Despite the hype surrounding it, the gathering of the country’s ruling elite in Beijing is likely to prize measured change over dramatic reform.

If there was a clearer idea of what makes China’s new elite leadership tick, then the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that is about to be held in Beijing would not be such a big deal. But in a polity which privileges concealment over overt statement, it is viewed widely as the one chance for outsiders to see more clearly what the leadership aims to achieve. Expectations were raised by the October statement by one of the most staid members of the current Standing Committee of the Politburo, Yu Zhengsheng, that the plenum would presage a new era of reform.

In Chinese politics reform is a word that has a wholesome, positive air about it. But the question is where and when reform will happen and who will gain from it. The plenum is not like a party convention in the Western sense. It is not an eye-grabbing, media-dominating event that produces surprises. Comparing this year’s installment with the great Third Plenum of 1978 that heralded the repudiation of late Maoism and the embracing of the market, the non-state sector and foreign capital – all anathema before then – is misleading. The significance of the 1978 meeting was only obvious in hindsight. It took years for the scale of the radical transformation of the whole strategic direction of the Communist Party to be appreciated. That 2013 will prove a similar historic moment is unlikely, perhaps even impossible.

What is much more likely is that the highly tactical leadership now in charge will reaffirm its commitment to incremental reform. It will make some statements about the radical urbanization that China is about to undergo and say something about social welfare reform. China’s leaders will do what they have always done in plenums over the last three decades, namely set the broad parameters of politically permissible activity that provinces, ministries and other stakeholders will then need to implement.

This plenum will also have to produce something about the need to achieve greater egality and balance in the economy. It needs to answer some of the questions about how Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, intends to meet the goal of 'fast, sustainable growth' when a falling overall GDP figure looks likely. It needs to communicate to as broad a constituency as possible the arch-narrative of a world where the raw statement of growth on its own is no longer the be all and end all of government policy. It needs to say something about how the party is going to fulfill the increasingly complex aspirations of the Chinese people, aspirations that exceed purely having a materially good level of life and concern broader questions of well-being that vex the politics of all developed economies.

Observers will want to see some signs too of addressing the most sensitive issues. Yu Zhengsheng talked of economic reform. Reforming the economy is now a wholly uncontroversial mantra in China. However, it impacts on one enormously important issue that reaches beyond economics: whether wealth, prosperity and development benefit the few or are accessible to the many – in other words, good, old-fashioned questions of economic and social justice. At the heart of this lies the question of how state-owned enterprises have become vehicles of profit not just for the party state, but also for tightly knit networks of vested interests. Reforms that lap at the doors of these entities also creep into the space of powerful political players, who will resist any attempt to cut down their wealth, and who have the power to resist.

China’s new leadership is proving more confident than was expected and displays a high sense of historic mission. President Xi Jinping speaks increasingly like a politician who believes it is almost his historic destiny to sit at the centre of the leadership of a renascent 'rich, strong country'. The ultimate question for the plenum is not what outside observers make of it but what the vastly complex mixture of groups in China does. For them, a sign that the leadership is willing to take on some of the entrenched vested interests that penetrate the operations of some state-owned sectors to the core is critical.

This is likely to be couched in the language of more support for the market, which is the key channel in any attack on vested interests – through widening access to wealth and economic benefits, and support for the non-state sector and entrepreneurs. It is hard to see how deeper reform can occur without these two crucial elements. And it is through these that the attitude of China’s leadership to political and legal reforms – far more complex issues that, almost certainly, will not be addressed at the plenum but will lurk in the background − will become clearer. The leadership thinks it is too early to tackle these issues directly, but this plenum will still be part of the process for it to come up with ideas for how to transform not just China’s economy, but its polity too.

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This report serves as a record of the inaugural London Conference on Globalization and World Order, convened by Chatham House on 2–3 June 2014 at Lancaster House in London.

The London Conference has three aims: to be comprehensive in debating how best to manage the profound economic and political rebalancing taking place across the world; to go behind the headlines and debate the trends underlying and connecting current events; and to build an international community of experts with a shared understanding of the major challenges accompanying globalization.

This inaugural conference was fortunate to draw together high-quality speakers for each session, who offered perspectives reflecting their geographic and sectoral diversity. It benefited enormously from the ideas for themes, speakers and participants suggested by its steering committee. The conference would not have been possible without the generous support of its two founding partners – Accenture and Chevron – and its supporting sponsors – Bloomberg and Rio Tinto – as well as the generous cooperation that we received from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in hosting the event at the historic Lancaster House in St James’s. And the quality of the debate, insights and ideas generated over the course of the conference was driven largely by the input from its 200 participants. Steering committee members, sponsors and participants are all listed in the next section, along with speakers’ details and the conference programme.

The report itself opens with a short essay which explores one of the main conclusions of the conference: the loss of trust that appears to be permeating relationships between governments, and between governments and their citizens, as a result of the pressures they are all under from the process of globalization. This is followed by the key insights from each of the five main sessions of the conference on 3 June.

The final section brings together the five papers written by members of Chatham House’s in-house research teams in advance of the conference in order to stimulate participants’ thinking. Even following an eventful six months since these were written, their insights and proposals retain an important salience for the future.

We look forward to hosting the second London Conference on 1–2 June 2015.

 

Robin Niblett
Director 

Reaping the benefits of more than a decade of stability and fast economic growth, Angola increasingly wields global influence. Angola seeks to diversify its bilateral partnerships and improve existing ones, and is well-placed to exert its influence in multilateral fora. 

At this roundtable event, Angola’s Secretary of State for Cooperation, Hon Dr Maria Angela Bragança, will discuss Angola’s international priorities and how Angola is helping to shape key issues of global importance in a multipolar world.

Africa is now recognized for its vast potential as well as its political influence in international fora, and there has been a growing number of Africa-focused summits, with China, India, the European Union, South Korea and Turkey all hosting such events in recent years. The US has in the past given precedence to bilateral engagements in support of its ‘four pillars’ approach to implementing its Africa strategy. The first US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, held in August, marked a shift towards a complementary continent-wide engagement. 

At this roundtable, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield will discuss US policy and priorities in Africa and the significance of the summit for enhanced US-Africa relations.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The overarching theme of this event will be Korea’s changing role as a global power and its effect on the country’s relationships, including with the UK and Europe. It will aim to raise awareness of these issues to an audience of key decision-makers, and to encourage experts to think together strategically about areas of mutual interest, as well as practical ways to achieve deeper cooperation. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This event is held in partnership with the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

On 26 January, President Barack Obama joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his guest at India’s Republic Day, in a reflection of the huge potential in the US-India relationship. The trip makes Obama the first US president to visit India twice while in office, and comes on the heels of Modi’s visit to Washington last autumn. Nevertheless, the heavily touted ‘transformation’ in bilateral affairs that these summits are supposed to herald is unlikely to materialize soon. Continued, active and deliberate effort by the two leaders could allow the relationship to jump forward, but given competing priorities, this moment seems destined to pass without the major advances many believe are possible.

Since the 2005 breakthrough nuclear deal which brought India into the non-proliferation tent, the opportunities in the bilateral relationship have been loudly extolled. Notably, the countries lack historical closeness − during the Cold War, India led the Non-Aligned Movement but leaned towards the Soviet Union. This means that there is ample opportunity to progress in a number of key areas – but also is indicative of the challenges.

Democracy

It is often said that India is the largest democracy and the United States the oldest. President George W. Bush saw India as a valuable partner in promoting democracy around the region and the world. India’s loud, raucous political system should be a good example of a vibrant democracy. However, India, like China, holds strongly to the primacy of sovereignty and as such has no wish to lead others to build new political systems or to impose them.

Economics and trade

India has a middle class that is, by some counts, larger than the entire US population. However, India’s regulatory system is complex, and its legal architecture slow and unpredictable. After recent Indian decisions such as the 2012 case where retroactive taxes were imposed on Vodafone, American businesses have been extremely wary. Tensions at a governmental level were also raised in America after India collapsed the WTO negotiations last July.

Security

Major strides have been taken in military cooperation, and there is space for more.  During Obama’s visit, the two leaders revitalized their Defence Framework, building on a 2005 agreement and subsequent progress led by then-US deputy secretary of defense Ash Carter. Carter’s likely confirmation as secretary of defense in the coming weeks is probably the brightest spot for the future bilateral agenda. But Indian acquisition processes do not align well with their American equivalents.  And the US is resistant to providing blueprints to technology, which the Indians want, preferring to build at home and sell the equipment on. These misalignments make progress in this area difficult.

Geopolitics

India wants to be considered a regional and global power, and America would dearly like to have India onside, particularly in light of China’s occasional muscle flexing. However, as illustrated by its uncritical stance towards Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its abstention from the 2011 UN Security Council resolution authorizing military action in Libya, India’s view on sovereignty and its historical non-aligned positioning mean that it too often fails to back up the US on divisive issues.

Environment

The environmental debates between India (as a representative of the developing world) and the US (representing the developed) have often been acrimonious, as the two sides take opposing views on where the principal responsibility lies in ensuring growth while limiting the environmental fallout. There are however opportunities in this arena to advance together through technology cooperation. India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (behind China and the US) and has significant and growing energy demands as it works to bring its people out of poverty. If the US and India could find a compromise similar to the recent agreement between the US and China, the impact could be significant both in environmental terms and in the demonstration effect to others.

Unrealized potential

Most of these issues are central to President Obama’s legacy and integral to Modi’s goals of restoring growth to India and putting it at the centre of global geopolitics. They should dovetail well with both leaders’ agendas. But in each case, the challenges, including the institutional bureaucracies, are preventing real breakthroughs.

If this bilateral relationship is to be transformed, Obama and Modi need to not just push their systems, but exert sustained pressure on them to overcome the long-standing obstacles. Unfortunately, given other agendas and historical legacies of distrust, such ongoing attention is unlikely. More likely, the relationship will continue to move ahead, but the huge potential will for now remain unrealized.

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Much of the focus on China’s 13th Five Year Plan – its centralized and integrated economic guidelines for the next five years – has been on the estimated growth rate of 6.5 per cent, its lowest in recent history. This reflects the so-called ‘new normal’ of China’s development, as President Xi Jinping’s administration describes its aspiration for higher-quality growth in the context of a slowing economy.

But this growth target is an estimate, rather than a pledge. The emphasis on ‘ecological civilization’ – another of Xi’s signature buzzwords, referring to a broad set of approaches environmental protection – is striking. Further, by putting innovation and ‘green development’ at the heart of its ambition to create a ‘moderately prosperous society’, China has sent an important signal: that the country’s strategy for future prosperity in many respects converges with a shift away from its environmentally costly development model.

Environmental goals

The plan endorses a ‘vertical management system’ that will help overcome structural impediments to the local enforcement of environmental laws,  and of its 13 binding targets, 10 relate to the environment and natural resources. In the plan, China commits to an 18 per cent reduction in carbon emissions per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020 and a 15 per cent reduction in energy consumed per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020. It also re-commits to generate 15 per cent of primary energy from non-fossil sources and introduces an important new target of keeping energy consumption below 5 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2020. Underlining how air quality has become a major driver of energy and climate policymaking, it also promises a 25 per cent reduction in harmful PM2.5 particulates.

In short, the plan suggests that decision makers in China not only take seriously its UN pledge to see a peak in the country’s emissions before 2030, but also that they hope the country will be the leading supplier of low-carbon technologies. Among its non-binding targets are some significant innovation-related measures: to raise gross expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP to 2.5 per cent, from 2.1 per cent today; and over the same period to almost double the number of patents owned per 10,000 people, from 6.3 to 12.

Innovation

The document makes clear the principal driver of China’s economy should be innovation, rather than investment. Innovation, says the plan, ‘must be placed at the heart of overall national development’ and ‘integrated into all the works of the Party and the country’. There is emphasis on strategic areas at the ‘frontiers’ of science, ‘mass entrepreneurship’ through new models such as crowd-funding, and digital economy projects – what the leadership likes to call ‘Internet+’ – including around the Internet of Things, quantum computing and big data.  

Under China’s 12th Five Year Plan (from 2011 to 2015), the state focused on a defined number of specific technology goals in its ‘strategic emerging industries’. Renewable energies and electric vehicles, for example, were afforded specific preferential policies. By contrast, the new plan has a greater focus on ‘clean coal’ and hydropower in the energy sector; and while it doesn’t abandon solar and wind, it also suggests greater diversity in its overall approach, with more of an emphasis on reform of the energy sector, developing smart power grids and investing in energy storage technologies such as batteries and fuel cells.

Moreover, innovation in the plan is not framed as simply being about hardware – the commercialization of science and technology. Rather, the text reiterates that innovation should come in many different varieties: ‘theoretical, institutional, scientific and technological, and cultural innovation’. This raises the intriguing and hopeful possibility that the country’s planners recognize some of the challenges and opportunities the public, particularly in the form of newly vocal, engaged and connected urban constituencies, pose in the governance of innovation.

Policymakers – taking ‘social innovation’ seriously – could begin look at the public as technology users, incubators of demand-driven successes, and innovators in their own right. In a context of low public trust around food and agriculture in China, for example, organic cooperatives and ecological entrepreneurs have pioneered supply-chain innovations, typically facilitated by digital networks, to connect farmers with urban consumers looking for safer food. Lower-tech approaches to energy too – such as inexpensive solar water heaters, which garner a mention in the latest plan – have been driven by rural users and supported by local initiatives, rather than central government coordination or subsidies.

These approaches to innovation would present a quite different model than previous central government plans have encouraged. Whether in the plan’s implementation they are harnessed and given support might be critical to meeting China’s environmental goals, as well as its drive to create a more innovative economy and society.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has responded with an iron fist to last Friday’s failed military coup attempt in Turkey by detaining, dismissing or suspending, so far, 60,000 military officers, police and intelligence officials, judges, teachers, academics and civil servants, and imposing a widespread travel ban and a three-month state of emergency. He is vowing to reintroduce the death penalty, abolished in 2004 as part of reforms required for opening EU accession negotiations.

This uncompromising approach in the post-coup period will have profound negative implications on Turkey’s domestic politics, security and foreign policy in the foreseeable future to the detriment of its stability and prosperity.

Fractured politics

Erdogan’s indifference to the unprecedented political unity against the coup is, regretfully, a missed opportunity to dilute the deepening polarization and divisiveness bedeviling Turkish politics. His determination to use the putsch to consolidate political power in the presidency and to erode or eliminate the secular character of the Turkish state by means of a new constitution will widen the ideological and ethnic divide between, respectively, secular and conservative Turks and Turks and Kurds. Just a few months ago, Ismail Kahramam, speaker of the Turkish parliament and Erdogan ally, exhorted that ‘secularism cannot feature in the new [religious] constitution’.

His policies and rhetoric, in other words, will undermine even more the almost imperceptible presence of ‘interpersonal trust’ in Turkish society - the willingness of one party to rely on the actions of another party – seen as incongruent with a robust polity and cohesive society. According to a 2010 OECD survey Turkey’s levels of interpersonal trust are considerably lower than OECD averages and it stands out among the 20 surveyed countries as the only one where higher educational attainment correlates with lower feelings of trust. That posture can only breed even more discord and mistrust between the different segments of the Turkish electorate and entrench personality-based and top-down politics, the root cause of political turmoil in Turkey.

Diminished state capacity

Turkey’s NATO partners fear that the purges of experienced military and security personnel have the potential to diminish its capability to thwart the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other militant groups and to better manage its long and porous borders with Syria and Iraq. Thus far, Turkish authorities have incarcerated nearly one-third of Turkey’s senior military commanders and more than 7,000 police and intelligence officials. This constitutes a major loss of expertise and institutional memory at a time of heightening security challenges. After all, Turkey witnessed 14 bomb attacks over the last year, many of them carried out by ISIS or the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Similarly, the removal of tens of thousands of school teachers, both in private and state schools, university academics and education ministry officials will severely disrupt the provision of adequate educational services to enable future generations to succeed in an increasingly complex global economic environment. This ‘cleansing’ operation did not spare even the elite and renowned state and private universities considered bastions of liberalism and cosmopolitan values in Turkey.

In all probability, the government’s replacements of key staff with less qualified loyalists will rupture the institutional integrity and professionalism of the military establishment and the state institutions. Such a hollowing out process was already underway prior to the coup but post-coup decision-making has greatly accelerated the speed. Sadly, under the best case scenario, it will take Turkey years, if not decades, to restore a modicum of rule of law and public services’ delivery at pre-coup standards to which the Turkish citizenry have been accustomed.

Foreign policy challenges

Erdogan’s endorsement of the death penalty might signal the end of Turkey’s (already nearly non-existent) EU accession prospects and a more troubled relationship with Europe and the US. He was, before the coup, a prickly and challenging partner for the US and NATO to handle, a recalcitrant member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and vociferously against the US cooperation with PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish fighters targeting ISIS in northern Syria. After the coup, he will probably become more disagreeable to US and European foreign policy and security objectives.

His disagreeability will probably extend to Turkey’s deal with the EU to stem the flow of Syrian migrants across the Aegean Sea and Greece into mainland Europe, which looks increasingly unsustainable. A pugnacious Erdogan may utilize the forthcoming EU refusal to abolish visas for Turkish travellers to the Schengen borderless zone by end-October to wring out more concessions from an Erdogan-sceptical Europe. Despite their exasperation, they should decipher from his rapprochement with Israel and Russia that he tends to compromise with muscular diplomacy as opposed to diplomatic niceties.    

Turkey will be so convulsed and self-absorbed by internal political machinations and its security and military capabilities so compromised that it cannot afford to deploy sizeable assets to promote regime change in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers are, naturally, the prime beneficiaries while the armed largely Sunni opposition are the biggest losers. Arguably, Assad must now feel very secure in power and confident that he will enlarge his territorial acquisitions at the expense of the Sunni groups. Equally, the Syrian Kurds will seek to strengthen and, perhaps, extend the quasi-autonomous zone along the Turkey−Syria border commensurate with Turkey’s declining influence in the Syrian quagmire.

Europe’s lesson

Turkey is a bitter testimony to the ill-effects of sacrificing progressive values to political expediency, fear and interests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated a lack of strategic foresight by stymying Turkey’s desire to join the EU in 2005. Had the EU engaged Turkey in a credible accession process, however arduous it may have been, the coup would probably have never occurred. Turkish political leaders would have been forced to implement deeper and wider reforms to strengthen democracy, secularism, human rights and a functioning market economy. Instead, Europe is reaping what it sowed: a coup-rattled and more unstable Turkey on its doorstep.

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The field of Indian foreign policy is rich and wide ranging, offering new empirical material across a broad array of topics and relationships. This article reviews three recent books on the subject, with an eye towards evaluating change amid continuity in the pursuit of Indian foreign policy. This scholarship calls out for a new paradigm to understand India’s changing position and actions at global, regional and domestic levels. I argue that Indian foreign policy can and should be seen through the prism of an open border, interdependence framework, wherein both the domestic and global levels are analysed in a linked manner. While the literature surveyed here does not yet offer a new paradigm, some common findings suggest the need for new approaches. We also need to find and use new sources of data and seek ways to measure institutional effects in foreign policy. The task of measurement and theoretical modelling is made more challenging by the need to theorize the linkages across levels and to measure foreign policy variables in different countries simultaneously.