Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Why China may worry about North Korea just as much as America does

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SUCH reports have been heard before and smack of wishful thinking. But there are more reasons than usual to believe China’s promises that it is trying to rein in its unruly, pugnacious little ally, North Korea. South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, has said that China has promised not to side with North Korea if it stages further provocations towards the South. That would be a big shift. Last year China failed to condemn either the sinking by North Korea of a South Korean naval vessel in March, or the shelling in November of a South Korean island. Now Chinese scholars and officials do indeed seem to be sending strong signals to North Korea that enough is enough.

In June Liang Guanglie, China’s defence minister, told a regional-security forum in Singapore that China had done much more in communicating with North Korea “than you can imagine”. At another conference, in Kuala Lumpur, Zhu Feng, a professor at Peking University, contradicted a North Korean participant who argued that the security issue on the Korean peninsula was one of reunification and a legacy of the cold war. It was also a result, Mr Zhu said, of the unchanged nature of the North Korean regime and its behaviour. North Korea, he argued, “risks biting the Chinese hand that feeds it.”

China has been exasperated with North Korea before, not least in 2006, after its first test of a nuclear weapon. Mutual suspicion and animosity go back much further. In a recent paper*, You Ji, a former Chinese foreign-ministry official now at the University of New South Wales, reports that Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s dictator, never forgave China for its disapproval of the hereditary succession in which he took over from his father, Kim Il Sung. Sulking, he did not visit China once from 1983 to 2000.

Since May last year, however, he has been three times. That is a symptom of his regime’s greater dependence on China, which accounts for four-fifths of its trade and energy needs, and most of the food aid it gets to avert renewed famine.

The corollary of greater North Korean dependence should be greater Chinese influence. But in the past the North Korean regime has always managed to fend off unwelcome pressure by silently playing on two big Chinese strategic fears. One is that a spurned North Korea might provoke South Korea and America, triggering a cycle of retaliation and even war. The second is that it might collapse in chaos with a mass exodus of refugees into China. Any collapse would presumably be followed by reunification of the Korean peninsula under the prosperous, American-allied South. That could mean American troops stationed in a country bordering China, complicating its strategy should, for example, it ever find itself in a confrontation with America over Taiwan. Until now, the North’s primitive nuclear weapons have not seemed to worry China too much. After all, they do not threaten it, and if they help the regime survive, they serve a Chinese purpose.

Last year’s events may have changed these calculations. In South Korea President Lee faced criticism for not responding more robustly to the attacks. Some have called for American battlefield nuclear weapons to be stationed there, alarming China. There is also the risk that any new provocation, or mishap, could quickly get out of hand. In mid-June two South Korean marines shot their rifles at a civilian airliner landing at Incheon, the airport for Seoul, mistaking it for a North Korean plane. You Ji thinks that the Korean peninsula may have supplanted Taiwan as the potential war most worrying China. China’s North Korea-watchers also fret that the next dynastic succession, from Kim Jong Il to the plump but callow Kim Jong Un, may be more than the system can stand, leading to a military junta or civil war.

One form of Chinese pressure on North Korea is a renewed drive to help it reform the moribund economy. After Mr Kim’s most recent trip to China the North announced that China would help develop three special economic zones. In the past, similar schemes have come to nought, perhaps because the Kim regime fears economic liberalisation would make the example of South Korea look even more appealing, and lead to an implosion.

Another sort of Chinese pressure is to coax North Korea back to the six-party process that it hosts for the two Koreas, America, Japan and Russia to discuss North Korean “denuclearisation”. China has proposed preliminary steps—starting with inter-Korean talks, followed by North Korean-American dialogue.

The first step has so far proved out of reach because of South Korea’s demand for some sort of apology for last year’s outrages. That might be finessed by holding lower-level talks initially. But the big obstacles remain, and China seems unable to overcome them. America does not want to reward North Korean bad behaviour; and nobody believes it will ever fully abandon its nuclear capability. Yet at a recent nuclear conference in Seoul organised by the Asan Institute, a think-tank, Gary Samore, of America’s National Security Council, made clear that the United States can never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Superpowerless

In fact, America will have to resume dialogue one day. There is no other way to work towards at least capping North Korea’s nuclear weaponry, which, unmolested and uninspected, it is presumably doing its best to enhance. But talks might be further delayed if the North flexes its muscles with a third nuclear test—perhaps even with a bomb made not from its dwindling stock of plutonium but from highly enriched uranium, for which last year it admitted it had a programme, shocking the world. Judging from its recent signals, China should be exerting what influence it can to prevent a new test. What is really frightening about the Kim family, however, is that not even mighty China can tell it what to do.

In the Brother Leader's bunker

On the surface, life goes on. Beneath it, Libyans nervously watch and wait

HOURS after Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was indicted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague on June 27th, a rebel group calling itself the Free Generation Movement furtively torched a billboard in the heart of Tripoli, Libya’s capital, showing him in dress uniform. The impoverished residents of Souk al-Juma, one of Tripoli’s rubbish-strewn suburbs, quietly cheered the news of the arrest warrant. “I saw it on a television,” whispers a delighted video-games salesman. “He’s finished—game over, Qaddafi.”

Maybe so. But his security service is still cracking down on Tripoli’s restive suburbs. Every night armed checkpoints ensure that whole districts are locked down. Plain-clothes policemen still go from house to house, taking away suspected rebels or their sympathisers. “Some never come back,” says a young man who was detained for three days.

Fear stalks the capital. If you ask people about politics, they tend to flee into the city’s ill-stocked shops and unpaved alleys to escape the eyes of informers. “Neighbours are always watching,” says a resident, playing loud music to avoid being overheard. He turns it up even louder at night to drown out the sound of police guns. “They shoot for hours,” he says. “Often we cannot sleep.”

When thousands of Tripoli people rose up four months ago, inspired by rebels in Libya’s eastern city, Benghazi, and elsewhere in the Arab world, they were spurred into action by the grinding poverty which many Libyans still suffer and by the stark contrast of the dank suburbs with the shiny new skyscrapers in central Tripoli occupied by the oil-rich elite tied to the colonel. “But it is not just about money,” says a shopkeeper. “We also want freedom and democracy.” Like many of his neighbours, he is sure the colonel is finished. “The rebels will come and save us.”

Pictures of the colonel and the plain green flag that symbolises his rule are less common than before. Some brave residents are so keen to speak out that they accost strangers, asking if they are journalists. Some shopkeepers quietly insist on pressing gifts on foreigners or refuse payment for goods. “Thank you, America” and “Obama good”, say others.

But they are taking their time. Sympathisers in Tripoli are generally lying low. Some of them attack checkpoints or provocatively paint cats and dogs the colours of the revolution (red, green and black), which the police then shoot. The opposition is hampered by the blockage of internet access and text-messaging facilities. Yet protest networks such as the Free Generation Movement still hope to prepare the ground for a post-Qaddafi transition. “We have many allies, even in the government,” claims one of the group’s leaders, who says he knows of ten other secret protest groups.

Some anti-Qaddafi people have left Tripoli for the Nafusa Mountains, only 100km (62 miles) south-west of the capital, where the rebels have tightened their grip and have been taking towns, such as Yafran, increasingly close to Tripoli. With the port of Misrata now also securely in rebel hands (though the colonel’s forces still fire artillery into the town), the rebels are slowly advancing. Zliten is under attack. Though the oil-refinery town of Brega is still in the colonel’s hands, it too is under pressure. Some youths from Tripoli say they will get weapons and military training in the mountains and then return home. “The time to fight here will come,” says one.

The Nafusa rebels have cut the oil pipeline that supplied Colonel Qaddafi’s last working refinery, in Zawiya. Their next target is Gharyan, a town farther east which would let them block a key supply route to the colonel, from Algeria. The rebels are lobbying Tunisia’s government to close its border and cut off another conduit.

Hundreds of lorries arrive from Tunisia every day, as well as private cars laden with scarce goods. The black-market price of petrol is now 30 times more than the official rate at petrol stations, where drivers wait in mile-long queues for up to a week. Bicycles, once a rare sight, have suddenly become popular—and expensive. Traders are trying to bring in more of them from Tunisia.

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Though Tripoli is now under a kind of siege, the government is still dug in. In Bab al-Aziziya, the colonel’s fortified compound, buildings have been wrecked and bunkers punctured by NATO bombs. Yet the state machinery still functions. Visitors to the compound are carefully searched and bags X-rayed. The lawns in the inner sanctum are freshly mown and watered.

The colonel, it is presumed, hides in many places. Some say he sleeps in schools and hospitals, knowing NATO will not attack them. Or perhaps he spends nights in bunkers deep below his compound. On June 27th NATO destroyed a bus he is said to have used. Its charred chassis and a singed palm tree next to the colonel’s white-tiled but wrecked villa were shown off to the foreign media.

The state propaganda tries to stiffen the people’s resolve to resist NATO and defend their Brother Leader. Officials say they are handing out 1.2m guns to let ordinary citizens “defend themselves”. Foreign correspondents were invited to a conference centre to witness some 500 middle-class women and children brandishing their newly acquired weapons. After emotional speeches broadcast on television, the women, some with Giorgio Armani camouflage caps and high heels, took their AK-47s into the car park and fired them into the air. Male security guards joined in. “I want to save my leader,” says a fervent 14-year-old, Fatima Hassan, over the noise.

Such rituals may be effective—among some sectors of society. The poor do not, on the whole, seem to love the colonel. But in middle-class districts of Tripoli the mood is more mixed. In Abu Salim, a business area (and site of a jail where 1,260 political prisoners were killed in one night in 1996), many people have benefited from the colonel’s rule. “I own a comfortable house and two cars and it is safe to leave them on the street,” says a 26-year-old trader. “What more do I want?”

Privately owned shops in Abu Salim sell badges showing Colonel Qaddafi in various heroic and sympathetic poses, including one alongside Saddam Hussein, and play songs with government jingles vilifying the rebels in the east. “Save our dear Misrata,” goes one. Streets and shops in the district are festooned with green flags. “They are Ali Babas,” says a resident of the rebels. “Thieves, terrorists.” Another refers to civil strife in neighbouring Algeria in the 1990s, when some 200,000 civilians were killed. “War is not freedom.”

But even in Abu Salim, people moan about inflation. Some food prices have leapt fivefold. Middle-class people say their children, especially, are suffering. “They’re scared by the sound of NATO bombs,” says a father. Despite the relentless propaganda, morale is steadily being eroded. Reports of defections suggest that the regime is being whittled away. The latest renegades included 17 footballers.

To keep prices down, the government has restricted cash withdrawals at banks to about $800. Fear of instability has kept money changers busy. In darkened shops bundles of notes held together by rubber bands are stacked hip-high against the walls. Rich Libyans wheel suitcases full of dinars, worth 40% less than they were before the unrest, to change them into dollars at the al-Mushir Souk, near Green Square, where the colonel used to rally his faithful.

No more. There are few visible signs of a mass uprising in the offing. But there is a sense, under the surface, that people are waiting for the regime’s end.

How to cope with data overload

Too much information

Correction to this article

GOOGLE “information overload” and you are immediately overloaded with information: more than 7m hits in 0.05 seconds. Some of this information is interesting: for example, that the phrase “information overload” was popularised by Alvin Toffler in 1970. Some of it is mere noise: obscure companies promoting their services and even more obscure bloggers sounding off. The overall impression is at once overwhelming and confusing.

“Information overload” is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, virtual friends to pester, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend, papers to shuffle and spouses to appease. A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge has made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third think that it has damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.

Commentators have coined a profusion of phrases to describe the anxiety and anomie caused by too much information: “data asphyxiation” (William van Winkle), “data smog” (David Shenk), “information fatigue syndrome” (David Lewis), “cognitive overload” (Eric Schmidt) and “time famine” (Leslie Perlow). Johann Hari, a British journalist, notes that there is a good reason why “wired” means both “connected to the internet” and “high, frantic, unable to concentrate”.

These worries are exaggerated. Stick-in-the-muds have always complained about new technologies: the Victorians fussed that the telegraph meant that “the businessman of the present day must be continually on the jump.” And businesspeople have always had to deal with constant pressure and interruptions—hence the word “business”. In his classic study of managerial work in 1973 Henry Mintzberg compared managers to jugglers: they keep 50 balls in the air and periodically check on each one before sending it aloft once more.

Yet clearly there is a problem. It is not merely the dizzying increase in the volume of information (the amount of data being stored doubles every 18 months). It is also the combination of omnipresence and fragmentation. Many professionals are welded to their smartphones. They are also constantly bombarded with unrelated bits and pieces—a poke from a friend one moment, the latest Greek financial tragedy the next.

The data fog is thickening at a time when companies are trying to squeeze ever more out of their workers. A survey in America by Spherion Staffing discovered that 53% of workers had been compelled to take on extra tasks since the recession started. This dismal trend may well continue—many companies remain reluctant to hire new people even as business picks up. So there will be little respite from the dense data smog, which some researchers fear may be poisonous.

They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.

Curbing the cacophony

What can be done about information overload? One answer is technological: rely on the people who created the fog to invent filters that will clean it up. Xerox promises to restore “information sanity” by developing better filtering and managing devices. Google is trying to improve its online searches by taking into account more personal information. (Some people fret that this will breach their privacy, but it will probably deliver quicker, more accurate searches.) A popular computer program called “Freedom” disconnects you from the web at preset times.

A second answer involves willpower. Ration your intake. Turn off your mobile phone and internet from time to time.

But such ruses are not enough. Smarter filters cannot stop people from obsessively checking their BlackBerrys. Some do so because it makes them feel important; others because they may be addicted to the “dopamine squirt” they get from receiving messages, as Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, two academics, have argued. And self-discipline can be counter-productive if your company doesn’t embrace it. Some bosses get shirty if their underlings are unreachable even for a few minutes.

Most companies are better at giving employees access to the information superhighway than at teaching them how to drive. This is starting to change. Management consultants have spotted an opportunity. Derek Dean and Caroline Webb of McKinsey urge businesses to embrace three principles to deal with data overload: find time to focus, filter out noise and forget about work when you can. Business leaders are chipping in. David Novak of Yum! Brands urges people to ask themselves whether what they are doing is constructive or a mere “activity”. John Doerr, a venture capitalist, urges people to focus on a narrow range of objectives and filter out everything else. Cristobal Conde of SunGard, an IT firm, preserves “thinking time” in his schedule when he cannot be disturbed. This might sound like common sense. But common sense is rare amid the cacophony of corporate life.

Economist.com/blogs/schumpeter

Correction: This article was amended on July 1st to correct the figures related to Teresa Amabile's study.

The unfathomable Naoto Kan defies both friends and enemies

One step ahead of the executioner

LIKE one of the irradiated dogs that have been left to fend for themselves in the shadow of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, Naoto Kan, the Japanese prime minister, is giving the impression that he has gone feral. Why else but because of a blind craving for power would he defy even his friends within the government who are begging him to resign?

Given that politics has been in a state of paralysis since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident on March 11th, it is a fair question. Both outside the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and within it, many politicians are so exasperated with Mr Kan’s lack of leadership that they cannot see any hope of laws essential for recovery and reconstruction being passed until he steps down.

Yet, either through luck or cunning, Mr Kan has managed to keep one step ahead of those baying for his blood. He survived a no-confidence motion in parliament a month ago by promising to step down eventually. On June 27th Mr Kan at last set the conditions that he said would enable him to resign.

The conditions were the passage of three bills: a ¥2 trillion ($25 billion) supplementary budget to cope with the disaster; the issuance of bonds to finance the 2011-12 budget deficit; and an electricity initiative to broaden the scope of feed-in tariffs to encourage more use of renewable energy in the national grid. All three have been held up by opposition from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which pretty much ran Japan for 55 years until 2009 and is fixated with destroying Mr Kan. It has demanded that he quits before, not after, it approves any bills—though Mr Kan would not be the only one to doubt its sincerity.

Mr Kan’s conditions put the ball back in the LDP’s court, but not for long. Confusingly, on the same day that he set the conditions for his retirement, the prime minister reshuffled his cabinet. He appointed a renegade LDP politician, Kazuyuki Hamada, to handle internal affairs in parliament. With that move, Mr Kan managed to incense both the LDP and his own party.

Given such confusion, some observers do not discount the possibility that Mr Kan might make one final lunge for redemption. They say that later this summer he might dissolve parliament and call a snap election, aiming to campaign on a pledge to abandon nuclear power. He might even quit, it is whispered, on the anniversary of the bombing on Hiroshima on August 6th, when anti-nuclear feelings run high. On June 28th Mr Kan did nothing to dispel the rumours, telling DPJ politicians that energy policy was likely to be the most important issue in the next election.

There would be political resonances to such a gamble. In early August 2005 the then-prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, called a snap election to push through postal privatisation. It was a move that nearly split the ruling LDP but also gave Mr Koizumi a landslide victory. In post-Fukushima Japan, nuclear power would be a much more emotive issue. “It could be a bomb to destroy both the DPJ and the LDP,” says Takeshi Sasaki of Gakushuin University in Tokyo. He speculates that, like Mr Koizumi, Mr Kan might attempt to surround himself with charismatic young politicians to be the face of the next government. Such people might include Goshi Hosono, Mr Kan’s 39-year-old Mr Fix-it who this week was appointed minister in charge of the nuclear mess.

There are just as many reasons to doubt that such an election would be feasible, however. The high command of Mr Kan’s party would be staunchly opposed, fearing the DPJ would lose. Nor is it yet clear how firmly the public has swung against nuclear power since March 11th. After all, years of power shortages loom. What is more, no one in the disaster areas is in any mood for a national election. All they ask is for parliament to provide funds and lead the reconstruction.

Mr Kan’s biggest drawback is that, unlike Mr Koizumi at the time, he is not popular. However much the public dislikes the mainstream parties, they do not like him either. A poll published on June 29th by Kyodo, a news wire, showed over two-thirds of those surveyed wanted him to step down immediately or by the end of August. The election scenario “won’t happen. It would be a suicide mission. He’s no Koizumi,” says Gerald Curtis of Columbia University. He certainly isn’t. But regardless of whether Mr Kan calls an election or not, if the main parties cannot find common ground for dealing with the disaster, they still need a bomb put under them.