Gwynne Dyer: Arab revolutions, China, and oil

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      Moammar Gadhafi’s speeches grow ever more delusional: last Thursday he accused al-Qaeda of putting hallucinogenic pills into the coffee of unsuspecting Libyan 17-year-olds in order to get them to attack the regime. But he also said something important. Defending his massacres of Libyan protesters, he pointed to the example of China, arguing that “the integrity of China was more important than [the people] on Tienanmen Square”.

      The Chinese regime will not be grateful to him for making that comparison, but it is quite accurate. Gadhafi, like the Chinese Communist Party, claims that there are only two choices: his own absolute power, or chaos, civil war, and national disintegration. The “integrity of Libya” is allegedly at stake. Also like the Chinese ruling party, he is willing to kill hundreds or even thousands of his own fellow citizens in order to maintain his rule.

      Ruthlessness will not save Gadhafi now: he has already lost control of more than half the country, and the oil revenues that enable him to reward his allies and pay mercenaries will soon dry up. But ruthlessness certainly did save the Chinese Communist regime in 1989, when the army slaughtered between 300 and 3,000 young pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s central square. Might it need to deploy such violence again in order to survive?

      So far the current wave of revolutions has been an entirely Arab phenomenon, apart from some faint echoes in Iran, but the example of successful non-violent revolution can cross national and even cultural frontiers. It won’t matter that it’s a very long way from the Arab world to China if large numbers of young Chinese conclude that the same techniques could also work against their own local autocracy.

      It is very unlikely that that sort of thing is brewing in China now. There were online calls for a “jasmine revolution” last week, but few people actually went out onto the streets of Chinese cities to protest, and those who did were swiftly overwhelmed by swarms of police. Even the word “jasmine” is now blocked in Internet searches in China, and tranquility has been restored.

      The reality is that few Chinese under the age of 30 know much about the savage repression of 1989. Moreover, despite a thousand petty grievances against the arbitrariness and sheer lawlessness of state power in China, they are just not in a revolutionary mood—and they will not be so long as the goose keeps laying the golden eggs.

      But what if the Chinese economic miracle stalled? Then the situation could change very fast, for the regime is not loved; it is merely tolerated so long as living standards go on rising quickly. And what could cause it to stall? Well, the economic side effects of the current wave of revolutions in the Middle East might do the trick.

      Sometimes, it really is all about oil. The last two times the world economy really took a nosedive—way beyond the normal, cyclical recessions—were both oil-related. In 1973, after the Arab-Israeli war of that year and the subsequent embargo on Arab oil exports, the oil price quadrupled. In 1979, when the Iranian revolution cut that country’s oil exports, the impact was almost as severe. So could it happen again?

      Non-violent revolutions should not affect oil exports at all. Heavy fighting of the sort we are now seeing in Libya can damage oil-producing facilities and drive out foreign workers who are needed to run those facilities, but Libya is not a big enough producer to affect the global supply situation much by itself.

      What drove the oil price up to $120 a barrel at one point last week (it later fell back to $110) was not the loss of Libyan production, but the fear that, as the contagion of revolution spreads, one or more of the major Middle Eastern oil exporters may fall into the same chaos. Then, the oil pundits predict, the price could hit $180 or even $220.

      Never mind the direct impact of such an astronomical price on the Chinese economy (although China imports a lot of oil). Far worse for China would be the fact that the whole global economy would go into a period of hyperinflation and steeply falling consumption, for China is now integrated into that economy.

      So the Chinese goose stops laying its golden eggs, and young Chinese start looking around for someone to blame. They would, of course, blame the regime—and at that point, the Middle Eastern example of successful non-violent revolution becomes highly relevant.

      Which is not to say that non-violent revolution is really possible in China. The Party has always been willing to kill its opponents, and there is no proof that it has changed, even though another generation has passed since 1989 and none of the original killers is still in office.

      But the current generation of Chinese young people barely remember 1989. They would not be deterred by the memory of what happened to their predecessors.

      Comments

      13 Comments

      seth

      Feb 25, 2011 at 11:55am

      Unlike the west run by Big Oil bought and paid for corrupt politicians, the Chinese have seen this coming and are rapidly expanding electricity production with nuclear and hydro moving to the front of the list.

      Power, electric vehicles, mass transit and high speed rail are being built as national priorities like the military not requiring a fare paid business cases and stupid carbon taxes that our corrupt fascist politicians like Brimstone Harper and the our equally traitorous silly greenies recommend.

      The Chinese are rapidly working on synthetic fuel options like Shell's new Qatar plant that produces diesel, gasoline and jet fuel from natural gas at $25 a barrel. The corrupt fascist Brimstone loves screwing the taxpayer instead with $100/barrel Alberta crude.

      In Utah, the gas company is required to provide CNG at gas stations at the same cost as home supply - 30 cents a liter. Corrupt Canadian politicians like Brimstone and Canwest/Gordo have made a deal with Big Oil mouthpiece T Boone Pickens to supply CNG in Canada at the same price as gasoline.

      Wake up folks. The only thing stopping us right now is our corrupt politicians. Let's start by changing them out.
      seth

      Born Yesterday

      Feb 25, 2011 at 9:17pm

      First, about Libya: that fellow Gadhafi is a real monster. He always had his eccentricities but I would have never imagined that this self-professed "man of the people" would have such a pathological hatred for his own citizens. That's utterly disgusting.

      Regarding China, given that it's a dictatorship, we will never know what's in that government's mind at any given point. However, if I had to make a prediction, it's that the authoritarian waxworks over there will remain in power for a very long time.

      petr aardvark

      Feb 26, 2011 at 1:21pm

      well born yesterday, I'm not so sure. Having spent half my youth in communist eastern Europe. I never thought it would change in my lifetime and the funny thing is after 23 years the young people there barely remember the Communist years. Even this round of Arab revolutions caught the analysts by surprise.
      One of the key factors not talked about very much is the increased price of food in that region. After a failed grain harvest last summer Russia banned wheat exports. And Australia hasnt been exporting for 3 years. In the west we our food expense is maybe 7-9 % of our budget but in the developing countries it's more like 70% Egypt has 80million people, it imports most of its food - so there is a direct correlation between Russias failed grain harvest. And my guess is that food is about to get more expensive.

      William

      Feb 26, 2011 at 5:07pm

      Seth. I am an American who doesn't know a hell of a lot about Harper, but I have taken a course on Fascism, and he is not a fascist. He is a democratically elected politician whom, by Canadian standards, is right-wing and militaristic. That makes him less attractive to me, but that doesn't make him a fascist.

      I agree China is doing a lot to promote the adoption of alternative energy, and beyond that their power plant production is heavily reliant on coal. In a great many respects, they are far less green than most Western countries, but they are decisively working to try to be less reliant on foreign energy supplies than we are. This effort is assisted by the fact that most of their infrastructure was built very recently and therefore benefited from reaction to modern circumstances and technology whereas ours is very old. By building alternative energy plants, they don't just get cleaner or more secure energy, they get energy period. They were going build power plants anyway. We on the other hand have less economic incentive because we already have the electricity, and the difference is only us getting it from a better source rather than us getting it all, at least for the short term. Besides that, because their economy is growing at a phenominal rate, so are their budgets. So they have a lot of new revenue coming in that they can screw around with.

      I guess an acceptable solution could be a 10-20% reduction in military spending in the US paying for refiting national infrastructure. I suspect that would actually employ more people than the military industrial complex, but the Republicans make it impossible at present; even the democrats don't have the guts to do it.

      Steve Y

      Feb 26, 2011 at 7:54pm

      Hate to break it to you Seth, but even though China is expanding alternative energy quickly, there just isn't enough energy around for them. They experience brownouts quite frequently and they are rapidly running out of coal.... they currently use and produce HALF of the world's supply. Once they are out (approximately 20 years) they, and we, are screwed. For them to put say, their car fleet on electricity would be madness.

      seth

      Feb 27, 2011 at 3:47pm

      Well Bill being a Yank yer might have heard of Franklin D Roosevelt. He said

      “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

      I think that definition fits government under the Brimstone Harpy regime just about perfectly. Lots of the world's most infamous fascists were democratically elected.

      US nuclear costs built by public power are now dropping to under $3B/Gw 4 cents a kwh which is cheaper than both coal and natural gas. With Repug plans to strip the NRC - the most ineffective incompetent regulator in the OECD, of its power and to build 100 new nukes, nuke power costs will soon drop to the levels now predicted in China - $1B/Gw 1.5 cents a kwh with the same 3 year build times . Far cheaper than coal or natural gas.

      Coal kills 30K Americans every year and sickens hundreds of millions more - an estimated cost of $120B per annum. The US spends $800B annually on fossil fuels. $2500B would be enough to replace all fossils with mass produced nukes - a 40% rate of return on the nuke investment.

      During World War II with an industrial capacity a tiny fraction of today's, the USA at its peak was building the equivalent of a nuke plant a day with its Liberty ship production alone - do the conversion in 8 years once it got going.

      So politically, financially and industrially the US is poised to do what the Chinese have planned - to replace all carbon fuels with nukes by 2030. The new clean energy act proposes to get 80% all US electricity converted to nukes (since it is by far the cheapest clean energy) by 2030., When combined with a push on electric vehicles we are effectively there.

      @steve y

      As I said Steve no problem with coal, twenty years from now China will be powered on nukes.
      seth

      Alan Burnham

      Feb 28, 2011 at 3:49am

      Seth, it's been 65 years since the nuclear age dawned and not one single country in the entire world has yet found a satisfactory solution to storing long term nuclear waste. You might think about the 100,000 tonnes of the stuff still looking for a home before jumping into the deep end of the nuclear pool.

      seth

      Feb 28, 2011 at 4:32pm

      Actually Alan, China,India, Japan, France and Russia pretty well have the waste problem in hand. They reprocess into MOX fuel and plan on burning the rest to a small pile of ash with the GenIV reactor like India;s new 500MW first if 5 units.

      Remember all the world's nuke waste now perfectly contained waiting recycle as Gen IV reactor fuel would fit on a football field buried 40 feet deep. It's not a huge problem.

      Compare that to the cubic miles of toxic forever arsenic and mercury laced mine tailing ponds just waiting to burst.
      seth

      Steve Y

      Feb 28, 2011 at 7:48pm

      Too bad in a few years the world will face a crippling shortage of uranium, not counting the massive expansion your are suggesting.

      seth

      Mar 1, 2011 at 10:51am

      @steveY
      Lotsa nuke waste around to make into MOX to fuel conventional reactors. Candu's run on old PWR fuel rods and burn thorium. 80% nuke France fuels have its fleet on MOX.

      Finally the Gen 4 reactor like India's new 500 MW first of 5 by 2020 unit running on what is to it enough nuke waste to power the world for a thousand years.
      seth