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I can imagine that American studio executives and foreign policy wonks breathed a sigh of relief when the 2016 film The Great Wall (directed by Zhang Yimou) “bombed” at the global box office. Representing a co-production between China and the United States through the Wanda Group’s recent acquisition of Legendary Entertainment, The Great Wall was meant to bring together American film making and marketing skills with Chinese capital in order to showcase China to the world. Starring Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe and Chinese star Jing Tian alongside Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau, the film was rocked by controversy before its release, including accusations of whitewashing and a formulaic yet meaningless story. Earning $171 million in China and $163 million from the rest of the world including the United States, The Great Wall made a modest profit but nothing of the magnitude of The Fate of the Furious (2017), Transformers: The Last Knight(2017) or the Chinese production Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) which made 5.7 billion yuan domestically ($860 million).

We can see The Great Wall as an example of a new kind Chinese soft power effort that seeks to place China much more prominently in the public’s eye. By learning from Hollywood and utilizing its massive marketing and global distribution reach, China hopes to promote itself as an attractive nation in the eyes of the world. It has been long said that Hollywood films promote an American lifestyle and American political values. Although The Great Wall was seemingly a failure, Chinese filmmakers and film companies will have learned valuable lessons to be applied in their own future productions – with or without American partners.

These ideas of being attractive underpin what Joseph Nye called a nation’s “soft power,” defined as “the ability to get what you want through persuasion or attraction in the forms of culture, values, and policies.” The United States has been seen to be the primary beneficiary of soft power throughout the 20th century, through its image-making pop culture industries and Hollywood in particular. People all around the world desire not just American products, but an American way of life replete with its democracy, civic institutions, and worldview. Rather than just coercing people through military or economic means, many people have been won over to America through its power of attraction and want what America wants.

As China rises and becomes a global player as big as, if not bigger than, the United States, many have argued that China will also need to develop its own forms of soft power. Successful soft power will convince the world that China is a benign and benevolent power and attract others to Chinese culture and its way of life. As early as 2007, then-Chinese President Hu Jintao was quoted as saying that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will definitely be accompanied by the thriving of Chinese culture.” More recently, in 2014, President Xi Jinping said, “We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s message to the world.” One of Xi’s signature policies, the “Chinese Dream,” has been proposed as a kind of corollary or alternative to the American Dream. This is all part of a “charm offensive” that will only accelerate in years to come, especially in light of the events at the recent 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

However, the consensus amongst observers is that despite its efforts in developing soft power over recent years, China is not making a significant dent in world public imagination. Writing in a recent series of blog posts, Joshua Kurlantzick (author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World) remains “doubtful” of Chinese soft power. He notes that “despite the fact that Beijing has upped its soft power efforts since 2007, its soft power appeal has not grown” and has in fact declined. Robert Thomas, writing for The Diplomat, comes to a similar conclusion and argues that China’s investment in soft power is not paying off. An Economist article from early 2017 also comes to a similar conclusion, arguing that Chinese pop culture is nowhere as attractive or ubiquitous as American pop culture.

One problem that analysts point to is the dissonance between image and action. Thomas points out that the recent death in custody of Liu Xiaobo was a soft power “own goal” for China as the world saw how the Nobel Prize winning activist was treated. Many are not convinced that China’s construction activities in the South China Sea and the acquisition of strategic infrastructure in countries such as Malaysia and Sri Lanka are benign. Moreover, the Confucius Institutes, which have been touted as a main component in the Chinese soft power agenda, are said to be a risk as their activities come under scrutiny and may not deliver on the investment.

Other examples include in the media, where China has begun to assert its message through a variety of means. A number of key media have been acquired by mainland companies in recent years, including the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Other media companies such as Apple Daily (Hong Kong) and the New York Times have come under financial pressure. And there is an expansion of state-owned media Xinhua and CGTN (formerly CCTV) around the world. The criticism here is that Chinese media interests are promoting forms of propaganda and suppressing voices critical of China.

Ultimately though, analysts of Chinese soft power say that the Chinese political system is a liability. Despite the focus on soft power and the spending of billions of dollars, China is fundamentally unable to be attractive because it’s not a liberal democratic regime like the United States. China, unlike the U.S., will never be able to attract people through the ideals of freedom, political participation, and civil liberties. Similarly, China’s undemocratic political system is opaque to outsiders and seemingly impenetrable. But perhaps these observers have got China and the rest of the world wrong.

First, they are seeing Chinese soft power through an American lens. That the United States was the case study for Nye’s theory is not a problem; the problem is assuming that other nations need to be like America in order to be attractive. This is to universalize the particular and speaks of the ethnocentrism of many American policy thinkers. Since China is diametrically opposite to America, the conclusion is that China lacks fundamental criteria to be an attractive country. China’s attractiveness is in fact very different from the United States’, and American observers may be blind to what makes China attractive. This is not “soft power with Chinese characteristics,” as Mikael Weissmann calls it facetiously, but requires an understanding of how the rest of the world thinks.

As my colleague Bill Case has proposed, China is in fact a very attractive model to leaders and politicians in Southeast Asia and no doubt in other parts of the world. Leaders see in China a powerful nation able to defy American and Western dictates, whilst assuring economic stability and prosperity for its citizens. China emerges as a solution for struggling regimes in Southeast Asia as they navigate difficult economic scenarios or, in the case of Malaysia’s embattled Prime Minister Najib Razak, a corruption scandal that threatens the legitimacy of his premiership. China provides a useful model for already illiberal and authoritarian-leaning political leaders and regimes to sustain themselves.

American and other Western observers fall into the trap of assuming that freedom, civil liberties, and democracy are more desired than economic stability and prosperity. As Chua Beng Huat has argued in the case of Singapore, liberalism is not a necessary precondition for the functioning of an advanced capitalist nation. Instead the legitimacy of Singapore’s leaders comes from their performance as economic managers and their ability to respond to citizen demands. Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” argument increasingly looks anachronistic. Many people in developing and poorer nations look up to Singapore, and increasingly China, as a model of political stability coupled with economic growth and prosperity. If people have to give up a few civil liberties – which many do not enjoy anyway – then why not, if it means less corruption, better infrastructure, more jobs, and increased income.

Looking at China’s rapid development – and as more people see it – China will grow in stature amongst lay opinion. Democracy is increasingly seen to produce inaction and stalemate as evidenced in countries across the European Union, United States, and Australia. Many Indonesians increasingly opine that things were better under authoritarianism and pejoratively call the post-1998 era “democrazy.” China, by contrast, is seen to take a no-nonsense approach to problems; it has clear objectives and gets things done. Rights may be trampled or limited in this process, but to many people who live in clogged cities like Jakarta or Manila or in underdeveloped regions, China’s model of action and development look like a godsend.

In an era of economic uncertainty, declining social mobility, economic inequality, rising unemployment, and casualization, the American model looks increasingly less appealing. If the election of Donald Trump is symptomatic of these problems, then it is little wonder that people are looking to other countries to emulate. On the other side of the Pacific, China continues to grow in stature and appears to be a paradigm of stability and prosperity. China’s success is of course not guaranteed, but in a world of economic uncertainty, the China model increasingly looks more attractive than Pax Americana.

Thomas Barker holds a PhD in Sociology from the National University of Singapore and teaches film and cultural studies at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus.

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Japan’s largest online retailer, Rakuten, is rapidly expanding into global markets. In order to ensure the success of the organization, but also to break down linguistic and cultural boundaries in Japanese society, CEO Hiroshi Mikitani mandates English proficiency within two years for all employees. Professor Tsedal Neeley discusses the thinking behind Mikitani’s mandate and why there’s such a strong connection between language and globalization.

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President Xi Jinping “has consolidated more power than any of his predecessors,” according to Kissinger Institute Director, Robert Daly. When Xi convenes the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China he will seek to continue his agenda for leading an evolving China into the 21st Century. What can we expect? Robert Daly provides insights into the workings of the party and Xi’s priorities in this edition of Wilson Center NOW. 

Guest

Robert Daly was named as the second director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center in August, 2013. He came to the Wilson Center from the Maryland China Initiative at the University of Maryland.  Prior to that, he was American Director of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing.  Robert Daly began work in U.S.-China relations as a diplomat, serving as Cultural Exchanges Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in the late 80s and early 90s.  After leaving the Foreign Service, he taught Chinese at Cornell University, worked on television (北京人在纽约) and theater projects in China as a host, actor, and writer, and helped produce Chinese-language versions of Sesame Street and other Children’s Television Workshop programs. During the same period, he directed the Syracuse University China Seminar and served as a commentator on Chinese affairs for CNN, the Voice of America, and Chinese television and radio stations.  From 2000 to 2001 he was American Director of the U.S.-China Housing Initiative at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  Mr. Daly has testified before Congress on U.S.-China relations and has lectured at scores of Chinese and American institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, the East-West Center, the Asia Society, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.  He has lived in China for 11 years and has interpreted for Chinese leaders, including Jiang Zemin and Li Yuanchao, and American leaders, including Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger. 

Host

John Milewski is the executive producer and managing editor of Wilson Center NOW and also serves as director of Wilson Center ON DEMAND digital programming. Previously he served as host and producer of Dialogue at the Wilson Center and Close Up on C-SPAN. He also teaches a course on politics and media for Penn State’s Washington Program.

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United Nations’ Secretary General Ben Ki-moon asserts that despite the extraordinary benefits of globalization, “it remains fundamentally unequal and ultimately unsustainable.”

Opening the 72nd meeting of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Ki-moon many people around the world are mired in extreme poverty and that “unacceptable inequalities persist”.

“We see the gap between globalisation’s potential and unequal gains reflected in peoples’ fears, anxieties and outright anger,” continued the UN chief scribe. Expectations at the meeting are high with Ki-moon anticipating that world leaders at the meeting will give a strong impulse to the Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals. The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals are a blueprint for building an inclusive, sustainable fair globalization and overcoming the resistance that still exists in so many parts of the world.

He said the Addis Ababa Action Agenda highlights the importance of being innovative when it comes to leveraging resources and financing for development. The strategy includes tax reform by developing countries themselves – but also international efforts to fight tax evasion, money laundering and the illicit financial flows that have depleted domestic resource bases.

“I am convinced that today there is more money leaving a continent like Africa due to money laundering and tax evasion and illicit financial flows than the money that goes in through official development aid, and this is a common responsibility of the international community,” he lamented.

He argues this “means donors upholding commitments to Official Development Assistance. And it means helping developing countries attract innovative finance and gain greater access to financial markets and private investment.”

He also acknowledged that the world generates trillions in savings every year. But today, almost US$50 trillion of citizens’ savings are earning low or negative financial returns, instead of flowing to finance the 2030 Agenda that will generate inclusive, sustainable growth. “Set against the imperatives underlying the 2030 Agenda, today’s global financial system, which manages some US$300 trillion in financial assets on our collective behalf, is simply not fit for purpose,” he continues.

The UN boss believes that the world has the resources to deliver the 2030 Agenda. “We must get these resources to where they are needed most,” he said, adding “Building on the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, we are taking forward a three-part strategy for enhancing UN support to financing the 2030 Agenda.” Coming home Ki-moon promises to first lead the UN system in an effort to ensure that the objectives of the Agenda are fully reflected in international economic and financial policies that impact the mobilization of financing.

“We will enhance our work with key inter-governmental platforms such as the G20, including shared efforts to address illicit financial flows. He said the second front would be reform now taking place within the UN development system to strengthen UN country teams.

“We want to support countries in brokering partnerships for innovative finance, better leverage resources for sustainable development, and create the conditions to attract and manage financial investments and private sector investments,” he said.

He also plans to champion key international initiatives that can harness large-scale changes in financing and financial system development, such as in the fields of digitalization and climate finance and in cooperating with major investment initiatives.

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President Donald Trump has denounced “the utter weakness and incompetence" of the United Nations, derided it as “a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time,” and proposed deep cuts to its U.S. taxpayer funding.

Trump will likely take a more measured approach when he attends the U.N. General Assembly in New York next week, according to sources tracking the issue inside and outside his administration.

In one of his most visible moments yet as a statesman, Trump will deliver a speech to dozens of world leaders on Tuesday in line with past presidential addresses to the annual gathering. Skeptical dignitaries bracing for a Trump tirade should instead expect an address on global hotspots like North Korea and Iran, and issues like famine in Africa. “In many respects this is just going to be business as usual,” a Trump administration official said.

Of course, it’s always possible that the mercurial U.S. president could go off script—as he has at past gatherings of foreign leaders.

Just this week, Trump dismissed the U.N.’s latest sanctions against North Korea, passed last Monday, as “not a big deal” that might not have “any impact”—undercutting his State Department, which declared them substantial.

Read more here

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“Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Heart Mountain, Wyoming. A typical Nisei family, Bill, Alice and Young Mike Hosokawa. Bill is editor of the Heart Mountain Sentinel. Heart Mountain Relocation Center newspaper.” 9/16/1942

Parker, Tom, Photographer.  Series: Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, 1942 - 1945. Record Group 210: Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1941 - 1989

Professional photographers were commissioned by the War Relocation Authority to document the daily life and treatment of Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II.  

Browse nearly 4,000 photos of Japanese American relocation and internment in the Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority in the @usnatarchives online catalog.

More Resources Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of Japanese American Internment at the National Archives

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Pollinators such as bees play a key part of producing the beans that go into your morning cup of coffee. They’re responsible for about 20 to 25 percent of coffee production by increasing the plants’ yield. But climate change is threatening both pollinators and the areas where coffee can grow. 

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We hear so often that America is "a nation of immigrants" or a "cultural melting pot" that the phrase has become kind of a tired cliche. But actually seeing that history is a different story. The fascinating photographs below — of people in their native dress passing through Ellis Island in the early 20th century — hint at just how incredible and unique America's history is as a nation of immigrants.

These photos were taken by Augustus Sherman, an amateur photographer who worked as the chief registry clerk on Ellis Island from 1892 until 1925. Sherman snapped these photographs of people passing through customs in their native dress. They were published in National Geographic in 1907 and once hung on the walls in the headquarters of the federal Immigration Service in Manhattan, according to the Public Domain Review. They are now housed by the New York Public Library.

New York began using Ellis Island as a way station for immigrants on Jan. 1, 1892, and between then and 1954, more than 12 million immigrants used the island to enter the United States. The National Park Service estimates that more than 40 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry back through Ellis Island.

The history of the island is not always a happy one: It also reflects deep racism and ethnic divisions. After World War I, thousands of suspected "alien radicals" were detained on the island, and in the 1920s, it began to turn away immigrants from certain countries or ethnicities, including Southern and Eastern Europe. People with mental and physical disabilities were excluded, as well as the illiterate, and children arriving without parents.

Here is a young German man, who the notes classify as a "stowaway":

Children and women from the Netherlands:

A Greek soldier in national dress:

Men from the Russian Empire. The photos were originally labeled Russian Cossacks, though readers have pointed out that this style of dress is similar to Georgian riders:

An Algerian man:

Women from Guadeloupe:

A young Hindu man:

Several Italian women in national dress:

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As we approach the anniversary of the communist victory on the Chinese mainland, it is worth reflecting on the dismal legacy of U.S. President Harry Truman’s Asia policy.

Truman is usually ranked in the “near great” category by scholars and historians of the U.S. presidency, who point to his significant accomplishments in foreign policy, such as the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Airlift, the recognition of Israel, and NATO. In assessing Truman, however, those successes should be weighed against Truman’s equally significant policy setbacks and failures in Asia, the consequences of which are still with us today.

In fact, Truman’s Asia legacy includes the Korean War’s costly stalemate, the subsequent and even more costly U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia, and today’s most serious challenges and threats to U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific.

When Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, America’s Nationalist allies retreated to the island of Taiwan. At one stroke, the most populous country in Asia — indeed, in the world — joined the communist bloc led by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. This development, as the great French strategist Raymond Aron noted at the time, presented the world with Sir Halford Mackinder’s geopolitical nightmare of a heartland-based empire in control of Eastern Europe and positioned to potentially dominate all of Eurasia.

As some U.S. “China hands” noted at the time, and as recent scholarship has confirmed, communist domination of all of mainland China was not inevitable, and greater and sustained U.S. military assistance to Nationalist forces may have altered the outcome of the Chinese civil war. Michael J. Green in his recent book By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia-Pacific Since 1783, explains the consequences of the Truman administration’s unwillingness to fully support Chiang kai-shek’s regime:

[The] Communist victory … was ‘far from secure, and its margin of victory in the civil war was thinner than it might appear to have been.’ The 1946 arms embargo left Chiang short of ammunition he needed to fight in the north…, and the combination of proper equipment and American advisors… may well have been enough to tip the balance in the pitched conventional battles in Manchuria and the north and ended the war in stalemate and the blunting of communist expansion.

Less than a year after Mao’s victory, with both Chinese and Soviet backing, North Korea launched an invasion of South Korea in an effort to forcibly unify the Korean peninsula under communist rule. Several months prior to the North’s invasion, Truman’s secretary of state, in a now infamous speech at the National Press Club, had conspicuously excluded the Korean peninsula from America’s security perimeter in East Asia.

Although Truman belatedly recognized the threat this invasion posed to U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific, and dispatched American forces to oppose communist aggression, once China massively intervened in the war against U.S. and U.N. forces, Truman settled for stalemate instead of victory. The North Korean regime survived.

Those who contend that a stalemate in Korea was the best the United States could do under the circumstances ignore the United States’ unrivaled military power at the time (including strategic superiority in nuclear weapons and delivery systems), and forget that the “circumstances” (namely, Chinese intervention) that supposedly warranted a stalemate in Korea resulted from Truman’s failed post-World War II China policies. As Green points out, had all of mainland China not fallen to the communists it is doubtful that China would have been able to intervene in Korea as massively and as effectively as it did.

Today, the North Korean regime threatens the United States and its Asian allies with nuclear weapons and delivery systems. There is, to be sure, plenty of blame to spread around for this current threat, including the failed policies of Presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. But the root of the problem can be traced all the way back to Truman.

Truman’s Korea precedent, it is worth noting, was replicated by U.S. leaders in the war in Southeast Asia, where fear of Chinese and/or Soviet intervention caused U.S. political leaders to refrain from even attempting to achieve victory over North Vietnam. James Burnham once wrote that America’s defeat in Vietnam stemmed from its “self-imposed strategic prison” of containment. In this sense, U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia was yet another legacy of Truman’s failed Asia policies.

One notable and significant exception to this dismal legacy in Asia is Japan, where the Truman administration helped transform that country from a militaristic empire into a stable, democratic Asian ally.

At the time Harry Truman left office in January 1953, he was viewed in America as a failed and unpopular president. Sometime in the early 1970s, many historians and scholars began to rehabilitate Truman and eventually ranked him among the “great” or “near great” U.S. Presidents. The truth, as is often the case, is somewhere between those extremes.

In that process of historical rehabilitation, Truman’s failed Asia policies were overlooked, downplayed, or explained away. The United States, it was said, did not “lose” China. Chiang kai-shek was corrupt and unworthy of U.S. military assistance. Truman’s conduct of the Korean War, it was argued, prevented World War III.

Statesmen should be judged not by the rightness of their intentions, but by the consequences of their policies. The United States today faces an increasingly assertive communist China in the East and South China Seas, the Indian Ocean, and in Central Asia, and a nuclear-armed hostile regime in North Korea. The seeds from which these current threats and challenges sprouted were planted and nourished on Truman’s watch. You reap what you sow.

Francis P Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century and America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War. His writings appear in The Diplomat, Joint Force Quarterly, the University Bookman and other publications. He is an attorney, an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, and a contributing editor to American Diplomacy.

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DAKAR, Senegal — When Kalilu Drammeh arrived in Libya he was in many ways similar to thousands of other migrants from across Africa, all of them desperate to cross the sea to get to Europe and, they hoped, a better life.

But in Libya, Mr. Drammeh, like many other people from his native Gambia and other sub-Saharan countries, stood out among the swirl of migrants and was an automatic target for abuse for one obvious reason: his skin color is darker.

Libyan smugglers call them “burned,” a racial epithet sometimes used in the country for people whose skin color is black. And while many of the migrants who pass through Libya hoping to set sail for Italy are beaten and otherwise abused by smugglers, Mr. Drammeh believes his treatment was especially harsh because of his skin color.

Fellow Muslims — even children — refused to let him pray alongside them. “They think they’re better than us,” Mr. Drammeh, who is 18, said by phone from a refugee camp in Italy. “They say we’re created different from them.”

For Africans like Mr. Drammeh, few legal paths for migration exist, so tens of thousands use smugglers to help them cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. To pay off the fees, which can be as steep as $5,000, many migrants crossing the sea’s central route spend months working under harsh conditions and abuse in Libya, a country plagued by lawlessness and violence since the fall of the former dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi.

This year more than 132,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to land in Europe — all of them facing huge risks along the way. More than 2,300 drowned or were missing after setting off from the northern coast of Libya, and many others are in Libya waiting to cross.

Some migrants are even more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation than others, a new report from Unicef and the International Organization for Migration says. Among those at particular risk, according to the report, are people traveling alone, those with low levels of education, children of any age and migrants who have endured long journeys.

But people from sub-Saharan Africa are most vulnerable of all, simply because of their skin color, the report says.

“It’s a brutal, terrible reality, but young people need to know the risks before deciding to go,” said Christopher Tidey, a Unicef spokesman. “Bottom line: This proves how essential it is that migrant and refugee children have access to safe and legal migration pathways.”

The report is one of the first attempts to use both anecdotes and quantitative research to document the abuse of migrants based on a variety of factors, including country of origin. It analyzes the testimony of some 22,000 migrants and refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean, focusing on those who are age 14 to 24.

The report offers an example: An adolescent boy from sub-Saharan Africa, even one who has secondary education and travels in a group along the Central Mediterranean route, faces a 75 percent risk of being exploited. If he came from another region, where skin tones are lighter, the risk would drop to 38 percent, it says.

“Countless testimonies from young migrants and refugees from sub-Saharan Africa make clear that they are treated more harshly and targeted for exploitation because of the color of their skin,” the report says.

Tensions between North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans have long existed.

In numerous sub-Saharan African countries, unemployment is soaring, prompting young men and women to leave home to get to Europe, where they hope to find work. Recent statistics have shown that the migrant flow to Europe has slowed, but no one is certain why. Analysts have cautioned that the lull is unlikely to be permanent.

The report says that while young people are at greater risk than adults regardless of where they cross the Mediterranean, those who cross from Libya are in the greatest danger. In Libya, “they contend with pervasive lawlessness and violence and are often detained, by state authorities and others,” it says.

Even before migrants arrive there, their journey across sub-Saharan Africa typically includes a treacherous trip through the desert in cramped buses or trucks.

In Libya, work and living conditions are grim. Women have reported being forced to work as prostitutes to earn money for the trip across the sea. Many men say they are beaten and even shot at by smugglers. Traffickers have locked up some migrants, forcing them to call home to have relatives pay ransoms to secure their release.

Sheku B. Kallon, a Sierra Leonean migrant who now resides in a camp in Italy, said smugglers charge people who have black skin more money for the trip. Traffickers justify the steep fees because they face more difficulties taking black people through Libya, where discrimination is common, he said.

Mr. Kallon said that while in Libya, smugglers hid him and a group of other black migrants by covering them with plastic sheets in the back of a truck. Even with the cover, the traffickers were so worried about being seen ferrying black people they took them through series of bypasses to get to Tripoli, he said.

Once in Libya, Mr. Kallon and his friends managed to find odd jobs from Libyan Arabs. But they were paid less because of their skin color, he believes. And sometimes they were not paid at all.

“I don’t think there is a place as bad as Libya,” he said.

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Robert Longley

Updated March 21, 2017

In 1947, World War II had just ended, the Cold War had just begun, and Americans were seeing communists everywhere. It was in that politically-charged atmosphere of fear that President Harry S. Truman on March 21, 1947, issued an executive order establishing an official “Loyalty Program” intended to identify and eliminate communists in the U.S. government.

Truman’s Executive Order 9835, often called the “Loyalty Order,” created the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct initial background checks on federal employees and carry out more in-depth investigations when warranted.

The order also created Presidentially-appointed Loyalty Review Boards to investigate and act on the findings of the FBI.

“There shall be a loyalty investigation of every person entering the civilian employment of any department or agency of the executive branch of the Federal Government,” the Loyalty Order decreed, also providing that, “equal protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty must be afforded the loyal employees.”

According to the paper The Second Red Scare, Digital History, Post-War America 1945-1960 from the University of Houston, the Loyalty Program investigated over 3 million federal employees, 308 of whom were fired after being declared security risks.

BACKGROUND: RISE OF THE COMMUNIST THREAT

Shortly after the end of World War II, not only had the entire world learned the horrors of nuclear weapons, America’s relationship with the Soviet Union had deteriorated from wartime allies to staunch enemies.

Based on reports that the USSR had succeeded in developing its own nuclear weapons, Americans, including government leaders, were gripped by a fear of the Soviets and communists in general, whoever and wherever they might be.  

Growing economic tension between the two nations, along with fears of uncontrolled Soviet spy activity in America began to influence ​U.S.

foreign policy and, of course, politics.

Conservative groups and the Republican Party sought to use the so-called “Red Scare” threat of Communism to their advantage in the 1946 midterm Congressional elections by claiming that President Truman and his Democratic Party were “soft on Communism.” Eventually, the fear that communists were beginning to infiltrate the U.S. government itself became a key campaign issue.

In November 1946, Republican candidates won sweeping victories nationwide resulting in Republican control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

TRUMAN RESPONDS TO THE RED SCARE

Two weeks after the election, on November 25, 1946, President Truman responded to his Republican critics by creating the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty or TCEL. Made up of representatives from six Cabinet-level government departments under the chairmanship of a Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, TCEL was intended to create federal loyalty standards and procedures for the removal of disloyal or subversive individuals from federal government positions. The New York Times printed the TCEL announcement on its front page under the headline, “President orders purge of disloyal from U.S. posts.”

Truman demanded that the TCEL report its findings to the White House by February 1, 1947, less than two months before he issued his Executive Order 9835 creating the Loyalty Program.

DID POLITICS FORCE TRUMAN’S HAND?

Historians contend that the timing of Truman’s actions, taken so soon after the Republican Congressional victories, show that both the TCEL and the subsequent Loyalty Order had been politically motivated.

Truman, it seems, was not as worried about Communist infiltration as the terms of his Loyalty Order indicated. In February 1947, he wrote to Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor George Earle, “People are very much wrought up about the communist 'bugaboo' but I am of the opinion that the country is perfectly safe so far as Communism is concerned—we have too many sane people.”

HOW THE LOYALTY PROGRAM WORKED

Truman’s Loyalty Order directed the FBI to investigate the backgrounds, associations, and beliefs of any of the approximately 2 million executive branch federal employees.

The FBI reported the results of their investigations to one or more of the 150 Loyalty Review Boards in various government agencies.

The Loyalty Review Boards were authorized to conduct their own investigations and to collect and consider testimony from witnesses whose names were not disclosed. Notably, the employees being targeted by the loyalty investigations were not allowed to confront the witnesses testifying against them.

Employees could be fired if the loyalty board found “reasonable doubt” regarding their loyalty to the U.S. government or ties to communist organizations.

The Loyalty Order defined five specific categories of disloyalty for which employees or applicants could be fired or rejected for employment. These were:

Sabotage, espionage, spying or the advocacy thereof

Treason, sedition or the advocacy thereof;

Intentional, unauthorized disclosure of confidential information

Advocacy of the violent overthrow of the U.S. government

Membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with any organization labeled as totalitarian, fascist, Communist or subversive

THE SUBVERSIVE ORGANIZATION LIST AND MCCARTHYISM

Truman’s Loyalty Order resulted in the controversial “Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations” (AGLOSO), which contributed the second American Red Scare from 1948 to 1958 and the phenomenon known as “McCarthyism.”

Between 1949 and 1950, the Soviet Union demonstrated that it had indeed developed nuclear weapons, China fell to Communism, and Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy famously declared that the U.S. Department of State employed more than 200 “known communists.” Despite having issued his Loyalty Order, President Truman again faced charges that his administration was “coddling” communists.

RESULTS AND DEMISE OF TRUMAN’S LOYALTY ORDER

According to historian Robert H. Ferrell’s book Harry S. Truman: A Life, by mid-1952, the Loyalty Review Boards created by Truman’s Loyalty Order had investigated more than 4 million actual or prospective federal employees, of which 378 were fired or denied employment.

“None of the discharged cases led to discovery of espionage,” noted Ferrell.

Truman’s Loyalty program has been widely criticized as an unwarranted attack on innocent Americans, driven by the Red Scare. As the Cold War’s threat of nuclear attack grew more serious during the 1950s, Loyalty Order investigations became more common. According to the book Civil Liberties and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman, edited by Richard S. Kirkendall, “the program exerted its chilling effect on a far larger number of employees than those who were dismissed.”

In April 1953, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 revoking Truman’s Loyalty Order and dismantling the Loyalty Review Boards. Instead, Eisenhower’s order directed the heads of federal agencies and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, supported by the FBI, to investigate federal employees to determine whether they posed security risks.

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Exotic pet ownership in China is booming. The country is seeing a sharp increase in the number of non-traditional pets, and one young collector is looking to profit from the demand. However, the lines between legal and illegal trade of wildlife are blurred.

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Robert Longley

Updated March 01, 2017

In his State of the Union Address on January 20, 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman told Congress that the federal government owed all Americans a “fair deal.” What did he mean?

President Truman’s “Fair Deal” formed the primary focus of his administration’s domestic policy from 1945 to 1953. The ambitious set of legislative proposals of the Fair Deal continued and built on the New Deal progressivism of President Franklin Roosevelt and would represent the last major attempt by the Executive Branch to create new federal social programs until President Lyndon B.

Johnson proposed his Great Society in 1964.

Opposed by the “conservative coalition” that controlled Congress from 1939 to 1963, only a handful of Truman’s Fair Deal initiatives actually became law. A few of the major proposals that were debated, but voted down, included federal aid to education, the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Commission, repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act limiting the power of labor unions, and the provision of universal health insurance.

The conservative coalition was a group of Republicans and Democrats in Congress who generally opposed increasing the size and power of the federal bureaucracy. They also denounced labor unions and argued against most new social welfare programs.

Despite the opposition of the conservatives, liberal lawmakers managed to win approval of some the less controversial measures of the Fair Deal.

HISTORY OF THE FAIR DEAL

President Truman first gave notice that he would pursue a liberal domestic program as early as September 1945.

In his first postwar address to Congress as president, Truman laid out his ambitious “21-Points” legislative program for economic development and expansion of social welfare.

Truman’s 21-Points, several of which still resonate today, included:

Increases to the coverage and amount of the unemployment compensation system

Increase the coverage and amount of the minimum wage

Control the cost of living in a peacetime economy

Eliminate federal agencies and regulations created during World War II

Enact laws ensure full employment

Enact a law making the Fair Employment Practice Committee permanent

Ensure sound and fair industrial relations

Require the U.S. Employment Service to provide jobs for former military personnel

Increase federal assistance to farmers

Ease restrictions on voluntary enlistment in the armed services

Enact broad, comprehensive and non-discriminatory fair housing laws

Establish a single federal agency dedicated to research

Revise the income tax system

Encourage the disposal through sale of surplus government property

Increase federal assistance for small businesses

Improve federal assistance to war veterans

Emphasize conservation and protection of natural in federal public works programs

Encourage foreign post-war reconstruction and settlements of Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease Act

Increase wages of all federal government employees

Promote the sale of surplus wartime U.S. naval vessels

Enact laws to grow and retain stockpiles of materials essential to the future defense of the nation

Focused at the time on dealing with rampant inflation, the transition to a peacetime economy, and the growing threat of Communism, Congress found​ too little time for Truman’s initial social reform initiatives.

In 1946, however, Congress did pass the Employment Act making it the federal government’s responsibility to prevent unemployment and ensure the health of the economy.

After his historically unexpected victory over Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 election, President Truman repeated his social reform proposals to Congress referring to them as the “Fair Deal.”

���Every segment of our population and every individual has a right to expect from his government a fair deal,” Truman said in his 1949 State of the Union Address.

HIGHLIGHTS OF TRUMAN’S FAIR DEAL

Some of the major social reform initiatives of President Truman’s Fair Deal included:

A national health insurance plan

Federal aid to education

Abolition of poll taxes and other practices intended to prevent racial minorities from voting

A major tax cut for low-income workers

Expanded Social Security coverage

A farm assistance program

Expansion of public housing programs

A substantial increase in the minimum wage

Repeal of the labor union-weakening Taft-Hartley Act

A new TVA-style program to create public works projects

Creation of a federal Department of Welfare

To pay for his Fair Deal programs while reducing the national debt, Truman also proposed a $4 billion tax increase.

LEGACY OF THE FAIR DEAL

Congress rejected most of Truman’s Fair Deal initiatives for two main reasons:

Opposition from members of the majority-holding conservative coalition in Congress who viewed the plan as advancing President Roosevelt’s New Deal’s effort to achieve what they considered to be a “democratic socialist society.”

In 1950, barely a year after Truman proposed the Fair Deal, the Korean War shifted the government’s priorities from domestic to military spending.

Despite these roadblocks, Congress did approve a few or Truman’s Fair Deal initiatives. For example, the National Housing Act of 1949 funded a program removing crumbling slums in poverty-stricken areas and replacing them with 810,000 new federally rent-assisted public housing units. And in 1950, Congress nearly doubled the minimum wage, raising it from 40 cents per hour to 75 cents per hour, an all-time record 87.5% increase.

While it enjoyed little legislative success, Truman’s Fair Deal was significant for many reasons, perhaps most notably its establishment of a demand for universal health insurance as a permanent part of the Democratic Party’s platform. President Lyndon Johnson credited the Fair Deal as being essential to the passage of his Great Society health care measures such as Medicare.

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Many Americans feared that the end of World War II and the subsequent drop in military spending might bring back the hard times of the Great Depression. But instead, pent-up consumer demandfueled exceptionally strong economic growth in the post-war period. The automobile industry successfully converted back to producing cars, and new industries such as aviation and electronics grew by leaps and bounds.

A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning members of the military, added to the expansion. The nation's gross national productrose from about $200,000 million in 1940 to $300,000 million in 1950 and to more than $500,000 million in 1960. At the same time, the jump in post-war births, known as the "baby boom," increased the number of consumers. More and more Americans joined the middle class.

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The need to produce war supplies had given rise to a huge military-industrial complex (a term coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as the U.S. president from 1953 through 1961). It did not disappear with the war's end. As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and the United States found itself embroiled in a cold war with the Soviet Union, the government maintained substantial fighting capacity and invested in sophisticated weapons such as the hydrogen bomb.

Economic aid flowed to war-ravaged European countries under the Marshall Plan, which also helped maintain markets for numerous U.S. goods. And the government itself recognized its central role in economic affairs. The Employment Act of 1946 stated as government policy "to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power."

The United States also recognized during the post-war period the need to restructure international monetary arrangements, spearheading the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank -- institutions designed to ensure an open, capitalist international economy.

Business, meanwhile, entered a period marked by consolidation. Firms merged to create huge, diversified conglomerates. International Telephone and Telegraph, for instance, bought Sheraton Hotels, Continental Banking, Hartford Fire Insurance, Avis Rent-a-Car, and other companies.

CHANGES IN THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE

The American workforce also changed significantly. During the 1950s, the number of workers providing services grew until it equaled and then surpassed the number who produced goods. And by 1956, a majority of U.S. workers held white-collar rather than blue-collar jobs. At the same time, labor unions won long-term employment contracts and other benefits for their members.

Farmers, on the other hand, faced tough times. Gains in productivity led to agricultural overproduction, as farming became a big business. Small family farms found it increasingly difficult to compete, and more and more farmers left the land.

As a result, the number of people employed in the farm sector, which in 1947 stood at 7.9 million, began a continuing decline; by 1998, U.S. farms employed only 3.4 million people.

Other Americans moved, too. Growing demand for single-family homes and the widespread ownership of cars led many Americans to migrate from central cities to suburbs. Coupled with technological innovations such as the invention of air conditioning, the migration spurred the development of "Sun Belt" cities such as Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix in the southern and southwestern states. As new, federally-sponsored highways created better access to the suburbs, business patterns began to change as well. Shopping centers multiplied, rising from eight at the end of World War II to 3,840 in 1960. Many industries soon followed, leaving cities for less crowded sites.

---

See: Years of Change: The 1960s and 1970s

This article is adapted from the book "Outline of the U.S. Economy" by Conte and Carr and has been adapted with permission from the U.S. Department of State.

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Four decades of strong economic growth has helped China become the world's second largest economy. But things aren't as good as often described in social media. China is still a "poor" country, at least according to a number of broadly used measures of the quantity and quality of life, and potential to make the Great Leap Forward to the status of a developed country.

Take China's per capital GDP, for example. It stood at 6894.50 US dollars in 2016 -- 55 percent below the world's average, according to Tradingeconomics.com.

Still, China's per capita GDP is close to 600 percent above its all time low of 132 USD in 1962. This means that the welfare of the average Chinese citizen is up enormously from the 1962 low. And part of the credit should go to the open minded leadership of the country over the last four decades.

China’s Key Metrics

Per Capita GDP$6984*

Per Capita GDP PPP14401*

GDP Annual Growth Rate6.9%

Unemployment Rate3.95%

*2016

Source: Tradingeconomics.com 8/29/17

That certainly doesn't feel like being poor any longer. Especially for those who live in the Southeast regions and benefited the most from the openness of China economy.

Then there's corruption, where China ranks near other poor countries like India and Pakistan, and nowhere near rich countries like the US.

Corruption leads to cronyism that kills competition, innovation, and enriches the economic elites at the expense of the masses. The fact that this is certainly not good for China’s future growth is no further away than the performance of other emerging market economies like Argentina, which has been bouncing back and forth between the “emerging” and the “frontier” status, never managing to join the ranks of developed nations.

CountryCorruption Index in 2010Corruption Index in 2015

China78/16883/168

Hong Kong1317

Pakistan143117

India8776

Finland42

USA2216

Source: Transparency International

Then there's pollution.China is the world’s top producer of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas - a status that isn’t expected to change any time soon, as China’s government is part of the problem rather than the solution.

Pollution undermines the quality of everyday life and the value of the country’s assets, like real estate. If pollution continues at the same rate in China, that may be worthless one day. Younger generations will opt to leave the country rather than move into polluted cities, depressing demand for real estate, aggravating the problem of excess capacity in the sector, and tapering economic growth.

The bottom line: China has come long way from an underdeveloped into an emerging economy, beating Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. But it has long way to go—both in terms of quantity and quality of life—before it makes the Great Leap Forward to take its place as one of the rich countries of the world.