Tag Archives: political economy

Streamlining

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Recall the People’s Republic of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law that requires all PRC-domiciled businesses, and by extension, the companies which those businesses control that are domiciled in non-PRC nations, to provide, even to actively seek out, any and all information that the PRC’s intelligence community wants those businesses to produce.

Now the PRC is moving to streamline that process.

China is set to create a new government agency to centralize the management of the country’s vast stores of data, as Beijing seeks to address data-security practices by businesses and streamline its regulatory structure.
The new national data bureau is set to become the top Chinese regulator on various data-related issues, people familiar with the matter said, in a shift from the current structure in which multiple ministries share oversight.

And this:

If established, the agency…[would] set and enforce data-collection and sharing rules for businesses, or vet the data that domestic companies plan to share with foreign business partners to check for potential national-security breaches….

Carefully omitted is that tie-back to the intelligence collection law. In addition to streamlining control of domestic data collection and dissemination, this centralized agency would streamline the intelligence community’s use of PRC businesses for espionage.

Rules for Investing in the People’s Republic of China

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The Biden administration is starting to pay lip service to setting rules for American businesses’ investing in the People’s Republic of China. It’s

preparing a new program that could prohibit US investment in certain sectors in China, a new step to guard US technology advantages during a growing competition between the world’s two largest economies.

And, of course, the effort will need new taxpayer money.

Treasury and Commerce departments said they expected to finalize their policy on the issue in the near future. Both agencies said they expected to seek additional resources for the investment program in the White House budget, which will be released next week.

Naturally, the administration isn’t prepared to specify which sectors would be included, or how these departments propose to enforce their rules. Just give them money.

Since the Federal government is in the business of regulating American business’ investing in enemy nations, I have my own proposal for a rule for investing in the PRC: No. No investments in the PRC, and those businesses with investments there have two years in which to wind down those investments and withdraw from the PRC.

That won’t cost nearly as much. Just require public companies to report their investments in their quarterly SEC filings, and private companies to report same in their Federal tax filings—which would easily fall within the requirement, with only the smallest adjustment, to report on accounts held in foreign nations. Require those particular reporting subjects to be available to the public via FOIA requests. These requirements would come close to paying for themselves in the early years by assessing fines equal to the size of the investments not reported or inaccurately reported.

I have an alternative rule proposal: for every dollar an American business wishes to invest in the PRC, it must invest three dollars in the Republic of China. If the RoC can’t absorb all of the investment, then the business cannot invest at all in the PRC. This alternative would carry the same reporting requirements and penalties as my first proposal.

A final alternative: spread those three dollars among any number, greater than one, of the nations rimming the South China Sea in addition to the RoC. Again, with the same reporting requirements and penalties.

What He Said

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Rick Wallace has the right of it—and exactly so—in his Letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section:

The Republicans should be sending one message to the American people loud and clear: The Democrats want to cut your Social Security benefits by 26% in 10 years. There is no other pertinent debating point. If the GOP is going to be vilified for trying to save the program with responsible alterations, the alternative should be made clear. Should the Democrats have their way, the program will collapse, and everyone will face major cuts to their benefits. That’s their Plan A. The GOP offers Plan B.

Those 26% are the size of the reduction in Social Security payouts to then-existing retirees when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money in those 10 years, and payouts after that come solely from incoming payroll tax collections.

The Progressive-Democratic Party politicians in both houses plainly don’t care about that damage to our retirees, preferring instead to keep the threat of reduction as an active cudgel with which to attack their political opponents. That’s why they react to loudly against any effort by Republicans and Conservatives to adjust Social Security in order to save it and avoid that 26% cut in benefits.

The Republicans and their Conservative allies, though, do need to stop cowering behind glittering generalities and instead be explicit in their solution, how it will work, and when/over what schedule it will be implemented.

Counterproductive

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The government of the People’s Republic of China now claims, at the end of its three-year Wuhan Virus shutdown, to be open for foreign business. A broad range of folks running American businesses actually are taking that government’s blandishments seriously.

Many companies that are increasing their commitments to China are consumer-facing. They still view China’s enormous market as a promising long-term bet, even if sales took a hit during the zero-Covid era.

This is, at best, counterproductive.

Any product’s technology, consumer-oriented or not, can be dual-used for military or intelligence collection purposes, and in the PRC, it will be—not only to the detriment of PRC citizens, but to our detriment and that of our friends and allies.

More than that, American investment, any sort of doing business, inside the PRC works to the benefit of the PRC’s economy.

No American company should be doing any sort of business with or within an enemy nation.

Full stop.

Yet Another Reason…

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…for State and local jurisdictions to stop taking government funds. This one is from HUD.

In proposed regulations that would touch any jurisdiction that accepts any sort of HUD funding, fair housing must mean a plan to “promote equity in their communities, decrease segregation, and increase access to opportunity and community assets for people of color and other underserved communities.”

Sounds reasonable.

However.

Those required to comply will include more than 1,200 cities and counties receiving HUD funding. All will be required to develop “equity plans.”
Such equity could mean anything from building low-income housing to redrawing school district lines for racial or socio-economic integration, all as assessed by the HUD bureaucracy.

Because folks moving from here to there still will be told, on arrival there, where they will be permitted to live and where their kids will be permitted to go to school and on and on—they’ll still be under government control. If they want, for good or bad reasons, to live with folks who look like them, or who share their values, or…, central government under these rules will not permit them that choice.

Racial discrimination in housing is pernicious, Husock concluded his piece (at the link). But he doesn’t go far enough in his conclusion. For Washington to invoke it to socially engineer neighborhoods across America is dangerous. No. For the Federal government itself to give special treatment to one group of Americans over other groups of Americans is especially pernicious racism.

This is another example of Federal government funds that are being transferred to State and local jurisdictions coming with strings attached, for good reasons or ill. Government strings only increase the central government’ ability to dictate terms to locals, to reduce our States to the same relationship to the central government as counties have relative to their States: merely convenient districts whose sole purpose is to enforce Federal law. That works for counties in States, but the structure of our system of federal government puts the States—individually as well as a group—on par with our central government on nationally domestic matters—and on higher authority on matters domestic to an individual State.

It is this federal republican structure, the role of our several States as [50] separate experiments in democracy, that string-loaded Federal funds transferred to States and locals so severely deprecates.