Transparency

Horse-trading, smoke-filled rooms, in-camera non-public proceedings, on-site inspections, secret-ops, military and diplomatic secrets, private meetings between lobbyists and government officials, watch what we say not what we do, planting false stories, misdirection, bribery and corruption, hidden agendas… the stuff of conspiracy theorists… and why “people” tend not to trust governments in general or their own government in particular. The old maxim that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to mind as does the notion of checks and balances and a representative democratically elected government. Through all of the best laid plans of the purest political hearts (there may be a few), indictments flow through our elected representatives like the great Mississippi herself… bribes ripple like mountain streams… and governments ignore the laws that form their foundations under the rubric of expediency.

Clearly, secrecy is a necessary component of running a government. The recent TSA leak of their inner methodologies and the damage to developing military hardware that comes from a well-placed spy are some pretty obvious examples. We’ve got a massive American bureaucracy with millions of government employees; they make hundreds of millions of mistakes, ranging from condoning torture and executing innocents, to failing to enforce a local neighborhood noise ordinance to the consternation of those who lobbied to get the ordinance passed in the first place. And we have competing branches of government, judicial, legislative and executive, all eyeing each other with justified suspicion, and the press just digging for dirt to sell subscriptions and advertising.

If there is one overriding issue in global politics, it is the battle over transparency. That we are supporting an undeniably corrupt regime in Afghanistan (it wouldn’t be the first time the US through its weight behind bribe-taking and self-dealing regional powers) doesn’t help our cries in the global arena for transparency, but without transparency – since bottom line, nobody trusts anybody (hell, even Israel spies on the US!) – without some form of global regulatory uniformity, attempts to change the world to be a better, safer and fairer place are simply unworkable. Financial crooks would simply move their operations to nations with lots of loopholes and “friendly” enforcement officials, and dirty air and water do not respect international borders.

Right now China and the US are embroiled in a battle royal over the enforcement of environmental standards if new accords are created in the Copenhagen climate change conference sponsored by the United Nations. China thinks standards are appropriate, as does the United States, but the Peoples Republic is not a country that is used to free-roaming foreigners making unannounced inspections, looking for obvious pollution violations. China has historically been exceptionally uncomfortable with transparency… a practice that is firmly rooted in cultural patterns implement hundreds (if not thousands) of years before the birth of Christ.

In ancient China, people learned to speak in “plausibly deniable” metaphors and indirect speech, since a misinterpreted word to a local duke would result in an instantaneous removal of one’s head (the easy way) or a slow torturous ignominious end. The lesson: keep your mouth shut and keep out of your neighbor’s business. Traditional Chinese residential architecture says it all: four solid, windowless outside walls, with windows facing an interior courtyard. The inner sanctum of the Forbidden City (the name should tell you all you need to know) is another harsh example.

Free speech is nice to most Chinese, but it generally doesn’t carry the fervor that Westerners place upon it. Hence, the Chinese legal system – more reflective of their cultural imperative than the implementation of any doctrinaire communist manifesto – has never been supportive of free speech, and government runs under the notion that government must be trusted to enforce itself. We (and the Chinese) know this doesn’t work, and even with the arrest and/or execution of 150,000 corrupt officials a year, China still stings from the insider corruption that it does not seem to be able to slow with any apparent success.

Iran’s unwillingness to allow international inspectors into its nuclear program comes from a vastly darker and more sinister place. China’s reluctance to allow inspectors is born of its cultural past and of a morbid fear of embarrassment (“losing face”) to the entire world if inspectors find extreme violations born of the very corruption that the Chinese government itself cannot stop. Americans simply do not trust government, any government, to do what it promises; we even joke about it… so we have a “watchdog” mentality. The Chinese? Well, their entire history speaks of another path.

The December 15^th New York Times says it ever-so-clearly: “But [the Chinese] will not accept any outside monitors to ensure that they are indeed making the changes that they have promised to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other pollutants emitted per unit of economic output...‘I think there’s no doubt that China, when it says 40 to 45 percent reduction in energy intensity, is serious about that,’ said Ed Miliband, the British secretary of state for energy and climate change. The more challenging hurdle, he said, is finding a way that China can prove to the outside world that it is reducing its emissions by the amount it claims… He Yafei, the Chinese vice foreign minister, said China’s laws would guarantee compliance...‘This is a matter of principle,’ even if it scuttles the talks, he said in an interview with The Financial Times.”

While ultimately, the West is unlikely to take a “trust me” attitude above enforcing environmental pollution standards, I suspect it helps to understand where the problems originated. The battle between poorer nations – who believe that the richer countries got that way because their smokestack industries polluted their way to riches – and the developed world may just be a side show to the evolution of Chinese participation as a full if not senior partner in global politics.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.