Absolute Power, a Mexican Monkey Wrench, and Russia’s Invincible Missile

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MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT CHINA

As Alex Kliment wrote in your Tuesday edition of Signal, Xi Jinping has moved to eliminate the two-term constitutional limit on China’s president, allowing him to remain formally in charge beyond the end of his current term in March 2023. I’m opening your Friday edition on the same subject, because this is a very, very big deal.

Multiply China’s growing international power by Xi Jinping’s domestic political control, and Xi is already the most powerful man on Earth. This week, he began the process of removing the most important remaining check on his authority.

Questions to consider:

• Should the rest of the world be happy about the predictability that comes with continuity at the top of the Chinese government? Maybe. Given China’s growing importance for the global economy, and China’s need for big changes in its economic and financial systems, shouldn’t we be glad that a self-professed reformer has minimized the risk that lame-duck status will undermine his ability to get things done? It’s not like China would otherwise become a democracy.
• This story matters for all of us. In 1990, China accounted for just 1.6 percent of global GDP. By 2016, it had surged to 14.7 percent, second only to the US. In 1996, China invested just $2 billion beyond its borders. By 2016, that number had climbed to $217 billion. Given the worldwide economic implications of China’s rise, don’t we all need China to succeed?
• Or maybe has Xi created a new sense of urgency within the party among those who fear his power and oppose his reform plans? Has he forced rivals to try to more actively sabotage his agenda or even to move against him?
• At what point does Xi start thinking more about protecting his power than about building China’s future?
• What happens if Xi fully consolidates power, but reforms fail, the economy sinks, and China has no clear alternative to his leadership? What sort of power struggle might that unleash?

We know there’s heightened caution in Beijing this week, because online government censors are suddenly very busy. You won’t have much luck if you try using any of these phrases on Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) this week:

• “Long Live the Emperor” (Pretty obvious)
• “Constitutional rules” (None of your business)
• “Animal Farm” (George Orwell says hi)
• “Winnie the Pooh” (Don’t mock the president)
• “I disagree” (Don’t think of debate)
• “Emigration” (Don’t think of leaving)

YET ANOTHER STRONGMAN

Xi Jinping is not the only strongman who made big (geopolitically consequential) moves this week. On Monday, the Saudi government issued late-night decrees to replace the kingdom’s top military commanders. No one has explained the reasons for the changes, but the message is clear enough. Soon-to-be-king Mohammad bin Salman wants all to know he’s fully in charge. And maybe he wants to blame the outgoing generals for a badly run war in Yemen for which he might otherwise face criticism. This was done in the King’s name, but it’s the Crown Prince’s agenda.

We also learned this week that women will soon be allowed to serve in the Saudi military. They won’t be in combat. (They can drive cars, but not tanks.) Instead, they’ll reportedly work in military security.

The broader message: Saudi Arabia will no longer be governed by consensus among rival branches of the royal family. One (young) man is in charge. He means to change his country, and he won’t need to amend a constitution to give himself more time.

A MEXICAN MONKEY WRENCH

Now let’s talk about trade. Negotiators from the US, Canada, and Mexico are meeting in Mexico City this week for Round 7 of the heavyweight fight over the rewrite of NAFTA. It’s not the various stories coming out of the White House that matter most for the deal’s fate. It’s the looming July 1 presidential election in Mexico that might just change everything.

There’s a good chance Mexican voters will elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as president. AMLO doesn’t much care for Donald Trump, and he doesn’t care for NAFTA — though he knows he might have to live with both, and he’s been careful in his public comments. Those now at the bargaining table want a new deal done before the election gives AMLO a chance to complicate matters further.

Maybe the deal will be done before Mexico votes. Maybe it won’t, but an AMLO victory will focus minds on finishing things before he can be inaugurated president in December. Or maybe, AMLO becomes president, swaps out the entire Mexican negotiating team, says many things that make Trump mad, and the bargaining gets more complicated than ever.

A lot of people in all three countries want NAFTA to survive, but that guarantees nothing. Stay tuned.

PUPPET REGIME: ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

Puppet Regime gets to the bottom of whose voice it really is on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.. You’ll never guess…

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING

Boko Haram — Boko Haram is a terrorist group based in Nigeria’s northeast that’s blamed for the deaths of nearly 17,000 people over the past seven years. The group’s militants, who kidnapped 300 girls from a school in Chibok in 2014, have struck again, taking 110 girls, some as young as 11, from another school in the town of Dapachi. (More than 100 of the Chibok girls are still missing.) It took the Nigerian government several tries to admit what happened and begin a search — and some official statements still refer (absurdly) to the girls as “missing” rather than “abducted.” This will be a nightmare for parents of these girls and a central issue in next year’s presidential election.

Italy elections and the SPD vote — I know I said last week that I’m cynical about these two votes, but we’ll keep close watch of what happens this weekend. How far to the right will Italy swing? Will Germany’s center-left SPD join another Angela Merkel-led government or leave her to muddle through her fourth and final term without a governing majority?

Hódmezővásárhely — Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party have dominated Hungary’s politics and made trouble for the EU for the past eight years. But on the eve of national elections next month (April 8), the party got a big shock last Sunday: It lost a mayoral election by 16 percentage points in a town called Hódmezővásárhely, long considered a Fidesz stronghold. Is this a harbinger of electoral trouble for Orban? Is Hungary’s opposition finally united? Will our favorite anchors at CBSN try to make me pronounce the name of this town while we’re live on the air this morning at 9:30am? Stay tuned.

WHAT WE’RE IGNORING

Russia’s Invincible Missile — President Putin announced on Thursday that Russia has developed “a low-flying, difficult-to-spot cruise missile with a nuclear payload with a practically unlimited range and an unpredictable flight path, which can bypass lines of interception and is invincible in the face of all existing and future systems of both missile defense and air defense.” One, no one has ever invented anything that can’t be made less useful by a future, not-yet-imagined invention. Two, Russia’s got 99 problems, but lack of an effective nuclear deterrent ain’t one. Mutually assured destruction lives on.

Russian graffiti — Graffiti takes many forms. It can express anger, love, pride, hunger for art, or all of the above. The one thing all these forms of graffiti should have in common is some degree of spontaneity. I hate to be cynical, especially after that outburst of cynicism in last Friday’s edition, but when Russian police get caught on video writing Putin’s name on walls and fences in advance of the upcoming election, well…. That just doesn’t feel very spontaneous. Judge for yourself.

Bill Gates on cryptocurrencies — During an ask-me-anything session on the popular Reddit website this week, Gates charged that anonymity makes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies a “rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way” by allowing users to stock up on fentanyl and other dangerous drugs. This comment got our man Kevin Allison’s attention. “Bill, I’ve got bad news for you regarding dollars,” comments Kevin. “Have you seen the movie Scarface?” 

Fortune Cookies — I had a delicious Thursday Chinese lunch, cracked open my fortune cookie, and was confronted with this: “Feeding a cow with roses does not get extra appreciation.” What is that? It’s like fortune cookies aren’t even trying anymore.

HARD NUMBERS

1,200: How do you keep military officers loyal to your government? Promote them. In 2002 there were seventy generals in Venezuela. Now there are 1,200, according to Venezuelan journalist Miguel Henrique Otero.

27: A January survey for NOI, Nigeria’s largest pollster saw President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval rating slide to 40%, the lowest on record and a 27-point drop since last July. This poll was taken before Boko Haram’s abduction of the Dapchi girls.

2: The leaders of two of the top three parties in Italy are disqualified from taking public office after Sunday’s election because of criminal convictions.

500: Since May 2017, Egypt has blocked about 500 news websites, including HuffPost Arabi and the country’s few remaining independent news websites.

49,780,000: The United States Citizen and Immigration Services has taken the words “nation of immigrants” out of its mission statement. That doesn’t change this basic fact: The US has more immigrants than any other country in the world, with 49,780,000 people living in the US who were born in other countries.

WORDS OF WISDOM

“No one has listened to us. You listen to us now.”

— Vladimir Putin touts advanced strategic nuclear weapons and other new military technology in his annual state of the nation address.

This edition of Signal was written by Willis Sparks, and prepared with editorial support from Kevin Allison (@KevinAllison), Leon Levy (@leonmlevy), and Gabe Lipton (@Gflipton). Spiritual counsel from Alex Kliment (@saosasha). Give a friend the Signal here.