Clubs seal: China’s view as alliances multiply

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Given Chancellor Angela Merkel's long, steady leadership both at home and abroad, many outside the country worry more than those inside about who will replace her. We examine the domestic and the international challenges she leaves behind. And these days, baklava can be found all over the world, though in its region of origin, its inventors and its recipe are not at all agreed. We look into why the Middle east has such a sweet tooth and such a soft spot for the syrupy treat. But first, America's diplomacy in Asia is revving up. Today, American leaders will join counterparts from Australia, India and Japan in Washington for the first in person meeting of the coalition known as the Quad. They'll talk about a range of issues, including the pandemic and the climate crisis. But at its core, one issue drives the alliance, ensuring a free and open Indo Pacific. In other words, China. Today's meeting follows the formation of another union that caused a kerfuffle. The Aukus security pact between America, Australia and Britain left French officials feeling left out, leading Prime Minister Boris Johnson to, in his way, mend fences.

I just think it's time for some of our dearest friends around the world to, you know, about all this donne moi and brake, because this is fundamentally a great step forward, forward for global security.

With all this diplomatic hullabaloo, China has remained relatively quiet even as more and more countries club together against it.

Well, the Quad is a group of big countries in the Asia Pacific which actually was first formed to talk about things like joint disaster relief. But then you've noticed that more recently their communiques talk much more consistently about a free, open, prosperous, rules based and inclusive Indo Pacific.

David Rennie is our Beijing bureau chief.

And that to diplomats is code for dealing with the disruptive rise of China in the region and China's willingness to throw its weight around economically or even physically in the South China Sea. And so that has given this still fairly loose meeting of these four countries a new lease of life.

But what exactly do you mean there on the throwing its weight around?

China has some very aggressive territorial claims and it's willing to enforce those. Japan, which has a dispute over China with the East China Sea, with some islands that Japan controls much more frequently. You now see Chinese fishing boats, Chinese naval vessels, coast guard vessels testing Japan's responses. In India, we saw some very dramatic border clashes and the high mountains and the Himalayas. And Australia has been subjected to what looks a lot like a very organized campaign of economic coercion. After the Australian government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the COVID 19 pandemic, China basically started slapping bans on the import of everything from coking coal to massive tariffs on wine barley, trying to take advantage of the fact that Australia sells a tremendous amount of stuff to China.

And so why is it that China has been so specifically assertive in that specific region?

There's a recent answer to that question which has to do with China feeling self confident as a much stronger, wealthier country. But there's a historic argument too, when China looks back at its history over the last several hundred years. The idea that when it was weak, its weakness was seen by foreign powers bullying China and carving away bits of territory. Whether that was the British taking Hong Kong, the Russians grabbing great chunks of northeastern China, There's a very, very clear link in the Chinese psyche that territorial integrity is how you demonstrate that you are a healthy, strong, confident China.

And today's meeting of the Quad comes hot on the heels of the announcement of the Aukus alliance that we've spoken about on the show. What do you think the Chinese Communist Party makes of all these alliances clearly designed against them?

That's their conclusion, that American claims. The warm words about how alliances are a Positive force in world affairs. The words that you heard Joe Biden use at the United nations at General assembly when he talked about America opposing attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones, whether through changes to territory by force, economic coercion, technical exploitation or disinformation. China's firm prejudice is is that all that soft soap that's just cover for American hegemony about trying to stop China's rise because America doesn't want to share the top table. And interestingly, the row with France, France's extreme dissatisfaction with the Australians, not just for canceling a big submarine contract, but for doing it all in secrecy and then forming this new alliance when a French minister accused Britain of returning to the American fold and accepting a form of vassal status, that language could frankly come straight out of the pages of the People's Daily here in Beijing because that's absolute vindication for China's worldview. For them, it made sense that Australia would rather be America's vassal than an equal partner of another mid sized country, France, because China's worldview is that the world is run by a very small number of very big countries and two matter more than any other and that everyone else basically is trying to work out how to extend their interest when it comes to China or America.

So with all of the attention on how powers such as France have responded to Aukus, how has China responded to it?

To date we have not seen tremendous expressions of solidarity with France. And that's interesting because normally whenever French political leaders call on Europe to pursue strategic autonomy, the Chinese love that. They praise them because they understand that when the French talk about strategic autonomy, places like the Indo Pacific, that that's code for a very Gaulist idea that Europe should avoid falling in line with the Americans. You're seeing really quite mild by Chinese standards, grumbling about America forming Cold War cliques. But by the standards of some of the really ferocious America bashing we've seen in recent months, it's been throat clearing as opposed to kind of yelling from the windows.

And why do you suppose China's response has been restrained then?

It's a mixture. I think at the most simple level there's a benefit in just letting France and America and the British kind of feud among themselves without stopping them. There is a sense that China doesn't like siding with losers. And I spoke to one prominent Chinese scholar who said that France lost face. There's a serious security calculation to this too, which is that China, although it spent a fortune on building up its military, still has relatively weak anti submarine capabilities and the kind of nuclear submarines that Australia says it wants to buy. They are the kind of deep water, fast, undetectable submarines that you want. If the Royal Australian Navy is not about guarding the seas close to Australia's shores, but actually becoming much more of a force projection tool for an American alliance. You need those nuclear submarines if you want to lurk stealthily in deep water.

Given all those strategic considerations, it's tempting to imagine that what is going on here is what the Chinese Communist Party likes to think is going on here. That this really is a, an alignment of powers all over the world either for or against China. That that very simple casting of things actually has a nugget of truth in it, doesn't it?

Well, rule one of paranoia is that sometimes you're right, they are actually after you. And I think China's own aggression in so many ways is, is changing the rules of its home region. I think the fact that all sorts of countries who clung to the idea that their trade relationship with China could be separated from all of their security concerns and Australia is an absolute example of that, I think that calculation is just changing because China's willingness to impose economic sanctions or to actually stage physical clashes. The same calculations that give rise to Aukus are shaping that meeting at the White House with the leaders today. Japan is realizing it needs to stop being a pacifist power. India is far more tolerant of American hardware and allies in its home region. That'll be the test of this quad. It's still an unproven alliance, but I think what it shows is that the idea that countries didn't want to choose between their profitable trade relationship with China and taking China seriously as a potential security threat. In international politics, saying you don't want to choose is a wish, not a strategy. And sometimes wishes just run out of road.

Thanks very much for joining us, David.

Thank you.

Germans go to the polls this Sunday with Angela Merkel set to stand down after 16 years as Chancellor. Ahead of her political departure, a somewhat nostalgic video clip has emerged. The Excerpt from a 1997 talk show was seized upon by Germany watchers. It shows Mrs. Merkel as a fresh faced environment minister explaining the urgency of action on climate change. She said delay will only incur higher costs and that the dangers of failure included hunger, drought and the mass movement of refugees. That vision of the future turned out to be prescient and yet it puts Mrs. Merkel in a less than favorable light.

I think what is so interesting about this clip and why it got so much attention is that it really summed up a lot of what Angela Merkel's entire chancellorship has been about.

Tom Nuttall is our Berlin bureau chief.

Which is that on the one hand, you've got this politician who has got this, in a way, extraordinary ability to not only really understand and penetrate issues, but also to communicate them very straightforwardly, calmly, clearly, perhaps to an audience that might not have thought about them too much before. We also saw a lot of this during the pandemic, for example. But then the other side of it is that what you often get with Angela Merkel is this sort of brilliant exposition of a problem and then a complete inability to follow through on it with action. It's a repeated pattern throughout her chancellorship. She explains something very simply, crisply, straightforwardly, and then you're waiting for the bit where she says, and therefore Germany will X, Y, Z, and it never comes.

And do you think the German public shares that kind of critical analysis?

I'm not sure that they do. The simplest data point is that they keep giving Angela Merkel big election victories. They think that she's a rather good chancellor. They like the way that she communicates. And when during the pandemic, it was interesting, at the start of 2020, Angela Merkel's party, the Christian Democrats, they were in a lot of trouble. They were polling at around sort of 26, 27%, which is terrible historically for them. Then when the pandemic came, you had this really strong incumbency effect. They went up to sort of 40%. And I think most people would credit that particularly to the way that Merkel herself handled it. She was precisely the sor of leader that people were looking for then. Calm, on top of the science, able to communicate clearly, reassuring. And then when we moved to sort of the later phase of the pandemic and German started to realise that Angela Merkel really was on the way out, then the support for her party started to plummet again.

But she's not looking to get another resounding victory. This time there will be a successor. What will that successor inherit?

Yeah. So Germany's next government is going to have a towering in trey. And this is in large part because the successive governments that have been led by Angela Merkel, although they may have done a reasonable job of managing crises like the pandemic and so much else before it, they've done very, very little to prepare Germany for this whole array of challenges that lies ahead. One thing that we might look at is the state of German infrastructure. And this is not Only roads, buildings, telecoms, networks, bridges. Although there is a very, very big problem there, a huge investment backlog. But perhaps even more, it's about the huge investment demands that are going to be created as Germany tries to meet its climate goals. It has tough emission reduction targets to meet by 2030, and then by 2045, it's supposed to be carbon neutral. That's going to mean huge investment in things like renewables and electricity grids, insulation of buildings, charging stations for electric cars, you name it. And right now, there's not a real sense of how Germany's going to be up to the scale of this industrial transformation. A second thing is a looming demographic crunch. The baby boomer generation is set to enter retirement en masse in the next few years, and it's as clear as day that there's going to be an extraordinary burden placed on the public pension system. There's not been a lot done to reform this in recent years, so this is going to be an urgent challenge for whoever it is that replaces Mrs. Merkel as Chancellor.

And what about more broadly? Mrs. Merkel is seen very much as the steady hand on the tiller of Europe. How will things look after her tenure?

Yeah, I think the rest of the European Union is perhaps more nervous about Angela Merkel's imminent departure than Germany is, and it's not difficult to see why. If you look at all of the crises that Europe has confronted over the last 10, 15 years, everything from the Eurozone to Russia's invasion of Ukraine to refugees, Brexit and populism and so on and so forth, every single one of these, you find Angela Merkel sitting at the heart of them, trying to find a solution, trying to. To keep all parties together, staying up all night, negotiating, forging very strong personal relationships where necessary, with very disparate figures in Europe. And so I think the idea of a European union in the 2020s that doesn't have a figure like that at its heart is a rather nervous proposition for a lot of people. The next German chancellor, whoever he or she is, is going to take a good while to find their feet. There may be other figures who would like to occupy a leadership role, perhaps Emmanuel Macron in France, but they certainly don't enjoy the same degree of TR and confidence in their leadership across Europe as Angela Merkel did. So we're going to see a bit of a void at Europe's heart, at least in the short term. And I think that leaves a lot of people feeling quite nervous.

And what kind of leadership do you think it will take to navigate all of these issues going forward, probably not.

The leadership that it's going to get. Frankly, the next government, at least opinion poll suggests, is almost certainly going to have to consist of three parties. This is the first time that we would have seen this in Germany since the 1950s. And the chances are that at least two of the three parties that make up the next government are going to disagree with each other about almost everything. And that, of course, is a recipe for gridlock, political mistrust, parties blocking each other from getting anything done, precisely the opposite of the demands that are going to be placed on Germany as it tries to confront all of the challenges that we've been discussing and of course, also the expectations a lot of Germany's partners might have of it. So, you know, we'll see what happens on election day. We'll see what sort of government emerges. It's been an extraordinarily unpredictable election campaign and there may still be a few surprises to come. But at the moment when you look at the candidates, when you look at the parties, and in particular when you think about what sort of coalition might emerge after the election, I think it's quite difficult to be optimistic that the next German government is going to be up to confronting this whole set of challenges.

Tom, thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks, Jason.

In the latest episode of the Economist asks our interview show, my colleague Ann McElroy, now in Germany to cover the elections, takes a deeper dive into 16 years of Angela Merkel's leadership. Among the guests assessing the soon to be ex leaders successes and failures is security expert Dr. Claudia Meyer.

I think what she succeeded in her small steps keeping the European house together approach is that she reduced the neighbors fear of Germany. She was able to keep Europe together and reduce the fear of a German dominant hegemony in Europe.

Look for the Economist asks from the usual grand coalitions of podcast providers.

What's the Milky Bar Kid?

The Milky Bar Kid is strong and tough. The obsession with sweet treats stretches way back before processed food companies got in on the game and made them so colorful. Sugar is one of the world's oldest documented commodities and it's no surprise, evolutionarily speaking, it's a great store of energy. And also, or rather because of that, people just love sweetness. There's one region, though, that seems to love it more than the rest.

Middle Easterners are very much enamored by sugar.

Josie Delapp is the Economist's international editor and writes about food for 1843, her sister magazine.

Of the top 20 countries that consume the most sugar per person, five are in the Middle East.

And why is it that that region in particular has such a sweet tooth?

Sugar was widely available in the Middle east for a long time before it became common in the west, and so is very woven into a lot of regional traditions. And I think one of the things that has sort of exacerbated that is the fact that because the region is overwhelmingly Muslim and alcohol is, if not banned, certainly not commonly consumed, sugar has become a way of celebrating. Sweets are one of the ways that people can enjoy themselves. There are lots of different sweet treats throughout the region, both in terms of drinks and in terms of food, but one really stands out above the rest. And I think that would be the sweet, nutty, layered dish of baklava, which has now spread across the world in terms of its popularity.

And how did it become so popular?

So, in a lot of Middle Eastern countries, baklava is a food for special occasions. It's a food for celebration. You might have it on feast days, at festivals, for religious days. You might bring it if you come and visit friends or family for a celebration, for a birthday. And unlike Christians, who often forgo foods like sugar or sweet things during the 40 days of Lent, that fasting period in the Christian calendar, Muslims celebrate Ramadan, where you also have a fast with a nightly feast, in which sweets play an important role. You break your fast with something sweet, and then you often carry on having sweets as part of that meal.

So it entirely fits into the secular and the religious calendar here. I mean, how did it get its start?

Well, baklava is one of those dishes where it's tricky to pinpoint an exact point of invention. The Assyrians may have made, you know, some kind of version of a sweet, nutty pastry in the 8th century, but I think it looks like it was the Ottomans who really perfected it. And in the imperial kitchens in the palace in Istanbul, they kind of turned out great trays of the stuff in the 15th century, which the sultan would give to elite soldiers on particular occasions. And More recently, in 2013, the European Commission bestowed a protected designation of origin status on baklava from Gaziantep, a Turkish city in the south of the country. And it's the first Turkish product that was recognized in this way. So that was a real point of pride for the country. So much so that it's even used in tourism ads.

Did you know that the world famous dessert baklava is from Turkey?

But I think that bakers across the Middle east, across Greece, far beyond would claim baklava as their own as well. You can get it everywhere from Morocco to Iran.

So is there such a thing as a sort of standard recipe for it?

I mean, all baklava has things in common. So it all has the layers of pastry, but they vary, for example, on how many layers. So the Greeks used use 33 layers, which is a nod to Jesus's age when he died. You can use different nuts. So Turkish baklava and Iranian baklava often uses pistachios, which both countries are famous for producing. But you can also use walnuts and you can use almonds, and you can use different spices to flavor your baklava. You can use cardamom, you can use cinnamon, but they all have that rich syrupiness that is the very much the defining flavour and texture, I think, of baklava.

And I know that you are an ambitious cook. I'm wondering if you've ever made it yourself.

I have, and actually, it's easier to make than you might think. It takes a little bit of patience. You probably want to buy your filo pastry rather than trying to stretch it out at home. And then once they're baked, you drench them in syrup. You don't, you know, you don't want to be shy with the syrup. You really want to embrace the sugar. And then when you do get around tweeting it, just remember to take your sweet time.

Josie, thank you very much for joining us.

Jason, it's my pleasure, as always.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors this week are Kim Gitelson and Chris Impey. Our senior producers are Duncan Barber and Sam Colbert. Our producers are Stevie Hertz and William Warren. And assistant producers Jason Hoskin and Abasoye Ocean Dairo. With extra production help this week from Emily Elias, Pete Naughton and John Joe Devlin, we'll all see you back here on Monday.