Disruptive Tendencies

Space Juxtaposition

Catching up on the news this morning, I scanned the MSNBC homepage for interesting stories. “Iran Sends Mouse, Worms, Turtles into Space” caught my eye, especially as it was juxtaposed with another story, “US Grieves Over Cancelled Program”. Iranian President Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying that the “Scientific arena is where we could defeat the West’s domination.”

Now, I don’t equate the launching of a 10’ rocket with the Apollo program or the space shuttle, but it seems that they are kicking ass in ambition. While Iran aspires to, and works towards, putting man into orbit within the next 10 years (it has already put a communications satellite into orbit), America is getting ready to mothball the shuttle fleet this year and has just cancelled the Constellation program, “effectively cancelling a five-year, $9 billion effort to build new Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets”, which “were slated to replace NASA’s three aging space shuttles.”

Is it possible that Iran (?!?) will have a heavy launch vehicle capable of putting man into orbit before the US gets its act together and replaces the shuttle fleet?

And it’s not just Iran. Our traditional space race competitor, Russia, will soon be the only means we have of getting our own astronauts to the International space station ("Can we catch a ride? We'll give you gas money."). India has successfully inserted a spacecraft into lunar orbit, has a manned program underway, has allocated budget and will launch a manned mission by 2014-2015. China has put men into orbit, and has laid out its plans to put a man on the moon by 2020.

I was in grade school when the Apollo program was underway. It was a race to be the first, to be the best, and to show the world what America is capable of achieving. We had political will. There was national pride. We accomplished that which no other country has yet to achieve. We were leaders. We swaggered when we walked.

And today? I fear that we’re not even laggards. Our mojo is gone. It's not that others have passed us, it that we've pulled ourselves out of the race. While other countries see manned space flight as a primary ambition, we yawn collectively and couldn’t care less. Maybe we’ll start caring when Iran has its own astronauts in orbit or when Russia/India/China puts astronauts back on the moon. But by then, we’ll be left in their dust – moon dust. That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

martin.suter at iplicensing.net

“Modern” China: The same old, same old

In May 1988, scant weeks after graduating with an undergraduate business degree, I had the chance to spend 3 weeks touring around China. Deng Xiaoping, the octogenarian leader, appeared to have recognised the need to open up to the west, but equally importantly, to loosen the internal controls imposed by a centralized, State-driven economy. In 1988, “free markets” were in their infancy within the country, giving farmers, traders and entrepreneurs the ability to freely trade, and profit, from their efforts. Using US fast food as a barometer for development, it was very early days. Beijing had but one KFC and Pizza Hut, and bicycles still ruled the capital. Pudong, across the river from Shanghai, was a vision, but ground hadn’t yet been broken. It was a time of general optimism in the country.

That winter, I moved to Beijing, and became an active observer and participant in the apparent opening up of the country. Not once did I feel threatened or that my actions were controlled in any way. I traveled the country freely, engaged in open discussion with students wherever I went, and watched, without any trepidation, as the student/democracy movement took shape in late spring 1989. When the army rolled into Tian an’Men Square on June 3-4, 1989, I felt betrayed. My naiveté and the western lens through which I had witnessed China’s “opening up”, had prevented me from acknowledging that it remained a tightly controlled, Communist country. The brutal crackdown, and subsequent months of living under martial law, gave me an up close and personal look at how effectively the Party leadership was able to swing the other way – moving from open to closed overnight.

Years have passed. Deng Xiaoping is dead and the torch has been passed to a generation of leaders that is too young to have been on the Long March. Beijing is now a sea of privately owned cars, Pudong glistens, and the world is beating a path to Beijing’s door for this summer’s Olympics.

But as I sit here this morning, I was appalled to see that a Chinese court has just sentenced Lu Gengsong to four years in prison on subversion charges. His crime? He published 19 essays on the Internet about corruption. Now, apparently “corruption” is something the Chinese take seriously. Many bureaucrats, including city mayors, have taken a bullet in the back of the head during periodic crackdowns. But Mr. Lu must have hit a nerve as he will spend the next four years in a Chinese jail. Having been inside of a prison in Shandong, think Midnight Express without the opium to dull the pain.

Is Lu Gengsong’s case an isolated incident? Not according to the article:

“China's ruling Communist Party is cracking down on human rights activists ahead of the Olympics, and still maintains tight control over all media and the Internet.A leading Chinese dissident, Hu Jia, who chronicled the plight of other dissidents through the Internet, was taken from his home in December and was recently arrested and charged with inciting subversion.The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists labels China the world's leading jailer of journalists, saying at least 29 reporters are currently locked up.”

I know what you’re thinking. “This is a blog on intellectual property. So where’s the connection?”

Intellectual property is a fundamental principle in a free market system. Individual rights and freedoms are integral elements, and include freedom of expression. How can a country that represses free speech, controls information access (Great Firewall of China) ever be expected to play within the rules established for the treatment of intellectual property.

US foreign and economic policy is born of convenience. It needs access to vast quantities of oil to preserve the industrial base, so the Saudi’s sponsorship of madrassas throughout the Muslim world was ignored, even though much of the hatred and vitriol directed our way was fomented from within these schools. The US needs access to the Chinese market and knows that a disproportionate amount of its debt is held by the Chinese, and so it conveniently ignores gross breaches of human rights.

The world reacted in horror in 1989, pulled back momentarily, but economics abhors a vacuum. The world feigned shock at the brutal actions of the central government, but on reflection decided that its suppression of the student movement was somehow to have been expected.

China has a different playbook, and while they may appear to play by civilized rules, their actions show otherwise.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

martin.suter (at) iplicensing.net