Hong Kong Aff
Download 1.87 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- No chance of escalation – China and US have stark cooperation – major incentives to deter war. Huan 12/31
- Policymaking Bad
Anwers to block outCredit RatingCredit rating is staying high – no change of collapse. Reuters 2014Reuters. “Fitch, S&P say no immediate impact on Hong Kong's ratings from unrest” September 29, 2014. CC (Reuters) - Clashes between Hong Kong police and pro-democracy supporters won't significantly affect the city's credit ratings in the short term unless they last long enough to have a material impact on the economy, Fitch and Standard & Poor's (S&P) said on Monday. Fitch has a rating of "AA-plus" with a stable outlook while S&P has rated the former British colony a notch higher having assigned it the highest AAA-rating. "It would be negative if the protests are on a wide enough scale and last long enough to have a material effect on the economy or financial stability, but we don't currently see this as very likely," said Andrew Colquhoun, head of sovereign ratings for Asia Pacific at Fitch. "Hong Kong retains a number of credit strengths supporting its very high rating including the strength of the government's balance sheet, supply-side economic flexibility, and high standards of governance underpinned by high-quality public institutions," he said. Fitch had affirmed its rating on Sept 15. Riot police advanced on pro-democracy protesters in the early hours of Monday, firing volleys of tear gas after launching a baton-charge in the worst unrest in the city since China took back control of the former British colony two decades ago. The S&P analyst said the protests reflected different perceptions about Hong Kong's governance and were not unusual given its political status. Although these protests could have a modest and short-term negative impact on economic performance, it would not significantly affect investments. "We also see little impact on the strong institutions and governance that underpin the government’s credit ratings," said Kim Eng Tan, S&P's Singapore-based analyst. "Material negative impact on credit fundamentals are unlikely unless the situation deteriorates severely." Share prices fell more than 2 percent at one point and the Hong Kong dollar slipped. No chance of escalation – China and US have stark cooperation – major incentives to deter war. Huan 12/31Si Huan, Year of cooperation marks US, China relations, China Daly,12/31/2014. NS Beijing and Washington have witnessed "a rise after restraint" in their interactions this year amid China's more proactive actions to lay out strategic cornerstones to prop up a "major-country diplomacy" that features stabilizing neighborhood, spearheading global economic development and weaving a network of partners, analysts said.¶ In a year summarized at a recent ministry reception as "a harvest year for Chinese diplomacy", President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang conducted 12 overseas visits to 30 countries in 2014, including Asian neighbors, as well as countries in distant Europe, Latin America and Oceania. Through more frequent bilateral interaction, Chinese leaders have spelled out a foreign policy vision that features good neighborliness and win-win cooperation.¶ So far, China has built various partnerships with 67 countries and five regional organizations, illustrating the "major-country style" in a non-aligned but partner-up approach.¶ Chinese leaders also voiced and propagated new economic and security concepts at a series of multilateral conferences such as the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands, the sixth BRICS Summit in Brazil, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tajikistan.¶ In late November, Xi highlighted China's pursuit of a "major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics", namely new style and vision, on the premise of continuity and consistency of China's foreign policy, at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs. Observers said the remarks signaled Beijing's diplomatic shift from its traditional approach of "keeping a low profile" toward striving for accomplishments, given the country's status as a rising economic giant.¶ In particular, the two intertwined global powers of China and the US have continued to forge a new paradigm of "big country relations" in the face of disagreement and competition.¶ Teng Jianqun, a senior research fellow from the China Institute of International Studies, said the China-US relationship is shifting into a "new normal", a term Xi has recently adopted to describe the current stage of China's economic development.¶ "Despite fierce competition and frequent setbacks in traditional areas such as trade and security, China and the US have managed to avoid conflicts and seek in-depth understanding," Teng said. Policymaking BadConfining discourse to only policy debates constructs a regime of truth that masks the constructed nature of their solvency; this leads to serial policy failure. Smith 97Smith, 97 (Steve, professor of political science at the University of Wales, Review of International Studies, Cambridge journals online) By focusing on the policy debate, we restrict ourselves to the issues of the day, to the tip of the political iceberg. What politics seems to me to be crucially about is how and why some issues are made intelligible as political problems and how others are hidden below the surface (being defined as ‘economic’ or ‘cultural’ or ‘private’). In my own work I have become much more interested in this aspect of politics in the last few years. I spent a lot of time dealing with policy questions and can attest to the ‘buzz’ that this gave me both professionally and personally. But I became increasingly aware that the realm of the political that I was dealing with was in fact a very small part of what I would now see as political. I therefore spent many years working on epistemology, and in fact consider that my most political work. I am sure that William Wallace will regard this comment as proof of his central claim that I have become scholastic rather than scholarly, but I mean it absolutely. My current work enquires into how it is that we can make claims to knowledge, how it is that we ‘know’ things about the international political world. My main claim is that International Relations relies overwhelmingly on one answer to this question, namely, an empiricist epistemology allied to a positivistic methodology. This gives the academic analyst the great benefit of having a foundation for claims about what the world is like. It makes policy advice more saleable, especially when positivism’s commitment to naturalism means that the world can be presented as having certain furniture rather than other furniture. The problem is that in my view ; indeed it is in fact a very political view of knowledge, born of the Enlightenment with an explicit political purpose. So much follows politically from being able to present the world in this way; crucially the normative assumptions of this move are hidden in a false and seductive mask of objectivity and by the very difference between statements of fact and statements of value that is implied in the call to ‘speak truth to power’. For these reasons, I think that the political is a far wider arena than does Wallace. This means that I think I am being very political when I lecture or write on epistemology. Maybe that does not seem political to those who define politics as the public arena of policy debate; but I believe that my work helps uncover the regimes of truth within which that more restricted definition of politics operates. In short, I think that Wallace’s view of politics ignores its most political aspect, namely, the production of discourses of truth which are the very processes that create the space for the narrower version of politics within which he works. My work enquires into how the current ‘politics’ get defined and what (political) interests benefit from that disarming division between the political and the non-political. In essence, how we know things determines what we see, and the public realm of politics is itself the result of a prior series of (political) epistemological moves which result in the political being seen as either natural or a matter of common sense. Their claim to ‘objective’ or non-biased knowledge mystifies their role as scholars and allows dominant ideologies to slip in – question their knowledge claims. Robinson 06Robinson 06 Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (William I., Critical Globalization Studies, Chapter 2, “Critical Globalization Studies”, ed by R Richard P Appelbaum, http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/robinson/Assets/pdf/crit_glob.pdf SW) Does such a CGS imply that scholarship and the academic profession become comprised by ‘‘politicizing’’ them in this way? There is no value-free research, and there are no apolitical intellectuals. (This is not to say that our research should not adhere to the social science rules of logic and empirical verification; indeed it must be lest it is reduced to propaganda.) We know from the philosophy and the sociology of knowledge that knowledge is never neutral or divorced from the historic context of its production, including from competing social interests (see, inter alia, Therborn, 1985; Fray, 1987; Chalmers, 2000; Sartre 1974; Robinson, 1996). Intellectual production always parallels, and can be functionally associated with, movement and change in society. There is no such thing as an intellectual or an academic divorced from social aims that drive research, not in the hard sciences, and much less in the social sciences and humanities. The mainstream scholar may ‘‘well believe in an independent, ‘suprasocial,’ detached knowledge as in the social importanlce of his expertise,’’ observes Horkheimer. ‘‘The dualism of thought and being, understanding and perception is second nature to the scientist. . . . [such mainstream scholars] believe they are acting according to personal determinations, whereas in fact even in their most complicated calculations they but exemplify the working of an incalculable social mechanism’’ (1972: 196–97). Many ‘‘mainstream’’ academics, shielded by the assumptions of positivist epistemologies, would no doubt take issue with this characterization of intellectual labor as, by definition, a social act by organic social agents. There are those who would posit a free-floating academic, a neutral generator of knowledge and ideas. But few would disagree that scholars and intellectuals are knowledge producers and that ‘‘knowledge is power.’’ Hence it is incumbent on us to ask, Power for whom? Power exercised by whom? Power to what ends? The theoretical and research trajectories of social scientists, policy makers, and others within the academic division of labor are influenced by their social position as shaped by class, as well as by gender, race, and culture. But many academics are linked to the state, to other social institutions, and to dominant groups in a myriad of ways, from corporate and state funding of research, to status, prestige, job security, and social approval that comes from integration into the hegemonic order, in contrast, as Ollman shows, to the well-known sanctions one risks in committing to a counterhegemonic project (1976: 119–32). Academics who believe they can remain aloof in the face of the conflicts that are swirling about us and the ever-higher stakes involved are engaged in a self-deception that is itself a political act. The claim to nonpolitical intellectual labor, value neutrality, and so forth, is part of the very mystification of knowledge production and the ideological legitimation by intellectual agents of the dominant social order. Such intellectuals, to quote Sartre following Gramsci, are ‘‘specialists in research and servitors of hegemony’’ (1974: 238). The prevailing global order has its share of intellectual defenders, academics, pundits, and ideologues. These ‘‘functionaries of the superstructure’’ (Sartre, 1974: 238) serve to mystify the real inner workings of the emerging order and the social interests embedded therein. They become central cogs in the system of global capitalism, performing not only legitimating functions but also developing practical and particularist knowledge intended to provide technical solutions in response to the problems and contradictions of the system. In short, whether intended or not, they exercise a ‘‘preferential option’’ for a minority of the privileged and the powerful in global capitalist society. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.87 Mb. Share with your friends:
|