Vatican surrender threatens Chinese faithful

Military strategist Sun Tzu once said the supreme art of war is to subdue your enemy without fighting.

The warrior would have approved of the tactics used by Beijing in its decades-long confrontation with the Vatican over the appointment of Christian bishops in China.

No actual conflict was involved but victory has been gained and the spoils of war are being reaped from the thousands of Christian churches across the country.

Pope Francis essentially hoisted the white flag when he agreed to accept Government approved bishops he had no role in appointing.

In a statement, the Vatican said the accord was “not political but pastoral” and hoped it would lead to the full communion of all Chinese Catholics.

Instead, the atheist Chinese leadership has launched a crackdown against its Christian community, burning crosses, withdrawing bibles from sale, banning children from churches and demanding images of President Xi Jinping and former Community Party Chairman Mao Zedong join those of Christ on or near altars.

Many genuine Christian leaders in China feel they have been betrayed.

The founder of the Christian human rights organisation, ChinaAid, Bob Fu, said millions of persecuted Christians in China had been let down by their Pope, while Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong said the deal only empowered the authorities in Beijing.

“The Government can tell Catholics: ‘Obey us. We are in agreement with your Pope’,” the Cardinal said.

Much was hoped of Francis when he succeeded to the papacy in 2013 with a reformist agenda aimed at bringing the clergy in closer touch with their flocks.

However, in recent times his reign has been dogged by a seemingly endless round of sex abuse scandals and cover-ups that reach into the highest levels of the Vatican. Francis himself has been widely criticised for not doing enough to make amends.

Faced with a crisis of confidence in the Church and his own waning popularity, Francis might have decided that rapprochement with China would remove one other troubling problem from his plate.

Initial outcomes suggest this may have been the biggest miscalculation of his papacy.   

Other faiths have already suffered under the Xi regime. Islamic crescents and domes have been stripped from mosques and many thousands of China’s Uighur Muslim community are reported to be in‘re-education’ camps.

Similar crackdowns have been launched against Buddhist temples in Tibet.

The size of the underground Christian community, and the support for it voiced by powerful interests in the West, has given Beijing pause in the past. Now it could easily become open season.

In an amazing admission, Francis said his deal will cause suffering among orthodox Christians in China.

“It’s true, they will suffer. There is always suffering in an agreement,” he said.

For the sake of those Christians his agreement has placed in the firing line, it is to be hoped the suffering will not be severe.

Cynicism draining democracy’s lifeblood

When former United States President Barack Obama spoke to students at the University of Illinois a few days ago, the last third of his hour-long address was devoted to a single message – vote.

“Don’t tell me your vote doesn’t matter,” he said at one point in his address. “Don’t boo, vote.”

“Vote not just for Senators and Representative, but for Mayors and Sheriffs and State Legislators.”

“You’ve got to vote”, repeated over and over.

Australians, with a compulsory voting system that goes back for almost a century, have to remind themselves that in most other countries of the world, not voting is an option that large chunks of the electorates regularly take.

Those who choose to sit on their hands on election day can have just as much effect on the result — and be just as responsible for it — as those who perform their democratic responsibilities.

In countries that hold voluntary elections (leaving aside the rigged polls of various authoritarian states) a good turnout is 80 per cent. In the United States it can slip to around 50 per cent.

Elections for the European Parliament in Strasbourg are notorious for low turnouts — less than 30 per cent in some constituencies.

In his speech Obama listed two dangers to democracy — indifference and cynicism.

Indifference is well known and to a great extent understandable. People have other priorities: Looking after the family, worrying about mortgage payments, saving up for that first overseas holiday.

They get so bound up in these issues they forget it is the activities of government that so often affect them, but celebrity gossip and televised sport are easier on the mind than politics and politicians.

Cynicism is different.

It is the drain down which idealism pours. It destroys hope and belief that things can be changed. It is the cancer of those who think about and passionately want things to be different.

As Obama so clearly put it:

“The more cynical people are about government and the angrier and more dispirited they are about the prospects for change, the more likely the powerful are able to maintain their power.

“The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism — a cynicism that's led too many people to turn away from politics and stay home on election day.”

Ironically, idealism can be the fertile ground in which cynicism grows because  devotion to a leader, or a system, often disappoints when that leader falls short, or the system fails to provide exactly what the idealist wanted.

The hardest thing to accept is that history is long; human life is short and the best that any one of us can hope for is to move a few steps along the road towards our ideals before handing on for someone else to take the next few steps, and so on.

It is so natural to want it all, to grow impatient with individuals and governments that don’t quite match up, and so switch off. 

But as Obama says, that is surrendering to those who have no ideals, except self- interest. It plays into the hands of populists with their simple answers to complex questions, which in the end always prove to be no answers at all.

So vote — for men and women who don’t claim to have all the answers, but who promise to do their best to find them.

It is a vote that will never be wasted.

Asia’s new elite — wealth without wisdom

Forbes has noted that Asia is now home to the world’s highest number of billionaires, with two new ones being created in China every week.

In addition, Chinese billionaires tend to be younger (average age 55 years while their American equivalents are firmly in their 60s) and are overwhelmingly first generation, rather than obtaining their wealth though inheritance.

The information is not new, and the changes have been under way for some time, but the effects are now filtering through to the collective consciousness of the West and are contributing to the wave of populist sentiment infecting many countries there.

The rich, like the poor, have always been with us. From the earliest times they based their wealth on land and the number of labourers or slaves that could be coerced into producing wealth from it.

Every society in recorded history had its ruling elite, who mostly savagely exploited those below them in order to stay on the top of the heap.

Changes began to happen in the late middle ages with the introduction of the printing press and got a great kick-along in the 19^th century as literacy spread though the labouring classes.

For the first time in history people who did not have much money could learn the details about the activities of those who appeared to have a surfeit of it — and began to question why this was so.

Philosophers, social reformers and agitators pointed out that it was the toiling workers who produced the means by which the wealthy could live in comfort, and questioned why there should not be a more even distribution of wealth.  

After the spread of communism and the savagery of the Russian revolution, the response of many of the elite was to keep their heads down — to separate themselves from the toiling masses as far as possible.

They retreated to their country estates and their city clubs, mixing only with their own kind, mentioned fleetingly in the social pages of newspapers and often seeking to link this publicity with some act of philanthropy – a hospital wing endowed here, a series of scholarships there.

Even so their numbers gradually decreased as heavy taxation forced many back into the middle classes, which were also being fuelled from below as increased education and opportunity allowed the industrious to rise.

It was this unwritten and informal social contract that allowed the two groups to tolerate each other and, according to some utopian thinking, would eventually result in a single large class living together in harmony.

It was never going to happen, but for several generations, the possibility that it could — to you if not the guy next door — kept social pressures at a manageable level.

The remarkable rise to wealth of elites in Asia, and especially China, and the ubiquity of social media have changed this comfortable equation.

A new class of fabulously wealthy Chinese (in a country that is still generally poor) have the means to show off to the world without the restraint that long acquaintance with the responsibilities of money might provide.

Suddenly the internet is laden with their pictures sporting designer clothing and accessories, riding in luxury cars and sipping the most expensive (though not necessarily the best) French Champaign.

Realising the dangers this presented, the Chinese Government has sought to curb their excesses, so far with little effect.

Authorities in Beijing rightly fear that this brazen flaunting of wealth will stir up trouble among the less fortunate in China, but this new look glitterati’s jet-setting lifestyle is also sparking resentment around the world as they parade themselves at the best hotels, buy up luxury apartments and swamp high-end resorts.

With countries in the West still struggling with the after-effects of the global financial crisis and austerity still the norm in many of them, coupled with constant media references to the ‘Asian Century’ and the ‘Rise of China’ is bringing about a growing resentment among their populations that they are being left behind.

While terrorism and refugee movements are still front of mind among most Westerners, there is also a realisation of growing inequality and a feeling that their own leaders have failed them.

Asia’s ultra-wealthy are a tiny fraction of the continent’s overall population, but their addiction to flaunting their wildly extravagant lifestyle is storing up trouble, both for them at home, and the countries they visit.

Universal healthcare – Modi’s biggest gamble

In less than a month’s time India embarks on its most significant social experiment since independence with the introduction of a universal healthcare scheme, the largest in the world.

Covering around 500 million of the giant nation’s poorest citizens, the scheme is officially named the National Health Protection Mission, but has been instantly dubbed Modicare, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

With a General Election due in less than a year, that close association carries both benefits and risks for Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The scheme has long been a dream of the Prime Minister, who has said that India can reach its true potential only with a healthy population.

“It is essential to ensure that we free the poor of India from the clutches of poverty due to which they cannot afford healthcare,” he said recently.

Brave words, but in India ambitious undertakings have a habit of falling victim to the country’s stifling bureaucracy.

Modi’s promise that every Indian village would have electricity in the first 1000 days of his administration foundered when that date passed with thousands still in the dark.

Public Servants covered over the failure by redefining ‘electrification’ as when power cables from the grid reached a transformer in the village, not when individual homes were connected.

Similarly, efforts to clean up the sacred River Ganges, in many places little more than an open sewer, have been shambolic, with officials saying this year’s deadline was always impossible.

Progress has been bogged down in endless negotiations over where to build sewage treatment plants, while complicated tendering processes have deterred private companies from seeking the projects.

Progress has been made, perhaps more than by any other Government in the country’s history, but Modi’s over-promising and his failure to fulfil the ambitions on which he was elected, could well backfire on him.

So the Prime Minister badly needs a win — and if the implementation of universal health care can be managed successfully it would overshadow the failures.

A study done almost a decade ago named medical costs as one of the primary causes of poverty in India, forcing around 63 million people below the poverty line due to their private healthcare bills.

Modi is relying on the country’s booming economy, the reform of the tax system with the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax last year, and increased foreign investment to fund the plan.

However, many commentators believe that in the short term at least, the major problem will not be money, but the ability of the country’s creaking health infrastructure and lack of qualified medical personnel to cope with what is expected to be a massive increase in demand.

Modicare is a huge political gamble for the Prime Minister, and the fortunes of the BJP in next year’s polls may depend on it.

Mahathir’s charm wins Beijing concessions

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad successfully walked a fine line during his visit to China this week.

He had the delicate task of delivering some bad news to his hosts — essentially his country’s renegotiation, or even withdrawal from China’s much heralded Belt and Road initiative negotiated by his predecessor, Najib Razak, which he rightly believes was a terrible deal.

However, he did not wish to overly antagonise his powerful northern neighbour especially as the chaotic foreign policies of the world’s other superpower, the United States, could no longer be relied upon.

His Government simply cannot afford the $A30 billion infrastructure deals already under way in Malaysia — projects funded by loans from China that his country will eventually have to repay.

It would appear from the outcome of his visit that he got most of what he wanted.

The costly projects will not go ahead — for the moment. The countries “agreed to let the details be considered by officials and the companies concerned”, essentially a shorthand for putting them on the backburner at least for the foreseeable future.

Mahathir was able to sweeten the situation with a series of minor agreements involving currency swaps, e-commerce and agricultural products.

The new Malaysian Prime Minister quite frankly told his hosts that any pressure on him to continue with the Belt and Road initiatives would eventually send his country into bankruptcy.

From Beijing’s perspective that would be a worse blow for the image of the Belt and Road and could easily scare off other possible clients.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang stressed that the problem would be solved through “friendly negotiations”.

“I can tell you that this is an important consensus reached during this visit,” Lu said.

For all the charm and soothing words during his Beijing visit, Mahathir has almost certainly not changed his belief, spelled out during the election campaign, that Najib’s relationship with China was risking “a new colonialism”.

At 93, he is old enough to remember the old colonialism and his country’s struggle to free itself from British rule.

Mahathir is also passionate about lifting his country’s living standards to the point where it can follow its neighbour, Singapore, in proclaiming itself a first world nation — but he wants it done on his terms.

There can be no ‘pause’ in aid programs

A recent report to the United Kingdom Parliament has revealed the horrifying extent of child rape and sexual abuse among aid workers in some of the world’s worst trouble spots.

The report, by the International Development Committee, rejected any suggestions that the abuse was a series of isolated incidents involving a few ‘bad apples’, stating that the problem was ‘endemic’ throughout the aid sector.

Commenting on the report, a former worker for the United Nations and the Red Cross, Andrew MacLeod cited an “institutional failure to crackdown on paedophilia” as one of the reasons he quit the sector.

He recommends people should be jailed, not just for taking part in the crimes, but for failing to report them.

This must happen — and happen quickly.

However, I draw the line when MacLeod calls for the “celebrity ambassadors” of international aid to suspend their roles until the situation is resolved. Why does he single out these people, mostly high-profile actors and other personalities? Or is he suggesting a general pause in the work of aid agencies until a resolution is found?

We are faced with an appalling choice here. Emasculate aid work while this endemic problem is stamped out — and allow more people to die of starvation or unattended injuries than the thousands who are already dying every day.

Allow aid work to continue at maximum effort — and risk serial abusers being let loose on vulnerable people.

A choice has to be made, and I choose the latter as the lesser of two terrible evils.

Never in recorded history have so many of the world’s people been in such dire need of relief; never has so much of that need been created, not by famine and other natural disasters, but by deliberate acts of inhumanity — by the persecution and slaughter wreaked by the strong against the powerless.

Every day Yemini civilians are pounded by a Saudi Arabian coalition. Innocent men women and children are dying in industrial numbers.

Every day, Syrian men, women and children are terrorised by the overwhelming might of Russian and Syrian Government forces; ditto Myanmar; ditto Afghanistan and the countless smaller but by no means less deadly conflicts that plague the African continent.

In addition, aid workers face unprecedented dangers in the field. No longer is the Red Cross on ambulances a guarantee of safe passage.

Rather, hospitals and their staff are deliberately targeted so injured opposition fighters can’t be patched up and put back in the field; aid convoys are attacked and the supplies they carry looted to feed and treat the combatants rather than their victims.

The globalised and often chaotic nature of aid work caused by this decline into barbarism is a challenge when it comes to aid agencies screening their workers. Often it has been a case of taking anyone who is willing and foolhardy (and devious) enough to put their hand up.

As CARE International UK stated: “The push to get lifesaving assistance… into the field quickly often comes at the expense of good protection analysis, and steps that would reduce the risks of unintended harm — including sexual exploitation and abuse — are skipped or deferred.”

The UK report has put aid agencies on notice. Image is crucial if donations are to continue. They will — are finding a way.

Of course it would help if Western Governments provided additional funds to assist agencies in properly screening, and properly remunerating aid workers for the appalling risks they take.

 

Instead, the first world is sitting back and accepting the chaos spreading over large areas of the planet. Aid budgets are being slashed and in many cases the arms they sell into these areas are active contributors to the slaughter.

The United Kingdom report has identified one huge problem — but it is by no means the only one.

*Graham Cooke is a regular and long-time donor to UNICEF and intends to remain so.

Turkish turmoil in era of ultimatums

An obscure American clergyman, currently under house arrest in Turkey, has been the trigger for turmoil that is ratcheting up of the trade war, possibly leading to a global economic crisis and the break-up of NATO.

Of course, no one should really blame Pastor Andrew Brunson, who until his arrest accused of spying and being part of the failed 2016 coup against the Government, headed the Izmir Resurrection Church on Turkey’s Aegean coast.

His detention is almost certainly in response to the US refusal to extradite cleric Fetullah Gulen who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes, rightly or wrongly, was behind the coup. Thus Brunson has become a pawn in a game of power politics.

Worse for him, his detention comes in an era of megaphone diplomacy where threat and counter-threat are bandied about through press release and social media with the whole world looking on.

As a result Erdogan will not back down and his United States counterpart, Donald Trump, is ready to bludgeon Turkey with massive trade sanctions.

Turkey’s economy is already in trouble, largely due to the populist president’s financial illiteracy and fears that now he has managed to secure himself dictatorial powers following the June elections, he will put many of his harebrained schemes into action.

One of which is his belief that interest rates should be kept low as higher rates lead to more inflation. The opposite is the case.

Turkey’s Central Bank should be raising rates in order to tame inflation and support the currency which is in freefall. The fact it has not suggests Erdogan has robbed it of the independence so necessary in a modern functioning economy.

His comments would hardly have instilled confidence in already concerned international investors: “This will be my people's response against those waging an economic war against us. If they have their dollar, we have the people, we have Allah."

If Trump really does put the blowtorch to Turkey’s exports to the US, which include steel and aluminium, then it is highly likely Erdogan will seek a saviour in Russian President Vladimir Putin, possibly even cutting ties with NATO.

Nothing would please Putin more in his quest to disrupt NATO and the European Union — a welcome addition to the mischief he is already planning for Montenegro and Bosnia and Hertozgovena.

As for Trump, his actions have become so erratic that diplomatic observers have virtually given up trying to understand him.

The tried and true system of quiet negotiation using back channels and intermediaries to achieve results in difficult situations has been thrown overboard.

We seem to have re-entered the era of public demands and ultimatums that led nations into catastrophic conflict in the early years of the last century.

As for Pastor Brunson, freedom remains an elusive dream.