"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

 

"While the share of people in extreme poverty has been falling since the 19th century, the total number didn’t begin to decline [at scale] until the late 20th century, when [communism collapsed and] rapid economic growth spread worldwide.

"Since then, poverty has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded."

~ post by Human Progress

"The end is nigh – not for the world, but for the climate industrial complex."

"The end is nigh – not for the world, but for the climate industrial complex. It has been a decline brought about mainly by the sheer reality of energy economics in the developing world.

"Published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the “World Energy Outlook 2025” reads like an obituary for the fantasy of global decarbonisation, acknowledging the undeniable truth that nations prioritising prosperity must unapologetically embrace coal, oil and natural gas.

"For years, the IEA and Western think tanks insisted that hydrocarbons were in structural decline, predicting a fatal drop in demand after 2030. Yet in the very document meant to track progress toward realising an absurd net-zero objective, the IEA concedes that demand for oil and natural gas will continue to grow well beyond 2035 and may not peak until 2050.

"The key insight of the IEA report is that emerging markets, excluding China, are becoming the primary drivers of growth in global energy consumption. This is a massive, structural shift. No longer will the trajectory of energy markets be dictated by the policies of Paris, Berlin or Washington but rather by the sovereign choices of nations whose citizens are desperate for better lives."

~ Vijay Jayaraj from his post 'IEA publishes climate-change era’s obituary'

Niall Ferguson: Osama bin Laden’s Posthumous Victory

"Comparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilisations. ...

"It is not just that the West has been successfully penetrated by an antagonistic civilisation that fundamentally rejects the fundamental division between religion and politics - church and state - that lies at the heart of both Christianity and Judaism. The West is also being geopolitically outmanoeuvred by 'the rest' in just the way Huntington foresaw*.

"Contrast the global order after 9/11 with the global order today. We have come a long way since NATO secretary-general George Robertson’s statement on September 11, 2001 - 'Our message to the people of the United States is . . . "We are with you." '

"In the past three years, Zbig Brzezinski’s worst-case scenario has come about. 'Potentially, the most dangerous scenario,' he wrote in 'The Grand Chessboard' (1997), would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by 'complementary grievances' Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that grand coalition has come into being, with North Korea as a fourth member. The 'Axis of Upheaval' (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) are now cooperating in military, economic and diplomatic ways. Moreover, the Trump administration’s combative treatment of American allies (the European Union, Japan, South Korea) and neutrals (Brazil, India, and Switzerland), not least with respect to trade policy, is alienating not only the traditionally nonaligned but also key partners.

'The upshot is that Israel is now virtually alone in fighting against the Islamists, so that even the United States wants plausible deniability when, as this week, the Israeli Air Force strikes the leadership of Hamas in the Qatari capital, Doha.

'The point is that the clash of civilisation continues. Now ask yourself: Who’s winning? 

...
"[C]omparing the world today with that of 24 years ago, I am tempted to say that bin Laden lost the war on terror but is winning the clash of civilisations. That’s not to say his particular brand of Salafist jihadism is winning; it can even be argued that it’s in decline. Bin Laden’s creed was always too uncompromising to form alliances of convenience. By contrast, the pro-Palestinian 'global intifada' is much more omnivorous, and can easily absorb the old left (Marxism and pan-Arabism) and the new (anti-globalism and wokeism). ...

"At the same time, Western civilisation today is so much more divided than it was 24 years ago. The public response to 10/7 illuminated the divisions. Whereas older voters generally remain more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, younger cohorts have swung the other way. Perhaps that’s because to Gen-Z, 9/11 is a faint memory - as distant as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy’s assassination were to my generation. But it’s also because the Islamists have done such a good job of co-opting the campus radicals, somehow overriding the cognitive dissonance in slogans such as “Queers for Palestine,” while at the same time tapping the antisemitism that still lurks on the far right. ...

"Walking the streets of New York this week, I felt old. To my children, my students, and my employees, 9/11 is not a memory. It is not even an historical fact. It is something people argue about on social media. ...

"It has taken me all these years to understand that 9/11 really was a clash of civilisations. And it has taken me until this week finally to face the reality that ours is losing."

~ Niall Ferguson from his post commemorating September 11, 2001: 'Osama bin Laden’s Posthumous Victory'

* Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntiongton, whose seminal essay on “The Clash of Civilizations” was published in 1993, aligning with the Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis, who had long argued that Islam was chronically unable to modernise.

Helen Clark & John Key: Politically and historically tone-deaf [UPDATE]

It's hard to overstate how politically and historically tone-deaf Helen Clark & John Key are for showing up at a Chinese Communist Party "victory" party, complete with the world's biggest dictators, celebrating the end of the Second World War.

Politically tone-deaf for all the many reasons rolled out by mainstream commentators: being responsible for cementing New Zealand's free-trade deal with China (for which much credit to both) doesn't require attending the biggest Asian military parade since the Japanese army rolled into Manchuria.

Far from any credit going to Mao Zedong's Communist Party for resisting that invasion, it was instead the CCP's salvation. It gave them their best chance of survival, which they grabbed with both hands.

Far from fighting a patriotic war, Mao's rabble instead withdrew into Yenan, coming back from near-extinction far from the war zone while lighting joss sticks and praying to Marx for the destruction of Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army at the hands of the Japanese.

So it wasn't "China" that fought off the Japanese. Because by and large the only "China" fighting there  was Chiang Kai-Shek's Republican army, forced to fight the Japanese invasion while Mao's forces largely sat on their hands hoping for the best—keeping their powder dry ready for the civil war they started after the Japanese surrender and the exhaustion of Chiang Kai-Shek's army. 

After resting up for several years while building its materiel and men, on the very day following Japanese surrender in China Mao's party headquarters issued orders to advance — taking over the country from north to south, finally seizing full control in 1949. (You can read all about the sorry tale in Anthony Kubek's brilliant How the Far East Was Lost.)

That neither Helen Clark nor John Key appeared to know anything about that history says very little for either, but their attendance at the revisionist parade would bring a quiet chuckle to Chinese organisers delivering the Big Lie to an international audience.

It would be even worse if Clark or Key did know the real history. That would be worse than a disgrace. It would be damning.

A brief history of Victory Day: 

• 1937-45: Kuomintang (KMT) exhausts itself fighting Imperial Japan. CCP "hides its strength bides its time." 
• 1945: Imperial Japan surrenders. 
• 1947: US cuts back on aid to KMT. 
• 1949: CCP, supported by Stalin, defeats an exhausted KMT. Captures China by Oct 1. KMT flees to Taiwan.

UPDATE: Historically tone-deaf to the CCP's stolen valour (the point of the cartoon above), and politically inept: just consider how the Financial Times, for example, summarises the event that Key and Clark endorsed. In short, it wasn't about free trade :

Chinese President Xi Jinping was selling his vision for a new world order this week. Hosting a regional security summit on Monday, Xi called on attendees including India’s Narendra Modi — Trump’s latest tariff target — and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to join China in leveraging their economic influence to challenge the west.

Bolstering that message was a massive military parade in Beijing yesterday ... to show off the latest weaponry in China’s arsenal. Xi was joined by fellow strongmen Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — the first time all three leaders have been in one place.

A 90-day delay to fix what Donald Trump started

 

"MAGA—genuinely, explain the 'win' to me. The claim is this deal 'brought China to the negotiating table.' But… they were already there. We’re not further ahead than we were 90 days ago. No resolution. No structural wins. Just a 145% tariff that tanked the markets—now walked back to 30% so we can 'keep talking.' ...

    "I’m asking a specific question: what was actually accomplished here? We’re in the exact same place we were 90 days ago. No structural reforms. No resolution. Just tariffs that were hiked, tanked markets, and then were walked back during joint talks both sides agreed to in Geneva. ...

"Nobody wanted the tariffs. They hurt consumers and businesses. Reducing them helps—but that’s not a victory. That’s just undoing damage we caused ourselves. 

    "And wasn’t the whole point of this to force companies to stop buying from China and make everything in America? So how exactly is that going to happen now? Seriously—I’m asking. Help me understand what was accomplished.

"I understand this wasn’t a unilateral move. The U.S. and China both sent delegations to Geneva and mutually agreed to lower tariffs for 90 days to de-escalate the trade war. 

    "There’s no evidence China begged us for relief—this was a joint decision to pause and keep talking. To me, it just looks like a temper tantrum that backfired. No strategy. No plan. Just retreat, then spin it as a win.

"Dialogue and negotiation were already happening before Trump’s 145% tariff stunt wrecked the markets. There’s no 'position of strength' here, he lit the fire, panicked when it backfired, then called the act of putting it out a victory. He doesn’t have more strength now… 

"And no one’s demanding a full framework in 2 days, we are just calling out the fact that nothing was achieved except reversing his own mess. That’s not strategy. That’s spin. ...

"A 'Win'? China didn’t “drop” export controls—they paused them for 90 days as part of a mutual de-escalation agreement. That’s not a concession, it’s a temporary reset so both sides can keep negotiating. Nothing structural changed. 

    "A 'Win'? Our tariffs on China were 12% Trump jacked them up to 145%, tanked the markets, then walked them back to 30%. That’s not a win—it’s called cleaning up your own mess and calling it progress. 

    "A 'Win'? China’s tariffs dropped to 10%? Sure—after we started a trade war that forced them to hike them in the first place. Most of their original tariffs ranged from 5–15% and averaged 7.2% on key sectors. You’re bragging about partially undoing damage Trump caused. This wasn’t strategy. It was a tantrum, a retreat, and now you’re dressing it up like 3D chess, dipshit."

~ tweeter Agent Self FBI on the 90-day pause on self-inflicted harm

REPOST: Trump's tariffs have had a chance, and already failed

People are stunned, confused, concerned. at what the Toddler-in-Chief is doing to world trade. They're asking: 

What's the president's end-game here? 

What's he after? 

Is it just a child seeking attention? 

Or is there a point to all this? 

One clue would be what was gained from the similar game-playing in his first term ...

You don't need to wait to see what will happen. Trump's tariffs have already had a chance, and they've failed, explains Timothy Taylor.

President Trump set off a wave of protectionist trade policies about seven years ago, back in 2018, and those policies were mostly extended and followed during President Biden’s term of office as well.

So we can already measure the results from Trump 1.0. And, who would have thought ...

[U]nsurprisingly to most economists, trade restrictions have done a poor job of producing the desired results. ..

Those "desired results" being those desired (or claimed to be desired) by Trump 1.0 and his protectionist advisors and cronies.

Apart from making tariff threats for geopolitical ends ("Give us Greenland or feel our trade wrath") America First's protectionists claimed there to be three specific economic benefits from their economic protectionism:

1. more US jobs in manufacturing;
2. reducing US economic ties with China; and
3. reducing the trade deficit.

Studying the results since Trump 1.0, it's clear that all three are dead on arrival.

Taking them one at a time.

1. American manufacturing employment has been declining ever since WWII. If anything however, it accelerated under Trump's tariffs. Why?

As [one economist] points out, there are several effects of trade barriers on US manufacturing jobs: a certain domestic industry is protected against competition, but higher prices in that industry can lead to problems for other domestic industries, and foreign countries may retaliate by shutting out US-produced exports. Put these together, and [this] suggests that the Trump tariffs of 2018 may even have led to a reduction in US manufacturing jobs.

2. Even while Americans were taxed to trade with China (which is what a tariff does) US trade with China has remained steady for more than a decade. "[S]even years of protectionism has not led to any meaningful drop in China’s value-added share." But it has led to Americans paying more for their goods.

3. The 'current account deficit' is the broadest measure of the trade deficit, explains Taylor. And was thus reduced by Trump's tariffs? Answer:

This measure also doesn’t change much in the years after the Great Recession, and then gets much worse [sic] during the pandemic. In short, seven years of protectionism hasn’t “fixed” the trade deficit, either.

Oops!

[T]he main point is simply that judged in terms of its own main justifications, the surge of protectionism since 2018 has not been achieving its goals.
    One can of course offer reasons for this failure. A common pattern in politics–and not just in trade issues–is that the failure of past policies to achieve their stated goals then becomes a new justification for more of the same. In this case, the failures of past protectionism become a reason for additional protectionism.
    As one example. after Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 2018, transforming it into US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), he said in his press conference: “Once approved by Congress, this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country, with the most advanced protections for workers ever developed.” Seven years later, Trump now apparently views the agreement that he renegotiated and lauded as a failure, and promises to dial up tariffs against Mexico and Canada–along with the rest of the world–to new heights.

Who would have thought it. Trump's not playing 4-d chess. He's playing 2-d Go-Fish. And losing.

"All of this helps to explain why a forcible annexation of Greenland would ultimately also harm U.S. interests [as well]."

"All of this helps to explain why a forcible annexation of Greenland would ultimately also harm U.S. interests. To trade in the most stable and powerful military alliance in modern history for control over a frigid and sparsely populated island—plus a place for Trump in the history books—is a bad deal for the American people. But that doesn’t mean that the Trump White House will see things the same way."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'They Really Just Might Invade Greenland'

'China's Trade Surpluses are Not a Source of Strength'

“'China believes it has a mandate to rule the world,' and that it is using trade balances to accomplish this. ... But, ultimately, Chinese trade surpluses [don’t] help ... '[Right up to] 1839 ... trade favoured the Chinese.' Little good it did them: China [eventually] experienced military humiliation, political and social disintegration, and an eventual descent into communism. ...
   "China’s 'strategy of generating massive trade surpluses [would] not have worked [when money was] backed by bullion ... the trade surpluses incurred by exporting more than its imports [would] have caused China’s currency to appreciate ... [making] Chinese manufactures more expensive and less attractive for outsourcing…'
   "'That never happened' ... because [without a gold standard] China [could devalue] its currency, harming its own people...' .... China’s currency manipulations have imposed costs on its citizens in terms of reduced real incomes. 

   "That isn’t all. The currency creation necessary to keep the yuan’s exchange rate with the dollar somewhat stable when new dollars are being produced at an impressive rate has helped fuel one of the biggest property bubbles in history [in both China and the US] .... [A] US deficit on the trade account must be offset with a surplus on the capital account ... [so] to maintain its export advantage was devious: it invested in the United States, 'buying US assets with US dollars ...The CCP today sits atop a $3 trillion hoard of assets, many of them American.' 

    "And, again, little good it did them. Holding significant stocks of depreciating US government debt isn’t, in fact, a source of strength. China cannot dump them to drive Federal borrowing costs up without tanking their value, which the Federal government is doing itself. As for those US assets, like farmland, it isn’t going anywhere, just like the buildings bought to much distress by the Japanese in the 1980s.
   "China’s government might well be running a trade surplus as a matter of policy. It may even be doing so with the aim of strengthening itself relative to geopolitical rivals like the United States. But ... it has tried this before [and] that same history indicates that the prospects for the government in Beijing are not good. Little good it did the Qing dynasty and little good will it do the Communist Party....

   "As Adam Smith observed in 'The Wealth of Nations,' mercantilism can enrich a few individuals but not entire countries – it detracts from, rather than adding to, the general welfare."

~ Composite quote from John Phelan, Kevin Roberts and Richard Fulmer from the post 'China's Trade Surpluses are Not a Source of Strength'

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history."

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

"Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero ...

"This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

"The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin—but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

"Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media. 

"This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. 

"I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. 

"Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. 

"Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military-service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. 

"Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. 

"And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin. 

"The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. 

"What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. 

"This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favour of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada; yours are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe; his is Taiwan and the China Sea. 

"At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called 'diplomatic realism.' 

"So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second-largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. 

"Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war. 

"The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands ...  

"It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books. ...

 

"Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. ... But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. 

"We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. 

"They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly ...  They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. ...

"Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. 

"Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical. 

"The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks. 

"But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads. 

"The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again. 

"Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. 

"The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. 

"Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

-Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025.

 

Why America (and New Zealand) Should Be on Ukraine's Side and Not Putin's Side, explained in 8 minutes.

 

'A Day of American Infamy' [update 2]

"In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world’s leading democratic powers on 'common principles' for a postwar world. ...
    "The Charter, and the alliance that came of it [including the supply of military equipment to Britain by Lend-Lease] is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.
    "If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.
    "Where do we go from here?"

~ Bret Stephens from his editorial 'A Day of American Infamy 

PICS: Bottom, war leader Winston Churchill at the White House 3 January 1942, wearing his air-raid suit (Imperial War Museum); top, a war leader at the White House with two thugs (Getty Images) 

UPDATE 1: 

"What does seem clear is that Trump is putting an end to the foreign policy the United States has pursued since the end of World War II. Indeed, his worldview seems to rest on two assumptions that run directly counter to the way in which, for all the serious differences between them, every president since 1945 has thought about America’s role in the world.
    
"The first is that Trump has a fundamentally zero-sum view of the world. America’s relationship with allies like Japan or the United Kingdom has been based on the assumption that both sides would benefit from the partnership. In particular, America would provide its allies with a security guarantee; in return, it would enjoy international stability, reap the benefits of free trade, and have huge sway over the rules governing the world order. Even if the United States might be a net contributor in the short run, expending more for its military budget than its partners, these alliances would over the long run serve the country’s 'enlightened self-interest.'

"Trump, by contrast, seems to believe that every deal has a winner and a loser; since American allies in Europe or East Asia are not unhappy about the current arrangements, this must mean that it is his nation that’s the sucker. ...

"The second assumption shaping Trump’s foreign policy is his belief that spheres of influence are the natural, and perhaps even the morally appropriate, way to organise international relations. ... [and] that maintaining an alliance structure that ignores spheres of influence is naive, needlessly costly, and fundamentally sentimental. ...

"Panama and Greenland are in America’s sphere of influence, and so Trump believes that he is entitled to make outrageous demands on them. Conversely, he seems to regard Ukraine as falling into Russia’s natural sphere of influence ...

"If Trump gets his way, the world will become much more transactional. America’s erstwhile allies in the western hemisphere will either need to learn to stand on their own feet or to pay financial tribute to their protector. Those which happen to be located in the vicinity of the world’s most powerful authoritarian countries will need to accommodate themselves to the diktat of Beijing or Moscow ..."

~ Yascha Mounk from his post 'Help Me Understand... The New World Order'

UPDATE 2:

"In light of the events of the past week [which includes the US siding with Russia and North Korea on a UN resolution condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and a three-ship Chinese naval circumnavigation of Australia], the Washington faction of NZ's Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade faces a new and major problem. ...

    "President Donald Trump’s affection for dictatorial regimes; the brutality of his transactional approach to international affairs; and his apparent repudiation of the 'rules-based international order' in favour of cold-eyed realpolitik; makes it difficult for America (and its increasingly apprehensive allies) to retain their footing on the moral high-ground.
    "It is difficult [therefore] to criticise the transactional elements of the relationships forged between China and the micro-states of the Pacific – the Cook Islands being only the latest in a succession of Chinese-initiated bilateral agreements negotiated in New Zealand’s 'back yard' – when the United States is demanding half of Ukraine’s rare earths in part-payment for the American munitions supplied to counter Russian aggression.
    "What those three Chinese warships have produced, however, is a much more compelling argument for aligning New Zealand’s defensive posture in general and its military procurement in particular with Australia’s. In the much colder and more brutal world that is fast emerging from the collapse of the 80-year-old Pax Americana, only the Australians can be relied upon to protect us – and only then if they are satisfied that the Kiwis are pulling their weight."

 ~Chris Trotter from his post 'What Are We Defending?'

"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool."

"To listen to protectionists, one would think tariffs are something of a miracle drug. Anything and everything can be solved by tariffs. Prices too low? Tariffs will raise ‘em. Prices too high? Tariffs will lower ‘em. Sprained knee? Just take two tariffs and call me in the morning. ...

"Take, for example, the argument that tariffs can be used as negotiation tools. The argument goes that you can threaten another nation with tariffs, impose the costs of the tariffs on them, and force them to bend to your will (whatever that will may be). ...

"[Yet] politicians face a different set of incentives. The major issue with many tariff supporters’ models is that they improperly model these incentives. This is a side effect of collectivist thinking; we must always remember that a 'nation' is a useful abstraction, but ultimately is made up of individuals who choose. A 'nation' never, ever chooses. And a government is not synonymous with the nation or the people located therein. ...

"Consequently, there is no incentive for the politicians to change their behaviour. It is for this reason we see tariffs consistently fail as a negotiation tool.

"Indeed, so-called trade sanctions and tariffs end up having the opposite effect. The American embargo of Cuba entrenched the Castro regime. Tariffs and embargoes on Iran failed to halt their nuclear program or weaken the regime. Putin still wages war in Ukraine despite (or because of?) trade sanctions. Perhaps most damningly, the Chinese government developed DeepSeek as a direct response to Trump’s original 'economic statecraft' against the Communist Party (continued by Biden).

"Adam Smith recognised this problem. In the 'Wealth of Nations' ... he notes that tariffs could be a potential tool to negotiate lower barriers in other nations. ...   Such negotiations could work, he states, but could also lead to war ...."

~ Jon Murphy from his post 'The Political Problem of Tariffs'

"Economic wars often turn into military wars."

"President Trump made it clear during his presidential campaign that tariffs will be a part of his policy-making. He has followed through on that. But tariffs are very risky business. Yes, you can get lucky with them being a political tool at times. 

    "But tariffs can also turn very bad, especially when egos get revved up. American history is littered with the use of tariffs going very badly. 

    "President Trump, and the American people, should always keep that in mind. 

    "Economic wars often turn into military wars. 

    "Given the bankrupt state of our nation, any type of war should be the furthest thing from our minds. It could end up being the last nail in the coffin. 

    "Best to focus intensely on cleaning our own house."

~ Ron Paul

 

Trump's tariffs have had a chance, and already failed

You don't need to wait to see what will happen. Trump's tariffs have already had a chance, and they've failed, explains Timothy Taylor.

President Trump set off a wave of protectionist trade policies about seven years ago, back in 2018, and those policies were mostly extended and followed during President Biden’s term of office as well.

So we can already measure the results from Trump 1.0. And, who would have thought ...

[U]nsurprisingly to most economists, trade restrictions have done a poor job of producing the desired results. ..

"The desired results" being those desired by Trump 1.0 and his protectionist advisors.

Apart from making tariff threats for geopolitical ends ("Give us Greenland or feel our trade wrath") America First's protectionists claimed there to be three specific economic benefits from their economic protectionism:

1. more US jobs in manufacturing;
2. reducing US economic ties with China; and
3. reducing the trade deficit.

Studying the results since Trump 1.0, it's clear that all three are dead on arrival.

Taking them one at a time.

1. American manufacturing employment has been declining ever since WWII. If anything however, it accelerated under Trump's tariffs. Why?

As [one economist] points out, there are several effects of trade barriers on US manufacturing jobs: a certain domestic industry is protected against competition, but higher prices in that industry can lead to problems for other domestic industries, and foreign countries may retaliate by shutting out US-produced exports. Put these together, and [this] suggests that the Trump tariffs of 2018 may even have led to a reduction in US manufacturing jobs.

2.  Even while Americans were taxed to trade with China (which is what a tariff does) US trade with China has remained steady for more than a decade. "[S]even years of protectionism has not led to any meaningful drop in China’s value-added share." But it has led to Americans paying more for their goods.

3. The 'current account deficit' is the broadest measure of the trade deficit, explains Taylor. And was thus reduced by Trump's tariffs? Answer:

This measure also doesn’t change much in the years after the Great Recession, and then gets much worse during the pandemic. In short, seven years of protectionism hasn’t “fixed” the trade deficit, either.

Oops! 

[T]he main point is simply that judged in terms of its own main justifications, the surge of protectionism since 2018 has not been achieving its goals.
    One can of course offer reasons for this failure. A common pattern in politics–and not just in trade issues–is that the failure of past policies to achieve their stated goals then becomes a new justification for more of the same. In this case, the failures of past protectionism become a reason for additional protectionism.
    As one example. after Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 2018, transforming it into US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), he said in his press conference: “Once approved by Congress, this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country, with the most advanced protections for workers ever developed.” Seven years later, Trump now apparently views the agreement that he renegotiated and lauded as a failure, and promises to dial up tariffs against Mexico and Canada–along with the rest of the world–to new heights.

Who would have thought it. Trump's not playing 4-d chess. He's playing 2-d Go-Fish. And losing.

But Hipkins never noticed

Accidental Prime Minister Chris Hipkins apparently never read history.

"There have been times when China has been more active in its history," said the child leader at the Labour rump's party conference. "But bear in mind," said the historically-challenged infant, "that China has never invaded any other country."

At this point I hand you over to Bob Edlin, who has a little list ...

Tibet attests to that being bollocks, although maybe it did not come into the curriculum at Waterloo Primary School, Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley Memorial College (later known as Petone College), where Hipkins was educated before he completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Politics and Criminology at Victoria University,
    In 1950, the newly established Chinese Communist Party launched an invasion of Tibet to incorporate it into the People’s Republic of China. ... 'By seizing Tibet, China gained access to a multitude of rich natural resources and easier access to the strategically significant Indian border.' ....
    'In February 1979, Chinese forces launched a surprise invasion of northern Vietnam ...' '... Diplomatic relations between the two countries were not fully restored until 1991.
    Then there’s tiny Bhutan .... [where] China Is Quietly Expanding Its Land Grabs in the Himalayas.... just its latest move to ... challenge its regional rival India in the Himalayas. ... Constant skirmishing on the border dates back to the Sino-Indian Border War in 1962.
    Then there’s Taiwan, [never ever a part of historical China and] the subject of constant threats from Beijing that it will one day take control of the country ... by force if necessary. ... China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to those fears.

One could also mention Korea, in modern times (1950), which China invaded to maintain the hermit kingdom in its tyrannical solitude.  And in olden times (1636), when it invaded to maintain a vassal state.

And Mongolia, invaded in 1919 to crush dissent.

At this point we can see that China has torched, turned over and touched up nearly every single nation on its border. Yet according to Hipkins Junior, "China has never invaded any other country."

Waterloo Primary School, Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley Memorial College would all like a refund on their history teachers.

"Rather than searching in Marx's texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible."

Cartoon by Etta Hulme

"The [destructive aftermaths of the] Soviet Union, Maoist China, Kim's North Korea, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Chavez and Maduro's Venezuela, and countless other deadly authoritarian regimes and revolutions— all carried out in Marx's name, and celebrated by Marxists at their inception — are casually dismissed and dissociated from Marx's theories ... They are not 'true socialism' or 'true Marxism,' we are told, and it falls to the next socialist regime to implement Marx 'the right way.'
    "A succinct and representative example of this tendency among modern intellectuals may be seen in political theorist Matthew McManus's account of Marx's reputation over time

'But of course the most substantial objection came from Karl Marx, whose epochal critique of political economy remains in some respects the climax of the modernist project...Marxism became the chief theoretical outlook for most of the major socialist movements and parties by the end of the 19th century, with many achieving important reforms. But its reputation was seriously tarnished by the totalitarian movements in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, which appealed to Marx's legacy to advance tyranny while taking serious liberties with his thought. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989, many thought socialisms' days were numbered, though it has since enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as the inequalities and vulgarities of neoliberalism [sic] became increasingly scrutinised.'

"Note that McManus errs in assigning high status to Marx's intellectual following in the late nineteenth century, which, as we have seen, he did not possess at any point in his life or for many decades thereafter. Neither does McManus substantiate his efforts to differentiate the humanitarian abuses of Marx's twentieth century followers from Marx's own revolutionary theorising. 

    "One is reminded of the quip of French philosopher Michel Foucault, who stated in a rare moment of clarity: 'Rather than searching in [Marx's] texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible, what might even now continue to justify it, and what makes it intolerable truth still accepted today.' 'The Gulag question,' Foucault continued, 'must be posed not in terms of error (reduction of the problem to one of theory) but in terms of reality'."

~ Phil Magness, from recent writing

To AUKUS, or not to AUKUS?

"Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. [See for instance the NOT PC posts 'Free Trade Is the Path to Peace & Prosperity' and 'The Horsemen of non-apocalypse']
    "On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war.
    "Examples include the federation of the American states into the USA following a confederation after customs conflict between Maryland and Virginia; the European Coal and Steel Community (which evolved into the EU) tying up the French and Germany industries after three painful wars; ASEAN which was started after the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya ended; recently India has improved its physical and trade links with its neighbouring China and Pakistan.
    "Alas, economic relations between China and the US have deteriorated. That this occurred under both President Trump and President Biden suggests a structural tension arising from jostling over their places in the world. ...
     "One can explain the First World War and the follow-up Second World War as a consequence of Germany catching up in economic size to Britain and trying to find a comparable place in the world. (Neither noticed that the US was already bigger.) We may be grateful that moving from one global hegemon, Britain, to a second, the US, did not involve conflict between the two (although the two world wars accelerated the transfer from a weakened Britain). 
    "It is unlikely that China is going to be the next global hegemon. Rather, we are moving to a multipolar world where there is none. There is a plausible economic model which predicts that world economic output, and hence power, is moving to where the populations are – the situation before British industrialisation. It occurs because of the ease with which technology and capital can transfer between countries.
    "That does not mean that Chinese productivity will catch up to the American level – not in this century anyway. Factors like the resource base and social organisation mute the economics. ...
    "So behind today’s incipient economic warfare and military machinations we face a multipolar world whose shape is uncertain. ... The challenge for the world, then, is how to get from the current world order, in which the US acts the hegemon, to a multipolar world in which the US is but one of four or so big economies. Full multipolarity may be less than a quarter of a century away.
    "The US does not seem to see the issue this way. It is largely preoccupied with the short-term task of trying to maintain its current hegemony in a world whose order it sees as not too different from the immediate post-war one. ....
    "New Zealand may have little influence over the evolving world order. In so far as we have, we should be putting our effort in assisting it to move towards the reality of multipolarity. Ultimately New Zealand is having to balance its short-term interests against its long-term ones. I am not sure our friends always understand this."

~ Brian Easton from hist post 'Trading Towards A Multipolar World'

"The prospective return of Trump's deplorable gang of trade advisers to the top trade policy positions in Washington ought to scare the living bejesus out of everyone."

"Donald Trump has had a lifelong adherence to the most primitive form of trade protectionism imaginable. That is, the utterly mistaken presumption that trade deficits are mainly a result of cheating by nefarious foreigners and/or stupid trade deals foisted on the economy by Washington Swamp creatures.
    "Thus, according to the Donald America will not start winning economically again until a tough businessman/negotiator like himself brings the hammer down on cheaters and slams the gates on imports by tariffs and any other means necessary ...
    "What is worse ... [his crackpot advisers] see trade is way too important to be left to the whims of the free market. ... Thus, if you are an exporter [adviser Peter] Navarro insists that you get state approval for what you may or may not sell to the Chinese. And if you are an importer, you might as well get ready to pay a stiff tariff upcharge for the audacity of sourcing the lowest cost of global supply rather than buying from red-blooded, albeit higher cost, American vendors. ....
    "To be sure, there is a giant problem with the $20 trillion of cumulative current account deficits (2024 $) the US has racked up continuously since the mid-1970s. But those massive, chronic trade shortfalls and the devastating off-shoring of domestic industry which had accompanied them are the result of bad money — not bad trade deals, bad actors abroad, or the free market at work. ...
    "Stated differently, when you look for the culprit behind the collapse of America’s trade account and industrial base ... its wasn’t the Chicoms over there or incompetent trade policy officials over here. It was the money printers domiciled ten blocks from the White House. ...
   
"[N]o more insidious notion is at loose in the beltway [in this context] than the Trade Nanny predicate which underlies the Donald’s revived attacks on China’s alleged technology theft and 'economic aggression.' ... [W]hat actually unfolded [under the Trump presidency] was the very opposite of a traditional trade skirmish. Instead, it was an unprecedented act of Washington-led economic aggression against another sovereign state that happens to have unfortunately saddled itself with a statist economic model that we call the Red Ponzi. ... [T]he attack of Navarro and the Donald on China was an attack on the entire warp and woof of its jerry-built $15 trillion red capitalist economy. ...

"[T]he prospective return of [Trump's deplorable gang of trade advisers] to the top trade policy positions in Washington ought to scare the living bejesus out of everyone. ... Navarro is the most dangerous economic ignoramus and fanatical nationalist ever to hold high office in the White House; and Lighthizer is a career swamp creature and the walking embodiment of Washington’s crony capitalist system. ...
    "[A] return to the Trumpian Trade Wars is [not] a secondary matter.

    "What is actually brewing is an epic upheaval of international commerce that will bury Washington even deeper in the Swamp and batter the living standards of Flyover America in trade-based inflation that will make the recent fly-up on Joe Biden’s watch look like a walk in the park."

~ David Stockman from his post 'The Folly Of The Trumpian Trade Wars'

 

Bring back the slow-news days ...

"A comedian asked today if his audience was getting bored from all these slow-news days. Let’s consider the tumult:
    "Over the weekend, President Joe Biden did what he said he would not do and quit his race for a second term as US president. He also endorsed Kamala Harris for the bid. Overnight millions and millions of mega-donor and celebrity donations poured in for Kamala and the Democrats now that their favorite fossil was out of the race. ..
    "Suddenly, former President Trump has a real campaign to run against veritable competition, and reports started emerging that his campaign people are now doubting hopeful VP Vance is up to the new job because he was supposedly picked to electrify the MAGA faithful, but with the new fight for independent voters, the race becomes a different beast. ... Democrats have swung from all-out despair to surging hope over the course of a weekend. ...
    "That graze by a bullet and deaths caused by the assassination attempt have finally united a divided congress to the task of dividing the Secret Service from its leader. ...
  
"This isn’t just the most tumultuous year of political chaos in the US, geopolitics has ramped up in the last couple of months to suddenly outweigh inflation as a concern for markets ... [with] the prospect of an increasingly fractious Europe, isolationist America and a slowdown in the pulse of world trade. ... after a roaring rally, money is rushing out of potential flashpoints - such as Taiwan's stock market - and into havens such as gold, which hit an all-time high last week….
    "'All of Trump's policies are likely to be inflationary - be it tax cuts, immigration, or re-shoring, and hence dollar bearish...so the [US] dollar is likely to depreciate against gold,' ...
    "China’s growth is slowing even more, resulting in rescue packages from the Chinese government. So is growth under Bidenomics. ...
    "At the same time more than $100 billion has been wiped from the market value of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in less than a week after Trump sounded equivocal about his commitment to Taiwan's protection and chip industry. ...
    "Things are also only getting hotter in the Middle East ... Israel bombing Yemen with F-15s in reprisal to a drone attack in Israel by the Houthis ... Russia [moving] ships out of Crimean ports due to decimation of its Black Sea navy by the Ukraine ... Meanwhile, in the West, the Paris Olympics look like a police state, while Europe is gearing up for more war with the introduction of military conscription … In fact, Paris now hosts the largest military camp inside of Paris since WWII so that soldiers (not police) can reach any part of the Paris Olympics, which are scattered around the city, in thirty minutes. ...
    "And, of course, on Friday we had the biggest global internet crash in history. ... part of the mad mix of events that have happened all around the world in less than one week’s time. ..."

~ David Haggith from his post 'The Year of Chaos Roars!'

The Martyrdom of Jimmy Lai [updated]

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong's greatest freedom advocate is the political hero whose plight you didn't know about. As Jon Miltmore explains in this Guest Post, in his quest to save Hong Kong’s rapidly fading freedom, Jimmy Lai has sacrificed his own. The entrepreneur and media mogul currently sits in a Chinese prison, charged with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

Jimmy Lai addresses the camera in a still from the documentary: “Anything I have is this place.” 2023.

The Martyrdom of Jimmy Lai

by Jon Miltimore

When Jimmy Lai was a child working the streets of Canton (Guangzhou), China, in the 1950s, he received a bar of chocolate as a tip for carrying a man’s bags at a train station.

Poor and hungry, he immediately bit into the treat. He had never tasted anything like it, and he asked the traveller where he was from.

“Hong Kong,” the man replied.

Lai had never heard of Hong Kong, but he knew it was a place he wanted to be. So a few years later, at age 12, he stowed away on a fishing vessel and escaped mainland China for Hong Kong.

Lai immediately realised there was something different about the territory. He had never seen so much food or wealth before, and he quickly found work at a factory. Over several years, he worked, saved, and invested, and eventually as a young man Lai scraped up enough money to purchase a bankrupt clothing company and started manufacturing sweaters.

Lai’s entrepreneurship paid off. He prospered and diversified. He bought properties in Canada, and in the early 1980s launched the popular clothing brand Giordano (a name he picked up from a napkin from a New York City pizza joint). He later started newspapers, including the popular Next Magazine, which he founded in 1990, and the Apple Daily, which for years was the only pro-democracy daily newspaper printed in Chinese.

By 2008, Lai had become a billionaire and was on Forbes’s list of the wealthiest entrepreneurs. But at some point in his rags-to-riches story, Lai realised that wealth was not his ultimate goal.

Preserving the freedom of Hong Kong had become his life’s mission. “Without freedom, we have nothing,” Lai has often said.

In his quest to save Hong Kong’s rapidly fading freedom, however, Lai has sacrificed his own. The entrepreneur and media mogul currently sits in a Chinese prison, charged with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

Lai’s story was the subject of a 2023 documentary produced by the Acton Institute. How it will end remains unclear.

A Brief History of Hong Kong

To understand the political persecution of Jimmy Lai, one must first understand the history of Hong Kong.

In 1898, following years of colonial rule under the British Empire that began after the First Opium War (1839–1842), China leased Hong Kong to Great Britain for 99 years. For the next century, the small peninsula and islands that jutted into the South China Sea operated under British rule.

This changed in 1997, when the United Kingdom’s claim on the territory came to an end. But during its 156 years under British rule, Hong Kong developed a distinctly Western character. Property rights, free speech, and free markets helped turn Hong Kong into one of the most prosperous places on earth, a land far wealthier than neighbouring Communist China.

“In 1987, Hong Kong…had a per capita income of $8,260,” author Robert A. Peterson observed prior to the handover. “Just a few miles away, across the Sham Chun River — in Communist China — people of the same racial stock, living in the same subtropical climate on shores washed by the same South China Sea, were able to produce a per capita income of only $300.”

As Jimmy Lai would say, the British didn’t give Hong Kong democracy. But they did give Hong Kongers valuable institutions of freedom: free markets, the rule of law, free speech, and other human rights. And much like West Germany became a destination for immigrants seeking to flee the yoke of socialism following World War II, Hong Kong became a destination for Chinese immigrants following Mao’s takeover of China in 1949.

From Freedom to Authoritarianism

Because of how diametrically different these two systems were, there was always some uncertainty about what would happen to Hong Kong when the British handed it back over to China. Technically, the agreement made Hong Kong a special administrative region (SAR) of China, which came with certain guarantees, including a democratically-elected legislative system, constitutional rights, and the promise of Hong Kong autonomy for the next 50 years.

The idea was “One country, two systems,” a concept that stretched back to the 1980s, that granted Hong Kong would its own economic and administrative system separate from Communist China. But even as the ink on the handover agreement dried, China began to encroach on Hong Kong’s autonomy. And in 2012, following the rise of Xi Jinping, Communist officials began to secretly circulate a policy known as Document No. 9 (the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere), which said the Chinese government must wage war against “Western values,” including free speech, media freedom, and judicial independence.

This did not bode well for Hong Kongers.

“Hong Kong’s bad luck was that it exemplifies all those Western values in a Chinese form,” said Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong.

As if to demonstrate its commitment to this war on “Western values,” the government in Beijing soon arrested Gao Yu, a female journalist who was accused of publishing Document No. 9. She was found guilty in a secret trial and sentenced to seven years in prison for “leaking state secrets” to a Hong Kong media organization.

The crackdown on freedom in Hong Kong continued, eventually prompting the Umbrella Protests of 2014. Further protests in 2019–2020 were sparked by a bill that would allow Beijing to extradite to mainland China Hong Kongers accused of crimes.

The state’s violent crackdown on the 2019 protests garnered international attention and spawned the National Security Law that criminalized what the Chinese government defined as secession, subversion, and collusion. This included “subversive” messages suggesting that Hong Kong is a separate system from China that should be ruled democratically.

“The law was really about ensuring Beijing’s authority over Hong Kong and making sure it wasn’t subject to the same threats it was during the 2019 protests,” Michael Cunningham, a Research Fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center who lived in mainland China when the 2019 protests erupted, told me.

‘Hong Kong Is Dying’

As Hong Kong slipped slowly into authoritarianism, Jimmy Lai did something extraordinary: he continued to resist Beijing.

Wealthy and politically connected, Lai could have continued to speak out against Communist tyranny from London or New York or some other city with strong free speech protections. But he refused to abandon his fellow Hong Kongers, and remained committed to peaceful resistance.

“If we use violence, we’ll lose the moral authority we have,” Lai said.

While many Hong Kongers were scrubbing their online profiles of pro-democracy sentiments, Lai and journalists at the Chinese-language Apple Daily continued to publish and speak out against the Chinese government’s encroachments.

“He did all this knowing he was in the crosshairs,” said Cunningham.

Amid the global chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party saw its opportunity to take down the face of Hong Kong’s freedom movement.

On August 10, 2020, Hong Kong Police raided the headquarters of the Apple Daily. Some 200 officers wearing masks searched the offices of the popular pro-democracy tabloid, collecting journalists’ documents, and arresting several people, including Lai.

Lai, whose arrest was live-streamed, was frog-marched out of the office by police in plain clothes. He was charged with colluding with a foreign country and then released on bail. Several months later, he was arrested again.

Even with Lai behind bars, the Apple Daily continued to print, and the newspapers flew off newsstands. In response, Beijing seized the newspaper’s funds (and Lai’s), and on June 23, 2021, the Apple Dailyprinted its last newspaper.

There’s no question that Lai’s imprisonment and the collapse of a free press in Hong Kong mark a turning point in a territory once noteworthy for its prosperity and commitment to classical liberalism.

“It feels like Hong Kong is dying,” one anonymous Hong Kong resident says in the documentary.

To make matters worse, many of the leaders who might help lead resistance against Beijing have fled, since they are now targets of the state.

“I was wanted by the Hong Kong court for joining the June 4 candlelight vigil,” said Sunny Cheung, a Hong Kong activist now in exile.

Cheung has no intention of returning. If found guilty, he would face a maximum sentence of life in prison for attending that vigil.

“This isn’t a legal system in any sense that we understand,” said David Alton, a member of the British House of Lords and human rights advocate, “because it’s a foregone conclusion you’re going to be convicted.”

‘The Rest of His Life in Prison’?

Jimmy Lai’s future is unknown.

The 76-year-old freedom fighter remains in solitary confinement in a Chinese prison after receiving a nearly 6-year sentence in December 2022 on various charges. But he is still awaiting trial on charges related to China’s National Security Law, and a Hong Kong appellate court recently upheld a ban that prevents his British counsel from participating in the trial.

As I watched the Acton Institute’s incredible documentary on Lai — first once and then a second time — I felt a wave of emotions. And the same thought kept hitting me. How hadn’t I heard about this before?

Lai’s life and dedication to freedom is one of the most powerful stories I’ve watched in years, yet somehow it was a story I knew nothing about. The lack of international outcry over Lai’s political persecution is something I can’t get my mind around, and I’m not the only one. Many of Lai’s supporters expressed similar sentiments.

“Why haven’t the United Kingdom and the United States tabled resolutions in the United Nations?” asked Alton.

George Weigel, a senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, was also perplexed.

“It’s a great puzzle to me why the Vatican [for example], which is constantly emphasising the rule of law in international affairs, is not more vocally concerned,” said Weigel.

The lack of attention Lai’s imprisonment is receiving is troubling. Lai’s words make it clear that he is risking his life to save Hong Kong based at least in part on his belief that others care as much about liberty as he does, and they would be spurred to action by his persecution.

“[Hong Kong] gave me freedom. I owe freedom my life,” says Lai. “The more pressure I have, the greater the voice I should have so the world will pay notice.”

Lai has done his part. After suffering years of intimidation, state spies, and attacks that included a Molotov cocktail thrown at his home, he is currently a political prisoner in a Chinese cell. But the world is not doing its part. We are not doing our part.

No groundswell movement demanding freedom for Jimmy has managed to take hold. No social media campaign has gone viral. As someone who follows the news and works for an organisation dedicated to economic freedom, I feel embarrassed and convicted that I knew so little of Lai, who in 2021 received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Cunningham told me that Lai’s imprisonment is receiving more international attention than it is in the US, but there are some doubts about what exactly the international community can do regarding China’s Lai’s imprisonment and encroachment on the rule of law in Hong Kong.

“They need to be held to account for violating the British sign-over agreement,” he said.

Whatever political leverage or groundswell movement that can bemustered to influence China must be found quickly. If not, Jimmy Lai could end up paying the ultimate price for the West’s ambivalence.

“He may very well spend the rest of his life in prison,” says Benedict Rogers, the founder of Hong Kong Watch.

‘The Book Changed My Life’

Anyone who watches the documentary on Lai’s life is likely to find himself asking a question: Would I have the courage to do what Jimmy Lai is doing?

The answer is likely no, if we’re being honest. This is not so much an indictment of our own courage, but the recognition that the world is witnessing martyr-like bravery from Lai, who became a Christian in 1997.

The Bible was not the only book that shaped Lai, however. He credits another: F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

“The book changed my life,” Lai says of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s magnum opus.

This should perhaps come as no surprise. In a sense, Lai didn’t just read The Road to Serfdom. He lived it.

As a child, Lai saw the poverty and cruelty of the Communist system that took everything from his once-wealthy father after Mao claimed power in October 1949. Lai was able to flee that system and prosper in a free-market economy, only to watch, in a cruel twist, the CCP usher in its policies of serfdom into his adopted land.

This, I think, is what fortified Lai with such rare courage. He isn’t just fighting for freedom in an abstract sense. He’s fighting for freedom in the most practical of senses, the freedom that allows a poor child in China to reach a nearby land of opportunity — just like Lai did when he escaped to Hong Kong aboard a fishing boat after tasting a bar of chocolate.

“By saving Hong Kong, you are saving the value of the free world,” Lai says.

Lai doesn’t just believe these words are true. He knows them to be true. This is why he’s risking his life for freedom. And his remarkable life shows that heroes still walk among us.

The world right now isn’t paying attention to his sacrifice. But I believe it will. And CCP officials who think they can lock Jimmy Lai up and throw away the key would do well to remember a bit of wisdom the Apple Daily shared in its final printing:

“When an apple is buried beneath the soil, its seeds will 

become a tree filled with bigger and more beautiful apples.”

* * * * * 

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org and a Senior Writer at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER). 

His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.

His article first appeared at the AIER blog.

UPDATE: For updates on Jimmy Lai's plight you can follow the Support Jimmy Lai website and the Support Jimmy Lai #FreeJimmyLai account on Twitter, run by his son Sebastian, who has not seen his father for over 3 years. Asked by interviewer Christian Amanpour  Sebastien Lai , 

what he would say if he could see him tomorrow, Sebastien replies: "That I'm immensely proud of him."