The second anniversary of the pandemic crisis: The world is being restructured
▍ The epidemic is a touchstone
Under the crisis of the epidemic, the most difficult thing to deal with is the relationship between anti-epidemic and economic development. The epidemic is like a touchstone, testing the values and governance capabilities of different countries.
In order to avoid the outbreak of the epidemic crisis and even the Great Depression, the United States and Europe have promoted large-scale fiscal expansion, and the central bank's interest rate has fallen to near zero, which is far more powerful than the 2008 financial crisis era. This enhanced version of Keynesian crisis governance contained the outcome of the Great Depression and stopped the economic train from falling off a cliff. In 2020, the global economy shrank by 4.4%, and by the fourth quarter of 2021, the global economy is back on the growth track, and about half of the G20 economies are expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels in GDP.
However, the negative effects of the economy are also obvious: the amount of debt brought about by the frenzied currency, the inflation rate of 5 to 7% in European and American countries, the looming pattern of stagflation in the next few years, the bubble accumulated by the irrational prosperity of the capital market, and the financial crisis in third world countries that may result from the spillover of the Fed's debt reduction effect... At the same time, in order to maintain economic growth, Europe and the United States have paid a heavy human price. In two years, the number of infections in the United States has reached more than 60 million, with more than 840,000 deaths, and more than 93 million infections in Europe, with more than 1.6 million deaths. This tragic cost of life and health is somehow translated into economic growth figures, let alone the profound damage caused by this large-scale death to the psyche of a generation and to society. In the face of the pandemic, before the dilemma of epidemic prevention and economy, most Western countries failed the exam. The damage to the Western world from such an outcome will be profound and long-term.
▍ Under the epidemic situation, the risk of "large diversion" has reappeared
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nearly 10% (770 million) of the world's population will suffer from hunger in 2020, an increase of 118 million people compared to 2019. Another data suggests that in 2020, 18.5% of the world's population (1.4 billion people) will be in a moderate level of food insecurity. In other words, nearly 30% of the world's population (2.2 billion people) will face a food security crisis in 2020, an increase of 330 million in one year. According to the United Nations, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed some 100 million people into extreme poverty in 2020, with more than 500 million people living below the expanded poverty line and 200 million unemployed.
Before the outbreak of the crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that 110 emerging and developing economies would converge with advanced economies between 2020 and 2022. Now the IMF estimates that 58 of these countries will lose momentum. IMF President Georgieva warned of a "great divergence" of the world.
What is a great divergence? It means that under the continuous blow of crises such as the epidemic crisis and the climate change crisis, emerging economies and developing countries will lose the economic development achievements of the past decade or so, lose their development momentum, and return to the development gap and development gap that have existed with developed countries for hundreds of years. This means that global instability, resource competition and the risk of war will increase.
▍ The liberal international order continues to be under pressure
Under the crisis of the epidemic, the pressure on the liberal international order is increasing. Populism, nationalism, nationalism and other currents continue to proliferate, constantly undermining the already shaky foundation of order in the liberal world.
In the United States, the rise to power of the Biden administration marked in part a return to the liberal order. Biden's claim that "America is back" is a cry to the confidence of liberal international partners. The Biden administration has always faced both international and domestic battlefields. Internationally, he has faced the strategic competition between China and Russia, and the two countries have been ideologically classified by the United States as so-called "authoritarian countries", constantly challenging the liberal universal order advocated by the United States. Domestically, he has always faced the shadow of Trump, who has left office but is everywhere, fierce party strife, torn public opinion and the unintended consequences of the 2022 midterm elections. All of these domestic challenges come from anti-liberal forces.
On December 9, 2021, the United States held the "World Democracy Summit", bringing together more than 100 countries and organizations to participate in this international conference with distinct ideological overtones. On the one hand, this conference has the intention of isolating China and Russia, and on the other hand, the United States, as the "beacon nation" of liberal democracy, has responded vigorously to the worldwide wave of "anti-democracy" and defended the american value of liberal democracy. However, the effectiveness of the summit has been greatly reduced, and few viewers around the world have followed the summit, completely failing to achieve Biden's desire to cheer up the liberal international order.
▍ The epidemic crisis and sino-US strategic competition
During the covid-19 crisis, sino-US strategic competition has been intensifying. Although both China and the United States have the demand and desire to control competition and control the intensity of competition, Sino-US relations have always been in a downward inertia channel. According to a strategy report by the Brookings Institution, "strategic and persistent competition should be recognized as the foundation of contemporary Sino-US relations, and excessive disappointment should not be caused by extravagant hopes of unrealistic friendly cooperation." In the long run, there are some strategic and structural contradictions in Sino-US relations, and the epidemic has only made these contradictions more acute and intense.
First, Biden advocated U.S. diplomacy to serve the interests of the American middle class. From the perspective of economic development, the core of the interests of the middle class in the United States is to maintain the continuous expansion of the United States in high-tech, high-end manufacturing, electronic information and other industries. This kind of economic and diplomatic strategy is precisely in conflict with the strategic needs of China's industrial upgrading and promoting the transition of the economy from the low-end to the middle and high-end. If China's development wants to create a large number of middle-income people and more high-value jobs, it must upgrade to the middle and high end of the industrial chain and move towards higher value-added fields. This is bound to challenge the interests of U.S. industrial development and the interests of the American middle class. At present, the complementary economic structure of China and the United States lies in the mutual demand between the middle and low end of China and the middle and high end of the United States. But as long as China is not satisfied with the low-end position, it will definitely move the cheese of the United States. This contradiction is structural and a zero-sum game, which will inevitably lead to strategic containment by the United States.
Second, the United States has aggressively attacked and denigrated China's Belt and Road Initiative on the grounds of debt traps, corruption, and environmental damage, and promoted the "Rebuild a Better World" plan to compete with China. The reason why the United States cannot tolerate the "Belt and Road" is that its essence lies in maintaining the global resource system that has been formed by the Western Front, led by the United States. Because of its world hegemony, the United States has constructed a global resource system conducive to its economic virtuous circle through military, economic, legal, ideological and other means, and has controlled basic strategic resources such as minerals, oil, non-ferrous metals, and gold within its own sphere of influence through various direct and indirect means, which is the real foundation of US hegemony. However, the "Belt and Road" undermined the "feng shui" of the United States, and the "Belt and Road" promoted development by helping a large number of developing countries build infrastructure, thereby promoting the industrialization process of the countries along the route, which is bound to reorganize the world's resource system and inevitably shake the foundation of the economic order of the United States.
Finally, there is a clash of values and development models between China and the United States. American values and the American model are the core links in maintaining U.S. interests, and their role is even greater than that of the United States military and finance. With the decline of American power, the American liberal value system and the American model have also begun to encounter challenges, the biggest of which comes from the Chinese road and the Chinese model, which provides a new possibility and new choice for those countries that want to adhere to independent development. Although China has no intention of replacing the American model, for Americans accustomed to monotheistic thinking, if the Chinese model is not completely deconstructed, American values will inevitably suffer a terrible subversion.
For a considerable period of time in the future, China's power will continue to rise, while the United States will continue to adapt to and suppress the process of China's rise, and the world will appear as a "dual pattern" in which the competition between the two powers and the cooperation between the two powers are constantly staged.
— February 2022 New Edition —
▍ Extraterritorial
Can "Epidemic Economics" Revive the American Dream?
Yu Chunhai, Zhang Kaili
Looking at the current U.S. economy, we must see both the strength of the recovery and the problems in the recovery process. Thinking about the macroeconomic policy of the United States, we must not only clarify the basic logic of policy choices under the epidemic, but also analyze the inevitability of policy positioning from short-term epidemic relief to long-term structural adjustment.
"Connectivity Wars"?
Solve it
▍ Focus
The Beijing Winter Olympics in the era of great changes
Xiuyuan Foundation
In the face of a multitude of crises, in July 2021, the IOC officially introduced the new Olympic motto of "faster, higher, stronger and more united". Humanity really needs a "more united" Olympic Games, and a "more united" world.
▍ Cover Topic: The New Middle Ground of the Post-American Century
With the relative decline of its own strength and the sharpening of domestic problems, the United States' military presence and strategic investment around the world are shrinking. "After the tide of maritime hegemony recedes, large and small tidal flats and wetlands are revealed", and a vast "new middle zone" is emerging. In these regions, the order previously maintained by hegemony has loosened and cracked, and some medium-sized countries have become more active, actively leading and advancing the new regional integration agenda while restarting or accelerating the exploration of modernization paths based on their own cultural traditions. In the future, we will face a world that is more polar and more uncertain.
The "New Middle Ground" After Hegemony
Conj
The United States and the Taliban: Who Can Transform Afghanistan?
Qian Xuemei
Why can Iran withstand the extreme pressure of the United States?
Wu Bingbing
"Army-Led" Return to the Middle East: A Response to a New Crisis of State-Building
Duan Kyushu
▍ Concept
"Democrakis" and "Democradion"
Wang Shaoguang
These Europeans living in the 16th and 18th centuries looked at the traditional Chinese political system, and they all had a bit of a sense of looking left and right, and they couldn't figure it out. What they have in common is that it doesn't seem entirely accurate to refer to traditional Chinese politics in terms of monarchy or autocracy. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, some Westerners who knew more about Traditional Chinese Culture and History, or who had received Western education, even believed that traditional Chinese politics should actually be classified as "democratic."
▍Topic: Labor in the Digital Age
The Urgent Need: The "Deskilling" of the Gig Economy in the Service Sector
Chen Long, Zhao Lei
In the process of promoting unmanned distribution, on the one hand, some of the skills originally owned by blue-collar workers have quietly faded in the automation process, and on the other hand, the new skills required by the intelligent trend cannot be automatically cultivated from the existing work. Considering the huge number of workers in the new format and the rapid development of automation, intelligence and unmanned, the "reskilling" of the new format labor group is also an urgent task.
Platforms are not employers – a new way of thinking to resolve the paradox of platform labor
permission
Business, Market or Society? How the law responds to technical systems
Hu Ling
▍ Historical view
Failed political succession – the thirty years of the collapse of the Soviet Union
Fang Ning
Looking back 30 years later, the disorder and institutionalization of political succession was the political root cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of this problem, the possibility and opportunity to solve problems that could have been resolved through adjustment and reform have been completely lost.
▍ Rethinking the American model
The American System: The Rise and Differentiation of a Manufacturing Empire
Yan Peng
Manufacturing is the industrial basis for the rise of the United States as the hegemony of the world system, and it is also the material basis on which the United States can still maintain its hegemony. However, after becoming a hegemon, the United States chose a global political and economic system arrangement that conformed to the interests of hegemony, which promoted the accelerated spread of the American system in the process of globalization, but eroded the foundation of the Us manufacturing empire itself, so that the relatively complete empire of the system had a partial deindustrialization differentiation.
How the United States falls into the cyclical law of financialization
Sun Xi, He Xijie, Li Ming
The process of financialization over the past four decades has been a phased manifestation of the interaction between industrial capital and financial capital during the explosion of information and communication technology (ICT), which has profoundly shaped all aspects from the political system to corporate behavior and even social common sense, and has led to debt crises, employment crises, financial bubbles and cyclical financial crises in developed countries; as ICT matures, to fully realize its economic value, it is necessary to reshape the relationship between industrial capital and financial capital through necessary institutional reconstruction. Establish the dominant position of industrial capital.
▍ Academic reviews
The American "frontier" and its closure
Zheng Fan
This article is a new issue of "Culture Horizontal" in February 2022 (No. 1), welcome to share personally, media reprint please contact this public number.