Nacionalismo e pandemia - Joseph Nye Jr

 Project Syndicate, Praga – 1.6.2021

COVID-19 Vaccines and the US National Interest

Nationalism is no way to confront a virus that is indifferent to nationality. Now that safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are available, the US has four good reasons to lead a Marshall Plan-like effort to immunize the world's poor countries.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

 

Cambridge - A century ago, an influenza pandemic killed more people than died in World War I. Today, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more Americans than died in all US wars since 1945. A big difference, however, is that science did not have a vaccine for the influenza virus back then, but now several companies and countries have created vaccines for COVID-19.

A number of wealthy democracies, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have vaccinated over half their adult populations and seen a dramatic reduction in the number of new cases and deaths. Other places, such as India, Brazil, and parts of Africa, have low vaccination rates and high rates of new cases and deaths. The Economist estimates that the pandemic’s true global death toll may be something like ten million people, or more than three times the official number reported by national authorities.

Given these grim statistics, should leaders of wealthy countries export vaccines and help vaccinate foreigners before they finish the job at home? When former President Donald Trump proclaimed “America First,” he was being consistent with democratic theory, according to which leaders are entrusted with defending and advancing the interests of the people who elected them. But as I argue in my book Do Morals Matter? the key question is how leaders define the national interest. There is a major moral difference between a myopic transactional definition, like that of Trump, and a broader, far-sighted definition.

Consider President Harry Truman’s espousal of the Marshall Plan after World War II. Rather than narrowly insisting that America’s European allies repay their war loans, as the US had demanded after World War I, Truman dedicated more than 2% of America’s GDP to aiding Europe’s economic recovery. The process allowed Europeans to share in planning the continent’s reconstruction and produced a result that was good for them, but that also served America’s national interest in preventing Communist control of Western Europe.

There are four major reasons why a Marshall Plan-like effort to vaccinate people in poor countries is in the US national interest. First, it is in Americans’ medical interest. Viruses do not care about the nationality of the humans they kill. They simply seek a host to allow them to reproduce, and large populations of unvaccinated humans allow them to mutate and evolve new variants which can evade the protections that our vaccines produce. Given modern travel, it is only a matter of time before variants cross national borders. If a new variant arose that was capable of by-passing our best vaccines, we would have to develop a booster targeted at the new variant and vaccinate again, which could lead to more fatalities and more strain on the US medical system, as well as lockdowns and economic damage.

Our values provide the second reason that a vaccine Marshall Plan is in America’s national interest. Some foreign policy experts contrast values with interests, but that is a false dichotomy. Our values are among our most important interests, because they tell us who we are as a people. Like most people, Americans care more about their co-nationals than foreigners, but that does not mean they are indifferent to the suffering of others. Few would ignore a cry for help from a drowning person because she calls out in a foreign language. And while leaders are constrained by public opinion in a democracy, they often have considerable leeway to shape policy – and considerable resources to influence public sentiment.

A third national interest, related to the second, is soft power – the ability to influence others through attraction rather than coercion or payment. American values can be a source of soft power when others see our policies as benign and legitimate.

Most foreign policies combine hard and soft power. The Marshall Plan, for example, relied on hard economic resources and payments, but it also created a reputation for benignity and far-sightedness that attracted Europeans. As the Norwegian political scientist Geir Lundestad has argued, the American role in postwar Europe may have resembled an empire, but it was “an empire by invitation.” A policy of helping poor countries by providing vaccines, as well as aiding the development of their own health-care systems’ capacities, would increase US soft power.

Finally, there is geopolitical competition. China quickly recognized that its soft power suffered from the origin story of COVID-19 in Wuhan. Not only was there lack of clarity about how the virus originated, but in the early stages of the crisis, Chinese censorship and denial made the crisis worse than necessary before its authoritarian lockdown proved successful. Since then, China has assiduously pursued COVID-19 diplomacy in many parts of the world.

By donating medical equipment and vaccines to other countries, China has been working to change the international narrative from one of fault to one of attraction. The Biden administration has been playing catch-up, announcing that it will release 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as 20 million additional dozes of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. In addition, the administration has pledged $4 billion in funding for the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility to help poor countries purchase vaccines and supports a temporary waiver of intellectual property to help poor countries develop capacity.

In short, for four good reasons consistent with America’s history, values, and self-interest, the US should lead a group of rich countries in a plan to vaccinate the rest of the world now, even before the job is finished at home.

 

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard University and author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump.

Coronavirus from Wuhan: a Washington Post timeline

 

Timeline: How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible 

A security official moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a World Health Organization team arrived for a field visit on Feb. 3. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

By  

Glenn Kessler

The Fact Checker

May 25, 2021 at 4:00 a.m. GMT-3

The source of the coronavirus that has left more than 3 million people dead around the world remains a mystery. But in recent months the idea that it emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — once dismissed as a ridiculous conspiracy theory — has gained new credence.

How and why did this happen? For one, efforts to discover a natural source of the virus have failed. Second, early efforts to spotlight a lab leak often got mixed up with speculation that the virus was deliberately created as a bioweapon. That made it easier for many scientists to dismiss the lab scenario as tin-hat nonsense. But a lack of transparency by China and renewed attention to the activities of the Wuhan lab have led some scientists to say they were too quick to discount a possible link at first.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) from the start pointed to the lab’s location in Wuhan, pressing China for answers, so the history books will reward him if he turns out to be right. The Trump administration also sought to highlight the lab scenario but generally could only point to vague intelligence. The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.

As a reader service, here is a timeline of key events, including important articles, that have led to this reassessment. In some instances, important information was available from the start but was generally ignored. But in other cases, some experts fought against the conventional wisdom and began to build a credible case, rooted in science, that started to change people’s minds. This has led to renewed calls for a real investigation into the lab’s activities before the coronavirus emerged.

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Early speculation

Dec. 30, 2019: The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issues an “urgent notice” to medical institutions in Wuhan, saying that cases of pneumonia of unknown cause have emerged from the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Jan. 5, 2020: Earliest known tweetsuggesting China created the virus. @GarboHK tweeted: “18 years ago, #Chinakilled nearly 300 #HongKongers by unreporting #SARS cases, letting Chinese tourists travel around the world, to Asia specifically to spread the virus with bad intention. Today the evil regime strikes again with a new virus.”

Jan. 23: A Daily Mail article appears, headlined: “China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan — and U.S. biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could ‘escape’ the facility that’s become key in fighting the outbreak.”

Jan. 26: The Washington Times publishes an article with the headline: “Coronavirus may have originated in lab linked to China’s biowarfare program.” An editor’s note is added March 25: “Since this story ran, scientists outside of China have had a chance to study the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They concluded it does not show signs of having been manufactured or purposefully manipulated in a lab.”

Jan. 26: A study by Chinese researchers published in the Lancet of the first 41 hospitalized patients in Wuhan who had confirmed infections found that 13 of the 41 cases, including the first documented case, had no link to the seafood marketplace that originally was considered the origin of the outbreak.

Jan 30: Sen. Tom Cotton, speaking at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, says: “This coronavirus is a catastrophe on the scale of Chernobyl for China. But actually, it’s probably worse than Chernobyl, which was localized in its effect. The coronavirus could result in a global pandemic.” He adds: “I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

Feb. 3: WIV researchers report in the journal Nature that the novel coronavirus spreading around the world was a bat-derived coronavirus. The report said SARS-CoV-2 is 96.2 percent identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus named RaTG13.

Feb. 6: Botao Xiao, a molecular biomechanics researcher at South China University of Technology, posts a paper stating that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” He pointed to the previous safety mishaps and the kind of research undertaken at the lab. He withdrew the paper a few weeks later after Chinese authorities insisted no accident had taken place.

Feb. 9: In response to criticism from China’s ambassador that Cotton’s remarks are “absolutely crazy,” the senator tweets: “Here’s what’s not a conspiracy, not a theory: Fact: China lied about virus starting in Wuhan food market. Fact: super-lab is just a few miles from that market. Where did it start? We don’t know. But burden of proof is on you & fellow communists. Open up now to competent international scientists.”

Feb. 16: Cotton, in response to a Washington Post article critical of him, offers four scenarios on Twitter: “1. Natural (still the most likely, but almost certainly not from the Wuhan food market) 2. Good science, bad safety (e.g., they were researching things like diagnostic testing and vaccines, but an accidental breach occurred). 3. Bad science, bad safety (this is the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis, with an accidental breach). 4. Deliberate release (very unlikely, but shouldn’t rule out till the evidence is in). Again, none of these are ‘theories’ and certainly not ‘conspiracy theories.’ They are hypotheses that ought to be studied in light of the evidence.”

 Scientists respond

Feb. 19: A statement is published in Lancetby a group of 27 scientists: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that covid-19 does not have a natural origin,” the statement says. Scientists “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.” The statement was drafted and organized by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at WIV with U.S. government grants. (Three of the signers have since said a laboratory accident is plausible enough to merit consideration.)

March 11: Scientific American publishes a profile of virologist Shi Zhengli, who heads a group that studies bat coronaviruses at WIV. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China,” she said. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?” The article said that after the virus emerged, Shi frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, but she “breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves.” She told the magazine: “That really took a load off my mind. I had not slept a wink for days.”

March 17: An analysis published in Nature Medicine by an influential group of scientists states: “Although the evidence shows that SARSCoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here. However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features, including the optimized RBD [receptor- binding domain] and polybasic cleavage site, in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

The intelligence community weighs in

March 27: A Defense Intelligence Agency assessment on the origin of the coronavirus is updated to include the possibility that the new coronavirus emerged “accidentally” due to “unsafe laboratory practices.”

April 2: David Ignatius, writing in The Washington Post, notes: “The prime suspect is ‘natural’ transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets. But scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.”

April 14: Josh Rogin, writing in The Post, reveals that in 2018, State Department officials visited the WIV and “sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.”

April 22: Yuri Deigin, a biotech entrepreneur, in a long and detailed post on Medium, reviews “gain-of-function” research undertaken at the lab and concludes that “from a technical standpoint, it would not be difficult for a modern virologist to create such a strain” as the new coronavirus. He adds: “The opposite point is worth repeating too: the inverse hypothesis about the exclusively natural origin of the virus does not yet have strong evidence either.”

April 24: Under pressure from the White House, the National Institutes of Health terminates the grant to EcoHealth Alliance that funded study of bat coronaviruses at WIV.

April 30: President Donald Trump tells reporters: “You had the theory from the lab. … There’s a lot of theories. But, yeah, we have people looking at it very, very strongly.”

April 30: In a rare statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says: "The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified....The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

[Washington Post article: Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release]

May 3: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says in an interview with ABC News: “There’s enormous evidence that that’s where this began. … Remember, China has a history of infecting the world, and they have a history of running substandard laboratories. These are not the first times that we have had the world exposed to viruses as a result of failures in a Chinese lab.”

May 18: The Seeker, an anonymous Twitter user, posts a medical thesis describing a mine in Mojiang, Yunnan, where miners fell ill with a viral-induced pneumonia in 2012.

June 4: Milton Leitenberg, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reviews the history of lab safety and the type of research conducted at WIV and argues that the lab-leak theory cannot be easily dismissed. “The pros and cons regarding the two alternative possibilities—first, that it arose in the field as a natural evolution, as many virologists maintain, or second, that it may have been the consequence of bat coronavirus research in one of the two virology research institutes located in Wuhan that led to the infection of a laboratory researcher and subsequent escape—are equally based on inference and conjecture,” he says.

New evidence emerges

July 4: The Times of London reports that a virus 96 percent identical to the coronavirus that causes covid-19 was found in an abandoned copper mine in China in 2012. The bat-infested copper mine in southwestern China was home to a coronavirus that left six men sick with pneumonia, with three eventually dying, after they had been tasked with shoveling bat guano out of the mine. This virus was collected in 2013 and then stored and studied at WIV.

July 28: Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration national security official, writes in The Wall Street Journal that “suggesting that an outbreak of a deadly bat coronavirus coincidentally occurred near the only level 4 virology institute in all of China—which happened to be studying the closest known relative of that exact virus—strains credulity.” He calls for a “comprehensive forensic investigation must include full access to all of the scientists, biological samples, laboratory records and other materials from the Wuhan virology institutes and other relevant Chinese organizations. Denying that access should be considered an admission of guilt by Beijing.”

July 31: Science magazine publishes an interview with Shi Zhengli of WIV. She said it was impossible for anyone at the institute to have been infected, saying “to date, there is ‘zero infection’ of all staff and students in our institute.” She added: “President Trump’s claim that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from our institute totally contradicts the facts. It jeopardizes and affects our academic work and personal life. He owes us an apology.” In the interview, she admitted that some coronavirus research was conducted at biosafety level 2, not the more restrictive BSL-4.

Nov. 2: David A. Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist, writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “The ‘origin story’ is missing many key details, including a plausible and suitably detailed recent evolutionary history of the virus, the identity and provenance of its most recent ancestors, and surprisingly, the place, time, and mechanism of transmission of the first human infection.”

Nov. 17: An influential paper written by Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin is published: “The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin.” The paper noted that “a natural host, either direct or intermediate, has not yet been identified.” It argues that certain features of the coronavirus “might be the result of lab manipulation techniques such as site-directed mutagenesis. The acquisition of both unique features by SARS-CoV-2 more or less simultaneously is less likely to be natural or caused only by cell/animal serial passage.” The paper concluded: “On the basis of our analysis, an artificial origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not a baseless conspiracy theory that is to be condemned,” referencing the Lancet statement in February.

Nov. 17: WIV researchers, including Shi, post an addendum to their Feb. 3 report in Nature, acknowledging that RaTG13, the bat coronavirus closely associated with the coronavirus, was found in a mine cave after several patients had fallen ill with “severe respiratory disease” in 2012 while cleaning the cave.

[Washington Post Opinion: We can’t discover the pandemic’s origins if China’s thought police keep watching scientists]

Jan. 4, 2021: New York magazine publishes a lengthy article by Nicholson Baker, who reviews the evidence and concludes the lab-leak scenario is more compelling than previously believed.

Jan. 15: Days before Trump leaves office, the State Department issues a “fact sheet” on WIV that states: “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both covid-19 and common seasonal illnesses. … The WIV has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses. But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the covid-19 virus, including ‘RaTG13,’ which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.”

Jan. 20: Joe Biden becomes president.

Feb. 9: A joint report by the World Health Organization and China declares: “The findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain introduction of the virus into the human population.”

Feb. 11: WHO Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus refuses to rule out the lab-leak scenario. “Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded,” he said. “I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study.”

Feb. 19: National security adviser Jake Sullivan issues a statement about the WHO report: “We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them. It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government. To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak.”

March 4: Prominent scientists from around the world, in an open letter to WHO, call for a new investigation into the origins of the virus, saying the previous investigation was flawed. The letter detailed the elements of a “full and unrestricted” investigation. (Additional letters are released April 7 and April 30.)

March 22: The Australian newspaper reports: “Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers working on corona­viruses were hospitalized with symptoms consistent with covid-19 in early November 2019 in what U.S. officials suspect could have been the first cluster.”

March 28: “60 Minutes” airs report on lingering questions about the origins of the coronavirus, featuring Metzl and former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger. “There was a direct order from Beijing to destroy all viral samples -- and they didn’t volunteer to share the genetic sequences,” Pottinger says, quoting from declassified intelligence information.

May 5: Former New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reviews the evidence and makes a strong case for the lab-leak theory. He focuses in particular on the furin cleavage site, which increases viral infectivity for human cells. His analysis yields this quote from David Baltimore, a virologist and former president of the California Institute of Technology: “When I first saw the furin cleavage site in the viral sequence, with its arginine codons, I said to my wife it was the smoking gun for the origin of the virus. These features make a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2.”

May 14: Eighteen prominent scientists publish a letter in the journal Science, saying a new investigation is needed because “theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.” One signer is Ralph Baric, a virologist who worked closely with Shi.

May 17: Another former New York Times science reporter, Donald G. McNeil Jr., posts on Medium: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the Lab-Leak Theory.” He quotes W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University — who had signed the March 2020 letter in Nature Medicine — as saying his mind had changed in light of new information.

[Washington Post Opinion: Two possible theories of the pandemic’s origins remain viable. The world needs to know.]

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A casta patrimonialista e extratora do funcionalismo federal contra a nação - Demetrio Magnoli

 A casta

Por Demétrio Magnoli
31/05/2021 • 01:00

São “parasitas” que estão matando o “hospedeiro”? A sentença emitida por Paulo Guedes, como quase tudo que fala o já não tão poderoso ministro, é uma generalização estúpida. Nas suas desigualdades internas, o funcionalismo público é quase um microcosmo do conjunto da sociedade brasileira. Mas sua elite forma, de fato, uma casta aristocrática que extrai recursos vitais dos brasileiros comuns, amplificando a concentração de renda.

A casta está incrustada no funcionalismo federal: segundo o Ipea, em 2017, os servidores municipais tinham salário médio de R$ 2,9 mil, contra R$ 5 mil dos estaduais e R$ 9,2 mil dos federais. O Congresso e, especialmente, o Poder Judiciário formam os ecossistemas da casta: no Executivo, o holerite médio era de R$ 3,9 mil, contra R$ 6 mil dos funcionários do Legislativo e R$ 12 mil dos servidores do Judiciário.

Raymundo Faoro iluminou, nos idos de 1958, a relação intrínseca entre o poder estatal e o estamento dos servidores públicos. A conversão patrimonial do bem nominalmente público em propriedade privada — a prática sistemática de “tosquiar” a sociedade — expressa-se, entre tantas formas, na remuneração da casta. Os funcionários federais ganhavam, em média, 96% mais que os trabalhadores de empresas privadas, sempre em 2017. No Judiciário, 4,2% dos funcionários recebiam salários superiores a R$ 30 mil.

Getúlio Vargas esculpiu a transição para a economia urbano-industrial criando a moderna burocracia estatal e lançando as sementes da casta. Os filhos dos fazendeiros tornaram-se bacharéis. O PT, partido apoiado nos sindicatos de servidores, completou a obra varguista. Nos governos Lula e Dilma, o gasto com pessoal saltou de cerca de R$ 200 bilhões para mais de R$ 300 bilhões, já descontada a inflação.

O país existe para servir os servidores? Em 2019, o Brasil gastou 12,9% do PIB com o funcionalismo, um dos maiores dispêndios do planeta, superior ao do Canadá (12,1%) ou da França (11,8%), para não mencionar Reino Unido (9%), EUA (8,7%), Alemanha (7,6%) ou Chile (7,1%). Só o Judiciário — e sem contar o MP — consumiu 1,5% do PIB, um assalto à arca pública que fica evidente no cotejo com Itália (0,18%), França (0,15%) ou EUA (0,14%). Por aqui, terra de fidalgos togados, o vale-refeição dos juízes supera o salário mínimo em 24 das 27 unidades da Federação.

O lulismo impulsionou a casta a um novo patamar — e seus arautos nem sequer admitem a discussão de uma reforma administrativa capaz de limitar as rendas públicas destinadas a sustentar seus privilégios. O sociólogo Jessé Souza, o mais autêntico formulador da visão lulista sobre o Estado e a sociedade no Brasil, sintetizou a alegação da casta na seguinte sentença: “Os bancos querem enxugar os gastos do Estado, para que o Estado possa ter seu orçamento dirigido aos bancos”. Ficamos sabendo, então, que, segundo Jessé, propor uma reforma administrativa implica defender os interesses dos bancos.

A técnica de acusar o interlocutor de nutrir maléficas motivações ocultas, típica de espíritos autoritários, destina-se a circundar a argumentação histórica e factual, substituindo o debate informado por um torneio de insultos. Na maioria das nações democráticas, governos de diversos matizes políticos evitaram que a alta burocracia de Estado abocanhasse parcela da riqueza nacional similar à que alimenta a “nossa” casta. Seriam todos esses governos meros agentes do capital financeiro?

Na base do funcionalismo, especialmente nos níveis estadual e municipal, encontra-se a parcela dos servidores públicos de maior valor social. São, em grande parte, funcionários mal-remunerados da saúde e da educação que atendem à população de baixa renda. É a casta, não os malvados banqueiros, que desvia para si mesma os recursos necessários para a qualificação e modernização dos serviços públicos universais.

Uma reforma administrativa equilibrada — que, obviamente, não é a de Paulo Guedes — interessa à maioria dos brasileiros. Pena que, 90 anos depois de Vargas, os representantes políticos da casta ainda consigam se fantasiar como amigos do povo.

https://blogs.oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/post/casta.html

Columbia FDI Perspectives; ensaios tópicos sobre investimentos diretos estrangeiros

Columbia FDI Perspectives Perspectives on topical foreign direct investment issues Editor-in-Chief: Karl P. Sauvant (Karl.Sauvant@law.columbia.edu) Managing Editor: Riccardo Loschi (Riccardo.loschi@columbia.edu) The Columbia FDI Perspectives are a forum for public debate. The views expressed by the authors do not reflect the opinions of CCSI or our partners and supporters. No. 306  May 31, 2021 Reducing regulatory risk to attract and retain FDI by Priyanka Kher, Trang Thu Tran, Sarah Hebous*   Amid the backlash against globalization, policy uncertainty has been a key concern for investors over the past few years. As the COVID-19 crisis continues, fear of contagion and uncertainty over trade and investment policies will further dampen investment activities. Estimates indicate that global FDI flows could decline by 30-40% during 2020-2021. Boosting investor confidence to attract and retain FDI is critical as countries move toward economic recovery.   One important response by countries is to reform their regulatory regimes to reduce risks for investors, while preserving countries’ right to regulate in the public interest. Qualitative findings from recent investor surveys consistently show that MNE executives rank countries’ legal and regulatory environments as one of the top three factors shaping investment decisions, along with political and macroeconomic stability. Further, investors indicate that exposure to regulatory risks (e.g., expropriation, breach of contract) in host countries can and has triggered withdrawals of investments or the cancelling of planned investments.   A new quantitative measure of regulatory risk—which links directly to specific elements of countries’ legal framework—helps gauge the progress of such reforms.[1]It draws on existing and newly collected data sources, including the content of international investment agreements and investment laws, and evaluates them along three dimensions: transparency, investment protection and access to effective recourse mechanisms. Evidence using a database of 14,335 parent companies investing in 159 host countries suggests that this new measure of regulatory risk is correlated with country risk premium and matters for FDI.   Higher regulatory risk—that is, lower levels of transparency, protection and less effective recourse—deters MNEs’ decisions to enter or expand in host countries. In aggregate, it is associated with lower FDI inflows. The effect of regulatory risk on investors’ location decision is sizeable: if the median country improves its performance to the level of a top 25th percentile performer on the regulatory risk measure, investors will be 5.5–22% more likely to locate in the country.[2]   These results highlight specific policy actions that governments should take to minimize regulatory risk. It is important to note that countries are already implementing these actions: the newly constructed regulatory risk measure helps explore the link between these actions and FDI outcomes. To improve transparency and predictability, countries should ensure the systematic publication of, and public consultation on, laws and regulations. Availability of portals and other mechanisms to allow investors to find updated information about relevant laws and regulations can help. In addition, specificity and clarity in legal provisions can reduce room for discretion. For example, where investment approval is required under investment laws, countries can reduce regulatory risk by specifying the approval criteria and time-periods within which such approval should be granted. Investment protection against arbitrary government conduct, provided in countries’ investment laws or international investment agreements, in accordance with well-established good practices can further reduce regulatory risk. An example is legal provisions on protection against both direct and indirect expropriation and requiring payment of timely and adequate compensation. Equally important is the ability to freely transfer funds in a timely manner and in a freely convertible or freely usable currency. Of course, the drafting of any legal provisions entails not just considerations of well-established principles of investor protection, but the overall context, legal traditions and political economy realities of countries (including flexibility clauses needed to reflect and protect countries’ right to regulate). Legal provisions are only as good as their implementation. The challenges around lack of implementation across countries are well known. To strengthen the implementation of laws and regulations and balance the risk of potential costly disputes, countries can institute formal mechanisms to systematically address investor grievances and prevent their escalation into investor-state disputes.[3] Overall, strengthening judicial processes (e.g., by promoting specialized commercial courts, stipulating precise time-ranges for judicial processes, reinforcing efficient case-management systems) can further improve effective access to recourse. The effects of the current pandemic require that governments pursue various avenues to remain successful in attracting and retaining FDI in the highly competitive world FDI market. Reducing regulatory risk is one such avenue.   * Priyanka Kher (pkher@worldbank.org) is a Private Sector Specialist in the Investment Climate unit of the World Bank; Trang Thu Tran (ttran6@worldbank.org) is a Senior Economist in the Firms and Entrepreneurship unit of the World Bank; Sarah Hebous (sarah.hebour@gmx.de) is a consultant at the World Bank. The authors would like to thank Persephone Economou, Peter Muchlinski and an anonymous peer reviewer for their helpful peer reviews. [1] See Sarah Hebous, Priyanka Kher and Trang Thu Tran, “Regulatory risk and FDI,” in World Bank, Global Investment Competitiveness Report 2019/2020 (Washington: WBG, 2020), pp. 128-170. [2] Ibid. [3] The WBG has been supporting countries to set up institutional mechanisms to detect and resolve investor grievances that can potentially escalate into investor-state legal disputes. See World Bank, Report on Retention and Expansion of FDI: Political Risk and Policy Responses (Washington: WBG, 2019). The material in this Perspective may be reprinted if accompanied by the following acknowledgment: “Priyanka Kher, Trang Thu Tran, Sarah Hebous, ‘Reducing regulatory risk to attract and retain FDI,’ Columbia FDI Perspectives No. 306, May 31, 2021. Reprinted with permission from the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (http://ccsi.columbia.edu).” A copy should kindly be sent to the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at ccsi@law.columbia.edu. For further information, including information regarding submission to the Perspectives, please contact: Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, Riccardo Loschi, riccardo.loschi@columbia.edu.   Most recent Columbia FDI Perspectives    No. 305, Munir Akram, “Mobilizing FDI for sustainable infrastructure investment,” Columbia FDI Perspectives, May 17, 2021 No. 304, Anne van Aaken and Diane Desierto, “The Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration,” Columbia FDI Perspectives, May 3, 2021 No. 303, Gary Clyde Hufbauer, “Dangers lurking in the OECD tax proposals,” Columbia FDI Perspectives,April 19, 2021 All previous FDI Perspectives are available at https://ccsi.columbia.edu/content/columbia-fdi-perspectives.  Other relevant CCSI news and announcements On June 10, CCSI will host Compensation under Investment Treaties: A Pareto-Improving Proposal. Emma Aisbett and Jonathan Bonnitcha use a law-and-economics approach to propose a new rule for compensation that limits compensation to that required to prevent investment deterring effects of opportunistic host behavior, thus seeking to better ensure treaty participation benefits both source and host countries. In this online event, Emma will present the proposal; Jeffrey Sachs and Kekeletso Mashigo will discuss it; and we will then open the event for questions and answers from participants. Please register here. On May 26, CCSI, ASIL, and the Rutgers Center for Transnational Law hosted Investment Treaties and a New Legal Imagination. In the recently published book, Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination, Nicolás M. Perrone excavates the origins and evolution of the legal thinking underpinning the investment treaty regime and ISDS practice. Kathleen Claussen (University of Miami School of Law), Mélida Hodgson (Jenner & Block LLP), and Chantal Ononaiwu (CARICOM Secretariat) discussed with the author the implications of these findings for the future of international investment law. CCSI’s Brooke Guven moderated, and Jorge Contesse (Rutgers Law School) provided an introduction. View the video here. Karl P. Sauvant, Ph.D. Resident Senior Fellow Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Columbia Law School - Earth Institute Ph: (212) 854-0689 Fax: (212) 854-7946

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Origens da hostilidade entre a China e a Índia: o Tibete, 1959

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xthe53TvFg4&t=1538s

When India And Communist China Became Enemies | Mao's Cold War | Timeline

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•11 de jun. de 2020

At the height of the Cold War, China's ally India would turn from friend to foe as the issue of Tibetan independence rips the Asian brotherhood apart. 📺 

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