Joseph Shupac

Labour Strikes in China

The China Labour Bulletin website provides maps displaying incidents of labour strikes that have occurred in recent years. While of course these should be viewed with a hefty grain of salt, they may be worth scrutinizing all the same.

This image below shows the number of strikes in general that have occurred since 2011: as you can see, they have been becoming a lot more common since the beginning of 2014.

since 2011 map

Yet this may be somewhat misleading: nearly half of the strikes indicated in the map above are thought to have had fewer than 100 people participate in them. It may be better to look just at the number of larger strikes that have occured, as the following two maps do:

1000-10,000, 2011.png

more than 10,000 persons since 2011 — 4 out of the 7 labour strikes involving 10,000+ people since 2011 occured in Guangdong province, according to the China Labour Bulletin

These maps above show that the larger strikes, with 1000-10,000 people and 10,000+ people, respectively, occured most often in 2014, unlike the smaller but more numerous strikes that occured most frequently in 2015 and so far in 2016. Since 2015 there have not been any strikes involving more than 10,000 people, according to the China Labour Bulletin.

chinese_provinces-map

Now let’s have a closer look at the differences between China’s many provinces. Below I have tried to graph the number of strikes that have occurred in each province, first since 2011 and then since 2015:

2011

2015 Guangdong, China’s most populous province, finished at the top of both graphs, while Tibet, Qinghai, Hainan, Tianjin, Ningxia, Gansu, and Xinjiang finished at the bottom of both graphs. All of the provinces of China are more or less in the same position in both graphs, in fact. And there are no major regional patterns that can be gleaned clearly from either list.

1000 - 10,000 since 2015.png — Labour strikes since January 1, 2015 **involving at least one thousand people**. Guangdong had 27, followed by Jiangsu with 9 and Shandong with 8.

What if we adjust the figures to take into account the population size and GDP of each province? Then we get the following graphs:

2011 pop

2011 gdp

Here Guangdong and Tibet again finished at the top and bottom of both graphs, respectively. Ningxia, however, which had finished fifth from the bottom before adjusting for population and GDP, has now moved up to second from the top. Ningxia is China’s third least populous province (the two Tibetan provinces, Tibet and Qinghai, are the least populous), is one of China’s five “autonomous regions” (the others are Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Guangxi), and, along with Xinjiang, has by far the highest concentration of Muslim inhabitants of any province in the country.

In the adjusted-for-population graph, China’s relatively small and wealthy “direct-controlled municipalities”, namely Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, and Chongqing, were much higher up than they were on the adjusted-for-GDP graph, with the exception of Chongqing. (Chongqing is quite a bit less urbanized than the three others are). Shanghai and Beijing were third and fifth, respectively, while Tianjin, which was the least strike-prone of any province when adjusted-for-GDP, was close to the middle of the pack when adjusted-for-population.

Another big change was Hainan, China’s southernmost province and only island province (not counting Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan), which was third from the bottom before adjusting for population size or GDP, but fourth from the top when adjusting for GDP and eighth when adjusting for population size. Shanxi and Shaanxi, meanwhile, two neighbouring provinces located in and around the mountains of north-central China, moved from around the middle of the pack to near the top once adjusted for GDP and population.

map_1360

Shanxi in particular is China’s major coal producing region, and the coal industry has come under a lot of pressure in recent years, which may help explain Shanxi’s high position on both of these graphs. (Shaanxi too is a top coal producer. Inner Mongolia, though, China’s second biggest coal producer, is admittedly near the bottom of the GDP-adjusted labour strikes graph). Shanxi has also been arguably the main provincial target by far of Xi Jinping’s intense “anti-corruption” campaign.

Still, these graphs again do not prioritize large strikes over smaller ones. Below, then, are the strikes with between 1000 – 10,000 participants that have occured since 2011. Since there have been very few strikes with more than 10,000 participants, the 1000-10,000 category accounts for an overwhelming share of the large labour strikes that have taken place:

1000 since 2011

1000 since 2011:pop

1000 since 2011:gdp

The graph showing labour strikes with more than 1000 people since 2011, adjusted for GDP size, is I suspect the most important one. The population-adjusted graphs tend to somewhat misleadingly overemphasize the wealthiest provinces, like Shanghai or Tianjin, since they have lots of per capita economic activity and therefore also lots of per capita labour strikes. The graphs that are not adjusted at all skew in favour of populous provinces, meanwhile. The GDP-adjusted graphs, though, are perhaps the most indicative of provinces in which there may be growing social challenges to China’s political or economic establishment.

Notably, this GDP-adjusted graph is also the only one in which clear regional divisions can be seen. Apart from Guizhou, nine of the ten westernmost provinces in China- Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Chongqing, and Gansu – are in the bottom thirteen provinces of the list, and six are also in the bottom seven of the list. Seven of the top nine provinces on the list, meanwhile, are seven of China’s eleven eastern coastal states. These also happen to be the seven most southern coastal states on the Chinese mainland.

Beijing and the provinces around Beijing, like Liaoning, Hebei, Henan, Tianjin, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Shandong, are near the bottom or the middle of the list. Shanghai on the other hand, as well as two of the three provinces that surround Shanghai, namely Jiangsu and Anhui, are quite close to the top of the list. Guangdong, which is the most populous province in China, remains far ahead at the top of the list. Three of Guangdong’s four neighbouring provinces, namely Jiangxi, Guangxi, and Fujian, are at the top of the list as well.

chinese_provinces-map

Remarkably, Guangdong’s GDP-adjusted figure for large labour strikes is roughly twice as high as any other province and five times the nationwide average. Guangdong has also been home to four of the seven labour strikes in China involving more than 10,000 people since 2011, according to the China Labour Bulletin. Given Guangdong’s enormous size and revolutionary history, this may be worth noting.

The other biggest outlier is the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, which apart from Guangdong had by far the most large strikes adjusted for GDP size. Heilongjiang has been a major oil and coal producing province, which may partially help to explain this. Strikes in the province have been putting its governor Lu Hao, the youngest provincial governor in the country, under a lot of political pressure of late.

Heilongjiang’s position also highlights an interesting trend: China’s most peripheral provinces, like Tibet, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, Guangxi, Yunnan, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Hainan, and Jiangxi, are either at the very top of the list or at the very bottom of the list. Heilongjiang itself has the longest international border in China outside of the three “autonomous regions” of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. (Heilongjiang’s border with Russia is only slightly shorter than the entire US-Mexican border).

The China Labour Bulletin maps also zoom in to show which cities the strikes occured in, and gives basic information about them. For example:

CLB

It also breaks down the strikes by the response they are thought to have received, in five categories: “police”, “arrest(s)”, “government mediation”, “negotiation”, or “other”. According to the site, “Guangdong also led the country in the number of police interventions in labour disputes, accounting for about 19 percent of the total 831 incidents in which police were deployed and 24 percent of the incidents in which arrests were made”.

“Worker protests accounted for 38 percent of all mass protests by Chinese citizens last year, according to statistics published on the well-respected Wickedonna blog.”

To close, here are the numbers of strikes of all sizes since the beginning of 2015, adjusted for provincial population size and provincial GDP size. Guangdong is finally not at the top of either:

2015 pop

2015 gdp

But if you look only at large strikes since 2015, then Guangdong is back on top:

Expect the Unexpected: 10 Reasons North Korea Could Soon Change Course

1. Russia’s economy is currently in disarray as a result of falling natural resource prices, slow economic growth in Europe, and its rivalry with the United States. Russia has been an ally of North Korea because it sees North Korea as a counterweight to the Chinese, Japanese, and US-backed South Koreans, the other powers in Northeast Asia. If Russia’s economy does not bounce back, North Korea will need to adapt to the weakening of one of its only friends in the world.

2. Russia has been looking to export commodities to South Korea, as Russia worries that Europe and Japan will reduce their imports of Russian oil and gas as a result of the Ukraine conflict, the American fracking boom, the end of Western sanctions on Iran, and the possibility of Japan turning its nuclear power plants back on. Though Russia is obviously not thrilled about South Korea’s close relationship with the United States, it might nevertheless be happy to see a more united Korea serve as a counterweight to China and Japan in the Pacific.

In addition, the most direct way for Russia and South Korea to trade with one another is via the 800 km of North Korean territory that separates Seoul from Vladivostok. This is particularly true of gas exports, which travel cheapest through overland pipelines rather than by undersea pipelines or LNG ships. It is also true of many other types of goods, however. Politics aside, it would often make more sense to cross North Korea rather than to load and unload ships in order to sail the 600 km of sea between Russia and eastern South Korean ports (which are themselves 150 km or so from Seoul).

3. The youngest generation of the North Korean leadership, embodied by 33-year old Kim Jong Un, was raised during the 1990s, after the Soviet Union had fallen, after China’s economic miracle had begun, and after the Internet and satellite television had become common. Kim Jong Un himself went to school in Switzerland, a stark contrast to his father Kim Jong Il who may have been educated in China during the Maoist era.

Today Kim must be looking at Bashar al-Assad with fear. Like Kim, Assad took over at a fairly young age from a father who had been a larger than life figure. Assad lasted for one decade before the Syrian Civil War got underway; Lil’ Kim is now in the middle of his fifth year in office. Meanwhile, the number of North Koreans living today who were alive during the reign of the first Kim, Il Sung, is quickly falling.

4. Unlike most other poor countries, North Korea’s population is not young. Its population pyramid has two main bulges: one between 40-50 years old, the other between 15-25 years old. A decade from now, then, much of the older bulge will have become too old for manual labour, while the number of young people entering the workforce for the first time will have begun to drop off. At this point, North Korea may be more inclined to move away from a labour-based economy, which in turn will require it to import capital from abroad, perhaps from the South Koreans.

This aging also raises Korea’s family reunification issue: North Korea’s 40-50 year old cohort are in many cases the children of families who were divided by the peninsula’s split in the Korean War. The coming decade will be the last chance for many of these sundered families to get back in touch before their elderly parents pass away — and before this generation becomes old itself.

5. Back when China was run by committee, consensus, compromise, etc., it liked being compared to North Korea because it could say, in effect, “we may not have a liberal democratic political system, but at least we’re nothing like the government in North Korea”. Today, though, as China has been moving back in the direction of a more traditional persona-led dicatorship embodied by Xi Jinping, the last thing that the Chinese leadership wants is for Xi to be compared with Kim Jong Un.

Xi has yet to visit North Korea, even though Xi has been perhaps the most well-travelled leader in Chinese history, and the first ever to visit South Korea before North Korea. Kim Jong Un, in turn, has not yet travelled the 800 km from Pyongyang to Beijing. (In fact, Kim Jong Un has never officially left North Korea since taking over as its leader in 2012). This may soon change, however: Kim Jong Un may finally visit Beijing in the next few months.

6. Japan could be coming back in a big way: Shinzo Abe’s revivalism – including the end of formal military pacifism and the symbolic 2020 Tokyo Olympics – may just be the start. The Japanese economy is far less exposed to the Chinese economic slowdown than are those of South Korea and Taiwan. Japan might benefit more from Russia’s troubles than China will, given that China has often allied itself with Russia. Japan is also more dependent on energy imports than China, and so may be more likely to benefit from the fall in energy prices than China will.

Japan may benefit more than any other country from the coming era of robots, given its uniquely aged workforce and technological expertise — and given that robots might make China’s enormous human workforce less of an economic advantage over other countries than it is today. Whether Japan addresses its aging workforce dilemma by importing more energy to power robots or by continuing to outsource more of its industrial activity to countries like Thailand and Taiwan, however, it will have to become more active in the region, and thus potentially more aggressive in the region, in order to ensure its access to foreign markets.

If Japan’s reemergence causes the Chinese to want to create a rift in the US-Japan alliance, Korea is the best place for China to try to do so. The US loves its alliance with Korea, while Japan does not. The Japanese and Koreans have quite a tortured relationship, a legacy of Japan’s historical domination of the peninsula. The US would be thrilled by a more unified Korea, whereas the Japanese might be wary of one even in spite of their current rivalry with the North.

Consider the context for the Korean War (1950-1953): Japanese power had just been decimated in World War Two, so China helped to divide the Korean peninsula because it feared the American-allied unified Korea that had emerged at Beijing’s doorstep following the invasion of the North by America and the South. China did not have to consider using Korea to create a rift between the US and Japan, since Japan was not a player at the time. A somewhat similar situation occurred in 1990, when American power surged again as the Soviet Union fell and as Japan’s economy suddenly began its “lost decades” of slowing growth.

If Japanese power grows, however, China may want a more unified Korea as a buffer against the Japanese and as a prime way of splitting the American-Japanese alliance. Alternatively, if China and Japan can finally mend fences with one another politically, it may cause the United States (and/or Russia) to want a more unified Korea to serve as a counterweight to both China and Japan.

7. More so than during the 1990s, when Russia and China were weaker than they are now and 9-11 had not yet occurred, the US has a lot to worry about today other than North Korea’s military programs. North Korea’s first nuclear tests were in 2005, possibly in order to win back American attention that had shifted to the Greater Middle East. Now, though, with the US still worried about the Muslim world and also concerned with Russia and China, there may be diminishing returns to this strategy of gaining aid and prestige by nuclear saber-rattling.

The move by North Korea in 2010 to kill 46 South Korean navy soldiers in the Cheonan ship attack, which was by far the most casualties the South’s military has experienced in decades, suggests that the North Korean leadership may be aware of these diminishing returns. More recently, so does the announcement by North Korea this past winter that it has successfully developed a hydrogen bomb.

8. South Korea’s economy is slowing because of China’s economic slowdown and because South Korea has now basically become a “developed” economy (its per capita income is estimated to be $28,000, in nominal terms). While South Korea does not want to pay the financial burden of resuscitating theNorth Korean economy, it could nevertheless see some opportunities for itself in engaging the North in trade.

North Korea, for example, has one of the world’s largest reserves of high-quality anthracite coal, while South Korea is one of the world’s leading importers of coal and of fossil fuels in general. And of course, North Korea has a cheap, Korean labour pool (and potential consumer base), at a time when South Korea’s workforce is no longer cheap or youthful by global standards.

relative trade northeast asia.png — Trade figures, adjusted for overall GDP size

9. Coal prices have plunged of late in China and in most of the rest of the world. This could put a lot of pressure on the North Korean economy, which has become the third largest supplier of coal to China in recent years. China accounts for more than 90 percent of all North Korean international trade. According to Reuters, “last year, North Korean coal deliveries to China surged 26.9 percent, making North Korea China’s biggest supplier behind Australia and Indonesia. Coal deliveries from Australia plunged 25 percent, indicating the increase in [Korean] imports may have been to help support this”.

10. With China and the wider Northeast Asian economy struggling after years of rapid expansion, ending North Korea’s isolation could be a good last-ditch attempt to stimulate regional growth. China, for instance, could try to use its position as the North Korea whisperer in order to gain economic favours from the United States. China also has an incentive to engage North Korea — and to have South Korea engage North Korea — because the last thing the Chinese want to deal with right now is a refugee crisis emerging on their border with North Korea in the unlikely but not impossible event of a state collapse occuring there. A few million Koreans already live in China near the North Korean border.

korea north.png

Finally, North Korea could benefit the regional economy by serving as a land route between China and South Korea. Seoul is just 500-600 km from significant Chinese cities like Shenyang and Dalian by way of the North, and 1150 km from Beijing. In the longer-term, the North Korean trade route could become even more commercially important if fixed links are built across the Yellow Sea between North Korea and China, across the Gulf of Bohai between the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Shandong, or across the Korea Strait from Japan to the Korean peninsula.

———

So, could the era of extreme North Korean isolation from the world be reaching its final days? Certainly, from the US point of view, North Korea is something of a last man standing these days: of the six countries that the Bush government named as the “axis of evil” – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea – Kim is now the only leader not to have been either toppled (Iraq and Libya), besieged (Syria), or moving towards warmer relations with the US (Cuba and Iran). Given the changes occurring all around it in Asia and the world, North Korea’s position no longer seems like an easily sustainable one. Reunification with the South or not, it still makes sense to guess that North Korea under Kim Jong Un will end up being very different from that of his father.

The Provincials — Image of the Day

the provincials

The graph above shows the size of countries’ largest provinces or states in relation to their overall populations. So California, for example, is home to approximately 12 percent of the total population of the United States, whereas Ontario is home to 39 percent of Canada’s population and Punjab to 47 percent of Pakistan’s.

250px-Map_of_Argentina_with_provinces_names_en

The biggest standout here, though, is Argentina’s largest province Buenos Aires, which is by far the most populous of Argentina’s 24 provinces. In fact, the population of the province of Buenos Aires does not even include that of the “Autonomous City” of Buenos Aires – see map above – which is itself the fourth most populous province in the country. In Argentina’s presidential elections this past October, the two candidates were the leaders of the province of Buenos Aires and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, respectively.

Below is a graph, made using data taken from Wikipedia, which shows the GDP sizes of the biggest provincial/state economies around the world, in nominal terms. It is led by California, which is thought to have an economic output of nearly $2.3 trillion these days, larger than all but seven of the world’s countries. Given the nature of this information, though, this graph should probably be taken with a decent-sized grain of salt.

nominal gdp

13 of the 34 provinces/states in the graph above are in the USA, 9 are in China, and 13 are in other countries. Germany and Japan both have 2, but they are the only countries apart from the US or China to have more than 1 province on this graph.

No Indian states made it on to the graph above. On the graph below, however, which shows the 34 most populous provinces/states in the world, 11 are from India, whereas California, the most populous US state, is ranked 33rd. 17 out of 34 on the graph below are Chinese, and 6 are neither Chinese nor Indian. This graph also shows the territory size of each province.

prov

Note the dominance of India’s province Uttar Pradesh. In fact, India’s five most populous states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh (combined population: approximately 580 million) – border one another in a direct line, and Uttar Pradesh also directly borders India’s seventh most populous state, Rajasthan, as well as India’s most densely populated state, Delhi (India’s capital). In China and the US, in contrast, some of the largest states, notably California, Texas, Florida and Illinois in the US and Guangdong and Sichuan in China, do not border any of the other most populous states within their own country.

inde49

In Germany, meanwhile, the fifth most populous state in the country, Hesse, directly borders all four of the most populous German states: North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemburg, and Lower Saxony. Hesse’s chief city is Frankfurt, a European finance and transport hub.

germany-regions-map-printable

Finally, in Brazil, the three most populous states, namely Sao Paulo (which is by far the largest), Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro, directly border one another. Sao Paolo also borders the sixth largest state, Parana, while Minas Gerais also borders the fourth largest state, Bahia. The four largest Brazilian states are home to 48 percent of Brazil’s overall population.

Brazil_states_named

Eurozone Geopolitics (and the Future of “Czechia”)

Since 2001, when Greece adopted the Euro as its currency, seven countries have joined the Eurozone. Slovenia began using the Euro in 2007, Cyprus and Malta in 2008, Slovakia in 2009, Estonia in 2011, Latvia in 2014, and Lithuania in 2015. These countries are small. Together, they are home to around 14.5 million people, just 4 percent of the Eurozone’s total population.

This is not surprising: from 2001 to 2008 European countries were more focused on expanding the European Union and NATO than expanding the Eurozone, while since 2008 the economic slowdown in Europe has limited the ambition of European institutions to expand in a meaningful way. Key economies in the region, like Britain, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland, not to mention Russia or Turkey, do not appear likely to join the Eurozone any time soon, if ever.

zuPKcv5

Still, the admittance of these seven small states has altered somewhat the geography of the Eurozone. Slovakia is the only state among the ex-“satellites” of the former Soviet Union (the others being Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria) to adopt the Euro, and it is the only Eurozone country to border Ukraine.

Slovenia is the first among the states of the former Yugoslavia to formally join the Eurozone, and its membership gives Austria and Germany a Eurozone-only route to the Mediterranean that bypasses Italy. The Baltics are the only former Soviet Union republics to adopt the Euro, and their inclusion also means that Finland is no longer the extreme geographic outlier of the Eurozone that it was between 1999 (when it and all ten of the other Eurozone countries apart from Greece joined) and 2011, when Estonia joined.

Similarly, the Cyprus and Malta additions mean that Greece is no longer an outlier in the Eurozone. Even before they joined, though, Greece was still only 100 km from Italy — whereas Finland had been more than 800 km from any fellow Eurozone economies before the Baltics joined.

Among the Eurozone members that joined the group prior to 2007, the economies on the outer edges of the Eurozone — Portugal, Spain, Ireland, southern France, southern Italy, Greece, and Finland — have struggled the most during Europe’s nearly decade-long economic downturn. The inner countries of the Eurozone, on the other hand, as well as most of the non-Eurozone countries in the region, have not fared so poorly.

As the graph below shows, Germany and Austria may have been the only two pre-2007 Eurozone members to have experienced per capita income growth from 2008-2013, and Germany in particular (which accounts for an estimated 29 percent of Eurozone GDP) has been a veritable island of low unemployment within the Eurozone.

euro core periph — source: Future Economics

20160206_fnc255_0

Even among the newcomer Eurozone states, which apart from crisis-ravaged Cyprus have not done too poorly, it has been the more centrally located countries of Slovakia (the capital of which, Bratislava, is just 50 km from Vienna) and Lithuania (the westernmost Baltic) that have experienced the most growth. Slovakia and Lithuania are both thought to have had per capita income growth of 5.2 percent during the period 2008-2013, whereas Estonia, Latvia, and Malta had growth of just 1.6-2.7 percent, and Cyprus’s income shrank by 20.6 percent.

regional unemployment europe — Within Spain, Italy, and Belgium, the European countries with the largest internal regional divisions in their employment rates, their southern regions have higher unemployment in each case than their northern regions

Now, however, the economic slowdown may be moving towards the inner sanctuary of the Eurozone, in and around Germany, even as it has also lately been afflicting the outer regions of non-Eurozone Europe (Russia, Norway, Turkey, Scotland, etc.), which had performed relatively well in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Economies like Germany, northern Italy, and the Netherlands have increasingly appeared to be under threat of recession, while at the same time some of the Eurozone outsider “PIIGS”, like Spain and especially Ireland, are finally thought to be in recovery. Europe may be looking a bit topsy-turvy these days.

Much of this perception is simply anecdotal (which is not to say incorrect, necessarily), an adding-up of Brexit, Deutsche Bank’s falling stock price, the Volkswagen emissions scandal, the Syrian migration crisis, terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, and so forth.

There have also, however, been larger shifts. Falling energy prices are likely to help southern Europe more than northern Europe. Slowing economic growth in China, Russia, and other developing markets threatens export-oriented economies like Germany and the Netherlands. People in countries like Germany are getting old. The global shipping industry crash has been hurting parts of the Dutch and Danish economies. And there is a growing fear that Italy’s financial system may be reaching a crisis-point.

Eruzone Net Energy Imports Per Dollar of GDP — source: Future Economics

Developed Economies Energy and oil imports regional energy imports:exports

Now, it may be that these fears are overwrought, and that the centre of Europe will not undergo a reversal of fortune. But perception can often influence reality where economics are concerned, and the perception of countries like Italy, France, and even Germany has undeniably changed for the worse of late. It was less than a year ago that Germany was still popularly viewed as an unassailable economic and political stronghold of Europe, and less than two years ago that Spain, rather than Italy, was seen as the likeliest trigger for a Euro crisis (apart from Greece, of course).

Going Forward

When it comes to the “future of the Euro project”, the inward creeping of economic troubles from the Eurozone periphery to the Eurozone core should raise the question of whether or not the Czech Republic will join the monetary union as well.

The Czech, as well as most of the other Eastern Europe nations, were officially supposed to adopt the Euro, but many guess that this will not happen anymore given the current atmosphere in Europe. Nowadays, a “Czexit” from the European Union seems more likely, arguably, than a Czentrance into the Eurozone. The Czech Republic has the biggest GDP in Eastern Europe apart from Poland, more than double Slovakia’s. It is a “core” state: Prague is actually located closer to Frankfurt than Berlin is, and closer to Berlin than Vienna is.

trade-with-germany Europe-map

If the Czech Republic does join, Poland would then be surrounded by Eurozone states on all its EU land borders. The Czech Republic’s key trade partners, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany, have all joined now — and both the Czech and the Slovaks are arguably among the world’s five most trade-dependent nations. The Czech Republic also sits in the main route between Germany and Slovakia, both of which are in the Eurozone. Along with the financial fastness of Switzerland, or worldly London, or the half-in, half-out (but mostly out) ERMII monetary system of Denmark, the Czech Republic is now the only place within the core of the European Union not to have joined the Eurozone.

Motor Vehicle Production

Whether or not the Czech Republic joins could impact the future shape of the monetary union: its expansion, contraction, or dissolution. Yet for now the Eurozone seems focused on keeping the economies in its own centre intact, rather than expanding toward new peripheries in Eastern Europe.

Satellite Geopolitics in Eastern Europe

During the past year, the primary focus of the US-Russian rivalry has centred around Iran. The United States put an end to Western sanctions against Iran, and also chose to keep American troops in Afghanistan who support, among others, many of the tens of millions of Afghans who are Shiite Muslims or who can speak Farsi (as opposed to the Taliban, who are Sunni and typically Pashto-speaking). Russia, meanwhile, intervened to aid Bashar al-Assad in Syria, who’s survival diverts Sunni attention away from Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq.

With Russia now withdrawing some of its forces from Syria and the US hoping to do so from Afghanistan, the focus of the US-Russian rivalry could revert, perhaps, to Ukraine. By comparison to the Middle East, Ukraine has appeared to be very quiet of late.

Russia may have dialed back the conflict in Ukraine partly in order to shift the West’s focus to the Middle East. This of course has not been very difficult to accomplish, given Europe’s influx of Syrian migrants and America’s election-season rhetoric on issues like ISIS, the conflict in Libya, and Donald Trump’s proposal to ban, for an unspecified amount of time, all Muslims from travelling to the United States.

If the US-Russian focus does move back towards Eastern Europe, one can perhaps guess the rough outlines of any geopolitical contest that may occur there.

Poland will likely be the chief ally of the United States in the region. Unlike any of the five other former satellite nations of the Soviet Union, Poland borders the Atlantic Ocean (via the Baltic Sea). This provides it access to English-speaking countries like Britain, the United States, and Canada, as well as to countries where proficiency in English as a second language has become particularly widespread, most notably in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and to a lesser extent Germany.

Poland, indeed, tends to be relatively Atlantic-oriented. It conducts a larger percentage of its trade with economies like Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States than do any of the other ex-satellite countries in Eastern Europe. More than 10% of Poland’s modern-day labour force has worked at one time or another in Britain or Ireland, whereas Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks have more often gone to Germany or Austria and Romanians have more often gone to Germany, Austria, Italy, or Spain.

poles in britain — 1/60 Poles are living in Britain, according to this source

Poland is not an Eastern Orthodox country, like Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and several others in the region are. Rather, its population is predominantly Roman Catholic.

us ancestry — Poland also remains by far the largest “country of origin” in the United States among Eastern European nations, at a time when Americans may be becoming much more informed of their ancestry as a result of increasingly cheap gene-sequencing and genealogical services

Much more important than Poland having Western ties, however, is that it may be the only state in Eastern Europe large enough to lead a US alliance. Poland’s GDP is estimated to be 80 percent as large as those of its fellow ex-satellites – Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia) – combined.

Among other things, this economic size has allowed Poland’s economy to become relatively self-sufficient: Poland’s imports and exports are thought to be equal in value to just 80% or so of Polish GDP, compared to 110-170% of GDP in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Lithuania (though just 75% in Romania). This could make Poland somewhat less susceptible to the whims of its (largely European) trading partners than the other countries in Eastern Europe might be, and so perhaps also a more dependable ally of the United States.

eastern europe satellites

Poland, finally, is the only one of the ex-satellites to border the northeastern Baltic region, which consists of the “Baltic states” of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (which is situated between Poland and Lithuania), the Russian city of St Petersburg, and southern Finland.

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in particular have become the object of worldwide geopolitical speculation. They are the only former members of the Soviet Union to have joined the European Union and NATO, and, along with Slovakia, Finland, Greece and Cyprus, are the only countries east of Central Europe to use the Euro in place of their national currencies. They are home to six million people, about the same number of people as live in St Petersburg.

Sweden_pop

baltic_states_locator_2_0

While Poland will probably be the foundation of American influence in Eastern Europe, Romania may become its capstone. Though Romania’s per capita income is still considerably lower than other countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland, its population is significantly larger than any of the other former satellites apart from Poland, as is the size of its territory.

europe

Romania has Western ties because its language is close to Latin, rather than being a Slavic language like Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbian, or Croatian. This has resulted, among other things, in substantial Romanian diasporas having formed in Spain and especially in Italy. A Romanian living in Italy can arguably become near-fluent in Italian within just a month or two, without much difficulty.

romanian diaspora — The Romanian Diaspora, according to Wikipedia

Crucially, Romania may also be able to exert influence in Ukraine. Romania shares a roughly 800 km frontier with the former Soviet Union (by comparison, Poland has a 900 km or so border with the former Soviet Union, Hungary and Slovakia have 70 km ones, and the Czechs and Bulgarians have none), and both Romania and Ukraine are economically oriented toward the Black Sea.

Romania and Ukraine both also surround Moldova, which is a mostly Romanian-speaking country but home to Ukrainian, Russian, and Turkic Gaguaz minority populations. This is a particularly contested region; Russia has troops stationed in Moldova’s secessionist province of Transnistria, while the Black Sea coast, which includes Ukraine’s second city Odessa (just 140 km from Romania), is the only part of western Ukraine in which politically “pro-Russian” Ukrainians and “ethnic Russians” may still be prominent.

In response to a US-Romanian axis, Russia could attempt to press Romania from all sides by building up influence in Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary. Ukraine and Moldova are already home to Russian soldiers, while Serbia and Bulgaria are both Slavic and Orthodox countries that have historically often looked to Russia for support when fighting against their non-Slavic, Catholic, or Muslim neighbours like Turkey, Greece, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, and Romania. Russia continues to have ties to Bulgaria, and especially to Serbia, in the present day.

black-sea-map — South of Poland, Romania is also the only place along the western frontier of the former Soviet Union in which the border with the European Union is not located entirely in the Carpathian Mountains

Hungary, however, is neither Slavic nor Orthodox. Still, Hungary would be a critical anti-Romanian ally for Russia to attempt to recruit. The large and rugged Hungarian-Romanian borderland, located in and around the region of Transylvania, has long been politically fraught. It lies on the Hungarian side of the Carpathian Mountains and is home to substantial Hungarian and Roma (who are distinct from Romanian) minority groups, yet, since roughly the end of the First World War, has mostly been part of Romania.

hungarians in romania — “Ethnic Hungarians” in Romania

Romani in Romania — Roma in Romania tend to live either in and around Transylvania or in and around the country’s capital city of Bucharest

While Romania holds the upper hand in this region, Hungary still has leverage over Romania because it controls the land and river routes that link Bucharest to markets in Austria, Germany, and northern Europe in general. Russia has been moving to form closer ties with Hungary, as Hungary’s Fidesz-led nationalist government has angered many of the other countries in the EU in recent years.

Danubemap

Hungary and Bulgaria are both potentially significant to Russia for other reasons as well. Bulgaria can give the Russians access to the Mediterranean Sea via Greece or the Balkans, without having to pass through the Turkish Straits. It is just 250 km from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea via Bulgaria and Greece, and 600-700 km from the Black Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria and the Balkans.

Indeed, given Russia’s reliance on natural gas exports and Italy’s reliance on gas imports (Russia is the world’s leading gas exporter, and Italy the world’s third largest gas importer), this trans-Bulgarian route to the Adriatic is one that Russia may need to avoid recession and at the same time maintain its influence in Italy. In turn, Russia may try to use Italy to put pressure on Romania, given the relatively close connections that exist between the two Latin countries.

europe_gas — Note that Poland, the Czech Republic, and especially Romania are not very dependent on Russian gas compared to Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Hungary

Russia may need Hungary, meanwhile, to resist interfering with Russia’s interests in Ukraine (there are an estimated 200,000 ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine), serve as a wedge between Poland and Romania, and ensure Russian access to Central European economies like Germany.

If, hypothetically, Russia were to cow western Ukraine into submission and then be shunned as a result by US allies like Poland and Romania and by German allies like the Czech Republic and Slovakia (The Czech Republic and Slovakia are deeply entrenched in the modern German trade network), Hungary could be left as the only land route linking Russia’s sphere of influence to potentially “neutral” European economies like Italy, Austria, Switzerland, or France.

EasternEuropeMap

Moreover, Hungary is the only ex-satellite state apart from Romania that borders both the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Hungary’s leading city Budapest is just 300 km from Serbia’s capital Belgrade, 300 km from Croatia’s capital Zagreb, 380 km from Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, and 400 km from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital Sarajevo. Considering that Budapest is also only 215 km from Vienna, 160 from Bratislava, and 400 km from the outskirts of Prague, this puts seven European capital cities within a 400 km radius of Budapest. The only other EU capital which can come even close to saying the same thing for itself is Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital.

Russia might ideally like to ally itself with Germany or one of Europe’s other big economies, but if the Germans are not willing to participate in such a relationship then Hungary could be the place where a tug-of-war between Russia and America, or between Russia and Germany, or between Russia and “the West”, will occur. And if Russians do successfully win Hungary as a partner, thus potentially blocking off access to Romania from Poland, the focus of the conflict might then shift to Southeastern Europe, as the Americans could seek an alternative route to Romania.

During the Cold War the Americans involved themselves in Southeastern Europe by folding both Greece and Turkey into NATO (in spite of their intense rivalry with one another), but of late US-Turkish relations have been challenged by the wars in Syria and Iraq, while Greece has been trapped in an economic crisis and so unable to pick up the slack.

During just the past few months, though, more hopeful discussions than there have been in years have taken place regarding the possibility of the Greeks and Turks in Cyprus finally reunifying. This may perhaps portend an increasing cooperation between Turkey and the West, particularly as it has occurred around the same time as Turkey’s relationship with Russia deteriorated sharply following Russia’s entrance into Syria and Turkey’s downing of a Russian military jet there.

Then again, it is also entirely plausible that American relations with Turkey will continue to decline, and that the Greek economy will not soon recover in any meaningful way, leaving the United States to look instead to countries like Italy, Bulgaria, and the Balkan states in order to form a southern pathway to Romania and the Black Sea.

Clash of %22Civilizations%22 — Greece’s fall has been Turkey’s rise

Of course, nothing like this scenario is guaranteed to happen. This is just a very rough outline of what a new US-Russian political confrontation in Eastern Europe might look like. Given that the past may not necessarily resemble the future, and in particular that technological developments could perhaps render some traditionally important geopolitical imperatives irrelevant – to give just one example, air power might allow countries like the United States to access their allies without possessing a land route to reach them – this outline may not end up being very prescient. Ideally, none of the ex-satellites will have to choose between looking eastward to Moscow or westward to Washington.

For a discussion of the conflict in Ukraine in particular, see The Geopolitics of Ukraine

Seniors Discount? Oil Prices and Old Rulers

Today’s low oil prices are probably not the result, even in part, of elderly men ruling over the world’s major energy-exporting nations. Still, it may be worth noting that the sons of Saudi Arabia’s modern founder, Abdulaziz bin Saud, are finally nearing the end of their long royal lifespans, while the leaders of energy-endowed countries like Iran, Algeria, Angola, Oman, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have now reached old age too, after multiple decades in office. Even Vladimir Putin is 63 years old, long past his judo prime. He was just 47 when he first came to power.

As Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi arguably showed in 2011, longtime aging rulers can sometimes give way to political upheaval that causes domestic oil and gas production to fall. Uncertainty over the vigour of some of the following leaders might indeed cause global energy exports to fall, and thus, perhaps, prices to rise:

Kuwait – Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah – 86 years old – In power since 2006

Sabah’s presumed successor, Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, is 78 years old. As recently as 2012 Kuwait was the world’s largest oil exporter outside of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia – Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Saud – 80 years old – In power since 2015

Salman will probably be the last king to be chosen from among the 45 or so sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz bin Saud. Salman’s youngest living sibling, his half-brother Muqrin, is turning 71 this year and, as of last year, is no longer the designated Crown Prince. The Saudi Crown Prince has since become Muhammad bin Nayef, Salman’s nephew, while the Deputy Crown Prince has become Salman’s own son Mohammad bin Salman

Algeria – Abdulaziz Bouteflika – 79 years old – In power since 1999

Bouteflika came to power during and after the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s. Today his health is in question. Algeria is estimated to be the world’s 16th largest energy producer and its fourth largest natural gas exporter.

Uzbekistan – Islam Karimov – 77 years old – In power since 1991

Karimov first came to power at the end of 1980s, when he became President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic

Iran – Ali Khameni – 76 years old – In power since 1989

Kazakhstan – Nursultan Nazerbayev – 75 years old – In power since 1991

Oman – Qaboos bin Said al Said – 74 years old – In power since 1970

Qaboos first became ruler after overthrowing his father in a palace coup in 1970. He has no children or clear successor

South Africa – Jacob Zuma – 74 years old – In power since 2009

Zuma was Deputy President of South Africa from 1999-2005. South Africa is a major producer of energy, and a net exporter of energy, because of its coal reserves, though it is a net importer of oil

Nigeria – Mohammadu Buhari – 73 years old – In power since 2015

Buhari was previously Nigeria’s head of state during the 1980s

Angola – Jose Eduardo dos Santos – 73 years old – In power since 1979

Angola, one of the fastest-growing economies of the past decade, is now the world’s third or fourth largest oil exporter outside of the Middle East

Equatorial Guinea – Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasongo – 73 years old – In power since 1979

Equatorial Guinea is the 30th-40th largest oil producing country, but may have the world’s third highest per capita oil production, the highest outside the Middle East. Both the age of its leader and the number of years he has been in power are exactly the same as in Equatorial Guinea’s relatively nearby neighbour Angola

Sudan – Omar al Bashir – 72 years old – In power since 1993

Brunei – Hassanal Bolkiah Muiz’zaddin Wad’daulah — 69 years old – In power since 1967

Brunei is the world’s 40th-50th largest oil producing country, but may have the 6th highest per capita oil production

Brazil – Dilma Roussef – 68 years old – In power since 2010

Her predecessor, Louis Inacio Lula da Silva, who literally as of today was selected to become Roussef’s new chief of staff, was 65 years old when he left office in 2011 at the end of an eight-year term. Roussef has been facing an impeachment attempt, while Lula has been under investigation in a corruption scandal.

United Arab Emirates – Khalifa Al Nayhan — 68 years old – In power since 2004

The Emir of Dubai is 66 years old, meanwhile

Colombia – Juan Manuel Santos – 64 years old – In power since 2010

South Sudan – Salva Kiir Mayardit – 64 years old – In power since 2011

Iraq – Haider al Abadi – 63 years old – In power since 2014

Masoud Barzani, meanwhile, who has been president of oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan since 2005 and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party since 1979, is 69 years old. Foud Massoum, a Kurdish politician who is Iraq’s president (a more ceremonial role than prime minister), is 78 years old and has been in office since 2014. Nouri al Maliki, who was Iraq’s prime minister from 2006-2014 and is now Iraq’s vice president, will turn 66 this June. Saddam Hussein was 42 years old during his purge of 1979 and 66 years old when the US invaded in 2003.

Russia – Vladimir Putin – 63 years old – In power since 1999

Malaysia – Najib Razak — 62 years old – In power since 2009

Mahatir Mohammad, meanwhile, is 90 years old. Malaysia is thought to be the world’s 25th largest oil producing country

Turkey – Recep Tayyip Erdogan – 62 years old – In power since 2003

While Turkey is a significant net importer rather than exporter of energy, it is nevertheless capable of impacting the rest of the Middle East, and it has hopes to become a major energy nexus at the centre of the Middle East, North Africa, and Caspian Sea region. (Similarly, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister since 2009 and was previously prime minister from 1996-1999, is 66 years old)

Australia – Malcolm Turnbull – 61 years old – In power since 2015

Egypt – Abdel Fathah al-Sisi — 60 years old – In power since 2014

Sisi was also highly influential for at least a few years before 2014, following Hosni Mubarak’s departure from office in 2011

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The following graph shows how old these countries’ rulers were in any given year between 1970 and 2015, and how old they will be in 2020 if today’s rulers remain in power for the remainder of the decade:

Age oil leaders

In the graphs below, the y-axis indicates the age of today’s rulers, the x-axis indicates the number of years they have been in power, and the size of the circles indicates the relative amount of energy that is produced by their country.

oil3

oil5

oil4

oil leaders

US Legal Immigration — Image of the Day

most-common-country-immigrants

most-common-country-immigrants-no-mexico

With all the disgusting Trump talk on the issue of illegal immigration that has been going on, the other main source of American newcomers – legal immigrants – is sometimes overlooked. The maps above were made by Giorgio Cavaggion, using data from the Department of Homeland Security of immigrants who “became legal permanent residents during the fiscal year of 2012.” That year over one million people in the US became Legal Permanent Residents. Here are 10 thoughts on the maps above:

1. Mexico Still Dominates

Even in spite of the big drop-off in immigration from Mexico to the United States (see graphs below), Mexico still ranks first in half of the states in the country. Only in the northeastern and north-central regions of the US, from Montana to Maine, is Mexico not #1.

2012-phc-mexican-migration-08a FT_14.12.26_BorderApprehensions

2. India a Strong Second

India finished first in six states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, and Virginia) and second to Mexico in twelve states (Washington state, Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina). This is a big increase from previous generations (see graph below).

Still, nearly a third of all Indian immigrants in the US live either in California or New Jersey. More than 25% live in San Jose, Chicago, or Greater New York City. Also notable is that India’s many regions are not represented proportionally in America. Rather, Indian states like Gujarat and Punjab are highly over-represented. Gujaratis, for example, account for more than 20% of Indians in the US, though they are only 6% or so of the population within India itself.

pyramid5-2011 — Population pyramid of Indian Immigrants in the US

Foreign-born Americans By Country of Origin. India still ranks far behind Mexico, and just barely ahead of various Pacific and Caribbean countries

3. Burmese in Fly-Over Country

Burma (aka Myanmar) was first in Indiana and second to Mexico in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa. This could be significant going forward, given that Myanmar may have finally begun to liberalize its political system and renew ties with the United States in recent years. Indeed, Myanmar has often been seen as one of Hillary Clinton’s primary achievements during her time as Secretary of State, so if she becomes president it could perhaps further impact the US-Burmese relationship. Since the mid-2000’s, though, most Burmese immigrants in the US have been from non-Burmese ethnic minority groups, like the Karen people.

4. Bhutan Surprises

I would never have guessed that Bhutan, a far-away Himalayan country of just 750,000 people, would finish first on this list in three separate states (Vermont, New Hampshire, and North Dakota). No other country, apart from Mexico, India, and the Philippines, was first in three or more states. And even the Philippines was first in just one of the Lower 48 states.

5. The French Connection

Vietnam finished first in just one state, Louisiana, and the fact that it did reflects two different ways in which history continues to inform the present-day United States. First is the French connection: Louisiana and Vietnam were both part of the globe-spanning French Empire, a fact that seems to resonate today even though neither Louisiana nor Vietnam even speak much French anymore. Or maybe Vietnamese just enjoy New Orleans jazz.

Second is the American military: wherever it goes, people from that country tend to end up in the United States. The Vietnamese have now become one of the biggest non-Hispanic groups in the US apart from Chinese and Indians, as have immigrants from Korea and the Philippines where the US also fought significant wars during the 20th century. Iraq too has seen its share of immigrants to the US grow over the past decade: on the maps above, Iraqis finished first in Michigan and second to Mexico in Tennessee and Idaho.

6. Cubans in Kentucky, Dominicans in Massachusetts

One might have expected Cuba to finish first in Florida, but in fact Mexico took that honour, leaving Cuba in second. But while Florida was the only state where Cuba finished second to Mexico, Kentucky, surprisingly, was the only state where Cuba finished first overall. Massachusetts and Rhode Island, meanwhile, were taken by the Dominican Republic, which did not finish second to Mexico in any states.

Though Cuba and the Dominican were the only two Spanish-speaking countries apart from Mexico on either of the maps above, the United States of course also has a very large population from other Latin American countries. These did not finish first – or second to Mexico – in any states, however, because many live in Washington D.C. (Salvadorans in particular) or in major immigrant-rich states like California, New York, and Florida, or come from Puerto Rico which is not considered to be a foreign country, or have not yet become Legal Permanent Residents.

7. East Asia in the West

This is an obvious one: immigrants from East Asian countries often continue to cling to the Pacific Ocean even once they reach the United States. Though Mexico still finished first throughout the entire US West Coast, the Philippines finished first in Hawaii and Alaska and second to Mexico in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Oregon and Utah, meanwhile, were the only two states in which China was second to Mexico. India, though not a Pacific country, was second to Mexico in Arizona and in Washington state.

8. East Africa in the North

Of the ten states in the Lower 48 which directly border Canada, Mexico finished first in just two (Washington state and Idaho), Canada finished first in just one (Montana), Bhutan finished first in three, Somalia in two (Maine and Minnesota), and Iraq in one (Michigan). Another East African state, Ethiopia, finished first in nearby South Dakota. Ethiopia also finished second to Mexico in Colorado.

9. Filipinos in Coal Country

Outside of the offshore states of Hawaii and Alaska, the only state the Philippines finished first in was West Virginia. Outside of California, Nevada, and New Mexico, the only state the Philippines finished second to Mexico in was Wyoming. Today Wyoming accounts for approximately 40% of US coal production and West Virginia accounts for about 10% of US coal production. Both states produce considerably more coal than any other state; only Kentucky even comes close to their level of coal production. Wyoming, West Virginia, and Alaska also have the highest per capita energy production of any states in the country.

10. China “Seemingly” Underrepresented

China, in spite of its huge population, only finished first in one state, and only finished second to Mexico in two states. This could be a bit misleading, though, since the state that China finished first in was New York. New York was the only one of the “Big 4” states (California, Texas, Florida, and New York) not to be finished by first in by Mexico, and, with the exception of Michigan, it was the only one of the fourteen most populous states in America not to be finished first in by either Mexico or India.

Capital Idea — Image of the Day

Capital_City_Plaza_Hotel

Countries have different way of ordering their own provinces and capital cities, and how they choose to do so may sometimes say a lot about what sort of politics they have. Where countries’ capital cities are concerned, there is usually something akin to one of the following four set-ups:

The Argentine model: the country’s capital city serves as its own unique administrative district and is surrounded on all sides by a single province that it influences to a large degree.
The American model: the capital city serves as its own unique administrative district but is not surrounded by a single province (or state, etc.), but rather by two or more provinces.
The Saudi model: the capital city is not its own unique administrative district, but is part of an important province that is named after itself.
The Canadian model: the capital city is sometimes annoyingly full of bureaucrats, but is otherwise more or less a normal place. It is not its own administrative district.

The Argentine Model

250px-Map_of_Argentina_with_provinces_names_en

Examples of the Argentine model include, of course, Buenos Aires, which is surrounded by the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina’s recent presidential election, in fact, was between the mayor of Buenos Aires and the governor of Buenos Aires province); Berlin, which is surrounded by Brandenburg (see map below); Moscow, which is surrounded by the Moscow oblast; the Australian Capital Area, which is surrounded by New South Wales (see map below), Vienna, which is surrounded by Lower Austria; Brussels, which is surrounded by Brabant (though Brussels does not directly border Walloon Brabant, which is several km to the south of Brussels); Prague, which is surrounded by the Central Bohemian Region; and Addis Ababba, which is surrounded by Oromia.

Australian-States

oesterreich_karte_en

Beijing probably also belongs in this category: it is surrounded mostly by the province of Hebei but in two spots also by the city of Tianjin, which like Beijing is one of China’s four “direct-controlled municipalities” (the other two are Shanghai and Chongqing). Tianjin was temporarily made part of Hebei province in the 1960s, and in recent years there has been much talk of increasing integration and cooperation between Beijing, Hebei, and Tianjin in order to form a sort of capital city macro-region, which is often referred to by the acronym Jingjinji.

20150530_CNM939

Seoul in South Korea has a similar set-up to Beijing. It is surrounded almost entirely by the province of Gyeonggi, but also touches the coastal city-province of Incheon, in the same way that Beijing does the city-province of Tianjin:

Note by the way that South Korea has a number of city-provinces. Of these, only Gwangju, in the southwest, conforms fully to the “Argentine model”.

Paris too may be included in this list; Paris is not itself a province, but it is surrounded on all sides by Ile de France, one of France’s 13 regions. (Prior to the beginning of this year Ile de France was one of France’s 22 regions, but these have since been reordered and reduced).

The American Model

md-map

Capitals which are their own unique administrative districts but lack their own single encircling province include Washington D.C. (which is surrounded by both Virginia and Maryland), Tokyo, London, Delhi; Mexico City, Bangkok, Tehran; Hanoi, Abuja (though Nigeria’s largest city by far, Lagos, which was the capital until 1991, is an example of the Argentine model), Baghdad (which is surrounded by four other provinces), Manila, Jakarta, Madrid, Islamabad, Brasilia (though just barely …and the capital of Brazil prior to 1960 was Rio de Janeiro), Kinshasa, and Bogota (though in a relatively weird way; see map below, Bogota is the sliver between the departments of Cundinamarca – which Bogota is also the capital of – and Meta).

colombia

One feature that a number of these have in common is that, while the capital city’s administrative district often borders two other provinces, it is usually surrounded much more by the less populous of the two other provinces. Notable examples of this include Washington D.C., which is surrounded much more by Maryland (population 5.9 million) than by Virginia (population 8.3 million); Delhi, which is surrounded much more by Haryana (25 million) than by Uttar Pradesh (205 million); and Brasilia, which is surrounded much more by Goias (6.5 million) than by Minas Gerais 21 million.

Brazil_states_named inde49

Capitals which do not fit this pattern, however, are Mexico City, where the federal capital district is surrounded much more by the state of Mexico (population 16 million) than by the state of Morelos (population 1.9 million); and Islamabad, which is surrounded much more by Punjab (population 91 million) than by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (population 27 million).

mapmexicobasic

PakistanProvincesMap

A number of non-capital cities, meanwhile, such as Hamburg, which is the most populous city in Germany apart from Berlin, fit into this category as well.

The Saudi Model

saudi-arabia-political-map

A capital city which is not its own unique province, but rather is part of an important province named after itself. Examples may include Riyadh, Stockholm, Dhaka, Santiago, and Ankara. Bern also could probably be on this list, but Bern is only the de facto capital of Switzerland; Switzerland has no de jure capital city.

The Canadian Model

Examples of countries in which the capital city is not its own unique independent unit may include Ottawa, Amsterdam, Rome, and Warsaw.

According to Wikipedia “two national capitals in federal countries are neither federal units [like provinces, states, etc.], special capital districts, nor capitals of federal units: Ottawa, the capital of Canada [because Toronto is the capital of Ontario, the province in which Ottawa is located], and Palikir, the capital of the Federated States of Micronesia“. Ottawa is situated entirely within the province of Ontario, but also directly borders French-speaking Quebec.

93f88daab2d2ff195b57f9c71ee3db76 — Palikir

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Please let me know if I’ve made a mistake on any of these; administrative divisions can be a bit complicated – and I can be a bit lazy.

Texas: The Real Swing State

There are, in a certain sense, three big political regions in the United States: the Northeast, the Southeast, and the Southwest.

The Northeast has a temperate climate, excellent natural harbours along the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes, and a long border with Canada. The Southeast has a sub-tropical climate, less-than-excellent natural harbours (excepting New Orleans), and no international borders. The Southwest has a semi-desert climate, an abundance of energy and mineral resources, and an extremely long border with Mexico.

For the purposes of this article, the Northeast has five “core” states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. These states are geographically contiguous, and they have voted for the same party as one another in all six of the presidential elections since 1988 and in 23 out of the 30 elections since 1892. At least four of them have voted in unison in 27 of the past 30 elections.

If you subtract the smallest of these states, Connecticut, then at least 3 of the remaining 4 of these states have voted in unison in 29 of the past 30 elections. The sole exception to this was 1988, when New Jersey and Pennsylvania voted for George H W Bush while New York and Massachusetts were two of only ten states to vote for Michael Dukakis, who had been governor of Massachusetts.

Before that you have to go back 31 elections to see the Northeast vote split, when in 1892 Grover Cleveland won New York and New Jersey while Benjamin Harrison took Pennsylvania and Massachusstetes. While in those days the Democrats had been more popular in the south than in the north, the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland had already been governor of New York, mayor of Buffalo, and President of the United States, and he was born and raised in New Jersey.

Today the five Northeastern core states account for 15% of US electoral college seats. New York and Pennsylvania, the most populous of the five, account for 9% of US electoral college seats.

The Southeast arguably has five core states as well: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. These too are geogaphically contiguous, and they have voted in unison during all four of the most recent presidential elections, 9 out of the past 13 elections, and 27 out of the past 34 elections — including, incredibly, a run of 17 elections in a row from 1880 to 1948. Other states like Arkansas could probably be included in this group as well, but for simplicity’s sake we’ll leave them out for now.

Today the Southeastern core states account for 8% of US electoral college seats, led by Georgia which is by far the largest of the five. As the population of the Southeast core is roughly half as large as that of the Northeast core, it often requires support from adjacent populous states, most notably Texas and Florida but also North Carolina and Tennesse (both of which are larger than any of the Southeastern core states with the exception of Georgia) in order to be electorally competitive with other regions.

The Southwest, in contrast, has just two core states, which are not geographically contiguous: Texas and California. These have not voted in unison since 1988, and have voted in unison in just 5 of the past 13 elections — twice for Reagan, who had been governor of California, twice for Richard Nixon, who had been born in California and served as both a Senator and a Congressman representing California, and once for George H W Bush, who had been Reagan’s Vice President.

This division has, perhaps more than anything else, defined modern American politics, as California and Texas are the most populous states in the country, accounting for 17% of the electoral college seats in a presidential election. By comparison, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada combined only account for 7% of electoral college seats.

During the past six elections, starting with the very first post-Cold War election of 1992, which also happened to be the dawn of the (ongoing) Clinton era, the Northeast core and California have voted for the Democrats while the Southeast core and Texas have voted Republican. This has occasionally left the presidency in the hands of populous areas located on the fringe of the three political regions, such as Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Virginia, Michigan, and upstate Pennsylvania. Not incidentally, this year’s Democratic National Convention will be held in Pennsylvania, while the Republican National Convention will be held in Ohio.

Ohio, currently the seventh most populous state in America, has voted for the winning president in every election since it voted for Nixon (who was beaten by Kennedy) in 1960, Hewey (who was beaten by FDR) in 1944, and Harrison (who was beaten by Grover Cleveland) in 1892. Ohio’s president-picking has been even better of late than that of Missouri, the “bellwether state”, which voted for all but one victorious president between 1904 and 2004 before failing to pick Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Florida has almost exactly the same successful record as Ohio since 1928, except that unlike Ohio it voted for Bush Sr., who was beaten by Clinton, in 1992, and for FDR to have a fourth term as president during the Second World War election of 1944. While today Florida has a population much larger than any state apart from California and Texas, it was only the 18th most populous state in 1950, and at the begining of the 20th century had a population barely larger than that of Rhode Island.

Illinois, in spite of being America’s fifth most populous state, has been less successful in getting its preferred candidates into the Oval Office. It did not vote for George W Bush in either of his elections, and voted for Gerald Ford rather than for a victorious Jimmy Carter in 1976. Many people, however, believe that Illinois was the decisive state in the election of 1960, the closest election of the 20th century. It has been alleged that Illinois’ vote was rigged in Kennedy’s favour that year.

Michigan has been nearly identical to Illinois in its voting patterns, with the exception of 1968 (Michigan voted for Hubert Humphrey rather than Nixon), 1948 (Michigan voted for Dewey rather than for Truman), 1940 (Michigan was the largest of just 10 states to vote for Indiana-born Wendell Wilkie instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt), and 1912 (Michigan was one of just seven states to vote for Progessive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt instead of for Woodrow Wilson). Today Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Florida account for 15% of electoral college seats.

The Break-Up

The most significant modern shift in American politics has probably been in the Southwest. Whereas California voted for the Republicans nine out of ten times between 1952 and 1988, it has voted for the Democrats in all six elections since. Whereas Texas voted for the Democrats four out of ten times between 1952 and 1988, it has voted for the Republicans in all six elections since. And whereas Texas and California voted in unison seven out of ten times between 1952 and 1988 and fourteen out of nineteen times between 1916 and 1988, they have not voted in unison since. It is certainly more difficult now to imagine a Republican president hailing from California, as both Reagan and Nixon did, or a Democratic president hailing from Texas, as Lyndon Johnson did.

California’s shift has occured probably as a result of a demographic influx from Latin America, the Pacific rim, and other parts of the US. Texas’ political shift has been less distinctive than California’s, meanwhile; it went from red-violet to red whereas California went from nearly red to blue.

Texas’ solidification as Republican state may be partly due to economics and environmental politics. Whereas oil and gas production across much of the rest of the US plummeted during the 1980s and 90’s (including in California, where oil production has halved since 1985), oil in the Gulf of Mexico rose from under 15% of total US oil production in 1985 to nearly 45% of total US oil production by 2000. This left Texas, which also produces prodigious amounts of natural gas and coal, with an even larger role in American energy production, just as many Americans were becoming increasingly concerned with the ozone layer and global warming. As states were forced to choose a side in the environmental war, Texas’ allegience was an obvious one: it is with the Republicans.

The Bush and Clinton families may perhaps have played a role in the political shift in Texas as well. The Bush’s, historically a northeastern family, shrewdly put down roots in Texas during the 1950’s. George H W Bush became a Texas congressman and George W Bush would later become its governor from 1995-2000. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, was born in neighbouring Arkansas, and served as governor of Arkansas from 1983-1992 (remember when Hillary Clinton had a southern accent?) before beating George H W Bush in the 1992 presidential election. In that year Texas voted for a second Bush term, while Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee all voted Clinton.

The Clinton-Bush rivalry has continued in intensity since then, first because of the contested election between Bush Jr. and Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore (which occurred in the wake of Bill Clinton’s perjury scandal, which the Republicans at times tried to tarnish Gore as having been involved with), then because of Hillary’s 2008 anti-Bush primary campaign (before it became clear that Hillary’s true opponent was Obama, rather than just the legacy of George W.), and finally during 2015 when many thought that this year’s election would be Hillary vs. Jeb. Perhaps this Clinton-Bush, Arkansas-Texas dynamic has helped to sour the Texans on the modern-day Democratic Party to some degree.

Looking Ahead

The question now is whether or not the post-1980’s predictable electoral system will begin to change. Will the Republicans continue to dominate the Southeast, or will the Democrats make inroads there, solidifying their position in Florida and even moving into the Southeast core? The Southeast has certainly been changing in recent years; among the ten fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the US during the 2000s, eight were in the Southeast. The Southeast may also have seen growth among its white liberal population, as metropolitan areas like Raleigh, Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Houston, and Dallas have all been among the fastest-growing American cities in the past decade.

Similarly, could the Republicans look to take back some Northeast (and Midwest) states that have been reliably Democratic-leaning since 1992? The Northeast too has seen some big changes; Pennsylvania, for example, is in the midst of a gargantuan natural gas boom that could perhaps help tilt the state towards the Republicans, assuming environmentalist voters finally tire of the Democrats’ somewhat cynical embrace of burning natural gas as a “transitional” substitute for coal and begin to pressure the Democrats to abandon their alliance with the gas industry. New York may have similar gas resources, but fracking there is prohibited for now.

Finally, could California and Texas reconcile? Texas, now effectively serving as the Republican heartland, and California, now the Democratic heartland, actually have some commonalities. Both have large Mexican populations. Both are arid and sunny. Both have a lot of oil (especially if the Southern Monterey shale formation is viable, though even without it California remains the fourth biggest oil producer in the US). Both have substantial ties to Asia: California because of its Pacific frontage and sizeable Asian population; Texas because the port nexus of Houston-New Orelans handles by far the most bulk goods of any shipping region in America, making it an integral component of US-Asian trade. (Houston, in fact, has suprisingly become one of the top Chinese tourist destination in the US, a legacy of Yao Ming and later Jeremy Lin having played for the Rockets).

Texas and California are also the two most populous states, and so would benefit from electoral reforms that would stop the US Senate and US presidential election rules from continuing to over-represent small states like Rhode Island and Hawaii in favour of big ones like California, Texas, and Florida. Florida, to be sure, has commonalities with California and Texas as well: it is populous, sunny, and home to a large number of Spanish-speakers.

Texas and California, when combined with Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, have 24% of the electoral college seats in the US. Between 1928 and 1964 Texas and California voted for the same candidate in 9 out of 10 elections: 3 Republicans, 6 Democrats. Could it happen again? It seems extremely unlikely to this year, but the longer-term future is less certain. Indeed Texas, with its enormous population, its 20th century history as a purple state, and its position straddling both the Southwest and the Southeast, is in some ways arguably America’s truest swing state. It has simply forgotten how to fly.

East Asian Trade – Image of the Day

From Finally Passing Gas: 10 Winners and Losers of the Panama Canal Expansion:

trade asia

A typical assumption has been that China and Japan will be the primary beneficiaries of the canal. China, after all, leads the world in importing commodities and exporting bulk goods, and Japan has accounted for 40% of the world’s LNG imports – far more than any other country – in recent years.

Yet while China and Japan lead the pack in terms of the value of their absolute trade, they lag far behind both South Korea and Taiwan in the more relevant category of relative trade; that is, the value of their trade relative to the overall size of their economies. As can be seen in the chart above, the economies of China and Japan are generally not as trade-oriented as those of South Korea and Taiwan. As such, they might not benefit as much from the canal, which is intended to ease trade — in particular LNG trade, which the pre-expansion canal could not facilitate.

Of course, none of this means that South Korea and Taiwan are risk-free investments. They are not. Both, for example, have significantly more exposure to China’s economy, which has been struggling of late, than Japan does. All else being held equal, though, South Korea and Taiwan appear likely to be two of the greatest beneficiaries of the new canal.