Author: pstaniland

Paul Musgrave has a nice post here talking about his experience in Qatar with Chinese consumer products – cars, smartwatches, etc are increasingly common in global markets, even if we don’t necessarily see them in the US. In an area where we are seeing change in the US, I’ve noticed the rise of quality Chinese camera lenses, moving quickly from fairly simple lenses (often manual focus or with poor build quality) to increasingly sophisticated, high-quality lenses from manufacturers like Viltrox, Sirui, Thypoch, and Laowa, joining more basic options from TTArtisan, Yongnuo, and the like (plus the eccentric but cool Leica homages from Light Lens Lab). We may see something similar in my other area of obscure consumer knowledge, affordable mechanical watches. In both cases, Chinese manufacturers are now starting to take it the Japanese and Europeans on the lower end of the market.

Anyways, key point here:

“I want to be clear, because everyone on the Internet is illiterate: I’m not asserting right now that the Huawei ban as a good or bad thing. I am simply trying to point out that if you live in the United States and assume that you have a good vantage point on global consumer trends because you live in a rich country, you are dead wrong. Americans live in an increasingly walled-off market that is diverging from the trends and market shares of the rest of the world.

In particular, the United States is now insulated from Chinese goods, a gap that’s noticeable in cars and smart devices. (I’m leaving out telecoms infrastructure, the sort of thing that wonks like Neuberger notice, because I’m guessing most of us don’t order telecoms equipment often.)

The gap didn’t used to be so big. In 2015, for instance, China had no carmakers in the global top 10 and only one in the global top 15. In 2023, there were three PRC automakers in the global top 15, but only one in the top 10. Last year, there were four in the top 15 and two in the top 10 (with a third just a few units out of tenth place). In the United States, PRC car makers had a share of … zero percent.

There’s a smaller gap in smartphone makers, where Apple and Samsung dominate globally and in the USA, but once you look at the next manufacturers after the leaders you notice that names like Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme, and Huawei together constitute a sizable global share. And, yes, those are all Chinese brands.

Five or especially ten years ago, you used to be able to look at Chinese export statistics and dismiss them as exaggerated. For one thing, global trade statistics didn’t capture that the bulk of value of an iPhone, for instance, went to companies outside of China even though stats attributed the whole value of the phone to China (for a version of this observation that will leave you confused and frustrated, see this CFR explainer). But if you go to not-America, and especially not-Global North, you will really quickly notice that Chinese brands now play a huge role. China isn’t just the workshop of the world: it’s increasingly a home to major brands.”

An excellent article in Frontier Myanmar on the growing battles as the AA moves east:

“The AA offensive into Ayeyarwady followed the group’s capture of Gwa Township in late December. After seizing the southernmost part of Rakhine State, AA forces began pushing over the foothills of the Rakhine Yoma mountain range into the delta, thrusting east into Yegyi Township, and south into Pathein Township. 

The AA has since attacked numerous points along the Pathein-Monywa highway, a 750-kilometre two-lane road that runs north-south between the Rakhine Yoma and the west bank of the Ayeyarwady River. The military has responded by increasing security and restricting traffic flows, as it seeks to retain control of the critically important route. . . .

The highway is integral to the functioning of the military’s defence industries, most of which are on the west bank of the Ayeyarwady River in Bago and Magway, according to a January 2023 report by the Special Advisory Council-Myanmar. . . .

For almost 18 months after the coup, the AA avoided confronting the military, instead focusing on consolidating control in rural areas of Rakhine. Publicly, the group gave the impression that it had little interest in supporting the broader revolutionary movement against the regime. 

Quietly, however, the AA was providing training and weapons to resistance groups that had sprung up on the border of Rakhine. Each April, when the AA marks its anniversary, more and more resistance groups send it messages of appreciation, including several groups from Magway. . . .

While the AA’s resistance partners are effusive in their praise, the same cannot be said for some residents of western Ayeyarwady, Bago and Magway. Until the AA-led offensives, these areas had seen few clashes, largely insulating locals from the worst of the country’s civil war. “Sometimes we would hear reports of PDF groups targeting and assassinating military council officials, such as administrators or Pyusawhti members. But actual fighting only began recently,” said a Padaung resident.”

The US has regularly had to deal with allies and partners whose interests clash with it. I’ve previously highlighted the problem America faced with South Vietnamese (and Thai) interference in Cambodia in the late 1950s – at least some parts of the USG wanted GVN and the Thais to back off on their border disputes with Sihanouk’s Cambodia and links with anti-regime dissidents, but Saigon and Bangkok were crucial to other American interests.

Another version of this dilemma can be found in Taiwanese backing for anti-CCP forces in northern Burma/Myanmar in the 1950s. The Taiwanese pulled forces out under pressure in 1953-54, but got back to it in the late 1950s (also with Thai backing), much to American chagrin. This is a useful analytical paper by the State Department in February 1961 laying out the leverage problem and a possible way forward (which ultimately mostly worked):

This is a fairly grim, important assessment from the Kathmandu Post:

There could not have been a bigger contrast. As the country marked the 18th Republic Day last Thursday, pro-monarchy forces were banding together in Kathmandu for a rally to restore the Hindu kingdom. On the same day, the CPN-UML, the party of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and a solidly pro-republican outfit, took out its own rally, with Oli calling on his UML party cadres to ‘seize Kathmandu’. While both the gatherings were sparsely attended, the consensus was that the pro-monarchy rally was much bigger, with around 5,000 participants. The inability of the UML, the biggest elected communist force in the country, to summon even a couple of thousand protesters is perhaps a sign of its declining popularity. The common perception is that other big pro-republican parties like the Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) are also on a decline. The first Constituent Assembly elected in 2008 had formally abolished monarchy and established the new republican order. The assembly elected Ram Baran Yadav as the country’s first President, thereby ending the centuries-old tradition of the head of the state’s position being occupied by a hereditary monarch. Later, the 2015 national charter institutionalised the republic.

Yet people are increasingly disillusioned by the republican system and its political backers. A complaint one gets to often hear is that a single king is preferable to 10 entitled politicians with monarchical ambitions. For many Nepalis, this is more a sign of frustration with the new political class than it is a yearning for the return of monarchy. And yet, if the chief proponents of republicanism were capable of even a little reflection, they would ask why the monarchists have of late become so active. But these leaders, and Oli most notoriously, appear keener to demonise the pro-monarchy forces than to earn the public’s trust through their own action. The politicians of major parties argue that Nepal has achieved a lot under the new republican system, including greater representation of marginalised groups in state organs. This is true. But the country’s achievements under the republican order have also been undercut by our political leaders’ sense of entitlement. More and more people are (rightly) judging them based on what they do today, not the role they played in this or that revolution in the past. . . .

The growing (though still limited) popularity of the pro-monarchy forces also owes to people’s tendency to hanker after a ‘benign dictator’ who can seemingly solve all of the country’s problems. In this quest conveniently forgotten is the erstwhile monarchs’ egregious suppression of democratic rights. Again, a big argument in favour of the republic was that no one should have a divine right to state power. In this egalitarian spirit, the sons and daughters of common folks have since served as heads of state, while the heads of governments and chiefs of executive and legislative bodies are directly or indirectly elected through popular vote. This is something to be celebrated. But people are dismayed when they see the kind of unaccountability, exclusion and corruption they blamed on monarchy being repeated by their elected representatives under the republican order. As the implementers of the order are being discredited, the system they helped bring about too is being questioned. Thus the biggest threat to the republic are not the resurgent pro-monarchy forces. It is the republican forces that have forgotten their solemn pledge to the people.”