TWTW: The World This Week / Episode #32
France still on the ropes as Macron digs in ….TikTok boom in DC …. Xi still resonating … India's dog problem …. and finally, French cartoonist Mr T has his own view of the dynamic of Putin and Xi.
This weekly feature for Andelman Unleashed, explores how the media of other nations are reporting and commenting on the United States, and how they are viewing the rest of the world.
France (still) on the ropes
Life is not getting very much better at all for Emmanuel Macron as he continues to plow ahead with his plan to drag the French pension system from the mid-17th century into the 21st with one long, as it’s turning out, very hard pull. So, it was hardly surprising that as night fell across Paris on Friday, heralding another tense weekend, this lead headline crossed on the homepage of Le Monde:
"The Council of Europe is alarmed by the 'excessive use of force' in France," the paper reported.
At mid-day Friday the Elysée Palace already appeared to recognize just how far matters had deteriorated, issuing a terse two-paragraph statement that Macron and King Charles III had decided to "postpone" the state visit of the British monarch "taking into account a new national day of action against the reform of the pension system next Tuesday in France." What actually happened was much worse than this anodyne statement.
As Adam Sage in Paris and Valentine Low wrote as the lead of The Times of London: "President Macron asked for the postponement of the King’s state visit to France after intelligence reports said it would have been targeted by protests against his pension reform. A police intelligence agency report said 'hate messages' had been circulating on social media in connection with the visit, along with calls to 'spoil' the occasion. The King and the Queen were not being targeted themselves but would have become collateral victims of the increasingly violent campaign over Macron’s decision to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, the intelligence report said." Two days before the start of what was supposed to be a historic three-day state visit to France—the first of the new [king’s] reign—Macron asked for a postponement in the face of an escalating and often anarchic revolt. He is said to have had a 15-minute conversation with Charles, with whom he has a good relationship, before the decision was announced.”
More to the point, as France 24 reported, "French public sector trade unionists have warned they will not provide red carpets during the visit." Not to mention the gilded chairs for the state dinner at the Palace of Versailles. Clearly, Macron had failed to appreciate the optics of his playing host to one of the world's last hereditary rulers in the same building where King Louis XVI, the last of the Bourbon monarchs, was forced out of by mobs of the 1789 French revolution before finally being guillotined in the Place de la Concorde.
But Macron has remained adamant in his unbending decision to go ahead with the reform of the pension system, raising the age to 64 from 62—among the youngest in Europe—forcing it through the National Assembly without a vote, only inflaming the millions who had taken the streets to protest. On Wednesday, Macron actually went on nationwide television and warned against "a January 6 Capitol Hill riot,” adding, "We won't tolerate any outburst."
Finally, on Saturday morning, Le Monde published a major editorial on its front page, expressing the opinion of the paper: "Pause rather than fracture….Emmanuel Macron must seize the hand extended by the leader of the CFDT [trade union federation], Laurent Berger, who proposes to put the reform on 'pause'. Many options become possible once the Head of State gives up making the immediate postponement of the starting age the alpha and omega of his five-year term." Next to this editorial is a four-column-wide photo that says it all:
CNN
For the full story, more background and some thoughts of where we go from here, as I wrote earlier last week for my CNN Opinion column:
My own personal perspective: First, full disclosure, Macron awarded me the rank of chevalier in the Légion d'Honneur two years ago for my work chronicling French presidents back to François Mitterrand 40 years ago. Now, Macron, who takes a long view of history and his role in it, in my view quite rightly believes this measure is imperative for the very survival of his country. Decades from now, long gone from office, he wants historians to recall his initiative as having taken the deeply unpopular move that saved his nation at any cost, rather than having been yet another politician with a vision who simply caved to the expediency of the moment. But perhaps this is very much a moment when compromise should trump (sic) hubris.
How others see America
Tic Toc, Tik Tok
"‘Earnest and temperate’: TikTok’s Singaporean CEO’s poise fails to sway skeptics in US Congress," writes Charissa Yong, US correspondent for the Singapore daily Straits Times, describing one of their own, on the hot seat in Congress.
"With his hands folded on his lap and a black tumbler with a TikTok logo in front of him, TikTok chief executive Chew Shou Zi was a picture of calm facing a sea of photojournalists snapping his picture in the 10 minutes before the start of Thursday’s hearing. But as impassive as he was under fire, Mr Chew – whom the Washington Post described as 'soft-spoken, earnest and temperate' during a heated hearing that lasted five hours—could not convince the congressmen that the social media app did not pose a national security threat to the United States. The minds of the more than 50 congressmen who grilled the Singaporean CEO appeared mostly made up from the start. Many were vocally skeptical that TikTok was truly not beholden to Beijing, given its ownership by Chinese parent company ByteDance."
America, China & beyond
"Is America willing to risk direct war with another nuclear power?" asked Gianluca Mercuri, columnist for the leading Milan daily Corriere della Sera, then responded with his view of "how to avoid World War III over Taiwan." His answer? "Avoiding war is the maximum possible objective with respect to an enemy who takes it into account, who with this leadership repeats that he does not want to give up Taiwan. Avoid war, buy time—which also means decades—and in the meantime that leadership will pass. And the next one will at least have a clear picture of the resolve of America and its allies. It could be argued that such a freeze is also the only way out of the Ukrainian impasse."
Closer to home, Minni Chan, in Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, suggested another answer—"China, US draw on regional forces to scale up mutual deterrence, elaborating: "The competition between China and the US in the Asia-Pacific region has seen the two powers scale up military exercises with their regional counterparts in a bid to discourage each other from using force…"
"Joint exercises with countries in the region had become common practice for the PLA and US forces, as a way to indicate their deterrent capabilities," Chan continued. "A team of 200 People’s Liberation Army troops from the Southern Theatre Command naval base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, will take part in Golden Dragon 2023, 20 days of drills with Cambodia from March 20. At the same time, the US and the Philippines announced their biggest ever annual war games will be held from April 11 to 18, with 17,600 personnel from both sides taking part, including around 12,000 Americans."
How others see the World
View of France from abroad
The Straits Times of Singapore has a roundup of how the world is viewing France's revolution:
· "Influential British business daily the Financial Times said Mr Macron’s actions increase the risk that the French “will follow Americans, Britons and Italians and vote populist: President Marine Le Pen in 2027….France can’t go on like this. It’s time to end the Fifth Republic, with its all-powerful presidency... and inaugurate a less autocratic Sixth Republic."
· "Images of the violence made the front pages of the Spanish newspapers, with the daily El Pais running the headline “Rage takes over the streets of France”. The left-wing government in Madrid, which has passed its own pension reform, said France had seemingly overstretched in imposing its plans."
· "All of the major Italian newspapers carried extensive coverage of the protests in Paris and the provinces. 'France burns,' read the headline of Roman daily Il Messaggero, alongside a photo of the entrance to Bordeaux’s city hall in flames. 'France in the street: Day of anger,' wrote Corriere della Sera, warning that 'difficult days are coming.'"
· "La Stampa [Turin] said Mr Macron’s television interview had only served to 'explode social anger.'"
· "Capitalising on Macron’s woes, Russian state media broadcast footage of clashes between police and demonstrators, brutal arrests and streets full of smoke from tear gas and burning objects to present the image of a country on the edge."
· "Hungarian public television spoke on Thursday of a 'revolutionary atmosphere' in France."
Xi's travels resonate
The Moscow visit of Xi Jinping continues to resonate far beyond the borders of either Russia or China. Stefan Kornelius, former foreign editor, now head of the politics department of Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote in its lead story Saturday that in "Xi's dangerous world, Russia and China are working on an alternative order: one with war, the other with an elaborate ideology. Both regard democracies as the greatest enemy." The German commentary is an important statement for a leading daily in a nation that should know, from a time buried deep in its history and its national DNA, how such matters can play out—and end badly.
As Kornelius continued, "Three days, two state banquets, one world view: after Xi Jinping's visit to Vladimir Putin, it is clear that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is now playing a secondary role in the actual struggle to shape the 21st century. Xi and Putin have shared their geostrategic sketchbook. The knowledge gained from the pompously staged encounter is as simple as it is overwhelming: the mighty territorial states of Russia and China form a defensive alliance against the democratic world, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific. The aim of their ideological and political demonstration of power is not only the USA, but above all the idea of order that has shaped the world of states since the Second World War. So welcome to the Sinocentric century. Welcome to the world of Xi Jinping.”
And then, in India, who let the dogs out?
Deputy science editor Jacob Koshy, writing in The Hindu, asks "Is India in the grip of a 'stray dog' crisis?"
And then Koshy answers, "with an estimated 60 million stray canines roaming around the streets in India, questions are being raised about the implementation of municipality laws and cultural attitudes of tolerance towards stray dogs."
Finally, there’s …. Mr. T
The great French cartoonist, Mr T has managed to capture the true reality of the Putin-Xi summit and apparently increasingly close rapprochement of China and Russia, which really translates quite clearly into Putin the supplicant and Xi the somewhat benevolent dictator.
Mr T, who describes himself as "a cartoonist for as long as I can remember," says that "it is only since 2020, after a career in the audiovisual industry in France, England, and the United States that I have devoted myself once again to finding humor, distance and questions in my drawings, to make people smile in order to make them think." He helped launch the first digital medium, based in Switzerland, devoted entirely to press cartoons called LaTorche 2.0 (recently updated to 3.0). He is a member of the extraordinary collective Cartooning for Peace.
Here's how Mr T sees himself:
Inside dope astonishing
Off with their heads