The United States Congress should restrict the National Security Agency’s ability to collect “bulk data” without a warrant

AT: Protectionism Defense

Trade wars will escalate and collapse the economy

Droke, editor of the three times weekly Momentum Strategies Report newsletter, published since 1997, which covers the U.S. economy, 10

(Clif, 3-29-10 “America and the Next Major War,” http://www.greenfaucet.com/node/15302, accessed 2-14-11)

In his book, "Jubilee on Wall Street," author David Knox Barker devotes a chapter to how trade wars tend to be common occurrences in the long wave economic cycle of developed nations.  Barker explains his belief that the industrial nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China will play a major role in pulling the world of the long wave deflationary decline as their domestic economies begin to develop and grow.  "The are and will demand more foreign goods produced in the United States and other markets," he writes.  Barker believes this will help the U.S. rebalance from an over weighted consumption-oriented economy to a high-end producer economy.

Barker adds a caveat, however: if protectionist policies are allowed to gain force in Washington, trade wars will almost certainly erupt and.  If this happens, says Barker, "all bets are off."  He adds, "The impact on global trade of increased protectionism and trade wars would be catastrophic, and what could prove to be a mild long wave [economic] winter season this time around could plunge into a global depression."

Barker also observes that the storm clouds of trade wars are already forming on the horizon as we have moved further into the long wave economic "winter season."  Writes Barker, "If trade wars are allowed to get under way in these final years of a long wave winter, this decline will be far deeper and darker than necessary, just as the Great Depression was far deeper and lengthier than it should have been, due to growing international trade isolationism.

He further cautions that protectionism in Washington will certainly bring retaliation from the nations that bear the brunt of punitive U.S. trade policies.  He observes that the reaction from one nation against the protectionist policies of another is typically far worse than the original action.  He cites as an example the restriction by the U.S. of $55 million worth of cotton blouses from China in the 1980s.  China retaliated by cancelling $500 million worth of orders for American rain.  "As one nation blocks trade, the nation that is hurt will surely retaliate and the entire world will suffer," writes Barker.

Containing protectionism is critical to prevent global trade wars resulting in conflict and economic collapse.

Stewart Patrick, CFR International Institutions Director and Senior Fellow, 3/13/2009, "Protecting Free Trade," http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=21084
President Obama has committed to working with U.S. trade partners to avoid “escalating protectionism.” He is wise to do so. As never before, U.S. national security requires a commitment to open trade. President Obama and his foreign counterparts should reflect on the lessons of the 1930s—and the insights of Cordell Hull. The longest-serving secretary of state in American history (1933–1944), Hull helped guide the United States through the Depression and World War II. He also understood a fundamental truth: “When goods move, soldiers don’t.” In the 1930s, global recession had catastrophic political consequences—in part because policymakers took exactly the wrong approach. Starting with America’s own Smoot Hawley Tariff of 1930, the world’s major trading nations tried to insulate themselves by adopting inward looking protectionist and discriminatory policies. The result was a vicious, self-defeating cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation. As states took refuge in prohibitive tariffs, import quotas, export subsidies and competitive devaluations, international commerce devolved into a desperate competition for dwindling markets. Between 1929 and 1933, the value of world trade plummeted from $50 billion to $15 billion. Global economic activity went into a death spiral, exacerbating the depth and length of the Great Depression. The economic consequences of protectionism were bad enough. The political consequences were worse. As Hull recognized, global economic fragmentation lowered standards of living, drove unemployment higher and increased poverty—accentuating social upheaval and leaving destitute populations “easy prey to dictators and desperadoes.” The rise of Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy and militarism in Japan is impossible to divorce from the economic turmoil, which allowed demagogic leaders to mobilize support among alienated masses nursing nationalist grievances. Open economic warfare poisoned the diplomatic climate and exacerbated great power rivalries, raising, in Hull’s view, “constant temptation to use force, or threat of force, to obtain what could have been got through normal processes of trade.” Assistant Secretary William Clayton agreed: “Nations which act as enemies in the marketplace cannot long be friends at the council table.” This is what makes growing protectionism and discrimination among the world’s major trading powers today so alarming. In 2008 world trade declined for the first time since 1982. And despite their pledges, seventeen G-20 members have adopted significant trade restrictions. “Buy American” provisions in the U.S. stimulus package have been matched by similar measures elsewhere, with the EU ambassador to Washington declaring that “Nobody will take this lying down.” Brussels has resumed export subsidies to EU dairy farmers and restricted imports from the United States and China. Meanwhile, India is threatening new tariffs on steel imports and cars; Russia has enacted some thirty new tariffs and export subsidies. In a sign of the global mood, WTO antidumping cases are up 40 percent since last year. Even less blatant forms of economic nationalism, such as banks restricting lending to “safer” domestic companies, risk shutting down global capital flows and exacerbating the current crisis. If unchecked, such economic nationalism could raise diplomatic tensions among the world’s major powers. At particular risk are U.S. relations with China, Washington’s most important bilateral interlocutor in the twenty-first century. China has called the “Buy American” provisions “poison”—not exactly how the Obama administration wants to start off the relationship. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s ill-timed comments about China’s currency “manipulation” and his promise of an “aggressive” U.S. response were not especially helpful either, nor is Congress’ preoccupation with “unfair” Chinese trade and currency practices. For its part, Beijing has responded to the global slump by rolling back some of the liberalizing reforms introduced over the past thirty years. Such practices, including state subsidies, collide with the spirit and sometimes the law of open trade. The Obama administration must find common ground with Beijing on a coordinated response, or risk retaliatory protectionism that could severely damage both economies and escalate into political confrontation. A trade war is the last thing the United States needs, given that China holds $1 trillion of our debt and will be critical to solving flashpoints ranging from Iran to North Korea. In the 1930s, authoritarian great-power governments responded to the global downturn by adopting more nationalistic and aggressive policies. Today, the economic crisis may well fuel rising nationalism and regional assertiveness in emerging countries. Russia is a case in point. Although some predict that the economic crisis will temper Moscow’s international ambitions, evidence for such geopolitical modesty is slim to date. Neither the collapse of its stock market nor the decline in oil prices has kept Russia from flexing its muscles from Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan. While some expect the economic crisis to challenge Putin’s grip on power, there is no guarantee that Washington will find any successor regime less nationalistic and aggressive. Beyond generating great power antagonism, misguided protectionism could also exacerbate political upheaval in the developing world. As Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair recently testified, the downturn has already aggravated political instability in a quarter of the world’s nations. In many emerging countries, including important players like South Africa, Ukraine and Mexico, political stability rests on a precarious balance. Protectionist policies could well push developing economies and emerging market exporters over the edge. In Pakistan, a protracted economic crisis could precipitate the collapse of the regime and fragmentation of the state. No surprise, then, that President Obama is the first U.S. president to receive a daily economic intelligence briefing, distilling the security implications of the global crisis. What guidance might Cordell Hull give to today’s policymakers? To avoid a protectionist spiral and its political spillovers, the United States must spearhead multilateral trade liberalization involving all major developed and developing countries.

Trade blocks trigger trade wars that end in extinction

Miller and Elwood, International Society for Individual Liberty, 1988

[http://www.free-market.net/resources/lit/free-trade-protectionism.html ]

TRADE WARS: BOTH SIDES LOSE When the government of Country "A" puts up trade barriers against the goods of Country "B", the government of Country "B" will naturally retaliate by erecting trade barriers against the goods of Country "A". The result? A trade war in which both sides lose. But all too often a depressed economy is not the only negative outcome of a trade war . . . WHEN GOODS DON'T CROSS BORDERS, ARMIES OFTEN DO History is not lacking in examples of cold trade wars escalating into hot shooting wars: Europe suffered from almost non-stop wars during the 17th and 18th centuries, when restrictive trade policy (mercantilism) was the rule; rival governments fought each other to expand their empires and to exploit captive markets. British tariffs provoked the American colonists to revolution, and later the Northern-dominated US government imposed restrictions on Southern cotton exports - a major factor leading to the American Civil War. In the late 19th Century, after a half century of general free trade (which brought a half-century of peace), short-sighted politicians throughout Europe again began erecting trade barriers. Hostilities built up until they eventually exploded into World War I. In 1930, facing only a mild recession, US President Hoover ignored warning pleas in a petition by 1028 prominent economists and signed the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised some tariffs to 100% levels. Within a year, over 25 other governments had retaliated by passing similar laws. The result? World trade came to a grinding halt, and the entire world was plunged into the "Great Depression" for the rest of the decade. The depression in turn led to World War II. THE #1 DANGER TO WORLD PEACE The world enjoyed its greatest economic growth during the relatively free trade period of 1945-1970, a period that also saw no major wars. Yet we again see trade barriers being raised around the world by short-sighted politicians. Will the world again end up in a shooting war as a result of these economically-deranged policies? Can we afford to allow this to happen in the nuclear age? "What generates war is the economic philosophy of nationalism: embargoes, trade and foreign exchange controls, monetary devaluation, etc. The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war." Ludwig von Mises THE SOLUTION: FREE TRADE A century and a half ago French economist and statesman Frederic Bastiat presented the practical case for free trade: "It is always beneficial," he said, "for a nation to specialize in what it can produce best and then trade with others to acquire goods at costs lower than it would take to produce them at home." In the 20th century, journalist Frank Chodorov made a similar observation: "Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution." WHAT CAN YOU DO? Silence gives consent, and there should be no consent to the current waves of restrictive trade or capital control legislation being passed. If you agree that free trade is an essential ingredient in maintaining world peace, and that it is important to your future, we suggest that you inform the political leaders in your country of your concern regarding their interference with free trade. Send them a copy of this pamphlet. We also suggest that you write letters to editors in the media and send this pamphlet to them. Discuss this issue with your friends and warn them of the danger of current "protectionist" trends. Check on how the issue is being taught in the schools. Widespread public understanding of this issue, followed by citizen action, is the only solution. Free trade is too important an issue to leave in the hands of politicians. "For thousands of years, the tireless effort of productive men and women has been spent trying to reduce the distance between communities of the world by reducing the costs of commerce and trade. "Over the same span of history, the slothful and incompetent protectionist has endlessly sought to erect barriers in order to prohibit competition - thus, effectively moving communities farther apart. When trade is cut off entirely, the real producers may as well be on different planets. The protectionist represents the worst in humanity: fear of change, fear of challenge, and the jealous envy of genius. The protectionist is not against the use of every kind of force, even warfare, to crush his rival. If mankind is to survive, then these primeval fears must be defeated."

AT: No Trade Impact

Trading alliances solve war---creates a financial incentive for peace and protection

Loren Mooney 14, citing Matthew O. Jackson, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford, and PhD in economics from Stanford Graduate School of Business, May 28 2014, “Matthew O. Jackson: Can Trade Prevent War?” http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/matthew-o-jackson-can-trade-prevent-war

How can humans stop war? Obviously there's no simple answer, but a new network model analysis of international alliances suggests that trade may be at least part of the answer. The model, developed by Stanford economist Matthew O. Jackson and economics Ph.D. candidate Stephen Nei, suggests that military alliances alone aren't enough to stop nations from attacking one other, and also that the addition of multilateral economic trade creates a more stable, peaceful world. While there is considerable existing research on the effects of trade and war, much of it has looked at bilateral relationships. This model focuses on multilateral interactions and considers various incentives for countries to attack, form alliances with, and trade with one another. In an attempt to understand what's necessary to achieve a stable network with no incentive for war, Jackson and Nei first explored an alliance scenario based solely on military defense considerations, excluding trade. "The fundamental difficulty we find is that alliances are costly to maintain if there's no economic incentive," says Jackson. So networks remain relatively sparse, a condition in which even a few shifting allegiances leaves some countries vulnerable to attack. "Stability is not just a little bit elusive; it's very elusive." Economic trade, however, makes a significant difference. "Once you bring in trade, you see network structures densify," he says. Nations form a web of trading alliances, which creates financial incentive not only to keep peace with trading partners, but also to protect them from being attacked so as not to disrupt trade. "In the context of the alliances we have analyzed, trade motives are essential to avoiding wars and sustaining stable networks," the authors wrote in their paper, Networks of Military Alliances, Wars, and International Trade. Their findings coincide with two major global trends since World War II: From 1950 to 2000, the incidence of interstate war has decreased nearly tenfold compared with the period from 1850 to 1949. At the same time, since 1950 international trade networks have increased nearly fourfold, becoming significantly more dense. "In the period before World War II, it was hard to find a stable set of alliances," says Jackson. The probability of a lasting alliance was about 60%. "You have almost a coin-flip chance that the alliance won't still be there in five years," he says. In Europe in the 1870s, for example, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought peace with "balance of power" diplomacy, which crumbled leading up to World War I. "Then in the past 50 years or so, there's been a surprising global stability." The impact of economic interdependence is especially apparent in Europe, Jackson says, where the Eurozone has promoted not only peace and increased trade among nations, but also labor mobility. Very costly wars still occur, of course, but Jackson notes that the most war-torn places in recent history have tended to be those with fewer global trade alliances. For example, the Second Congo War from 1998 to 2003 and beyond, which killed more than four million people and is the deadliest war since World War II, involved eight African nations with relatively few trade ties. "Then look at the Kuwait situation," says Jackson, referring to U.S. intervention in the first Gulf War to protect oil supplies. "Economic interest drives a lot of what goes on in terms of where nations are willing to exercise military strength."

Trade Cred Impact

Strong US trade credibility solves global war

Bergsten 1

C. Fred, director of the institute for international economics, foreign affairs, march/april, LN.

The United States' initial refusal in 1997 to contribute to the IMF support package for Thailand for fear of further riling Congress, for example, earned lasting enmity throughout Asia. The main reason for the debacle at Seattle was the United States' inability to propose a new round of trade negotiations that would meet the legitimate interests of other major players. Lacking the domestic authority to lower its own trade barriers, Washington was forced to offer an agenda that sought to reduce protection only in other countries -- a prospect that was understandably unappealing to the rest of the world. Similarly, in 1997 -- 98 APEC negotiations, the United States unsuccessfully pushed a program of sector-specific liberalization that focused almost wholly on U.S. export interests. And six years after the idea of the FTAA was launched in Miami, little progress has been made toward hemispheric trade liberalization. This international leadership vacuum has had two subtle but profound effects on the world economy. Like a bicycle on a hill, the global trading system tends to slip backwards in the absence of continual progress forward. Now, with no serious multilateral trade negotiations taking place anywhere in the world, the backsliding has come in the form of intensified regionalism (which is inherently discriminatory), as well as mercantilist and protectionist disputes across the Atlantic. An East Asian free trade area -- and along with it, a three-bloc world -- will likely emerge if the United States remains on the sidelines of international trade for another five years. Such U.S. impotence would also mean that the traditionally positive impact of regional liberalization on the multilateral process would give way to increasing antagonism and even hostility between the regional blocs. The other chief effect of the leadership vacuum is increased international disregard of, or even hostility toward, the United States on the economic front. Because of its weight in the world economy, its dynamic growth, and its traditional leadership role, the United States remains the most important player in the global economic system. The other economic powers generally seek to avoid confronting it directly. The EU, for example, has tried to avoid overt battles, despite its escalating range of disputes with the United States. East Asian governments are careful to assure Washington that their new regional initiatives are fully consistent with existing global norms and institutions -- a conciliatory stance that is in sharp contrast to Mahathir's shrill rhetoric of a decade ago and Japanese Vice Minister of Finance Eisuke Sakakibara's aggressive 1997 promotion of the AMF. In reality, however, the United States is perceived as wanting to call the shots without putting up much of its own money or making changes in its own laws and practices. These specific economic complaints fuse with and feed on more general anti-American sentiments throughout the world. Hence, the two other economic superpowers are proceeding on their own. The EU has launched the euro, a new association agreement with Mexico, and negotiations with Mercosur (the trade bloc comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay); East Asia is pursuing the AMF and the East Asian free trade area. The result is a clear and steady erosion of both the United States' position on the global economic scene and the multilateral rules and institutions that it has traditionally championed. If not checked soon, this erosion could deteriorate into severe international conflicts and the disintegration of global economic links.

Global Trade Good

WTO Net better

Narlikar & Wilkinson, Politics at Exeter & Government at Manchester, 2004 [Amrita & Rorden, “Collapse at the WTO: a Cancun post-mortem,” Third World Quarterly 25.3, p. 458]

We have argued here that the de facto institutional evolution of the WTO and the haphazard expansion of its agenda have brought its members to this point. Were the institution and its substance to be rationalised, the WTO’s credibility as a forum for negotiation would improve. Under such circumstances, it may be reasonable to expect the use of value-creating or integrative strategies by countries,30 a slower but longer-lasting and sustainable process of rule making, and a smoother ride on the roller-coaster that has become the WTO. Without a process of reform the consequences are more troubling. Although developing countries were able to find some comfort in the formation of large coalitions, they are unlikely to be similarly comforted outside the WTO. The current US administration has stated that, in the face of a lack of progress in the WTO, it will pursue its trade goals bilaterally. In such circumstances developing states will find it harder to resist pressures to agree to open up markets and to lobby for reductions in US subsidy regimes. As such, the WTO represents the best forum in which developing countries can exercise most negotiating power—albeit it one that, at present, does not best serve their interests.

WTO cred now and inev.

Kumar et al 11/13 – (2014, Manoj, Krista Hughes, and Tom Miles, Reuters, “India-U.S. deal revives WTO and hope of world trade reform,” http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/11/13/india-trade-wto-idINKCN0IX08N20141113)
India and the United States settled a dispute on Thursday that had paralysed the World Trade Organization and risked derailing a $1 trillion package of reforms of global customs procedures. The deal, which needs to be backed by all 160 WTO members, has resurrected hopes that the trade body can now push through those reforms, opening the way up for further negotiations. India had plunged the WTO into the deepest crisis in its 20-year history in July by vetoing a deal on streamlined customs rules due to a lack of progress on its demands to be allowed to stockpile food without observing the usual WTO rules on agricultural subsidies. That put the WTO's future in doubt just months after it appeared to have overcome decades of stalemate on the issue at a meeting in Bali in Indonesia. "This breakthrough represents a significant step in efforts to get the Bali package and the multilateral trading system back on track," WTO director general Roberto Azevedo said. "Implementation of all aspects of the Bali package would be a major boost to the WTO, enhancing our ability to deliver beneficial outcomes to all our members."

Chinese Censorship Bad- Soft Power

Censorship unsustainable – wrecks Chinese growth and soft power

Custer 12

C. Custer, Chinese cultural expert, degree in East Asian studies, Tech In Asia, December 18, 2012, "Web of Failure: How China’s Internet Policies Have Doomed Chinese Soft Power", http://www.techinasia.com/failure-china-internet-policies-doomed-chinese-soft-power/

* modified for ableist language
A Death Blow to Business

What’s effective in fostering stability is, I’ll admit, debatable, but it’s less debatable that China’s internet policies have had a strong negative impact on businesses. If the recent blocking of foreign VPNs proves to be the new normal — and we have every sign that that is the case — I expect numerous foreign businesses to move some or all of their operations out of China. In addition to the fact that many businesses use blocked web services for communication and marketing, VPNs provide a crucial layer of security to corporate communications by encrypting the connection of those using the service. Without that layer of security, companies worried about cyber attacks, IP theft, and corporate espionage are going to be pretty exposed, and some of them will inevitably decide that the advantages of doing business in China are outweighed by the potential costs of having products or plans stolen by competitors. (True, many businesses use their own VPNs rather than the commercially-available ones that are currently blocked. But the Chinese government has said that all foreign-run VPNs are illegal unless they register with and are approved by MIIT, which none of them have.) But the Great Firewall doesn’t just damage foreign companies in China, it is also crippling [damaging] to Chinese companies that are looking to expand globally. Without access to social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, Chinese web companies are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to everything from market research to actual marketing. And although companies can establish overseas offices or find other ways to circumvent censorship and access these platforms, with all of them so widely blocked in China, there’s little impetus for Chinese developers to try to work with them. Chinese startups are focused on developing products that work with Chinese social platforms like Weibo, and that’s great, but it ultimately limits the scalability and global relevance of their products. At present, China’s regulatory environment might encourage the development of some truly remarkable domestic services, but it is difficult to imagine a globally dominant web startup from China because the Chinese internet is so thoroughly walled off from the rest of the world. Soft Power in Chains Of course, the Great Firewall does more than just prevent Chinese web services from going global; it is also a huge hindrance for Chinese cultural exports. I was reminded of this just recently while writing about the award Korea’s Ministry of Culture gave to Google because Youtube has been such an effective platform to spread Korean culture. In China, the success of Korean pop star PSY’s Gangnam Style video prompted a lot of discussion about whether China could ever produce its own PSY. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is, but it is irrelevant, because even if China could produce its own PSY, it could never export it. PSY’s song exploded in large part because his video went viral on Youtube which — surprise, surprise — is blocked in China. Now granted, even if VPNs were totally blocked, a Chinese PSY could just fly out of China with a USB stick and upload his video to Youtube from abroad. But I highly doubt the global response would be the same, because whether we’re aware of it or not, a big part of enjoying any cultural experience is interaction. Gangnam Style was catchy and weird — certainly China can produce something like that — but it ultimately also got the Western media to interact with Korea and Korean culture, and we all learned a little something about the Gangnam district and Korean satire along the way. That is the part of Gangnam Style that China could never produce, because the government actively discourages that sort of interaction. While it wants to promote Chinese culture, it does not believe that pop music — and certainly not politically satirical pop music — has any place in that promotional effort. Instead, the government pushes Confucius and other valuable-but-unappealing-and-mostly-irrelevant aspects of Chinese culture to Westerners while keeping its citizens and whatever culture they create quiet. Chinese and foreign net users are carefully segregated, and while China is happy to use foreign platforms to promote the party line through official channels like Xinhua, it is unwilling to trust its own people with access to almost any foreign social communication platforms. The problem (for China’s government) is that culture doesn’t work that way. Great cultural works are rarely produced by the state; they are produced by artists, creatives, academics, entrepreneurs and other regular people. Chinese artists have produced many great works, but China’s government is generally not willing to let these people communicate directly with the outside world. In an age where global communication and cultural broadcasting is simpler and more direct than ever before, China has shackled its own soft power by ensuring that its cultural producers have access to almost none of these new platforms. True soft power — in fact, true culture — cannot come without discussion and interchange. When was the last time you saw a really powerful movie or read a really powerful book and then discussed it with no one? Culture is by definition a discussion, an exchange, and a kind of ongoing communication. But China’s government has for the past several years been attempting to shove its own message into the global internet’s cultural exchange while doing what it can to keep the West out of China’s culture and keep Chinese people from easily interacting with the outside world. That is why Xinhua has a Twitter account but the average Zhou cannot. It’s also why Xinhua’s Twitter account isn’t actually following anyone. China is interested in using social media services only to broadcast itself; it has no interest in interacting with the outside world in a meaningful way. No Hope for the Future? It is a terrible sign that China’s crackdown on VPNs does not seem to have lessened after the conclusion of the 18th Party Congress. And at the same time, despite a couple years of massive expenditures in return for almost nothing in the way of results, China has shown no signs of wanting to adjust its shut-up-and-let-me-talk-dammit approach to soft power. China’s state media frequently complains that the West doesn’t understand China, but China has steadfastly refused to use internet platforms like Twitter and Facebook to attempt to increase that understanding in any meaningful way. And although the government remains dedicated to improving Chinese soft power, I have seen no signs that it is inclined to attempt a shift in strategy anytime soon. In the long term, I suspect the Great Firewall will prove to be domestically unsustainable. But until the wall comes down, China’s attempts at soft power are little more than a pipe dream, and its economic growth, especially in the tech arena, is ultimately going to be limited by the severe barriers it has erected between itself and the world at large.

Chinse soft power solves every scenario for extinction

Zhang 12

Zhang Weiwei is a professor of international relations at Fudan University and a senior research fellow at the Chunqiu Institute, China, September 4, 2012, "The rise of China's political soft power", http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2012-09/04/content_26421330.htm

As China plays an increasingly significant role in the world, its soft power must be attractive both domestically as well as internationally. The world faces many difficulties, including widespread poverty, international conflict, the clash of civilizations and environmental protection. Thus far, the Western model has not been able to decisively address these issues; the China model therefore brings hope that we can make progress in conquering these dilemmas. Poverty and development The Western-dominated global economic order has worsened poverty in developing countries. Per-capita consumption of resources in developed countries is 32 times as large as that in developing countries. Almost half of the population in the world still lives in poverty. Western countries nevertheless still are striving to consolidate their wealth using any and all necessary means. In contrast, China forged a new path of development for its citizens in spite of this unfair international order which enabled it to virtually eliminate extreme poverty at home. This extensive experience would indeed be helpful in the fight against global poverty. War and peace In the past few years, the American model of "exporting democracy'" has produced a more turbulent world, as the increased risk of terrorism threatens global security. In contrast, China insists that "harmony is most precious". It is more practical, the Chinese system argues, to strengthen international cooperation while addressing both the symptoms and root causes of terrorism. The clash of civilizations Conflict between Western countries and the Islamic world is intensifying. "In a world, which is diversified and where multiple civilizations coexist, the obligation of Western countries is to protect their own benefits yet promote benefits of other nations," wrote Harvard University professor Samuel P. Huntington in his seminal 1993 essay "The Clash of Civilizations?". China strives for "being harmonious yet remaining different", which means to respect other nations, and learn from each other. This philosophy is, in fact, wiser than that of Huntington, and it's also the reason why few religious conflicts have broken out in China. China's stance in regards to reconciling cultural conflicts, therefore, is more preferable than its "self-centered" Western counterargument. Environmental protection Poorer countries and their people are the most obvious victims of global warming, yet they are the least responsible for the emission of greenhouse gases. Although Europeans and Americans have a strong awareness of environmental protection, it is still hard to change their extravagant lifestyles. Chinese environmental protection standards are not yet ideal, but some effective environmental ideas can be extracted from the China model. Perfecting the China model The China model is still being perfected, but its unique influence in dealing with the above four issues grows as China becomes stronger. China's experiences in eliminating poverty, prioritizing modernization while maintaining traditional values, and creating core values for its citizens demonstrate our insight and sense of human consciousness. Indeed, the success of the China model has not only brought about China's rise, but also a new trend that can't be explained by Western theory. In essence, the rise of China is the rise of China's political soft power, which has significantly helped China deal with challenges, assist developing countries in reducing poverty, and manage global issues. As the China model improves, it will continue to surprise the world.

Chinese Censorship Bad- Disease

Censorship crushes China biotech research

Jacobs 1/29/15

Andrew Jacobs is an American correspondent for The New York Times. Jacobs has been based in Beijing, China, since April 2008, NYT, January 29, 2015, “China Further Tightens Grip on the Internet”, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/world/asia/china-clamps-down-still-harder-on-internet-access.html

On Tuesday, however, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology acknowledged that the government was targeting V.P.N.s to foster the “healthy development” of the nation’s Internet and he announced that such software was essentially illegal in China. “The country needs new methods to tackle new problems,” Wen Ku, a director at the ministry, said at a news conference, according to People’s Daily. In recent weeks, a number of Chinese academics have gone online to express their frustrations, particularly over their inability to reach Google Scholar, a search engine that provides links to millions of scholarly papers from around the world. “It’s like we’re living in the Middle Ages,” Zhang Qian, a naval historian, complained on the microblog service Sina Weibo. In an essay that has been circulating on social media, one biologist described how the unending scramble to find ways around website blockages was sapping colleagues’ energy. “It’s completely ridiculous,” he wrote of the wasted hours spent researching and downloading V.P.N. software that works. “For a nation that professes to respect science and wants to promote scientific learning, such barriers suggest little respect for the people actually engaged in science.” It is not just scientists who have come to depend on an unabridged Internet for their work. Cheng Qingsong, a prominent film critic, complained that it was more and more difficult to stream foreign movies. Andrew Wang, a professor of translation at Beijing Language and Culture University, worried that his students would be unable carry out assignments that require them to watch English-language videos on YouTube, which has long been blocked here. The vast majority of Chinese Internet users, especially those not fluent in English and other foreign languages, have little interest in vaulting the digital firewall. But those who require access to an unfiltered Internet are the very people Beijing has been counting on to transform the nation’s low-end manufacturing economy into one fueled by entrepreneurial innovation. Illustrating such contradictions, the central government this week announced a series of programs that seek to lure more international business talent by easing visa requirements and through other incentives. “We have to focus on the nation’s strategic goals and attract high-level talent to start innovative businesses in China,” said Zhang Jianguo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, who bemoaned the nation’s shortage of scientists and technology entrepreneurs. Those goals, however, will not be helped by the assaults on Internet access, critics say. Avery Goldstein, a professor of contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said the growing online constraints would not only dissuade expatriates from relocating here, but could also compel ambitious young Chinese studying abroad to look elsewhere for jobs. “If they aren’t able to get the information to do their jobs, the best of the best might simply decide not to go home,” he said. For those who have already returned to China and who crave membership in an increasingly globalized world, the prospect of making do with a circumscribed Internet is dispiriting. Coupled with the unrelenting air pollution and the crackdown on political dissent, a number of Chinese said the blocking of V.P.N.s could push them over the edge. “It’s as if we’re shutting down half our brains,” said Chin-Chin Wu, an artist who spent almost a decade in Paris and who promotes her work online. “I think that the day that information from the outside world becomes completely inaccessible in China, a lot of people will choose to leave.”
Key to solve neglected diseases

Frew et. al, 8

[Sarah Frew is a research associate at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, University Health Network and University of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada. Hannah Kettler is a program officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Peter Singer is a senior scientist at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, “ The Indian And Chinese Health Biotechnology Industries: Potential Champions Of Global Health?,” Health Affairs, 27, no. 4 (2008)]

DISCOVERY, DEVELOPMENT, AND DELIVERY OF "accessible"—that is, affordable, appropriate, and available—products to treat infectious diseases such as HIV, malaria, TB, and respiratory and diarrheal diseases, as well as noncommunicable diseases, are critical to improving the health of the world’s poor. During the past ten years, global health product development has improved dramatically, with new money from government and philanthropic donors, new not-for-profit initiatives, and contributions of expertise from the private sector. But sustainable solutions are still lacking. One approach to this problem is to explore opportunities to use the market potential of the poor.1 As Bill Gates noted in his June 2007 remarks at Harvard’s commencement: We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism—if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities.2 Multinational drug companies and even some larger biotechnology companies are making important contributions to global health through product donation and not-for-profit research and development (R&D) initiatives.3 However, their core business model, which depends primarily on earning blockbuster returns to compensate risky and expensive R&D and commercialization while also meeting investors’ expectations for return on investment (ROI), is by definition poorly suited to addressing the health needs of the world’s poorest populations. Through a better understanding of how pharmaceutical and biotech companies in India and China are already making a profit serving the poor, we can gain insight into sustainable business models in global health. Drug manufacturers in China and India—specifically, Cipla, Ranbaxy, and Hetero—are well known in the global health community for manufacturing and selling low-cost antimalarial and antiretroviral therapies in Africa. Less well known are the products and strategies of the emerging biotech companies in India and China. Our case studies of Indian and Chinese biotech companies reveal a surprising and important focus on appropriate, affordable products for infectious diseases and other local maladies.4 For example, we found that Shanghai United Cell Biotech had developed the only tablet formulation of cholera vaccine; that the Serum Institute of India (Pune), through its 138-country global distribution network and relationships with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), provides one of every two doses of vaccine given worldwide; and that Shantha Biotechnics (Hyderabad) developed a cost-effective manufacturing process for hepatitis B vaccine (Shanvac-B), India’s first indigenously developed recombinant DNA product, driving down the price from US$15 per dose for the imported product to US$0.50, and is now supplying about 30 percent of UNICEF’s global requirement for hepatitis B vaccine. In addition, recent changes in intellectual property (IP), industrial, trade, and regulatory policies have caused Indian and Chinese companies to move farther up the value chain—investing in innovative research and entering new, wealthier markets. We contend that existing global health financing vehicles could be made more sustainable through greater inclusion of emerging-market companies.
Neglected diseases cause state failures that go nuclear

Hotez 10

[Peter J. Hotez is distinguished research professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University. He is also president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute. “ Gandhi's Hookworms,” January 21, 2010, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/gandhis_hookworms?page=0,0]

Toward the end of his life, Mohandas Gandhi suffered from a hookworm infection. This disease, caused by blood-feeding worms in his intestine, is associated with severe anemia, lethargy, and fatigue. The fact that Gandhi's vigorous efforts to wage peace in India may have been slowed because of hookworms is only one of the more dramatic examples of the deep connection between medical health and the promotion of international peace and security. Today almost all of the 1.4 billion people who live below the World Bank's poverty line are infected with hookworms or related parasites. Taken together, there are seven high-prevalence Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) that particularly afflict low- and middle-income countries: six parasitic worm infections, which each afflict up to 1 billion people, and a bacterial infection known as blinding trachoma, which infects 60 to 80 million people. In addition to their disproportionate impact on the poor, NTDs differ from the type of infections common in the developed world because, in the absence of treatment, they can persist for years or decades. NTDs produce chronic and disabling effects on child development and farm worker productivity, and they increase the risks of pregnancy. In doing so, these infections actually trap people in poverty -- chronic hookworm infections in childhood reduce cognition, school performance, and future wage-earning potential by 40 percent or more. India loses almost $1 billion annually in worker productivity because of elephantiasis, which is caused by filarial worms in the lymphatic system and genitals. Africa suffers similar economic losses from elephantiasis -- as well as river blindness caused by larval worms in the eyes and skin, and schistosomiasis from worm eggs in the intestines, liver, bladder, or female genitals. The people at highest risk for acquiring these NTDs also live in areas of greatest concern to the global security interests of the United States. As much as one half of the world's poor who suffer from NTDs live in the nations that comprise the Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Almost as many live in pockets of poverty in middle-income countries that either hold and maintain nuclear weapons stockpiles or aspire to produce them, including India, Pakistan, China, Iran, and North Korea. In these countries, people are not only trapped in poverty because of their health conditions, they are also trapped in conflict. As NTDs spread throughout impoverished areas of Islamic countries and nuclear weapons states, they can promote global insecurity by increasing poverty and the possibility for radicalization. The security risks created by high endemic rates of NTDs argue strongly for seeking low-cost solutions for their control and elimination.

AT Censorship Good- No Impact

No impact to internet freedom in China

Chen et al. 13 – (Oct. 2013, Le Chen, Chi Zhang, and Christo Wilson, College of Computer and Information Science Northeastern University, “Tweeting Under Pressure: Analyzing Trending Topics and Evolving Word Choice on Sina Weibo,” COSN’13, October 7–8, 2013, Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
ABSTRACT

In recent years, social media has risen to prominence in China, with sites like Sina Weibo and Renren each boasting hundreds of millions of users. Social media in China plays a profound role as a platform for breaking news and political commentary that is not available in the state-sanctioned news media. However, like all websites in China, Chinese social media is subject to censorship. Although several studies have identified censorship on Weibo and Chinese blogs, to date no studies have examined the overall impact of censorship on discourse in social media.

In this study, we examine how censorship impacts discussions on Weibo, and how users adapt to avoid censorship. We gather tweets and comments from 280K politically active Weibo users for 44 days and use NLP techniques to identify trending topics. We observe that the magnitude of censorship varies dramatically across topics, with 82% of tweets in some topics being censored. However, we find that censorship of a topic correlates with high user engagement, suggesting that censorship does not stifle discussion of sensitive topics. Furthermore, we find that users adopt variants of words (known as morphs) to avoid keyword-based censorship. We analyze emergent morphs to learn how they are adopted and spread by the Weibo user community.

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, social media has risen to prominence in China. Sina Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, abbreviated as Weibo) boasts 500 million users [45], and Renren (the Chinese equivalent of Facebook) boasts 172 million users [22]. Like people the world over, Chinese users flock to these platforms as places to socialize and share content. However, social media in China also plays a more profound role as a platform for breaking news and political commentary that is not available in the state-sanctioned news media. For example, Weibo played a key role in the downfall of once-prominent politician Bo Xilai [17].

Like all websites in China, Chinese social media is subject to government-enforced content regulation policies. The primary manifestation of these regulations is censorship, which is known to impact Chinese blogs [25] and Weibo. Current work disagrees on the scope of censorship on Weibo, with estimates ranging from 0.01% [42] to 16% [7] of all “weibos” (a.k.a. tweets on Weibo) being censored. Users who discuss political issues [42, 49] and minority groups [7] tend to incur the brunt of censorship. In fact, it is hypothesized that Weibo employs thousands of crowdsourced workers to manually examine and censor the huge volume of tweets that are generated each day [49]. Thus, tweets may be visible for minutes, hours, or even days before they are censored, giving researchers an opportunity to download and analyze them.

Although it is no secret that tweets on Weibo are censored, how censorship is applied and the impact that it has on discourse is currently unknown. In this study, we seek to answer two key questions: first, what is the impact of censorship on discourse on Weibo? In other words, is censorship effective at chilling or even halting discussion on Weibo? Second, do Weibo users adapt in order to avoid censorship? Anecdotal evidence suggests that users may use morphs to avoid keyword-based censorship [7, 42], e.g., 储君(crown prince) instead of 习近平(Xi Jinping, the current president of China). However, it is unknown whether this theory is true, and if so, what the dynamics of morph generation are. These two questions get at the heart of the conflict between information dissemination and censorship in the highly dynamic, human-driven social media space.

To answer these questions, we break our study down into three major components. First, we conduct a large scale crawl of Weibo for 44 days. Our crawl targeted a connected component of 280,250 users who are active onWeibo. The crawler implemented a prioritization system where users who tweet more frequently were crawled more frequently. This enabled the crawler to gather most censored tweets before they were deleted (censorship can then be identified after-the-fact). In total, our crawl gathered 36.5M tweets, 1% of which were censored. We observe that censorship is not applied uniformly, e.g., 82% of tweets from one particularly contentious topic were censored, while up to 50% of tweets from some celebrity users were censored.

In addition to tweets, our crawler also gathered all of the comments on each tweet. Comments on Weibo function like comments on Facebook, i.e., users append them to existing tweets. Unlike prior studies of censorship on Weibo, ours is the first to examine both tweets and comments. This distinction is important, because, as we show in § 4.2, there are an order of magnitude more comments than tweets on Weibo.

Second, we leverage Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) [9] to extract 37 trending topics from our crawled data. Each one of these topics corresponds to a real-world event (e.g., the Boston marathon bombing, Ya’an Earthquake, etc.), and several were heavily censored (e.g., a Sichuan official who was criticized following the Ya’an earthquake, an incident between President Xi and a Beijing taxi driver, etc.). Across these topics, we analyze the relationship between the magnitude of censorship and the characteristics exhibited by the topic (e.g., number of engaged users, tweets per user, etc.). Contrary to our expectations, we find that users are more active in discussing censored topics, indicating that censorship does not have a chilling effect on discussion on Weibo.

Third and finally, we examine the usage of morphs on Weibo. We find that 11 of our 37 topics include morphs, in some cases up to 5 morphs per topic. Although we observe that many uncensored topics include morphs for comedic or satirical effect (e.g., 黑十字 (Black Cross) in place of 红十字(Red Cross)), we also find that morph usage dramatically increases within censored topics. Temporal analysis reveals that morph usage increases rapidly within hours of censorship being implemented, suggesting that users adapt their word usage to circumvent censorship.

No impact in China – coopt freedom

MacKinnon 11 (Rebecca MacKinnon, Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, on the Board of Directors of the Global Network Initiative, May 18, 2011, “HEARING OF THE COMMISSION ON SECURITY & COOPERATION IN EUROPE (HELSINKI COMMISSION);”, Lexis)

MS. MACKINNON: You know there's another academic -- I won't get too far into academic wonkery (ph) -- who talks about something called authoritarian deliberation. And, you know, one of the things I think in the reporting on a lot of authoritarian countries and the Internet is that, you know, if there's a lot of public debate about issues that's seen as, oh, well that country must be liberalizing and it must be on its way to democracy. But what we're actually seeing is that a government, like China -- but there are others like Bahrain comes to mind, and a number of other places -- where exactly that -- you have quite a lot of discourse going on; you have tremendously lively conversation. But it's constrained within certain boundaries and also very manipulated by people who -- some people who are paid by the government, other people who are just kind of -- you know, all the nationalistic people are encouraged to do whatever they want, no consequence, and the liberal internationalists, you know, have consequences and get censored. So it's manipulated in a particular direction. And it's hard, you know, because, you know, there's no app to deal with that, right? But, at least in China but I think also in other countries, again it comes back -- it goes away from the technology and comes back to human community. And in China one reason why the government, I think, has been so effective in maintaining control while still having a very lively Internet is that they've marginalized this liberal blogger community, you know, they've got -- just the amount of space they have to talk, the ability to converse is more and more squeezed; more and more people are threatened, and so on.

AT Censorship Good- No I/L

Internet promotion just provides another outlet for regime propaganda

Morozov 11 (Evgeny Morozov, visting scholar at Stanford University, Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, 2011, “The Net Delusion,” ch. 5)
But this raises an even broader question: Why does government propaganda—and especially propaganda based on lies and intentional misrepresentation of facts—still work in an age when one could find plenty of credible evidence online to disprove it? It works for the same unfortunate reasons that myths about Barack Obama's missing birth certificate or the myths about 9/11 being an inside job work for so many audiences in America. The easy availability of evidence to the contrary is not enough to dispel such myths, for they are not always based on rational examination of evidence. In addition, certain structural conditions of public life under an authoritarian regime might make such government-induced myths harder to dispel. Barbara Ged- des, a noted political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, who studied sources of popular support for authoritarian states around the world, discovered that a particular sector in the population is most susceptible to government propaganda. Usually it is what we can best describe as the middle class: people with some basic education who earn a good living and are neither poor and ignorant nor rich and sophisticated. (These two latter groups, Geddes found, were least sus-ceptible to government propaganda: the former because they could not even understand what the government wanted and the latter because they could easily see through it.) Thus, high rates of exposure to government propaganda may not necessarily make people aware of the fact that they are being brainwashed, let alone allow them to read between the lines. Conventional wisdom about government propaganda in authoritarian states has been best summed up by none other than Ithiel de Sola Pool, who said, "'When regimes impose daily propaganda in large doses, people stop listening." Geddes disagreed, "We must suppose that it must take an uncommonly educated populace before governmental control of information flows begins to boomerang in any serious way." Mere exposure to information does not by itself decrease support for authoritarian governments; it does not guarantee an increase in media literacy or sophistication. Simply getting a country's population online is not going to trigger a revolution in critical thinking; judging by the recent global hysteria over how the Internet might be dumbing us down, some people clearly believe that the opposite is more likely. It's hardly surprising, then, that authoritarian governments from Russia to Iran and from China to Azerbaijan are busy turning the Internet into the Spinternet—a Web with little censorship but lots of spin and propaganda—which reinforces their ideological supremacy. The age of new media, with its characteristic fragmentation of public discourse and decentralization of control, has made the lives of propaganda officials toiling in stuffy offices of authoritarian governments considerably easier.