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The human rights situation in China has never been easy. And since Xi Jinping has held the reins of power, it has been even less so. That this assessment is not a random snapshot, but the result of a deliberate development, became apparent in the way the two civil rights activists Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong were treated. The two lawyers have to pay for their civil activism in accordance with the Chinese constitution, with prison sentences that are so long the question arises whether they will ever leave prison.
All they had done was follow what Xi Jinping called for when he took office: fighting corruption. In 2012, the civil rights activists had only called on the new CP leadership to disclose the assets of top government officials. Not a particularly radical demand. And yet they ended up behind bars. Colleagues now predict that China’s civil rights movement will not recover from this blow any time soon, writes Marcel Grzanna.
A problem that is currently plaguing almost the entire world: rapidly rising prices. And according to economist Isabella Weber, who spoke with Frank Sieren, inflationary pressure in China will also increase “to the extent that the economy picks up.” Weber, who wrote her thesis on China’s economic transformation after the early 1980s, points out a difference in how the country deals with high inflation: “For a long time now, China has had no problem capping prices in areas of basic needs or in those that are in some way relevant to the system.” Isabella Weber is also the architect of the German gas price cap – and has been inspired not least by the experiences China made.
The fate of activist Ding Jiaxi took a decisive turn in 2011. A friend had invited the lawyer to a conspiratorial meeting in a private home in Beijing. A group of like-minded individuals wanted to talk there about civil rights in China. One of the people Ding met that evening was called Xu Zhiyong.
Twelve years later, both men are once again in prison. This time, the justice system struck so hard with its sentences that old comrades fear that China’s civil rights movement will not recover from this for years to come. Xu, who had already served a four-year sentence by 2017, will have to serve another 14 years, and Ding, after serving a 3 1/2-year sentence, will have to serve another 12. It is uncertain whether they will survive their prison terms. Not even their closest relatives know where they are being held.
“Xu Zhiyong and my husband have done nothing but exercise their constitutional rights,” Luo Shengchun told China.Table. Luo has been married to Ding Jiaxi since 1994 and has lived in US exile with their two daughters since 2013. She says the Chinese Communist Party fears little more than the ideas of the two civil rights activists. That is why the trials have taken place without prior announcement and in closed sessions, she says. “Ding Jiaxi always told me it was the right thing to do. He never accepted that the state accused him of breaking the law,” says Luo.
Ding has been critical of the government for decades. In 1989, he protested along with tens of thousands of others on Tiananmen Square. He only escaped the massacre on 4 June by chance because he earned some money that evening at university. “His dream was always to do good for society. Even as a child at school, he stood up for the weak,” says Luo.
Shortly before his conviction on 10 April, Ding’s lawyer released a statement his client had dictated to him during one of his last visits. Ding himself had neither pen nor paper at his disposal. “However many have doubted me, no matter many difficulties and setbacks I’ve encountered, including physical torture that I’ve suffered, I will not part from my steadfast convictions,” he said.
After passing his engineering exams, Ding switched careers and became a lawyer. But instead of human rights, he spent a decade and a half on commercial law. But he never let go of his dream. In 2010, he spent several months in the United States to find inspiration and refocus on what he really wanted to do. Back in Beijing, he decided to change China’s society. Ding Jiaxi gratefully accepted the invitation to the meeting in Beijing of the group surrounding Xu Zhiyong.
Xu was the brain behind an idea he called “civic engagement” (公民承诺). A mental concept that the lawyer had already sketched out years before and with which he wanted to sharpen the senses of his fellow Chinese citizens for their civic duties. Duties that, as he believed, would fill China’s constitution with life: To form one’s own opinion and express it freely, constitute oneself with others, and assemble at will.
“Ding Jiaxi […] became one of the leading forces in this group within a very short time,” said the Chinese lawyer Teng Biao, who was also a guest in the Beijing home that evening. From then on, Ding belonged to the group’s inner circle and spread its ideas across the country via a network. He traveled to numerous provinces and met old associates and fellow students, but above all, dozens of Chinese citizens who wanted to challenge unfair court rulings.
In the spring of 2012, the members of the group gave their engagement a name: New Citizens’ Movement (新公民运动). New, because it borrowed an old concept but added to it a charter with more ambitious goals: equality in education, disclosure of party officials’ assets, and the so-called joint citizens’ meals, a political forum meant to multiply and develop the movement’s ideas. “We streamed these meals partly over the internet and invited others to do the same. We wanted to inspire more and more people with our concept,” says lawyer Teng, who also lives in the US in exile today.
The growing civilian space during the Hu Jintao era emboldened the activists. As to whether they saw the danger coming, Luo Shengchun does not know. “Sometime during 2012, I noticed that some people regularly besieged our house,” she recalls. “I was worried but never realized how far my husband’s activism had gone.” Ding reassured her, but at the same time, advised her to apply for a job with her French employer in the US.
When Xi Jinping came to power in China at the Party Congress in the fall of 2012, civil rights activists hoped for a more liberal future. In a letter dated 9 December, they urged the new CP leadership to disclose the wealth of top functionaries. Seven thousand people from all over China signed the document. It was the activist highpoint of the New Citizens Movement – and marked its downfall.
Shortly after the People’s Congress, when the new government took over and the transfer of power from Xi Jinping’s successor regime was completed, the security forces struck mercilessly: dozens of arrests, house arrests, prosecutions, trials, and prison sentences. Ding Jiaxi was arrested in April. Just the day before, he and his wife had been to the US Embassy in Beijing to pick up visas for them and their two daughters.
When Ding and Xu were released from prison in 2017, they continued their activism at a slower pace. There were hardly any physical meetings, and their efforts to recruit new members for their movement were significantly scaled back. But even this was too much for the state. Lawyer Teng sees the renewed arrests of the two civil rights activists and their lengthy prison sentences as a clear signal. “Xi Jinping wants to destroy even the last remnants of civil society in China because he and his followers are very afraid of losing power,” he says. The country’s growing economic problems increased the pressure and the fear of social unrest.
Only very few members and sympathizers of the New Citizens Movement are still active as activists or human rights lawyers at all, says Teng. The repression also affects the families of those convicted. Xu Zhiyong’s sister has been kept under 24-hour surveillance since the verdict. She was warned not to contact Luo Shengchun in the US. In a short message, she asked Luo not to contact her again. Otherwise, she would face prison.
Luo Shengchun has decided to dedicate the rest of her life to the fight against the “criminal regime” in Beijing. She hopes the democratic world will see the prison sentences as a warning signal. “This regime is not even willing to respect its own constitution. It will disregard the rules anywhere in the world,” she says.
Ms. Weber, you are considered the inventor of the gas price cap, which you initiated with an essay in the Guardian in December 2021. You came up with the idea because you wrote a book examining China’s economic reform policy – a highly topical title: “Das Gespenst der Inflation” (The Spectre of Inflation). What do China’s communists have to do with the German gas price cap?
Like Germany today, in the face of the war against Ukraine, China found itself in a period of extraordinary upheaval in the 1980s. China was transitioning from a planned to a market economy. In response to the pandemic, states suddenly intervened very extensively in economic activity and structural disruptions occurred due to war and shutdowns. In both cases, in China in the 1980s and in Germany today, the risk of rampant inflation is high.
And then the therapy is also similar?
The context is very different, but there are nevertheless lessons to be learned from history. Back then, China had learned from Ludwig Erhard’s economic policy. In all three cases, direct price stabilization of important goods was used to varying degrees to counter inflation and social destabilization.
So a combination of planned and market economy?
In China’s case, yes. Plan for the core and market for everything else. And the core is not even entire sectors of an economy, but can be, for example, only the three largest steelworks in the country. The reform cadres chose a solution that did not risk everything at once.
So a new economic policy?
No, the Chinese did not invent this crisis policy, they only adapted it. There were similar proposals in the USA after the Second World War. The country had to evolve from a war economy into a market economy, and in order to rise to this challenge, America’s top economists at the time recommended keeping important prices stable. China did not simply copy from other countries but studied historical experiences closely and used them for its own purposes. Today, by contrast, we have often forgotten the experiences of our own history that helped the Chinese succeed.
However, the policy did not work in China. In the late 1980s, there was an inflation of over 30 percent, one of the reasons for the Tiananmen Square protests, which were then brutally suppressed.
Yes, but I wasn’t trying to learn from China either, according to the motto: China has done everything right, and now we’ll take their concept out of the drawer and everything will be fine.
Instead?
The Chinese at that time not only looked at things from a macroeconomic perspective but also paid great attention to important individual prices. They were pioneers among the communist countries in the 1980s in re-creating markets. The countries of the Soviet Union would only be forced to follow suit a decade later – with very mixed success.
And then you wrote an article in the British Guardian with the memorable line: “What we need is a serious conversation about strategic price controls – just like after the war.” But there was no mention of China, the core theme of your book.
I didn’t want the proposal to be grounded up against the backdrop of the global power conflict between China and the United States. So I referred to the post-war period in the US, which I also discuss in my book. What was helpful here was that the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the highest priests of US economic policy, had also already made this historical comparison after Covid, but before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Your sentence was explosive enough as it was.
If measured against the ensuing shitstorm, it could certainly be put that way. On the one hand, economists who think like Larry Summers did not like this path. Their therapy was to immediately raise interest rates – untargeted like a broad-spectrum antiviral. For me, this is far too massive an intervention. It burdens the entire economy instead of fighting price explosions in specific areas.
But it didn’t sit well with progressive market liberals either.
They believed there was no need to do anything because inflation would disappear sooner. I also disagreed with that: That is too risky because it can lead to far-reaching economic destabilization. That’s why we need a third way: If there is a fire in the kitchen, it makes no sense to hope that the fire will die down, nor to put the whole house under water. This is precisely the principle China followed in the 1980s and also in the German Jedermann-Programm: sensible and moderate in both cases. In the shitstorm, on the other hand, some acted as if I had called for immediate price controls, a planned economy in the afternoon, and communism in the morning.
With Putin’s attack on Ukraine, your ideas suddenly became interesting for Germany.
At that point, I no longer made abstract arguments but, together with my colleague Sebastian Dullien specifically called for a gas price cap for Germany. We argued that households could not bear this sharp price increase and that the state must therefore help meet basic needs while price signals are maintained where they can have an effect.
The reaction to this article was also initially very critical and ideological.
Yes, but the debate quickly became more substantive and open to the extent that it became harder to tell the people: Don’t make such a fuss. By the end of September 2022, the resistance of consumers and their associations was becoming louder and louder. The German government came under pressure and had to react. When even the leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Lindner, backed the gas price cap, it became clear: It would soon come.
And then things had to happen very quickly.
Yes. At the end of September, the German government’s Gas-Heat Commission was established, of which I became a member. Then came the “double whammy” – a strong signal toward the line of argumentation that I represent.
An excellent example of how to learn from each other in a globalized world?
Quite, especially when we suddenly find ourselves in a radically new situation and are confronted with entirely new challenges. Looking at what others are doing and drawing strategies for one’s own development from that has meant the end of Maoism and the beginning of economic rise in China. Today, China is at risk of returning to a more ideological approach.
Germany is still experiencing inflation of 7.4 percent in March. It is thus ten times higher than in China. In the EU, it is even 8.4 percent. It is similar with growth in Germany: 0.4 percent in the first quarter, 4.5 percent in China, so also ten times higher. What conclusions do you draw from this?
The International Energy Agency has already warned that there might be another big spike in energy prices. That’s why it is good that the gas price cap exists. Nevertheless, the gas price cap ultimately took effect very late. High prices had already taken the air from some companies, and high interest rates came on top of that. Other companies are considering leaving. But, of course, there are also crisis winners who have made exploding profits. People’s savings are getting smaller and smaller. Real wages have fallen.
Why is inflation so low in China, despite an economic crisis in 2022?
I believe the inflationary pressure is yet to hit China, to the extent that the economy is now picking up. But – and this is the big difference to us – the Chinese have extensive recent experience with these phenomena. They, too, had to learn from their mistakes. However, Beijing has now developed the tools to deal with such inflationary spikes early and carefully.
How exactly?
In China, individual prices – in the energy sector, for example – are still controlled today. Some instruments function similarly to the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as well as direct price caps. Despite these stabilization measures, market competition is brutal. I am currently more concerned about inflation and growth in Europe than in China. Much, very much, depends on our willingness to quickly and without blinders pragmatically develop an economic policy that meets the challenges of a Zeitenwende.
Isabella M. Weber, born in 1987 in Nuremberg, Germany, is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute. A revised version of her thesis has recently been published in German under the title: “Das Gespenst der Inflation – wie China der Schocktherapie entkam?” (The specter of inflation – how China avoided shock therapy?), published by Suhrkamp, 32 euros.
When his opponent stretched his hand across the board, Ding Liren almost flinched in shock. It took him a moment to really interpret the clear signal as such. Then he buried his face in his left hand for nearly half a minute and struggled to realize: World Chess Champion.
After a three-week display of strength in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana with a tie after 14 matches and the drama in the fourth and final match of the tiebreak, Ding defeated Russia’s Jan Nepomnjaschtschi. Nepomnyashchi opened the door to the throne of the World Chess Federation for his opponent with a wrong queen move under extreme time pressure.
Ding Liren is now the first Chinese to walk through this door. The country’s women have been absolutely top-class for decades. In 1991, Xie Jun won the title for the People’s Republic for the first time. But as in many sports, success in chess is mainly defined by the success of the men. The media attention is primarily focused on them, less on the women, who in turn, however, are allowed to participate in the men’s competitions. But not the other way around.
Ding Liren can be sure of media attention in the future. Not only in China. Also because his world championship title carries a stigma he is not to blame for. Neither Ding nor Nepomnyashchi are considered the best chess players in the world, even though they faced each other in the World Championship tournament.
Instead, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen dominates the game of kings. Carlsen, however, after five consecutive titles, no longer felt like competing against a challenger and, therefore voluntarily decided not to participate. Ding Liren is likely to face this stigma until he gets the chance to prove himself against Carlsen.
Ding’s skills on the board are undisputed and have been proven many times. No Chinese player has ever before achieved such a high ELO. This value is generally regarded as a valid measure of a player’s skill level. Since its introduction in 1970, only 132 chess players have cracked the 2,700-point mark. Ding’s best score is 2816, the tenth highest ever measured. Carlsen’s is 2,885 – a whole different league. The best woman of all time is China’s Hou Yifan with 2,650 points.
Ding Liren proved his skill as a teenager when he became the first youth to win the Chinese national championship in 2009 at the age of just 16. He received much international attention when, between August 2017 and November 2018, he remained unbeaten in 100 games in a row in classical chess – i.e., in minimum of 60-minute physical matches, not online. Never before has a chess player achieved such a streak. Norway’s Carlsen, however, snatched the record from him just a year later.
The world championship title will dramatically raise the fame of the 30-year-old Ding, especially in China. The General Administration of Sport of China already set the tone after the triumph, congratulating Ding on a great victory for the country. Even though China’s sports officials tended somewhat to neglect their top chess talents in recent years. In an interview in 2017, Ding said that he mainly had to organize his trips to international tournaments and pay for them out of his own pocket.
Chess actually experienced a renaissance as a popular sport in China with Xie Jun’s triumph in the women’s tournament in 1991. After the game was even banned during the Cultural Revolution, more and more chess clubs have been opening all over the country since the 1990s. Ding Liren also learned the game as a young boy in one of them in his hometown of Wenzhou. He dominated the matches against his peers early on.
After winning the national championship, the question finally arose whether he wanted to give it a go as a professional chess player. Since his parents, an engineer and a nurse, had doubts, Ding pursued a two-pronged approach. Along with chess training, he attended Peking University to earn a law degree. For some years now, the 30-year-old has been concentrating entirely on chess.
The world title has already paid off financially in any case. His victory earned him 1.1 million dollars, and his market value for participating in upcoming invitational tournaments has risen dramatically. grz
Pants down, belly out – protests are passionate and varied in Taiwan. More than 5,000 trade unionists in the capital, Taipei, celebrated Labor Day with demonstrations and rallies. They are demanding higher wages and fewer working hours. Sound familiar? No wonder. Workers’ rights are universal.
The human rights situation in China has never been easy. And since Xi Jinping has held the reins of power, it has been even less so. That this assessment is not a random snapshot, but the result of a deliberate development, became apparent in the way the two civil rights activists Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong were treated. The two lawyers have to pay for their civil activism in accordance with the Chinese constitution, with prison sentences that are so long the question arises whether they will ever leave prison.
All they had done was follow what Xi Jinping called for when he took office: fighting corruption. In 2012, the civil rights activists had only called on the new CP leadership to disclose the assets of top government officials. Not a particularly radical demand. And yet they ended up behind bars. Colleagues now predict that China’s civil rights movement will not recover from this blow any time soon, writes Marcel Grzanna.
A problem that is currently plaguing almost the entire world: rapidly rising prices. And according to economist Isabella Weber, who spoke with Frank Sieren, inflationary pressure in China will also increase “to the extent that the economy picks up.” Weber, who wrote her thesis on China’s economic transformation after the early 1980s, points out a difference in how the country deals with high inflation: “For a long time now, China has had no problem capping prices in areas of basic needs or in those that are in some way relevant to the system.” Isabella Weber is also the architect of the German gas price cap – and has been inspired not least by the experiences China made.
The fate of activist Ding Jiaxi took a decisive turn in 2011. A friend had invited the lawyer to a conspiratorial meeting in a private home in Beijing. A group of like-minded individuals wanted to talk there about civil rights in China. One of the people Ding met that evening was called Xu Zhiyong.
Twelve years later, both men are once again in prison. This time, the justice system struck so hard with its sentences that old comrades fear that China’s civil rights movement will not recover from this for years to come. Xu, who had already served a four-year sentence by 2017, will have to serve another 14 years, and Ding, after serving a 3 1/2-year sentence, will have to serve another 12. It is uncertain whether they will survive their prison terms. Not even their closest relatives know where they are being held.
“Xu Zhiyong and my husband have done nothing but exercise their constitutional rights,” Luo Shengchun told China.Table. Luo has been married to Ding Jiaxi since 1994 and has lived in US exile with their two daughters since 2013. She says the Chinese Communist Party fears little more than the ideas of the two civil rights activists. That is why the trials have taken place without prior announcement and in closed sessions, she says. “Ding Jiaxi always told me it was the right thing to do. He never accepted that the state accused him of breaking the law,” says Luo.
Ding has been critical of the government for decades. In 1989, he protested along with tens of thousands of others on Tiananmen Square. He only escaped the massacre on 4 June by chance because he earned some money that evening at university. “His dream was always to do good for society. Even as a child at school, he stood up for the weak,” says Luo.
Shortly before his conviction on 10 April, Ding’s lawyer released a statement his client had dictated to him during one of his last visits. Ding himself had neither pen nor paper at his disposal. “However many have doubted me, no matter many difficulties and setbacks I’ve encountered, including physical torture that I’ve suffered, I will not part from my steadfast convictions,” he said.
After passing his engineering exams, Ding switched careers and became a lawyer. But instead of human rights, he spent a decade and a half on commercial law. But he never let go of his dream. In 2010, he spent several months in the United States to find inspiration and refocus on what he really wanted to do. Back in Beijing, he decided to change China’s society. Ding Jiaxi gratefully accepted the invitation to the meeting in Beijing of the group surrounding Xu Zhiyong.
Xu was the brain behind an idea he called “civic engagement” (公民承诺). A mental concept that the lawyer had already sketched out years before and with which he wanted to sharpen the senses of his fellow Chinese citizens for their civic duties. Duties that, as he believed, would fill China’s constitution with life: To form one’s own opinion and express it freely, constitute oneself with others, and assemble at will.
“Ding Jiaxi […] became one of the leading forces in this group within a very short time,” said the Chinese lawyer Teng Biao, who was also a guest in the Beijing home that evening. From then on, Ding belonged to the group’s inner circle and spread its ideas across the country via a network. He traveled to numerous provinces and met old associates and fellow students, but above all, dozens of Chinese citizens who wanted to challenge unfair court rulings.
In the spring of 2012, the members of the group gave their engagement a name: New Citizens’ Movement (新公民运动). New, because it borrowed an old concept but added to it a charter with more ambitious goals: equality in education, disclosure of party officials’ assets, and the so-called joint citizens’ meals, a political forum meant to multiply and develop the movement’s ideas. “We streamed these meals partly over the internet and invited others to do the same. We wanted to inspire more and more people with our concept,” says lawyer Teng, who also lives in the US in exile today.
The growing civilian space during the Hu Jintao era emboldened the activists. As to whether they saw the danger coming, Luo Shengchun does not know. “Sometime during 2012, I noticed that some people regularly besieged our house,” she recalls. “I was worried but never realized how far my husband’s activism had gone.” Ding reassured her, but at the same time, advised her to apply for a job with her French employer in the US.
When Xi Jinping came to power in China at the Party Congress in the fall of 2012, civil rights activists hoped for a more liberal future. In a letter dated 9 December, they urged the new CP leadership to disclose the wealth of top functionaries. Seven thousand people from all over China signed the document. It was the activist highpoint of the New Citizens Movement – and marked its downfall.
Shortly after the People’s Congress, when the new government took over and the transfer of power from Xi Jinping’s successor regime was completed, the security forces struck mercilessly: dozens of arrests, house arrests, prosecutions, trials, and prison sentences. Ding Jiaxi was arrested in April. Just the day before, he and his wife had been to the US Embassy in Beijing to pick up visas for them and their two daughters.
When Ding and Xu were released from prison in 2017, they continued their activism at a slower pace. There were hardly any physical meetings, and their efforts to recruit new members for their movement were significantly scaled back. But even this was too much for the state. Lawyer Teng sees the renewed arrests of the two civil rights activists and their lengthy prison sentences as a clear signal. “Xi Jinping wants to destroy even the last remnants of civil society in China because he and his followers are very afraid of losing power,” he says. The country’s growing economic problems increased the pressure and the fear of social unrest.
Only very few members and sympathizers of the New Citizens Movement are still active as activists or human rights lawyers at all, says Teng. The repression also affects the families of those convicted. Xu Zhiyong’s sister has been kept under 24-hour surveillance since the verdict. She was warned not to contact Luo Shengchun in the US. In a short message, she asked Luo not to contact her again. Otherwise, she would face prison.
Luo Shengchun has decided to dedicate the rest of her life to the fight against the “criminal regime” in Beijing. She hopes the democratic world will see the prison sentences as a warning signal. “This regime is not even willing to respect its own constitution. It will disregard the rules anywhere in the world,” she says.
Ms. Weber, you are considered the inventor of the gas price cap, which you initiated with an essay in the Guardian in December 2021. You came up with the idea because you wrote a book examining China’s economic reform policy – a highly topical title: “Das Gespenst der Inflation” (The Spectre of Inflation). What do China’s communists have to do with the German gas price cap?
Like Germany today, in the face of the war against Ukraine, China found itself in a period of extraordinary upheaval in the 1980s. China was transitioning from a planned to a market economy. In response to the pandemic, states suddenly intervened very extensively in economic activity and structural disruptions occurred due to war and shutdowns. In both cases, in China in the 1980s and in Germany today, the risk of rampant inflation is high.
And then the therapy is also similar?
The context is very different, but there are nevertheless lessons to be learned from history. Back then, China had learned from Ludwig Erhard’s economic policy. In all three cases, direct price stabilization of important goods was used to varying degrees to counter inflation and social destabilization.
So a combination of planned and market economy?
In China’s case, yes. Plan for the core and market for everything else. And the core is not even entire sectors of an economy, but can be, for example, only the three largest steelworks in the country. The reform cadres chose a solution that did not risk everything at once.
So a new economic policy?
No, the Chinese did not invent this crisis policy, they only adapted it. There were similar proposals in the USA after the Second World War. The country had to evolve from a war economy into a market economy, and in order to rise to this challenge, America’s top economists at the time recommended keeping important prices stable. China did not simply copy from other countries but studied historical experiences closely and used them for its own purposes. Today, by contrast, we have often forgotten the experiences of our own history that helped the Chinese succeed.
However, the policy did not work in China. In the late 1980s, there was an inflation of over 30 percent, one of the reasons for the Tiananmen Square protests, which were then brutally suppressed.
Yes, but I wasn’t trying to learn from China either, according to the motto: China has done everything right, and now we’ll take their concept out of the drawer and everything will be fine.
Instead?
The Chinese at that time not only looked at things from a macroeconomic perspective but also paid great attention to important individual prices. They were pioneers among the communist countries in the 1980s in re-creating markets. The countries of the Soviet Union would only be forced to follow suit a decade later – with very mixed success.
And then you wrote an article in the British Guardian with the memorable line: “What we need is a serious conversation about strategic price controls – just like after the war.” But there was no mention of China, the core theme of your book.
I didn’t want the proposal to be grounded up against the backdrop of the global power conflict between China and the United States. So I referred to the post-war period in the US, which I also discuss in my book. What was helpful here was that the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the highest priests of US economic policy, had also already made this historical comparison after Covid, but before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Your sentence was explosive enough as it was.
If measured against the ensuing shitstorm, it could certainly be put that way. On the one hand, economists who think like Larry Summers did not like this path. Their therapy was to immediately raise interest rates – untargeted like a broad-spectrum antiviral. For me, this is far too massive an intervention. It burdens the entire economy instead of fighting price explosions in specific areas.
But it didn’t sit well with progressive market liberals either.
They believed there was no need to do anything because inflation would disappear sooner. I also disagreed with that: That is too risky because it can lead to far-reaching economic destabilization. That’s why we need a third way: If there is a fire in the kitchen, it makes no sense to hope that the fire will die down, nor to put the whole house under water. This is precisely the principle China followed in the 1980s and also in the German Jedermann-Programm: sensible and moderate in both cases. In the shitstorm, on the other hand, some acted as if I had called for immediate price controls, a planned economy in the afternoon, and communism in the morning.
With Putin’s attack on Ukraine, your ideas suddenly became interesting for Germany.
At that point, I no longer made abstract arguments but, together with my colleague Sebastian Dullien specifically called for a gas price cap for Germany. We argued that households could not bear this sharp price increase and that the state must therefore help meet basic needs while price signals are maintained where they can have an effect.
The reaction to this article was also initially very critical and ideological.
Yes, but the debate quickly became more substantive and open to the extent that it became harder to tell the people: Don’t make such a fuss. By the end of September 2022, the resistance of consumers and their associations was becoming louder and louder. The German government came under pressure and had to react. When even the leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Christian Lindner, backed the gas price cap, it became clear: It would soon come.
And then things had to happen very quickly.
Yes. At the end of September, the German government’s Gas-Heat Commission was established, of which I became a member. Then came the “double whammy” – a strong signal toward the line of argumentation that I represent.
An excellent example of how to learn from each other in a globalized world?
Quite, especially when we suddenly find ourselves in a radically new situation and are confronted with entirely new challenges. Looking at what others are doing and drawing strategies for one’s own development from that has meant the end of Maoism and the beginning of economic rise in China. Today, China is at risk of returning to a more ideological approach.
Germany is still experiencing inflation of 7.4 percent in March. It is thus ten times higher than in China. In the EU, it is even 8.4 percent. It is similar with growth in Germany: 0.4 percent in the first quarter, 4.5 percent in China, so also ten times higher. What conclusions do you draw from this?
The International Energy Agency has already warned that there might be another big spike in energy prices. That’s why it is good that the gas price cap exists. Nevertheless, the gas price cap ultimately took effect very late. High prices had already taken the air from some companies, and high interest rates came on top of that. Other companies are considering leaving. But, of course, there are also crisis winners who have made exploding profits. People’s savings are getting smaller and smaller. Real wages have fallen.
Why is inflation so low in China, despite an economic crisis in 2022?
I believe the inflationary pressure is yet to hit China, to the extent that the economy is now picking up. But – and this is the big difference to us – the Chinese have extensive recent experience with these phenomena. They, too, had to learn from their mistakes. However, Beijing has now developed the tools to deal with such inflationary spikes early and carefully.
How exactly?
In China, individual prices – in the energy sector, for example – are still controlled today. Some instruments function similarly to the American Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as well as direct price caps. Despite these stabilization measures, market competition is brutal. I am currently more concerned about inflation and growth in Europe than in China. Much, very much, depends on our willingness to quickly and without blinders pragmatically develop an economic policy that meets the challenges of a Zeitenwende.
Isabella M. Weber, born in 1987 in Nuremberg, Germany, is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Research Leader for China at the Political Economy Research Institute. A revised version of her thesis has recently been published in German under the title: “Das Gespenst der Inflation – wie China der Schocktherapie entkam?” (The specter of inflation – how China avoided shock therapy?), published by Suhrkamp, 32 euros.
When his opponent stretched his hand across the board, Ding Liren almost flinched in shock. It took him a moment to really interpret the clear signal as such. Then he buried his face in his left hand for nearly half a minute and struggled to realize: World Chess Champion.
After a three-week display of strength in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana with a tie after 14 matches and the drama in the fourth and final match of the tiebreak, Ding defeated Russia’s Jan Nepomnjaschtschi. Nepomnyashchi opened the door to the throne of the World Chess Federation for his opponent with a wrong queen move under extreme time pressure.
Ding Liren is now the first Chinese to walk through this door. The country’s women have been absolutely top-class for decades. In 1991, Xie Jun won the title for the People’s Republic for the first time. But as in many sports, success in chess is mainly defined by the success of the men. The media attention is primarily focused on them, less on the women, who in turn, however, are allowed to participate in the men’s competitions. But not the other way around.
Ding Liren can be sure of media attention in the future. Not only in China. Also because his world championship title carries a stigma he is not to blame for. Neither Ding nor Nepomnyashchi are considered the best chess players in the world, even though they faced each other in the World Championship tournament.
Instead, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen dominates the game of kings. Carlsen, however, after five consecutive titles, no longer felt like competing against a challenger and, therefore voluntarily decided not to participate. Ding Liren is likely to face this stigma until he gets the chance to prove himself against Carlsen.
Ding’s skills on the board are undisputed and have been proven many times. No Chinese player has ever before achieved such a high ELO. This value is generally regarded as a valid measure of a player’s skill level. Since its introduction in 1970, only 132 chess players have cracked the 2,700-point mark. Ding’s best score is 2816, the tenth highest ever measured. Carlsen’s is 2,885 – a whole different league. The best woman of all time is China’s Hou Yifan with 2,650 points.
Ding Liren proved his skill as a teenager when he became the first youth to win the Chinese national championship in 2009 at the age of just 16. He received much international attention when, between August 2017 and November 2018, he remained unbeaten in 100 games in a row in classical chess – i.e., in minimum of 60-minute physical matches, not online. Never before has a chess player achieved such a streak. Norway’s Carlsen, however, snatched the record from him just a year later.
The world championship title will dramatically raise the fame of the 30-year-old Ding, especially in China. The General Administration of Sport of China already set the tone after the triumph, congratulating Ding on a great victory for the country. Even though China’s sports officials tended somewhat to neglect their top chess talents in recent years. In an interview in 2017, Ding said that he mainly had to organize his trips to international tournaments and pay for them out of his own pocket.
Chess actually experienced a renaissance as a popular sport in China with Xie Jun’s triumph in the women’s tournament in 1991. After the game was even banned during the Cultural Revolution, more and more chess clubs have been opening all over the country since the 1990s. Ding Liren also learned the game as a young boy in one of them in his hometown of Wenzhou. He dominated the matches against his peers early on.
After winning the national championship, the question finally arose whether he wanted to give it a go as a professional chess player. Since his parents, an engineer and a nurse, had doubts, Ding pursued a two-pronged approach. Along with chess training, he attended Peking University to earn a law degree. For some years now, the 30-year-old has been concentrating entirely on chess.
The world title has already paid off financially in any case. His victory earned him 1.1 million dollars, and his market value for participating in upcoming invitational tournaments has risen dramatically. grz
Pants down, belly out – protests are passionate and varied in Taiwan. More than 5,000 trade unionists in the capital, Taipei, celebrated Labor Day with demonstrations and rallies. They are demanding higher wages and fewer working hours. Sound familiar? No wonder. Workers’ rights are universal.