TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #56
Attacking iPhone…Harmony of sorts at the G20…Elections: Argentina, Maldives….Choice cargos…Where’s Waldo?...Toyota shows some leg…cartoonist Paresh sees some drips of progress from the G20 behemoth
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, continues on its mission to explore how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
How others see America
Attacking the iPhone
If there’s one soft underbelly in America, China may have found it this past week as it forbade, at least in theory, an untold number of workers from government offices to government-owned factories (and they are legion) from owning, if not lusting after, an iPhone.
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post attributed the measure to “national security risks amid heightened geopolitical tensions with the United States….aimed at eliminating perceived national security risks from using telecommunication devices made by a US company. The order only targets the iPhone, designed in California, and does not involve other smartphones from foreign brands. Apple’s iPhone is also the only foreign-made smartphone with a dominant market share in China. According to the data, the iPhone had 17.2 per cent of the Chinese market—the same as Chinese phone maker Oppo, and only slightly behind China’s Vivo.”
And all this after Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, freshly back from what she saw as a groundbreaking trip to a China, eager to re-open deep commercial ties with the U.S., telling Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, “‘People have said they’re on a charm offensive to attract U.S. capital, and I would agree with that.’ She said she plans to follow up with regular contact with her Chinese counterparts to underline that ‘the happy talk needs to translate into change.’”
Has she been reading the same newspapers we are?
Of course, in the end there was also a suggestion of reciprocity, as the SCMP continued:
Similar bans have been imposed by Washington and its allies on Chinese telecoms devices. The Biden administration has banned electronic equipment from Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE since November 2021 for the purpose of “protecting the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications.”
But then Xi Jinping made sure there could be no appeal from Joe Biden at this weekend’s G20 summit in New Delhi. He simply didn’t show up, a move mirrored by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which itself could also open up new opportunities for America and its allies, as I pointed out in my latest column for CNN Opinion….
How others see the World
G20 and all that ….
Indeed, as I suggested, the leaders who did show up managed to agree, and a day ahead of schedule, on a concluding statement touching in a somewhat watered-down fashion on Ukraine but taking on directly some central global challenges. As Nikkei Asia reported: “Group of 20 leaders in New Delhi have reached a consensus on a joint declaration, avoiding explicit condemnations of Russian aggression against Ukraine but defying doubts about whether a document could be issued at all.” But perhaps most consequential, Nikkei continued, was the agreement “to work on expanding the lending capacity of multilateral development banks, particularly the World Bank, in a move that could balance China’s growing financial influence over developing economies—many of which are reeling from debt.”
As correspondent Mark Magnier summarized the results in the South China Morning Post:
United States and host India made the most of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s absence from the Group of 20 meeting on Saturday in New Delhi, India. They promoted US-led multilateral lending to counter China’s infrastructure diplomacy, went on a charm offensive with developing nations, and inserted some minimal language into the communique that indirectly condemned Chinese ally Russia over its Ukraine invasion.
Perhaps most consequential for the future of the G20, however, were two little-noticed actions—the African Union’s induction as a permanent member of the G20 and Modi’s final act as president, handing over the G20 gavel to the leftist President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio da Silva, who will preside until next September’s meeting in his country.
More elections
Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world….
In Argentina….
London’s The Economist spent three hours interrogating the upstart candidate for the October 22 watershed elections. But first, there’s a troubling context that helps explain the advance polling and suggesting an upset: “Argentina needs saving. Annual inflation is 113%. The peso’s black-market value against the dollar has fallen by half this year. After decades of economic mismanagement, mostly under Peronist administrations, Argentines are fed up with their venal and incompetent politicians. Their dismay has helped propel Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian and ‘anarcho-capitalist’ who entered Congress only in 2021, to become the front-runner. Even by the standards of Argentine politics, he can sound eccentric: he is said to have hired a medium to consult Conan, his dead mastiff.”
“Mr Milei talks a good game,” The Economist continues, “He wants to privatise all the sclerotic state companies, dollarise the economy and reduce the country’s deficit to zero in his first year. His political and economic models, he says, are Australia, Israel, Ireland, and New Zealand….If Mr Milei wins the election next month the country could, in theory, become again a laboratory for exciting, dynamism-promoting ideas….”
Then comes the to-be-sure: “His policies are poorly thought through. Far from building a consensus, he would struggle to govern. And if frustrated, some Argentines worry, he might conceivably turn authoritarian….Intemperate, rash, and outlandish: little about Mr Milei suggests he is the saviour Argentina needs.
The Maldives…
Went to the polls on Saturday to elect a new president—a vote that shaped up as a battle between India and China, both with enormous interests in the Indian Ocean that surround this collection of 26 ring-shaped atolls comprising more than 1,000 coral islands barely 500 miles off the southern tip of India but commanding strategic shipping routes critical to China as well.
But the final results will await a second round on September 30 between the top two finishers, neither of whom reached the 50% mark in an eight-way contest.
The challenger, Mohamed Muizzu with 46% of the vote, has pledged a return to a pro-China policy, expelling a small Indian military force, while incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih favors maintaining a tilt toward India. Still, as Al Jazeera correspondent Zaheena Rasheed reported, “a victory for Solih, who has sought closer ties with India, appears far from certain. The incumbent faces stiff competition from the pro-China mayor of the capital, Male, Mohamed Muizzu.”
Mayor Muizzu
“Maldives President pulled out all the stops to win re-election,” Rasheed elaborated. “In the lead-up to Saturday’s polls, the 61-year-old has handed out deeds to plots of land that are yet to be reclaimed from shallow lagoons, promised a 40 percent wage hike for the country’s bloated public sector, and even waived all fees for parking violations accumulated over the past five years.”
President Solih & friend
In the end, as New Delhi’s The Hindu newspaper observed, “Former President Mohamed Nasheed emerges as kingmaker.” Unable to run himself after conviction on corruption charges, his proxy Ilyas Labeeb, came in third with 7.16% of the vote. Long pro-Indian, Nasheed has been embittered by his conviction on corruption charges by the Solih administration. Without his support, however, it is unlikely President Solih will be able to make up the 10% he needs to secure a second-round win. China would be back in the Maldives.
A very choice corridor
One reason China’s should be so worried about the Maldives? “A shipping corridor that would connect India with the Middle East and ultimately Europe—a game changer for global trade—was announced at the G20 summit,” as Arab News reported.
“The proposed memorandum of understanding for a shipping and rail transportation corridor would include the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the EU, and other countries in the G20… part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment. The rail and shipping corridor would enable greater trade among the countries, including energy products. It could also be one of the more ambitious counters to China’s own Belt and Road Initiative that sought to connect more of the world to that country’s economy.”
Wheres’s Waldo?
Well, actually US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And the answer came when he suddenly popped up in Kyiv. As Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported, his “surprise trip to Kyiv coincided with a new aid package for Ukraine [that included] military and humanitarian aid worth over $1 billion. Blinken's visit comes on the same day as a lethal Russian missile strike in the Donetsk region.”
As it happened, his visit “came as Ukraine's Parliament approved the appointment of a new defense minister after Oleksii Reznikov was dismissed over the weekend. Parliament approved Rustem Umarov as the defense minister.”
And then there’s the missiles. Euromaidan Press, quoting American sources, suggested the US “is likely to send Ukraine long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to help in its fight to repel the Russian invasion of its territory.”
As the missile’s manufacturer Lockheed Martin observes, it is “a conventional surface-to-surface artillery weapon system capable of striking targets well beyond the range of existing Army cannons, rockets and other missiles,” actually quite accurate at a nearly 200-mile range. Since it could reach targets quite deep into Russia, the US has been reluctant to supply it—until now.
And then there’s Toyota?
The Zurich daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung seems somewhat horrified—either at Toyota, or perhaps the Swiss canton of Vaud, which has had the temerity to “ban Toyota advertising because of its ‘sexist character.’”
In Lausanne [home since 1915 of the International Olympic Committee on the shores of Lac Leman], NZZ observes, “several advertising posters were pasted over. It is said that the model's slimness promotes stereotypes.” Just her slimness?
Finally, there’s Paresh….
Indian cartoonist, Paresh, imagines just what output the great multinational engine of the G20 would be most likely to generate, even if he was a bit premature in his pessimism—though perhaps, despite the grand language of the G20 declaration, prescient instead?
Paresh Nath is an editorial cartoonist with more than 35 years experience in international media. Based in New Delhi, since 2005 he’s served as chief cartoonist of Dubai’s The Khaleej Times. He had worked for 18 years as chief cartoonist of National Herald, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru. Earlier, in the 1990s, he drew for The Indian Express of New Delhi. At the same time, he’s served as art director in population-oriented documentaries, researcher, script writer, director of films on tribal dances, and as an animator in cartoons. He tries to preach peace, goodwill, friendship, and universal brotherhood through his work, so it’s hardly a surprise that he’s a member of the great Paris-based collective Cartooning for Peace
Here’s how Paresh imagines himself:
Or AKs for that matter?? (not!)
What is it about models and motor vehicles? I get the male gaze, but then why not w/ power tools?