Daily Archives: 6 September 2023

We’re the Government, and We’re Here to…Help

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Not some government personnel saying they’re from the government; they are the government. The People’s Republic of China plans to form a new government entity whose purpose, ostensibly, is to help out the PRC’s economic private sector.

[The PRC’s] National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, said Monday that it would set up a bureau to coordinate policies across different government bodies and help development of the private economy, the source of most of the new jobs and economic dynamism in the country.

This says it all, though:

The new bureau will be tasked with monitoring the country’s private economy and establishing channels for regular communication with private enterprises….

Those channels will become channels of control. “This is what you ought to do to increase performance. Be too bad if you don’t do these things.”

The NDRC’s claim is this:

Unlike the recently formed national data bureau, which also falls under the NDRC’s umbrella, the new department announced Monday won’t hold a vice-ministerial rank, suggesting it is unlikely to be a policy heavyweight in a vast government bureaucracy that has long favored the country’s powerful state-owned enterprises.

That won’t last. The new department will increasingly gain power as its controls strengthen. That’s not particularly unique to the PRC; all governments are populated by bureaucrats whose primary personal imperative is to hold onto/increase their power as part of their justification for their jobs. It’s just a stronger imperative for the bureaucrats of the PRC government, and especially for Emperor President Xi Jinping.

Thus, this is the government of the People’s Republic of China extending its control over the nation’s economy through a back window. I don’t write “the nation’s private economy” because that term in the PRC is a cynical euphemism for government-controlled businesses that are nominally privately owned. Mainland Chinese companies, along with those on Hong Kong and Macau, are too beholden to the PRC’s intelligence community’s “information” demands and to the PRC’s newly enacted “report on your friends’ and neighbors’ suspicious espionage activities” law.

Then Don’t Do That

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he wants to avoid brinksmanship and the risk of a government shutdown in the upcoming talks as Congress get back to work after its August month back home.

We cannot afford the brinkmanship or hostage-taking we saw from House Republicans earlier this year when they pushed our country to the brink of default to appease the most extreme members of their party.

If Schumer were serious, though, he’d cut out his obstructionism and work with Republicans to pass spending bills that represent true spending cuts; and he’d work with Republicans to make permanent the tax cuts enacted in 2017 and to further reduce tax rates; and he’d work with Republicans to pass legislation that would seal our southern border; and he’d work with Republicans on the sole rational spending increase, that for rebuilding our Navy and the rest of our military establishment.

Instead, he’s bent on his brinkmanship and on his decision to try to hold our economy hostage for his personal and his Party’s political gain. He’s pushing for another Schumer shutdown.