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https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/chinas-attempt-to-avoid-the-american-tech-monopoly-trap/

One of the great paradoxes of recent economic history is how little the information technology sector has contributed to overall productivity. Economist Raicho Bojilov examined total factor productivity across the major industrial economies from the 1970s to the present and observed:

Somewhat surprisingly, we do not witness, even with a lag, a major pickup in the productivity growth in other industries that are directly and indirectly connected to the IT industry. One would expect that if the IT industry were the engine of the US economy that generates the products, technologies, and techniques of the future, then the other industries would even­tually experience a jump in productivity rates to levels comparable to those of the IT industry. Thus, one may wonder why aggregate productivity in the US has not grown much more in accordance with the innovations and major productivity gains that have been achieved in the IT industry.1

Bojilov adds that “the annual rates of indigenous innovation in the US and the UK have made only a partial recovery during the IT revolution: while higher than the rates for the period 1970–1990, they are still lower relative to the rates witnessed in the postwar years until the late 1960s.”

Why have IT improvements failed to radiate through the broader economy? There are many possible explanations, but the transformation of once-disruptive tech companies into rent-seeking monopolies is surely an important one. The monopolization of information technology arises from the nature of the technology itself: so-called network effects make it convenient to have one venue on which to post political comments and cat pictures, one provider of office software that everyone uses, one giant internet retail marketplace, and so forth. But the fact that technological monopolies have their origin in network effects rather than in the nefarious manipulation of mar­kets does not eliminate the potential for abuse.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17403/china-belt-road-forced-labor

Almost all the workers had been deceptively recruited with promises of certain wages and legal work visas. Instead, their passports were confiscated right after they disembarked the plane, leaving them unable to leave unless they paid a heavy fine to the Chinese employer…. They were locked up in poor living and working conditions on the work premises, which were guarded by security guards…. They suffered excessive work hours of up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with no holiday allowance… Many workers were injured during work with no access to medical treatment…. After a worker from a Chinese mining company in Indonesia was diagnosed positive for Covid-19 in November 2020, he was put in isolation in an empty dormitory room for more than 20 days without any medical treatment. Later other workers found his dead body.

The Chinese embassy also seems to have actively worked to suppress… complaints…. “Several workers said they tried to call the Chinese Embassy to report that their passports were detained by their employing company. The embassy’s reply was that it had no right to intervene and the workers were told to file a report at the local police station. However, these workers, cannot even get out of the gate of the work site, and they also face language barriers. It is quite unrealistic for them to call the local police. — “Silent Victims of Labor Trafficking: China’s Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic”, China Labor Watch, April 30, 2021.

Forced labor exists in two distinct forms in China. One form is modern slavery, not directly sanctioned by the state, as exemplified by the BRI workers mentioned above. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, “on any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China…. This estimate does not include figures on organ trafficking.”

The other form of forced labor is systematic and legal under China’s penal system. Communist China has used forced labor and labor camps, citing “reeducation”, since the 1950s. In 2013, the CCP claimed that it was abolishing the practice, only to reinstate it again some years later to “reeducate” Uyghurs. A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, published in September 2020, found that the Chinese government had built nearly 400 detention camps in Xinjiang.

“Tens of thousands of former detainees are likely to have been transferred into forced labour programmes…. They contaminate the supply chains of hundreds of multinational companies with forced labour, and they implicate not only Chinese authorities, but much of the rest of the world in a concerted campaign of ethnic replacement that credible reports suggest may well amount to genocide”. — Nathan Ruser, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The Guardian, September 24, 2020.

[A] much less known fact is that China also subjects Tibetans to forced labor on a large and organized scale. In the first seven months of 2020, China drove more than half a million Tibetans into forced labor according to a 2020 report, “Xinjiang’s System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet,” by the Jamestown Foundation.

“The entire Belt and Road initiative is based on forced labor,” according to Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch. “Chinese authorities want the Belt and Road projects for political gain and need to use these workers.”

A new report, “Silent Victims of Labor Trafficking: China’s Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic” by China Labor Watch, published on April 30, details the conditions of some of those overseas Chinese workers, who are building China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the world. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forms a crucial part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign policy and is a key tool in China’s ambition to become a global superpower.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-navy-heads-to-the-americas-11622586717?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Reports that two Iranian frigates may be steaming into the Atlantic toward Venezuela ought to concentrate minds in the Biden Administration. So much for Iranian goodwill amid President Biden’s determination to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.

The vessels’ destination isn’t clear, and they could still turn back. But when asked by reporters on Monday about U.S. monitoring of the frigates, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said “Iran has constant presence in international waters, is entitled to this right on the basis of international law, and can be present in international waters.” He added: “I warn that nobody should make a miscalculation. Those who live in glass houses must be cautious.”

Iran’s navy isn’t the U.S. Sixth Fleet, but the entry of warships into Caribbean waters would be a notable provocation. If it sails into these waters without resistance, a precedent will be set for adversarial navies operating in the region. Don’t be surprised if Russia and China decide to join the party in the future.

Iran is a long-time Cuban ally, and since Hugo Chávez turned Venezuela into a dictatorship 20 years ago, Tehran has nurtured an ever-closer relationship with Caracas. The two regimes have engaged in joint defense ventures in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, and Venezuela is known to supply fake identities to Iranian operatives to move around the region.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-whos-dictators-11622586882?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Biden rejoined the World Health Organization as one of his first official acts, and his Administration has vowed to “strengthen and reform” it. That effort isn’t going well, as last week’s World Health Assembly shows.

The annual WHO confab started badly as China succeeded in blocking Taiwan’s participation—and embarrassing the U.S. in the process. The island democracy, which hoped to participate as an observer, has one of the world’s best records combatting Covid-19 and could spread its lessons to the world.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that there is “no reasonable justification for Taiwan’s continued exclusion from this forum,” and the G-7 nations supported its participation. But China, which tries to block Taiwan from all international institutions, prevailed over the Western democracies.

Then on Friday the World Health Assembly voted to appoint Syria and Belarus to WHO’s executive board, which sets the governing body’s agenda and implements its policies. Video of the vote shows it proceeding with neither debate nor objections.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/06/01/irans-stock-of-enriched-uranium-16-times-higher-than-limit-set-out-in-jcpa/

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks currently underway in Vienna.

Iran holds a quantity of low enriched uranium nearly 16 times higher than the limit authorized in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to a report Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After Washington pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018 under former US President Donald Trump and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions against Tehran, Iran began breaching the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities as of 2019.

One of its more recent breaches, enriching uranium to 60%, a big step towards weapons-grade from the 20% it had previously reached and the deal’s 3.67% limit, continued. The IAEA estimated that Iran had produced 2.4 kg of uranium enriched to that level and 62.8 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Iran’s production of experimental quantities of uranium metal, which is prohibited under the deal and has prompted protests by Western powers because of its potential use in the core of nuclear weapons, also continued. Iran produced 2.42 kg, the IAEA reported, up from 3.6 grams three months ago.

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, the report by the UN nuclear watchdog showed, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks that are currently underway in Vienna.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17420/eu-china-investment-treaty

The lopsided agreement, which ostensibly aims to level the economic and financial playing field by providing European companies with improved access to the Chinese market, actually allows China to continue to restrict investment opportunities for European companies in many strategic sectors. The deal also lacks meaningful enforcement mechanisms for issues that the EU claims to care about, such as climate change and human rights, including forced labor.

“China has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use its economic power as a strategic weapon. By deepening their economic reliance on China — without coordinating their policy with fellow democracies — European nations are increasing their vulnerability to pressure from Beijing. That is a remarkably shortsighted decision to make.” — Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, January 4, 2021.

China contends that its sanctions are tit for tat — morally equivalent retaliation — in response to those imposed by Western countries. In fact, the European sanctions are for crimes against humanity, whereas the Chinese sanctions seek to silence European critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

“China cannot and will not be tamed. It will not adhere to the rule of law. It will not give up on its uncouth wolf warriors. It will not change its debt trap diplomacy. It will not end the weaponization of political systems, in this case the fault lines of democracies, to smother democracies. If it is counter sanctions today, it will be intellectual property theft tomorrow, and 5G data surveillance of free citizens next. Under Xi Jinping, China has become a hydra-headed monster.” — Gautam Chikermane, Indian foreign affairs expert, Observer Research Foundation, May 21, 2021.

“While halting the ratification of CAI is good, scrapping CAI altogether would be better.” — Andreas Fulda, German China scholar, May 20, 2021.

The European Parliament has halted ratification of a controversial investment treaty with China until Beijing lifts sanctions on European lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move, a rare display of fortitude by an institution notorious for vacillation, reflects a hardening stance in Europe toward the Chinese Communist Party.

The ratification freeze, backed by all of the major groupings in the European Parliament, is significant for several reasons: it represents a turning point in EU-China relations, in that Beijing no longer calls the shots; it marks a shift in the balance of power in favor of the European Parliament at the expense of the European Commission; and it signifies the beginning of the end of Merkelism, and ideology which, among other things, consistently prioritized commercial interests over human rights concerns, whether in China, Russia or Iran.