Completely hollow

RNZ this morning has a story about the moral void that is former Prime Minister John Key, in which he gloats about being a personal friend of Chinese tyrant Xi Jinping. Which just highlights what a smug, sociopathic arsehole Key is. In case anyone has forgotten, Xi is committing genocide in Xinjiang, while destroying any semblance of democracy in Hong Kong. Its one thing to shake hands and make nice with a genocidaire when you're Prime Minister, for the sake of peace and international relations and just not making a scene. But to keep it up and turn it into a personal relationship when its no longer a requirement of the job? To gloat about it? That takes someone completely devoid of morals or empathy, someone completely hollow. And we're well rid of him as Prime Minister.

Labour refuses to condemn genocide in Xinjiang

But they will condemn "possible severe human rights abuses".

What a pack of snivelling, grovelling chickenshits. Refusing to call the crime what it is for fear of offending the criminal. But maybe this is Labour's "kindness"? Fuck the poor. Fuck the kids. Fuck immigrants. But be kind to génocidaires.

But for all their grovelling, it is unlikely to be enough to satisfy prickly China, and we'll likely suffer those "trade consequences" anyway. Which makes you wonder why they're bothering. But I guess cowardice and a refusal to stand up for anything is just in their nature now.

The Greens worry about morality, Labour worries about trade

The Greens have done what was expected of them, and agreed to back ACT's motion on genocide in Xinjiang tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Labour Party is worrying about trade:

Trade Minister Damien O'Connor has warned a parliamentary debate on whether Beijing is committing genocide in Xinjiang would damage trade with China.

Parliamentarians were set to decide on Tuesday morning whether their parties would back a motion in Parliament to label the human rights abuses of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region of China as an act of "genocide".

Senior ministers in the Labour Government have cautioned the use of the genocide label outside the definition prescribed by the United Nations. National Party leader Judith Collins said the Government should release what information it had on abuses in Xinjiang to MPs, to allow them to decide.

“Clearly the Chinese Government wouldn't like something like that ... I have no doubt it would have some impact [with trade]. That's hardly rocket science,” O’Connor said to reporters, on the way into a Labour caucus meeting on Tuesday .

Its not rocket science, and yet its also irrelevant. Genocide is being committed in Xinjiang. Its a crime under international law, and just fundamentally immoral. When that is happening, worrying that you might offend someone by calling them on their crimes is fundamentally missing the point.

But isn't it so very Labour? Make a lot of noise about their principles ("kindness", "my generation's nuclear free moment", Norman Kirk and David Lange), and then when they are actually tested, turn into whining, snivelling cravens?

Will Labour condemn genocide in Xinjiang?

ACT is planning to introduce a motion to parliament condemning genocide in Xinjiang:

The ACT party will ask Parliament to debate a motion declaring China’s oppression of the Uyghur minority an act of “genocide”, a move that could compel the Labour Government to consider symbolically admonishing Beijing for the abuses.

The motion, similar to that passed in both the United Kingdom and Canadian parliaments, will ask MPs to vote on whether the human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China amount to genocide, and whether they should call upon the Government to “act to fulfil its obligation” under United Nations conventions.

The Chinese government's actions have been found to be genocidal by US think tanks and the US government. Human Rights Watch documents pervasive crimes against humanity, including enslavement, torture, mass incarceration, family separation and enforced disappearances, but they stop short of calling it "genocide" because they feel they cannot document the necessary intent. From my POV, its pretty clear: China is engaging in an ethnicity-based sterilisation campaign. And that makes it genocide.

Will a motion from the NZ parliament make a difference? As with the declaration of a climate emergency, that depends on whether we actually act on it. But I expect the government to vote for this (or make such a declaration itself), and to start imposing sanctions. Sadly, I expect them to make excuses, just as past governments have over this issue, or war, or pretty much anything. While Labour loves to celebrate its past of taking bold stands for an independent, moral foreign policy (e.g. over nuclear testing under Kirk, and the nuclear ban under Lange), those days are long gone.

(As for the Greens, I take it as a given they will support it, and if they don't, they're going to have some pretty serious explaining to do).

Putting the Five Eyes in their place

Earlier in the week Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta gave a speech on NZ-China relations, in which she said that while New Zealand would criticise China, we were "uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes" beyond being a security alliance. This has predictably drawn outrage from Australia and the UK, who are upset with our perceived lack of support for their agenda, but it seems perfectly reasonable. Our agenda is not their agenda, and their agenda is not really one New Zealand should be a part of. As someone who thinks that all the Five Eyes does is get us involved in other people's wars (and war crimes) while pushing domestic surveillance and tyranny, Mahuta's speech is welcome, and hopefully it means a reduction of their influence in future.

At the same time, we should remember that the Five Eyes has already metastasised well beyond its original signals intelligence focus. There's a whole cluster of bodies around it focused on military "interoperability" between the parties, aimed at making it easier to be vassals in America's wars. And since around 2009 it has grown again into other areas, primarily aimed at aligning domestic policy. There's a Five Country Conference on immigration, which is about increasing surveillance and shutting down freedom of movement internationally, and a Quintet of Attorneys-General which is about pushing "anti-terrorism" laws, domestic surveillance, internet censorship and banning encryption. New Zealand participates fully in both of these. If we are to take Mahuta's words seriously, that should stop. Or is she a liar?

Climate Change: China steps up

China has increased its climate change ambition, and set a target to be carbon-neutral by 2060:

China will reach carbon neutrality before 2060 and ensure its greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade, Xi Jinping has told the UN general assembly.

“China will scale up its intended nationally determined contributions [under the Paris climate agreement] by adopting more vigorous policies and measures,” the Chinese president said, calling for a “green recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.

The unexpectedly forthright commitment will give fresh impetus to the UN’s efforts to galvanise action on the climate crisis, which has been flagging as the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the world’s societies and economies this year.

Its a decade later than the 2050 date set by most industrialised countries (including New Zealand), but that's what "common but differentiated responsibilities" means. Historically, China was less industrialised, and polluted less; while they've pretty much caught up, an extra decade to sort out their mess recognises that.

And now the USA really has no excuse whatsoever not to adopt a climate neutrality target. If they refuse to, then they are the common enemy of all humanity, and we should treat them as such.

Climate Change: The CDM problem

Back in the Kyoto era, the international climate change regime included a Clean Development Mechanism to fund emissions reduction projects in developing nations. Essentially someone would certify that a project - e.g. building a windfarm, or installing energy-efficient lightbulbs - would reduce emissions over and above "business-as-usual". The project would then get internationally recognised carbon credits, which could be sold on the international market, making it more profitable.

The CDM saw all sorts of fraud - factories built solely to produce hugely damaging hydroflurocarbons, so they could get credits for destroying their product - but there's a story on Inside Climate News today about the CDM working properly, and how that has turned into a disaster as well. The short version: there are a bunch of chemical factories in China, which make adipic acid, a chemical feedstock. A byproduct of the manufacture of adipic acid is nitrous oxide, a long-lived, hugely-damaging greenhouse gas 300 times as strong as carbon dioxide (in NZ we mostly see this from cow-piss and fertiliser). But there was a cheap way of destroying those emissions and turning them into harmless nitrogen and oxygen. The equipment was installed, the emissions were destroyed, the factories got credits, the CDM works!

Except that there were side-effects. These factories earned so much money from CDM credits that it effectively distorted the global adipic acid market. Clean factories which were built not to produce nitrous oxide from the beginning were driven out of business. Then, when Russian and Ukranian fraud crashed the price of carbon credits, the Chinese factories turned off their removal technology and went back to polluting. The world got five years abatement, and then a clean(ish) industry where emissions were the exception became a dirty one where they were the norm. These factories are still polluting today, producing the emissions of one and a half New Zealands. And there's no regulatory or price mechanism to stop them.

The lesson here is that while the CDM and equivalents can fund a transition to cleaner tech, it needs to be backed up with regulation or permanent price mechanisms to ensure that that tech continues to be used. China didn't do that, and we are all victims of their poor policy.

No extradition to tyrannies

Last month, China imposed a new "national security law" on Hong Kong. The law imposes a penalty of life imprisonment for secession, subversion, and "colluding with foreign forces" - which basicly means peacefully advocating for democracy or independence. It has been used to crush peaceful protests and interpreted by the government as outlawing attempting to win democratic elections. In other words, it effectively ends Hong Kong's already limited democracy.

Oh, and its extraterritorial, applying to anyone in the world. People in New Zealand who support Hong Kong independence, or just the right of all peoples to peacefully and democraticly determine their futures, are now criminals in China. And the Chinese regime could seek their extradition, because we have an extradition treaty with Hong Kong (we don't have one with China, for obvious reasons: its a tyranny, with the death penalty and no legal protections for the accused. Hong Kong's courts were, until last month, independent).

So I'm glad to hear that that treaty has now been suspended. It is inappropriate to extradite to tyrannies. And thanks to China's actions, Hong Kong now falls into that category. Unfortunately, this means that people who have committed non-political crimes may escape justice. But that's the price you pay for being a tyranny, I guess.

China will no doubt get shitty about this and punish us. But that's the price of having principles. And democracy and the rule of law are not principles New Zealanders are generally willing to surrender.

Is democracy now illegal in Hong Kong?

Over the weekend half a million Hongkongers queued to vote in an opposition primary to choose candidates for upcoming Legislative Council elections. But the Chinese regime is now saying that its illegal.

Late on Monday Beijing’s top representatives in Hong Kong labelled the primaries “illegal” and accused organisers of colluding with foreign powers in a “serious provocation” of Hong Kong’s electoral system and to seize the private data of voters.

“The goal of organiser Benny Tai and the opposition camp is to seize the ruling power of Hong Kong and ... carry out a Hong Kong version of ‘colour revolution’,” said a spokesman for the Liaison Office, whose chief is also in charge of implementing the national security laws.

The statement came in support of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, who said that democrats coordinating to win a majority and veto the government’s budget could be against the anti-sedition laws, and would be be investigated.

“If this so-called ‘primary’ election’s purpose is to achieve the ultimate goal of delivering what they call a ‘35+’ [majority seats] with the objective of objecting to, resisting every policy initiative of the Hong Kong SAR government, then it may fall into the category of subverting the state power, which is now one of the four types of offences under the new national security law,” Lam told media late on Monday.

And translating that from TyrantSpeak, "seize the ruling power of Hong Kong" means "getting elected", while "subverting the state power" means "refusing to pass legislation".

Hong Kong's basic law still allows elections. Its Legislative Council is still allowed to pass (or refuse to pass) laws. The regime is saying that the opposition using legal means to peacefully and democraticly bring about change is a crime. But if that's the case, you have to wonder why they bother with the charade of elections at all.

China is committing genocide in Xinjiang

China is sterilising Uighur women in Xinjiang in order to suppress their population:

Chinese authorities are carrying out forced sterilisations of women in an apparent campaign to curb the growth of ethnic minority populations in the western Xinjiang region, according to research published on Monday.

The report, based on a combination of official regional data, policy documents and interviews with ethnic minority women, has prompted an international group of lawmakers to call for a United Nations investigation into China’s policies in the region.

Genocide is defined in international law in both the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

[Emphasis added]

China is not a party to the Rome Statute - it fears international law. But it is a party to the 1948 Convention, having assumed the signature of the former Republic of China. It - and members of its regime - are thus subject to international jurisdiction for this crime. And they need to be investigated and prosecuted for it.

New Fisk

If Chinese tanks take Hong Kong, who'll be surprised? Land grabs are happening everywhere – and we're all complicit

Standing up for kiwi values

Last week, the ongoing democracy protests in Hong Kong saw a pro-Hong Kong student assaulted at the University of Auckland. The Chinese consulate in Auckland followed this up with a press release "express[ing] its appreciation to the students for their spontaneous patriotism" - effectively condoning the assault and inciting further violence in New Zealand. Now, MFAT has told the Chinese government that this is not acceptable:

The Government has rebuked China over its recent comments and actions where it sought to suppress freedom of speech and voiced support for violent opposition to Hong Kong protestors in New Zealand.

On Monday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials met with Chinese Government representatives in New Zealand to reiterate that freedom of expression would be upheld and maintained, which included on university campuses.

This is a significant move for a Government that has largely spoken generally about foreign interference and about democratic principles, while avoiding specifically mentioning China’s behaviour in recent years under an emboldened president.

Good. In China they might beat people for peacefully expressing their views, but that is not how we do things in New Zealand, and trying to incite such actions goes well beyond diplomatic norms. Arguably, its a crime, which makes the Consul-General party to any further assaults. And if there are further assaults, we should hold Chinese diplomatic staff responsible for their incitement, declare them persona non-grata, and deport them.

Climate change: Uninhabitable

Last year we saw the first suggestion that climate change might make parts of our planet uninhabitable, with a combination of humidity and temperature making some places unsurvivable for more than a few hours. And today, we learn that one of the places where this is most likely to happen is the North China Plain:

The deadliest place on the planet for extreme future heatwaves will be the north China plain, one of the most densely populated regions in the world and the most important food-producing area in the huge nation.

New scientific research shows that humid heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike the area repeatedly towards the end of the century thanks to climate change, unless there are heavy cuts in carbon emissions.

[...]

The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, found fatal WBTs [Wet Bulb Temperatures] of 35C would strike the north China plain repeatedly between 2070 and 2100, unless carbon emissions are cut. Shanghai, for example, would exceed the fatal threshold about five times and the “extreme danger” WBTs would occur hundreds of times. Even if significant carbon cuts are made, the “extreme danger” WBT would be exceeded many times.

Or, to put it another way: climate change is going to cause death on an unimaginable scale, and a significant disruption to China's food supply, with all the flow-on effects that entails. And all of this by the end of the century.

China is already taking climate change seriously, and the threat to food will cause them to take it even more seriously, because they understand the link between food security and regime stability. Hopefully they'll do enough, and convince other large polluters to do enough too. Otherwise, the consequences will be dire.

China is breaking the Montreal Protocol

Last month we learned that there had been a sudden spike in the atmospheric concentration of the ozone-depleting chemical CFC-11, which suggested that someone was breaking the Montreal Protocol on a huge scale. The new CFC production / release was located somewhere in east Asia, which immediately suggested China was responsible. And yes, its them:

Interviews, documents and advertisements collected by The New York Times and independent investigators indicate that a major source — possibly the overwhelming one — is factories in China that have ignored a global ban and kept making or using the chemical, CFC-11, mostly to produce foam insulation for refrigerators and buildings.

“You had a choice: Choose the cheaper foam agent that’s not so good for the environment, or the expensive one that’s better for the environment,” said Zhang Wenbo, owner of a refrigerator factory here in Xingfu, in Shandong Province, where he and many other small-scale manufacturers said that until recently, they had used CFC-11 widely to make foam insulation.

“Of course, we chose the cheaper foam agent,” Mr. Zhang said during an interview in his office. “That’s how we survived.”

[...]

“They never told us until last year that it was damaging the atmosphere,” Mr. Zhang said. “Nobody came to check what we were using, so we thought it was O.K.”

Apparently there's an entire underground industry there of illegally producing CFC-11 to supply corrupt businessmen like Zhang who choose the cheaper foam over obeying the law and protecting the environment. Its just another example of that country's corrupt business culture, which puts profit ahead of everything else. Previously that culture has killed children. Now it is threatening the entire planet.

Climate change: China gets an ETS

China has introduced an emissions trading scheme for its electricity sector:

The world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China, has launched the world’s biggest ever mechanism to reduce carbon, in the form of an emissions trading system.

China’s top governmental bodies on Tuesday gave their approval to plans for a carbon trading system that will initially cover the country’s heavily polluting power generation plants, then expand to take in most of the economy.

[...]

Under the trading system, power plants will be issued with allowances to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. Plants that manage to undershoot their targets, by cleaning up and becoming more efficient, will be able to sell their excess permits to other generators, which will be expected to seek greater efficiency as an alternative to paying for their emissions.

China’s power sector is responsible for about 3.3billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually, making this potentially one of the world’s most important mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases.

So, at the minimum, this means that Chinese powerplant emissions will effectively be capped, and will no longer increase. The same will happen to other industrial sectors as the scheme expands. And hopefully, they will then gradually reduce the caps, driving emissions reductions and production efficiency. Unless of course its just cheaper to bribe officials to ignore emissions than it is to reduce them.

Toxic politics

So, apparently National MP Jian Yang is a Chinese spy. Or went to university in China. Or is Chinese. Or something. Apparently, this is something we should all Care Deeply About because National Security and Agent of Influence and Yellow Peril and so on. Except I can't, because raising it during an election campaign just makes it seem like a nasty smear of an MP based on their national origin, designed to whip up fear of the Other.

I have no idea if the allegations are true or not. I'd be uncomfortable if they were, in the same way I'd be uncomfortable if a former member of the CIA or MI6 were a member of our government, because our MP's should work for us, not for other people (also, spying is an inherently unethical profession, so anyone who has ever worked for a spy agency fails the sniff test). But the problem is that we can never know one way or another. Calling someone a spy is pretty much irrefutable. It's like calling someone a meat-suit-wearing demon or a witch: any evidence to the contrary can (and will) just be viewed as another layer of deception. There's just no way of ever overcoming it.

(And on the flip side: if the SIS called a press conference tonight and announced that they'd been investigating Yang for years and were planning on arresting and charging him with espionage, given their past record of paranoia, delusion, and outright fantasy, I don't think we could take that as any evidence whatsoever. If the SIS said the Prime Minister had once defrauded the NZ taxpayer of $32,000 by lying about where he lived, I'd have to check, because they probably just read it on the internet somewhere, put the worst possible slant on it, then presented it as irrefutable truth. In fact, they're probably going "Jian Yang is a spy" right now, based solely on these media reports...)

But while I'd be uncomfortable if the allegation was true, what makes me even more uncomfortable is that it is being made at all, and especially during an election campaign. It's a sort of toxic, paranoid politics seen in xenophobic places like Australia and the US who are obsessed with Foreign Enemies (you know, things NZ doesn't have, because we want to get along with everyone). We've been here before with Muldoon calling people "communists", smearing people as foreign agents based on their political beliefs. Here, we're invited to do it on the colour of someone's skin, with an implicit premise that any kiwi born in a foreign country (or at least, a foreign country blighted with a repressive government) is untrustworthy and Not A Real Kiwi. But if the cost of "national security" is accepting premises like that, then I'd rather disband NZDF, SIS, GCSB and the rest of their corrupting apparatus, and be done with the whole vile idea.

Climate change: China will ban petrol cars

One of the big worries around climate change is what would happen to the climate when China's 1.2 billion people start living like dirty Americans. The good news is that we're probably not going to have to find out, because China has decided to follow a cleaner path:

China is joining France and Britain in announcing plans to end sales of petrol and diesel cars.

China's industry ministry is developing a timetable to end production and sale of traditional fuel cars and will promote development of electric technology, state media on Sunday cited a Cabinet official as saying.

The reports gave no possible target date, but Beijing is stepping up pressure on automakers to accelerate development of electrics.

This is going to make a massive difference, by preventing an enormous future emissions source. But its not just about climate change: air pollution in parts of China is bad enough to cause social unrest, so its tackling that too.

Meanwhile, the US will probably treat its shitty, dirty, inefficient gas-guzzling cars the same way it treats firearms, and refuse to give them up no matter how insane the consequences of keeping them are. Because proper regulation to save the planet (and prevent superstorms like the one currently drowning Florida) would be against their twisted national pride in backwardness or something. But with the rest of the world acting, they may end up forced to change if their car companies want to still have export markets. Alternatively, they can end up as a technological as well as a social and environmental backwater.

Good news from China

New Zealand's climate change inventory is due out in May, and is likely to show greenhouse gas emissions rising yet again due to our absence of effective policy. Meanwhile, in China, they're eliminating coal:

A third consecutive year of falling coal consumption and a renewable energy spending spree has made China the new global leader on climate change, some environmental groups claim.

Figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics this year revealed a 4.7 per cent year-on-year fall in coal consumption in 2016.

Coal production dropped even more, and the latest figures confirm a three-year trend of declining coal use for the country's massive electricity grid.

If this keeps up, then China will peak and start decreasing its emissions - which is exactly what we need to beat this. And while they've set a target date of 2030 for that to happen, the risk of air pollution causing social unrest is likely to make it happen even earlier. Meanwhile in the US Republican legislators are trying to ban the technologies which will save us in order to protect the profits of their coal industry donors. Sadly, those people are likely to see China's action as creating more headroom for the coal industry to spew its poison into the air, rather than following China's lead and eliminating it.

No extraditions to China

For the past two years the Chinese regime has been trying to negotiate an extradition treaty with New Zealand. The barrier, of course, is human rights: defendants in China do not receive fair trials, may be tortured and forced to "confess", and may face the death penalty if convicted by their kangaroo courts. Even if not murdered by the state, China's prisons and "re-education camps" are appalling and constitute an ongoing human rights abuse. All of this provides a cast-iron reason to refuse any extradition.

But National really wants to toady to China, so their farmer-cronies can sell more milk. So for the past four and a half years, they've been trying to extradite a murder suspect. They've tried to get around the human rights issues by seeking and receiving assurances from the Chinese regime that the victim will receive a fair trial and will not be executed or tortured. But there's a problem: the High Court doesn't believe China's bullshit:

The Government has been ordered to reconsider a decision to extradite a New Zealand resident to China for questioning about a murder, due to fears he could be tortured or forced to make a confession.

[...]

In her ruling, Justice Jillian Mallon said Adams had followed a "thorough" and "considered" process when making her decision.

However, she had not explained why the Government could trust China's promises to protect Kim, when information about his treatment could only be shared between the two governments and not other people.

"In view of New Zealand's limited experience with assurances from [China] and the limited information from other countries about their experience with [China] honouring assurances, this may be inadequate to protect Mr Kim's rights."

Mallon said it wasn't clear whether promises to give Kim a fair trial would protect him from "ill-treatment" and the right to silence beforehand, given China's laws did not allow Kim to have a lawyer present for pre-trial interrogations.

Unbelieveably, the Minister is actually considering appealing. Which shows how badly National is willing to surrender fundamental human rights for milk sales.

The Minister should not appeal. The Chinese regime's "assurances" are not credible and mean nothing in practice. New Zealand should not extradite anyone to China until it has established a solid track record of fair trials and respect for human rights.

Climate change: Meanwhile in China...

Last month the government released its latest climate change inventory, showing that emissions were still rising. More importantly, it seemingly has no plan to stop them, preferrign to rely on outright fraud. Meanwhile in China they're meeting their emissions reduction targets years ahead of schedule...

The structure of the economy is changing rapidly, with services and private consumption – sectors with very low energy intensity in relative terms – growing while the heavy industry sectors responsible for most of the coal consumption and CO2 emissions are contracting.

As a result we are seeing falling carbon emissions — and more blue skies.

[...]

The speed of structural change appears, however, to have taken the central planning apparatus completely by surprise.

2020 energy targets that would have seemed quite meaningful or even ambitious a few years ago have now become redundant.

The share of coal in the total energy mix will fall below 63% already this year, having fallen one percentage point per year since 2010.

The current target for 2020 is 62%, meaning that this target will probably be met in 2016 or 2017 — up to 4 years in advance.

They're meeting all their new energy demand from renewables, while gradually eliminating coal use. And this trend is likely to get even stronger as the Chinese economy shifts. So why are we dragging our feet again?