This thread by Paul Poast reminds us that we always need to see W. E. B. Du Bois’s scholarship as he understood the demographic problems of the Great Migration, but also political economy and international relations (IR). It’s time to review our IR reading lists. The field of International Relations as racial is not simply about race but the greater complexity of intersectionality.
For example note the recent US attempt to create limits on certain nations’ engagement in the US national chip industry versus the much larger markets for chip production and advanced technology. The result may be to compel China to only move its developments faster and with less global engagement. This could then affect the Taiwan position in the development of advanced chips with the concomitant international relations problem of One China.
This kind of “asian labor exclusion” in recent policy is only a temporary stopgap built on a naive version of globalization that could help a few US corporations, but only in the short run accompanied by the usual nativist sinophobia, because it’s always been about colonialism and imperialism. Did sanctions from Biden do more policy damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump. Ultimately it’s still about global military industrial competition, particularly since it's about Dutch chip-making machines, Taiwanese firms, one-China policy, and supercomputer competition between the US and China.
It's exciting that new work on Du Bois as an IR theorist is out this year.
That work includes a volume by my colleagues Adom Getachew and Jennifer Pitts...
These are in addition to the attention given Du Bois in Robert Vitalis' 2015 book.
Du Bois' work on international relations is critical FOR IR theory because, well, it's critical OF IR theory.
He's not trying to #KeepRealismReal, he's questioning the very foundations of the theory.
Du Bois' criticism might be best captured by his view (as @Ras_Karya points out in his above piece) on "Journal of Race Development" changing to "Journal of International Relations" in 1919: he didn't like the change.
He likely felt the former name was a more accurate description
Overall, Du Bois is a critical voice to existing IR theory -- whether Realism or Liberalism/Idealism -- in two big ways:
- Race relations are central for understanding world politics
- "International Relations" is best thought of as "Imperial Relations"
Let's unpack each.
First, race relations are central for understanding world politics.
A core idea in Du Bois' writing is the notion of "The Color Line"
As he said in his 1900 "To the Nations of the World" address, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line"
warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/engli…
In that speech, he elaborates on the "problem":
"The question as to how far differences of race...will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization."
Five years later, in 1905, this led Du Bois to label the Russo-Japanese War was as "epoch-making" because it "crossed the color line"
Here is the passage: Japan's performance in the war (which they would eventually win) was upending the "modern magic" of "white"
Side note: this is another example of how Russia's behavior (or the actions of others toward Russia) in security affairs seems to influence the thinking of IR theorists.
Another great example of how he sees race as a central principle in world politics are his views on World War I, namely way it was seen as shocking.
He put forward the view that the war was shocking to many in Europe and the United States because it threatened "White Civilization".
He wrote an article in the Journal of Race Development in April 1917 titled "Of the Culture of White Folk"
Link:
jstor.org/stable/2973821…
He writes of his amazement at the destruction within the "white world". World War I was shocking, not just because of the devastation it brought about, but because the devastation was unfolding in "White Civilization".
He then contrasts what is unfolding in Europe with the death and devastation that Belgian imperialism did in Congo during the late 19th century.
This leads to the second big way in which Du Bois is critical of IR theory: "International Relations" is best thought of as "Imperial Relations".
Prior to writing "Of the Culture of White Folk", Du Bois had published in essay in @TheAtlantic titled "The African Roots of War"
His thesis is straightforward: this might be a war in Europe, but its cause is in Africa.
This is because of colonialism...
...and how that fed jealousy and competition among the European powers, especially Germany.
Some might be thinking, "Hey, that sounds a lot like what Lenin argued."
You are right, though Lenin didn't publish "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (in 1917) until after Du Bois published his Atlantic essay (in early 1915).
google.com/books/edition/…
Following the war, Du Bois' writing would continue to raise both criticisms. They were intimately tied together, which is clear in his 1925 piece for @ForeignAffairs.
What makes Du Bois writing challenging to existing dominant views of IR is that those theories leave race out of it.
More deeply, Du Bois sees race as a construct for facilitating labor exploitation. This political economy is absent in Realism/Liberalism.
For awhile, Marxism was put forward as an alternative to Realism/Liberalism, as it did offer this political economy based critical view.
But Marxism became diminished as an alternative with the collapse of the Berlin Wall (and then Soviet Union) between 1989 and 1991.
Marxism also lacks the racial centrality of Du Bois theory. That gives Du Bois' work a continued relevance compared to Marxist-Leninist thought (though it should be added that Du Bois did join the communist party later in life, likely because of the ideological similarity).
In sum, the work of Du Bois should be required reading for IR students. His views on race and imperialism need to be grappled with by Realism, Liberalism, or just anyone who desires an understanding of world politics.
[END]
• • •
‘The price of repression is greater than the cost of liberty. The degradation of men costs something both to the degraded and those who degrade.’ — W E B du Bois
More failures in US industrial policy are only building atop a Trumpian bilateral trade-war of noncooperative behavior. The latest sanction is one on PMC labor, some AAPI. By comparison Trump was a coward in terms of executing a policy based on ‘trade-war’.
The following is the translation of a thread posted earlier this week by @lidangzzz.
"Lots of people don’t know what happened yesterday.”
To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship.
Every American executive and engineer working in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight.
One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump.
Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month.
With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight —— thus cutting off all service [to China].
Long story short, every advanced node semiconductor company is currently facing comprehensive supply cut-off, resignations from all American staff, and immediate operations paralysis.
This is what annihilation looks like: China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight. Complete collapse. No chance of survival.
[Translation of the DMs in a screenshot:]
Person A: Everyone from Lam Research at Yangtze Memory left today, and on the 12th the AMAT folks will leave as well
Person B: Yes. Not just Yangtze, but also HLMC, ICRD’s Jiading fab, Hefei’s CXMT DRAM fab
All leaving
Even Geehy in Hangzhou is pausing operations]
Q: Why hasn’t Chinese media reported on this?
A: I don’t know.
The only possible explanation is that this major story, and its future ramifications, will bring severe damage to the supposedly “continuously flourishing” semiconductor industry and Chinese national security as a whole.
The level of embarrassment is on par with Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.
Many people don’t understand why this is annihilation.
ASML has stopped providing services and support to mainland China.
For more analysis, see my post on Xi's S&T dreams and "technological vassaldom"
• • •
In brief, America's new regulations:
- prevent US firms from exporting their highest-end AI chips to China;
- prohibit firms and US persons from helping Chinese fabricators develop leading-edge manufacturing capabilities for logic and memory chips.
Regardless of how much Washington may want American firms to continue working with Chinese companies on lagging-edge chips, Beijing will see the decision to try to freeze Chinese domestic manufacturing above a defined level of technological advancement as deeply provocative.
2/ Many in China's chip space expected limits on semiconductors and equipment, what caught most off guard was the policy restricting "US persons" from supporting and developing China's advanced chip industry. (w/@_KarenHao)
3/ We searched through the most recent Chinese stock exchange filings to figure out which executives were affected. Many crucial executives in the C-suite: founders, chairmen, chief technical officers, and others labeled as part of "core research teams: held U.S. citizenship.
4/ They come from firms across the spectrum: chip design, chip-making materials and equipment. Many are viewed as promising national champions in the Chinese semiconductor industry. The policy was directed very much at the heart of China's attempt to move up the chip value chain.
5/ A sampling of the affected:
- AMEC, one of China’s largest chip equipment makers: 7 senior execs (including Gerald Yin, its chairman and founder) VPs and GMs.
- GigaDevice, up and coming designer of flash chips for autos/PCs: Deputy chairman and a director are U.S. citizens.
6/ Others:
- Montage Technology, Chinese chip designer: 3 senior execs: Stephen Kuong, its founder/director, an MD, a director on the board.
- Verisilicon: Wayne Wei-Ming Dai. Chairman/President/CEO/Founder, an EVP and senior VP.
Almost all of the executives moved to China’s chip industry after spending years working in Silicon Valley for U.S. chip makers or equipment firms like Intel, Applied Mat. Many were drawn to China through initiatives similar & including the country’s “Thousand Talents” program.
8/ Not uncommon at all to find talent programs mentioned in their bios, although its hard to tell if that's the main reason the executives made the switch. Here's the chairman of ACM Research, who provides systems for chipmaking. Its main customers are Chinese.
9/ The technology is nothing without the people there to make it work, and the rule will likely force them to decide between their jobs and their U.S. citizenship or PR status. Analysts say China will double down on efforts to make it lucrative for these executives to stay.
10/ With the sanctions, we'll also likely see a greater push by Chinese companies to attract talent from Taiwan, Japan and Europe.
11/ one interesting point I noted was that China definitely knows about this Achilles heel: there were a few media reports and shares of a chart of executives in China impacted by the rule. Within a day, all these pieces had been deleted off the internet. Likely censored.
• • •
The DOE of the US made a proposal worth up to $1.8 billion for two exascale computers between 2021 and 2023. Both China and America are using all their resource for exascale machines. China has teams working on some 15 application areas, while in the US, teams are working on 25, including applications in fields such as astrophysics.
Sep 22, 2022 China is looking even further ahead as well, to the 2030s, when it expects to have readied a generation of supercomputers 1,000 times faster than exascale machines and, again, made entirely from Chinese parts.