily settle down where they wished has been cast aside in the last few years in favor of even more stringent population controls in large cities.
Authorities had, however, stuck with a pledge to convert 100 million more people with rural registration into city residents complete with urban hukou by 2020, in the belief that urbanization would boost consumption. Rather than let migrants decide where to go, the planners wished to guide them into smaller cities officially designated for population growth. Each city, as per China’s tradition of five-year plans, set its own population targets and then went about trying to meet them, with either the carrot or the stick: preferential policies, including offering training, tax breaks, and low-interest loans to lure back entrepreneurial migrants in some; orders shutting migrant children’s schools and evicting workers from their apartments in others, including the showcase cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, as well as many provincial capitals.
Behind the push is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who announced his “rural vitalization” strategy in 2017, an ambitious master plan for managing the migrants’ future: deciding where they would go and what they would do. Going back to the countryside, whether voluntary or not, has been seen as necessary: Workers would revitalize stagnating local economies by starting businesses and buying homes—all the while, simply by their absence, alleviating the overburdened roads, hospitals, and schools of China’s cities.
The degree to which urban residents depended on them as restaurant cooks, waiters, dishwashers, delivery people, drivers of Didi Chuxing (China’s biggest ride-hailing app), proprietors of small shops, and household cleaners and nannies was unremarked upon. Meanwhile, officials’ desire to see fewer migrants work in the coastal cities while more remained in the interior has already borne fruit. In 2017, over 40 percent of migrants worked in western and central China, a figure that was several points up from 2016, while 55.8 percent worked in the east, a virtually unchanged number. In the Pearl River Delta, the number of migrants fell by 450,000, almost 1 percent.
Even before the pandemic, policymakers were concerned about how the migrants would make a living after returning to the countryside. Based in part on a reading of the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics Edmund Phelps’s 2013 book Mass Flourishing, translated into Chinese and then heavily promoted by Premier Li Keqiang, top leaders believed that given the right mixture of support, migrants would rush to start their own businesses in the villages, serving others who were moving back and hungry to replicate the standard of living in the cities, thereby igniting a virtuous circle: Migrants return to villages; they demand goods and services; more returnees open businesses to serve them; local economy flourishes; more people move back. “Migrants returning to their hometowns for employment, on the one hand can not only help grow local economies, expanding the tax base, and enhancing the development of towns, they can also help villagers by promoting employment and lead us out of poverty,” a Guizhou labor official said.
Policymakers, too, were confident that the newly rejuvenated countryside could also provide products and services meeting the needs of the cities and become an important part of the national economy. And they had a weapon to ensure the migrants’ success in far-flung villages: e-commerce, which had exploded in use in recent years. According to their understanding, the countryside is full of rich resources, including fresh fruit, organic tea, and free-range poultry and pork, as well as more regionally specific fare such as Tibetan caterpillar fungus and specially dyed ethnic Miao batik cloth. The challenge had been getting goods to customers across the vast geographic reach of China. That is where online sales came in, able to link a remote farmer who harvested mountain morels to an upper-middle-class white-collar worker with a yen for obscure fungi or offer a rafting adventure to a risk-seeking urbanite.
But, as is so often the case in China, ensuring growth of what economists like to call the “real economy” was not grand enough. Officials want the next chapter of Guizhou’s development, as with other provinces, to be in tune with the rapid technological changes related to the internet happening around the world, including the rise of e-commerce, social media, and video streaming—even if this focus would inevitably be capital-intensive but create few of the less-skilled jobs that migrants need. This plan, which is by far the higher priority for officials, calls for making Guizhou into a big data storage center.
In an ironic twist, this new high-tech vision of the province’s future is supposed to benefit from some of the same characteristics that had long been seen as holding Guizhou back. The excessive rainfall that fills its rushing rivers gives the province rich hydroelectric power resources, which means cheap electricity, key for storing data in servers that need to be kept at a low temperature. The remoteness of Guizhou makes its land cheap. The climate means less need for air-conditioning. Even the mountains, with their peculiar geology, are supposed to prove useful. If IT companies brought giant servers to install, they could expand the often naturally occurring karst caves into secure, long tunnels. The wind that blew through the giant cavities in the mountains would provide a natural cooling system for the thousands of servers companies were to place inside the mountains.
At the centerpiece of the nationally mandated strategy was the opening of a huge new investment zone in January 2014, to house technology companies including Apple, which agreed to invest $1 billion into a facility to store its data, and Qualcomm, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, and China’s state-owned telecommunications giants, which together invested billions of dollars. Forty-five minutes by car on a well-paved expressway outside the provincial capital city of Guiyang is the Guian New Area. Billboards tout “Guizhou’s Big Data Cloud Future” as one enters the vast complex of almost 700 square mile, now still mainly mountains, but many with so-called data tunnels drilled into them. This is where the tech giants will store the massive and growing data that each is collecting and managing.
Foxconn also decided to open a data center here, along with production facilities for tablets and smartphones, and founder Terry Gou came for a launch ceremony later that year. A press conference drew dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, eager to hear what had convinced the country’s largest private employer, with over 1 million workers, to come to Guizhou. In some ways it seemed surprising. After all, it was over 500 miles away from Shenzhen, home to Foxconn’s biggest production facilities and the world’s largest electronics supplier network. Guizhou is not known for having skilled workers or engineers. And while Foxconn has been opening factories in China’s interior to tap more affordable labor, including in Zhengzhou and Chengdu, Guiyang is remoter and poorer.
Gou looked unfazed by the frenzied attention—reporters surrounded him in a wild scrum of cameras and recording devices, yelling out questions as he entered the room. He had the stern smile he favors and was dressed in a light blue suit with a blue-checked tie and well-polished shiny black shoes. On his wrists were the two Buddhist bracelets he always seems to wear, one with big orange stones, the other dark brown wood beads. He stepped up onto a small stage prepared for the event and grabbed a microphone. Gou touted the fact that the Guiyang government had built a new speedway directly from the airport to Guian, ending near Foxconn’s facility. “We didn’t want to go through the city, so they did that for us—they built the highway so it came to us. Good infrastructure is always key,” he said. “To encourage the convergence of the big-data industry, they have done a very good job putting in a new fiber network, that all companies can utilize.” The city government had been so eager to get the investment they moved staff to the zone. “Government officials live on-site. Normally you would have to apply on your own in the nearest city,” Gou said. “Here they moved the agencies right onto our site, to encourage our development.”
Beyond the capital investment and taxes to be paid into local coffers, how many people did Foxconn expect to employ, one person asked. The usually unflappable Gou seemed agitated for the first time, curtly nodding his head no, as if to dismiss the question. “I hope that our commitment to this industrial park will not be shown by how many people we hire,” he said, adding that Foxconn’s model this time was different. The facility would increasingly rely on robots in its production. “We don’t want to go back to the traditional [model], labor-intensive, simple and boring,” he said. “We don’t know how many people will work here. So I can’t give you this answer.”
Whether the other plank of the Chinese government’s plan for the area, tourism—a proven job-creator—can succeed is now uncertain. Fewer people will be inclined to travel for pleasure after the COVID-19 crisis—or have the money to do so, although with borders uncertainly opening, domestic tourism may become more appealing to Chinese who once preferred Thailand or Mauritius. Some of China’s largest enterprises including Wanda and Evergrande have been developing huge resorts in the countryside, leading some to predict a coming supply glut.
Guizhou faces the same problem as all of China’s regions: Decisions are usually part of a master plan from above that doesn’t always take into account the realities of people on the ground. Mo Ruchun, whom I first met in 2000, has become successful as a labor broker, securing workers for the lumber industry in neighboring Guangxi province. But the 50-year-old former migrant is not sure the business will survive as China strengthens environmental regulations. Going forward, Mo Ruchun hopes to convert some of Binghuacun’s rice fields into a resort with newly planted orchards that tourists can pick fruit from, he explained when I visited him in his apartment in Libo, a township not far from the village. There would be a hotel with a restaurant specializing in fresh river trout, wild edible herbs, and locally raised rabbit meat.
This was not his first business scheme; earlier he had told me about plans for a consulting company for migrants-turned-entrepreneurs. A recent investment in 100 cows with a friend had ended badly; the cows never grew as large as had been promised, and they had sold them at a loss. “We got cheated. There is nothing we can do but accept that fact,” he said. Meanwhile, Mo Ruchun had little faith in the party secretary’s ability to manage such a huge transition, dismissing Mo Bochun (a distant cousin, who shares the same surname as many of the other villagers) as someone who only carried out orders but took no initiative. “You know, all this talk, and still we don’t even have one hotel in Binghuacun. We don’t even have a restaurant. There isn’t even a store. Not one of the house renovations has been completed,” he told me. “How can we know whether we will actually ever be able to make our village into a tourist destination?”
For migrants, returning to the villages after spending most of their lives far away will be difficult. The pandemic that has already devastated existing manufacturing and service companies will make it doubly difficult for new businesses in China’s interior to succeed. The deep divide in medical care between cities and the countryside has only become more apparent with the coronavirus; as migrants age they will face new health problems, and the financial burdens on rural families and local governments will grow. “I am already poor, and for people like me who try to start a business in the countryside, the risk is we fail and end up even poorer,” Yang Meng, a 30-year-old from another village, told me. Already there are indications that the “returning geese,” the slogan used for migrant returnees, aren’t being smoothly reassimilated. On the road between Guiyang and Binghuacun, long after passing fancy new commercial and residential buildings and tall billboards proclaiming, “Bright Future of Innovation, New Dream for E-Commerce,” where the roads narrow and run-down farmhouses and heaps of trash and scrawny village dogs return, walls are painted with slogans exhorting returnees to find work and not slack off.
Says one red banner strung on a blue construction-site fence:
“Poor and backward isn’t honorable
eating well and being lazy is even more disgraceful
returning to the village and working is much more advantageous
reduce tiredness and avoid rushing about
only the industrious aren’t impoverished
if you want to escape poverty, then act vigorously.”
This article was partially adapted from the author’s book, The Myth Of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World, published by St. Martin’s Press, March 2020


foreignpolicy--2020-05-16--Our Top Weekend Reads

Our Top Weekend Reads

Clean water is essential for individuals to take their own precautions against the coronavirus , but not everyone has equal access to it .
Meanwhile , despite Central and Eastern Europe ’ s rising economic fortunes since the 1990s , populists still find discontent to capitalize on .
And the Iraqi government could finally be asserting its authority over one of the most powerful Iran-backed militias in the country .
Inequality in water access worldwide will shape the course of the pandemic ; it must also be a priority in post-coronavirus economic reconstruction , Alan Nicol writes .
Southeast Asian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rescue missions when reports of hundreds of Rohingya refugees adrift in the Andaman Sea emerged in early April , Verena Hoelzl writes .
3 .
Annexation Could Be the Final Blow to the Israel-Jordan Relationship The fragile relationship between Israel and Jordan rests on peace between Israel and the Palestinians .
If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues plans to annex the Jordan Valley , it could be the end of friendly relations between the two countries , Eetta Prince-Gibson writes Although Central and Eastern Europe have experienced unprecedented economic growth , populists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and political loss , Jaroslaw Kuisz and Karolina Wigura write .
The fact that Kataib Hezbollah strongly opposed Mustafa al-Kadhimi for the position of Iraqi prime minister , but that he still received enough support to form a government , may point to an erosion of the group ’ s influence , Shelly Kittleson writes .

Clean water is essential for individuals to take their own precautions against the coronavirus, but not everyone has equal access to it.
Clean water is essential for individuals to take their own precautions against the coronavirus, but not everyone has equal access to it.
Meanwhile, despite Central and Eastern Europe’s rising economic fortunes since the 1990s, populists still find discontent to capitalize on.
And the Iraqi government could finally be asserting its authority over one of the most powerful Iran-backed militias in the country.
Here are Foreign Policy’s top weekend reads.
A woman washes her hands in the courtyard of her house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Nov. 1, 2018.
Inequality in water access worldwide will shape the course of the pandemic; it must also be a priority in post-coronavirus economic reconstruction, Alan Nicol writes.
Bangladeshi security personnel attend to emaciated Rohingya refugees following their arrival by boat in Teknaf on April 16, after nearly two months at sea.
Southeast Asian countries demurred on sending out search and rescue missions when reports of hundreds of Rohingya refugees adrift in the Andaman Sea emerged in early April, Verena Hoelzl writes.
Israeli soldiers on the Israeli-Jordanian border
The fragile relationship between Israel and Jordan rests on peace between Israel and the Palestinians. If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues plans to annex the Jordan Valley, it could be the end of friendly relations between the two countries, Eetta Prince-Gibson writes
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a meeting at the Palace on the Isle in Warsaw's Lazienki Park on May 14, 2018.
Although Central and Eastern Europe have experienced unprecedented economic growth, populists capitalize on a widespread feeling of social and political loss, Jaroslaw Kuisz and Karolina Wigura write.
U.S. soldiers intervene against Iraqi protesters carrying flags of Kataib Hezbollah as they storm the U.S. Embassy.
The fact that Kataib Hezbollah strongly opposed Mustafa al-Kadhimi for the position of Iraqi prime minister, but that he still received enough support to form a government, may point to an erosion of the group’s influence, Shelly Kittleson writes.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-16--How the Coronavirus Pandemic Will Permanently Expand Government Powers

We are all statists now .
Since the coronavirus pandemic struck and the global economy unraveled , we have looked to governments to mobilize medical resources , implement containment measures , and spend previously unimaginable sums to support workers and businesses .
Out of these emergency policies could arise new institutions and ways of solving problems that will benefit us long after the pandemic .
There is a dark side , too .
Governments have assumed new powers to trace , track , and control .
Some of them have already abused these powers , and it is entirely conceivable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To help us understand how the pandemic will permanently expand government powers—for good or for bad—Foreign Policy asked 10 leading thinkers from around the world to weigh in with their predictions .
In the Post-Pandemic World , Big Brother Will Be Watching Governments around the world have assumed unprecedented control over their citizens ’ daily lives in response to the coronavirus .
Get ready for the new normal : Opportunism and fear will lead many governments to leave some of their newly acquired powers in place.Democracies and dictatorships alike have closed borders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the economy , and implemented a variety of testing , tracing , and surveillance regimes in order to contain the infection .
Those that acted fastest and adopted more stringent measures have been most successful .
Leaders who denied , dissembled , and delayed are responsible for thousands of preventable deaths .
As infection rates decline and effective treatments become available , many countries will gradually relax most of the restrictions that are now in place .
Some of the leaders who assumed emergency powers during the crisis may relinquish them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Political opportunism and fear of a new pandemic will lead many governments to leave some of their newly acquired powers in place .
Expect to have your temperature taken or throat swabbed when you travel , and get used to having your phone observed , your picture taken , and your location tracked in many countries—with the use of that information not always restricted to matters of public health .
In the post-coronavirus world , Big Brother will be watching .
The Pandemic Will Be a Boon for Good Government First , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pours trillions of dollars into stimulus programs and the medical sector , there will be endless opportunities for corruption and graft.Authoritarian governments will almost certainly face a backlash for concealing the scope of the problem .
The good news is that the inevitable stories of squandered resources and opaque dealings will ultimately turn the pandemic into a boon for good governance and increased accountability .
From the Arab Spring and other movements , we know that societies have little patience with corruption when the population is suffering .
This will be especially true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certainly face a backlash for concealing the scope of the problem and allowing officials to profit from the pandemic .
By comparison , governments that are responsive , data-driven , energetic , collaborative , and innovative will have proved superior to autocracies in delivering their societies from the coronavirus and its economic costs—leaving these governments strengthened and enjoying greater public trust in the future .
The Shape of Future Government Will Be Forged in Asia The coronavirus pandemic is set to usher in a new era of bigger , more intrusive government in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be felt most dramatically in Asian nations that have long prided themselves on their relatively lean , minimal states.The pandemic will usher in a new era of bigger , more intrusive government in almost every advanced economy .
Most rich countries have moved quickly to turn on the spending taps , protecting their citizens and businesses with wage support schemes and cash payouts .
That is true in the United States and Germany , but also in places like Singapore and Malaysia whose leaders have traditionally shied away from expensive fiscal expansions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ governments , too , as states rush to create expansive new tools of disease control , workplace management , and social surveillance in the hope of curbing future outbreaks in advance of a vaccine .
Again , this is an area where Asian governments such as South Korea and Japan are likely to take the lead , given their mixture of high state capacity , technological knowhow , and relatively relaxed approach to privacy regulation .
In short , the era of big government is returning , but it will manifest itself in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the previous era of large states during the 1960s and 1970s—and much of its new shape will be forged not in the West , but in the East .
This is likely just the start of a raft of public schemes to shape the production of goods and services deemed essential.As countries and companies struggle with the effects of COVID-19 on work and production , industrial policy is making a comeback .
After decades of free-market momentum , governments in developed countries and emerging markets alike are embracing influential and long-lasting roles for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economies .
So far , this has involved increasing the management of trade by means of tariffs , licenses , quotas , product standards , and even outright export bans , particularly in food and medical supplies .
It has also included billions in cash and other public benefits to companies to “ bring home ” manufacturing currently done abroad , such as the $ 2.3 billion Japan is now paying its companies to leave China .
With the World Trade Organization faltering , this is likely just the start of a raft @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government purchases and stockpiling , buy-local requirements , and other schemes that many nations will put in place to shape the production of and access to a much wider array of goods and services deemed essential on national security grounds—now defined ever more broadly to include risk of disruption , overdependence on China , or the provision of jobs .
To be sure , efforts to maintain and perhaps even expand free trade won ’ t end .
But many of these negotiations will assume , condone , and sometimes even codify more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intervention in markets .
Like other life-transforming crises such as World War II , the coronavirus pandemic will likely ignite an urge for the protective embrace of big government .
After three decades of wealth creation on a historically unprecedented scale , we may now be on the cusp of an unprecedented period of wealth redistribution in the form of higher taxes to fund an expansion of health care and other services.We may be on the cusp of an unprecedented period of wealth redistribution .
The new kinds of surveillance of individuals with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic may be a harbinger of the future .
Privacy will increasingly become an issue in this new age of overbearing government .
And so will government debt , which is already mushrooming out of all proportion .
With the pandemic heating up the U.S.-China rivalry , calls for increased U.S. defense spending loom just over the horizon .
How will we pay for it all ?
That will constitute the real debate .
A bigger government with a larger role for experts on public health and other subjects may be on its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backlash against it .
With the pandemic response in the United States and many other countries rather uncoordinated , there will be a tendency to strengthen the role of national governments in the post-coronavirus world .
As a result , our lives may soon become more regulated than ever .
Some Governments Are Using This Crisis to Silence Critics A crisis need not lead to a permanent expansion of government powers—as long as the public remains vigilant .
In times of crisis , international human rights law allows all governments to temporarily limit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social distancing rules , for example—as long as the restrictions are strictly necessary , proportionate , and nondiscriminatory .
Some governments , however , are trying to use the coronavirus pandemic to silence critics , expand surveillance , and entrench their rule .
Whether they succeed will depend on whether the public understands that this would only increase the likelihood and severity of future public health disasters.A crisis need not lead to a permanent expansion of government powers—as long as the public remains vigilant .
Censorship restricts the free flow of information that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responding to health threats .
Surveillance that fails to protect privacy discourages voluntary cooperation , a prerequisite for any successful public health initiative .
Checks and balances on executive power—an independent legislature , judiciary , media , and civil society—ensure that governments serve the public ’ s welfare rather than their own political interests .
In short , the pandemic makes it clear that human rights should be upheld not only out of principle , but for powerful pragmatic reasons as well .
If the public appreciates these reasons , sufficient pressure can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from profiting from tragedy .
If not , we may find ourselves in a world with both greater risk of disease and less regard for human rights .
Local Government Will Emerge Stronger After the Pandemic The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the quality of governments around the world .
Many national leaders have failed the test—in contrast to the leaders of regions and cities , who have faced the pandemic head-on in their communities , showed greater competence , and earned the trust of their constituents .
In the process , the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different levels of government and strengthening the hand of regions and cities.The virus is clarifying the division of powers between different levels of government—and strengthening the hand of regions and cities .
The current focus of governors and mayors is on saving lives , delivering essential services , maintaining law and order , and supporting economic recovery .
But already , there are local leaders looking beyond the pandemic and actively reimagining life in their communities .
Limited finances will favor cost-effective policies that generate multiple benefits—including better ways to provide health care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economies .
Future government services will be more digitalized , leaner , and more distributed .
Throughout history , infectious disease outbreaks have had a profound effect on local governance .
The bubonic plague in the 14th century led to a rethinking of squalid urban spaces .
Cholera outbreaks in the 19th century triggered massive urban redevelopment schemes and a dramatic buildout of sewage systems .
The current coronavirus pandemic will likewise generate transformations in governance—from invasive surveillance technologies to track infections and enforce quarantines to major spending on health care to keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Technocrats Will Get Their Hands Dirty Past macroeconomic policymaking focused on key variables : growth , inflation , unemployment , debt .
This allowed central bankers and the like to tell themselves and their publics that they were only looking after the general welfare , not making distributional choices .
The pandemic and its fallout , however , have compelled the economic technocrats to get their hands dirty with allocative decisions—which companies get bridge loans , which work arrangements get subsidized , which assets get purchased .
This makes crisis policies both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the loans and purchases are transparent , more accountable.Central banks and finance ministries will come out of this crisis with new forms of intervention .
It also removes the gloves that previously kept policymakers somewhat clean but with a looser grip on events .
Central banks , finance ministries , and financial regulators will come out of this crisis with new forms of direct intervention , and some old ones unseen in decades and previously abandoned as distorting markets .
But the global economy we live in today , where markets are recurrently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not laissez faire .
Lines between fiscal , financial , and monetary policy will be blurred to good effect—it was always disingenuous to pretend that there were strict divisions .
Norms that previously prevented cooperation across government agencies will be replaced in response to the economic realities .
Independence is nice to profess , but it is little comfort when you can not deliver the desired outcome in splendid isolation .
After We Beat the Pandemic , We Must Cure Affluenza We must make sure this rollback of civil rights does not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the post-coronavirus era.Shaping the post-pandemic world starts with the acknowledgment that we are all infected by affluenza : We consume too much and equate conspicuous consumption with success and happiness in life .
Valuing economies purely on the basis of GDP has been recognized as a failure that must be addressed if we are to have a chance at creating a more equitable world .
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that we need a radical rethink of the production and distribution of food and other essential goods for all of us in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peace , and prosperity .
We should now be pushing for local , decentralized ownership and co-creation of social goods and services .
Governments are using the military-industrial complex to reduce citizens ’ participation in the democratic processes , and we must make sure this rollback of civil rights does not become a permanent fixture of life in the post-coronavirus era .
There ’ s been a fundamental battle in Western societies about the use of personal data , one that pits the individual ’ s right to privacy against the value of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Until now , most of that discussion has focused on surveillance capitalism .
For example , Google Maps shows us real-time traffic , but it does so by collecting location data from everyone using the service.It ’ s the same trade-off : Individually , private health data is very intimate , but it has enormous value to us all .
COVID-19 adds a new urgency to the debate and brings in new actors such as public health authorities and the medical sector .
It ’ s not just about smartphone apps tracing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being rolled out by corporations and governments around the world .
The medical community will seize the pandemic to boost its case for accessing detailed health data to perform all sorts of research studies .
Public health authorities will push for more surveillance in order to get early warning of future pandemics .
It ’ s the same trade-off .
Individually , the data is very intimate .
But collectively , it has enormous value to us all .
Resolving the debate means careful thinking about each specific case and a moral analysis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ core values .
The answers for law enforcement , social networks , and medical data won ’ t be the same .
As we move toward greater surveillance , we need to figure out how to get the best of both : how to design systems that make use of our data collectively to benefit society as a whole , while at the same time protecting people individually .

James Crabtree, Robert D. Kaplan, Robert Muggah, Kumi Naidoo, Shannon K. O'Neil, Adam Posen, Kenneth Roth, Bruce Schneier, Stephen M. Walt and Alexandra Wrage

We are all statists now. Since the coronavirus pandemic struck and the global economy unraveled, we have looked to governments to mobilize medical resources, implement containment measures, and spend previously unimaginable sums to support workers and businesses. Out of these emergency policies could arise new institutions and ways of solving problems that will benefit us long after the pandemic.
There is a dark side, too. Governments have assumed new powers to trace, track, and control. Some of them have already abused these powers, and it is entirely conceivable that they may never give them back.
To help us understand how the pandemic will permanently expand government powers—for good or for bad—Foreign Policy asked 10 leading thinkers from around the world to weigh in.—Stefan Theil, deputy editor
In the Post-Pandemic World, Big Brother Will Be Watching
By Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University
Governments around the world have assumed unprecedented control over their citizens’ daily lives in response to the coronavirus. Get ready for the new normal: Opportunism and fear will lead many governments to leave some of their newly acquired powers in place.Democracies and dictatorships alike have closed borders, imposed quarantines, shut down much of the economy, and implemented a variety of testing, tracing, and surveillance regimes in order to contain the infection. Those that acted fastest and adopted more stringent measures have been most successful. Leaders who denied, dissembled, and delayed are responsible for thousands of preventable deaths.
As infection rates decline and effective treatments become available, many countries will gradually relax most of the restrictions that are now in place. Some of the leaders who assumed emergency powers during the crisis may relinquish them. But get ready for the new normal: Political opportunism and fear of a new pandemic will lead many governments to leave some of their newly acquired powers in place. Expect to have your temperature taken or throat swabbed when you travel, and get used to having your phone observed, your picture taken, and your location tracked in many countries—with the use of that information not always restricted to matters of public health. In the post-coronavirus world, Big Brother will be watching.
The Pandemic Will Be a Boon for Good Government
By Alexandra Wrage, president of TRACE, founded to advance commercial transparency worldwide
First, the bad news: As the world pours trillions of dollars into stimulus programs and the medical sector, there will be endless opportunities for corruption and graft.Authoritarian governments will almost certainly face a backlash for concealing the scope of the problem.
The good news is that the inevitable stories of squandered resources and opaque dealings will ultimately turn the pandemic into a boon for good governance and increased accountability. From the Arab Spring and other movements, we know that societies have little patience with corruption when the population is suffering. This will be especially true for authoritarian governments, which will almost certainly face a backlash for concealing the scope of the problem and allowing officials to profit from the pandemic.
By comparison, governments that are responsive, data-driven, energetic, collaborative, and innovative will have proved superior to autocracies in delivering their societies from the coronavirus and its economic costs—leaving these governments strengthened and enjoying greater public trust in the future.
The Shape of Future Government Will Be Forged in Asia
By James Crabtree, associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and the author of The Billionaire Raj
The coronavirus pandemic is set to usher in a new era of bigger, more intrusive government in almost every advanced economy—but that change will be felt most dramatically in Asian nations that have long prided themselves on their relatively lean, minimal states.The pandemic will usher in a new era of bigger, more intrusive government in almost every advanced economy.
Most rich countries have moved quickly to turn on the spending taps, protecting their citizens and businesses with wage support schemes and cash payouts. That is true in the United States and Germany, but also in places like Singapore and Malaysia whose leaders have traditionally shied away from expensive fiscal expansions.
Future pandemic management will clearly require larger governments, too, as states rush to create expansive new tools of disease control, workplace management, and social surveillance in the hope of curbing future outbreaks in advance of a vaccine. Again, this is an area where Asian governments such as South Korea and Japan are likely to take the lead, given their mixture of high state capacity, technological knowhow, and relatively relaxed approach to privacy regulation.
In short, the era of big government is returning, but it will manifest itself in in ways that are quite different from the previous era of large states during the 1960s and 1970s—and much of its new shape will be forged not in the West, but in the East.
Industrial Policy Is Back
By Shannon K. O’Neil, senior fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead
This is likely just the start of a raft of public schemes to shape the production of goods and services deemed essential.As countries and companies struggle with the effects of COVID-19 on work and production, industrial policy is making a comeback. After decades of free-market momentum, governments in developed countries and emerging markets alike are embracing influential and long-lasting roles for themselves in the basic workings of their economies.
So far, this has involved increasing the management of trade by means of tariffs, licenses, quotas, product standards, and even outright export bans, particularly in food and medical supplies. It has also included billions in cash and other public benefits to companies to “bring home” manufacturing currently done abroad, such as the $2.3 billion Japan is now paying its companies to leave China.
With the World Trade Organization faltering, this is likely just the start of a raft of public subsidies, tax breaks, government purchases and stockpiling, buy-local requirements, and other schemes that many nations will put in place to shape the production of and access to a much wider array of goods and services deemed essential on national security grounds—now defined ever more broadly to include risk of disruption, overdependence on China, or the provision of jobs. To be sure, efforts to maintain and perhaps even expand free trade won’t end. But many of these negotiations will assume, condone, and sometimes even codify more, rather than less, direct government intervention in markets.
A New Age of Overbearing Government
By Robert D. Kaplan, author of 19 books on foreign affairs, including The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government’s Greatest Humanitarian, forthcoming in October
Like other life-transforming crises such as World War II, the coronavirus pandemic will likely ignite an urge for the protective embrace of big government.
After three decades of wealth creation on a historically unprecedented scale, we may now be on the cusp of an unprecedented period of wealth redistribution in the form of higher taxes to fund an expansion of health care and other services.We may be on the cusp of an unprecedented period of wealth redistribution.
The new kinds of surveillance of individuals with which some countries have successfully battled the pandemic may be a harbinger of the future. Privacy will increasingly become an issue in this new age of overbearing government. And so will government debt, which is already mushrooming out of all proportion. With the pandemic heating up the U.S.-China rivalry, calls for increased U.S. defense spending loom just over the horizon. How will we pay for it all? That will constitute the real debate.
A bigger government with a larger role for experts on public health and other subjects may be on its way, along with an intensified populist backlash against it. With the pandemic response in the United States and many other countries rather uncoordinated, there will be a tendency to strengthen the role of national governments in the post-coronavirus world. As a result, our lives may soon become more regulated than ever.
Some Governments Are Using This Crisis to Silence Critics
By Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch
A crisis need not lead to a permanent expansion of government powers—as long as the public remains vigilant.
In times of crisis, international human rights law allows all governments to temporarily limit certain rights—by means of travel restrictions and social distancing rules, for example—as long as the restrictions are strictly necessary, proportionate, and nondiscriminatory. Some governments, however, are trying to use the coronavirus pandemic to silence critics, expand surveillance, and entrench their rule. Whether they succeed will depend on whether the public understands that this would only increase the likelihood and severity of future public health disasters.A crisis need not lead to a permanent expansion of government powers—as long as the public remains vigilant.
Censorship restricts the free flow of information that is so essential in recognizing and effectively responding to health threats. Surveillance that fails to protect privacy discourages voluntary cooperation, a prerequisite for any successful public health initiative. Checks and balances on executive power—an independent legislature, judiciary, media, and civil society—ensure that governments serve the public’s welfare rather than their own political interests.
In short, the pandemic makes it clear that human rights should be upheld not only out of principle, but for powerful pragmatic reasons as well. If the public appreciates these reasons, sufficient pressure can be put on governments to prevent them from profiting from tragedy. If not, we may find ourselves in a world with both greater risk of disease and less regard for human rights.
Local Government Will Emerge Stronger After the Pandemic
By Robert Muggah, founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group, and the co-author of Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years
The coronavirus pandemic is exposing the quality of governments around the world. Many national leaders have failed the test—in contrast to the leaders of regions and cities, who have faced the pandemic head-on in their communities, showed greater competence, and earned the trust of their constituents. In the process, the virus is clarifying the division of powers between different levels of government and strengthening the hand of regions and cities.The virus is clarifying the division of powers between different levels of government—and strengthening the hand of regions and cities.
The current focus of governors and mayors is on saving lives, delivering essential services, maintaining law and order, and supporting economic recovery. But already, there are local leaders looking beyond the pandemic and actively reimagining life in their communities. Limited finances will favor cost-effective policies that generate multiple benefits—including better ways to provide health care to the most vulnerable and promoting greener economies. Future government services will be more digitalized, leaner, and more distributed.
Throughout history, infectious disease outbreaks have had a profound effect on local governance. The bubonic plague in the 14th century led to a rethinking of squalid urban spaces. Cholera outbreaks in the 19th century triggered massive urban redevelopment schemes and a dramatic buildout of sewage systems. The current coronavirus pandemic will likewise generate transformations in governance—from invasive surveillance technologies to track infections and enforce quarantines to major spending on health care to keep this and future diseases under control.
The Technocrats Will Get Their Hands Dirty
By Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics
Past macroeconomic policymaking focused on key variables: growth, inflation, unemployment, debt. This allowed central bankers and the like to tell themselves and their publics that they were only looking after the general welfare, not making distributional choices. The pandemic and its fallout, however, have compelled the economic technocrats to get their hands dirty with allocative decisions—which companies get bridge loans, which work arrangements get subsidized, which assets get purchased. This makes crisis policies both more effective and, as long as the loans and purchases are transparent, more accountable.Central banks and finance ministries will come out of this crisis with new forms of intervention.
It also removes the gloves that previously kept policymakers somewhat clean but with a looser grip on events. Central banks, finance ministries, and financial regulators will come out of this crisis with new forms of direct intervention, and some old ones unseen in decades and previously abandoned as distorting markets. But the global economy we live in today, where markets are recurrently disrupted by crises, requires strong hands, not laissez faire.
Lines between fiscal, financial, and monetary policy will be blurred to good effect—it was always disingenuous to pretend that there were strict divisions. Norms that previously prevented cooperation across government agencies will be replaced in response to the economic realities. Independence is nice to profess, but it is little comfort when you cannot deliver the desired outcome in splendid isolation.
After We Beat the Pandemic, We Must Cure Affluenza
By Kumi Naidoo, former secretary-general of Amnesty International and the co-founder of Africans Rising
We must make sure this rollback of civil rights does not become a permanent fixture of life in the post-coronavirus era.Shaping the post-pandemic world starts with the acknowledgment that we are all infected by affluenza: We consume too much and equate conspicuous consumption with success and happiness in life. Valuing economies purely on the basis of GDP has been recognized as a failure that must be addressed if we are to have a chance at creating a more equitable world.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that we need a radical rethink of the production and distribution of food and other essential goods for all of us in society to live in good health, peace, and prosperity. We should now be pushing for local, decentralized ownership and co-creation of social goods and services.
Governments are using the military-industrial complex to reduce citizens’ participation in the democratic processes, and we must make sure this rollback of civil rights does not become a permanent fixture of life in the post-coronavirus era.
The Public Good Requires Private Data
By Bruce Schneier, a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World
There’s been a fundamental battle in Western societies about the use of personal data, one that pits the individual’s right to privacy against the value of that data to all of us collectively. Until now, most of that discussion has focused on surveillance capitalism. For example, Google Maps shows us real-time traffic, but it does so by collecting location data from everyone using the service.It’s the same trade-off: Individually, private health data is very intimate, but it has enormous value to us all.
COVID-19 adds a new urgency to the debate and brings in new actors such as public health authorities and the medical sector. It’s not just about smartphone apps tracing contacts with infected people that are currently being rolled out by corporations and governments around the world. The medical community will seize the pandemic to boost its case for accessing detailed health data to perform all sorts of research studies. Public health authorities will push for more surveillance in order to get early warning of future pandemics. It’s the same trade-off. Individually, the data is very intimate. But collectively, it has enormous value to us all.
Resolving the debate means careful thinking about each specific case and a moral analysis of how the issues involved affect our core values. The answers for law enforcement, social networks, and medical data won’t be the same. As we move toward greater surveillance, we need to figure out how to get the best of both: how to design systems that make use of our data collectively to benefit society as a whole, while at the same time protecting people individually.
This article is part of Foreign Policy’s ongoing series about the world after the COVID-19 pandemic. Other installments include:
How the Global Order Will Be Changed Forever by John Allen, Nicholas Burns, Laurie Garrett, Richard N. Haass, G. John Ikenberry, Kishore Mahbubani, Shivshankar Menon, Robin Niblett, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Shannon K. O’Neil, Kori Schake, Stephen M. Walt
How the Economy Will Look After the Pandemic by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Robert J. Shiller, Gita Gopinath, Carmen M. Reinhart, Adam Posen, Eswar Prasad, Adam Tooze, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Kishore Mahbubani
How Urban Life Will Be Transformed by Richard Florida, Edward Glaeser, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Kiran Bedi, Thomas J. Campanella, Chan Heng Chee, Dan Doctoroff, Bruce Katz, Rebecca Katz, Joel Kotkin, Robert Muggah, Janette Sadik-Khan
The Future of Travel by James Fallows, Vivek Wadhwa, Pico Iyer, Rolf Potts, Elizabeth Becker, James Crabtree, Alexandre de Juniac
The Future of Entertainment, Culture, and Sports by Audrey Azoulay, Rahul Bhatia, Rick Cordella, Mark C. Hanson, Baltasar Kormakur, Jonathan Kuntz, David Clay Large, James S. Snyder
The Future of Schools and Universities by Arne Duncan, Andreas Schleicher, Mona Mourshed, Jennifer Nuzzo, Ludger Woessmann, Salvatore Babones, Davesh Kapur, Michael D. Smith, Dick Startz