Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his ministers have offered aid to residents of Hong Kong, but the Uyghurs are being ignored.

It is now undeniable that the Chinese government is conducting a genocide in its northwestern Xinjiang province. At least 2 million are or have been incarcerated in a vast network of concentration camps. The harrowing testimonies of former detainees and guards detail starvation, systematic rape, torture, forced sterilization, and mass execution.

But even after both the Trump and Biden administrations stepped forward and declared that a genocide is taking place, the British government has refrained from showing the same moral leadership. This acquiescence of human rights has occurred despite a sustained campaign from prominent activists and opposition politicians. Johnson and his ministers also remain resolutely opposed to the legislative route to better holding Beijing to account. For some time now, the government has maintained a circular logic when it comes to legal declarations of genocide: It knows that China will never agree to be heard by an international court, but it insists that only an international court can judge it guilty of genocide.

Activists both within and outside of Parliament have responded by tabling the so-called “genocide amendment” to the government’s Trade Bill. This would solve the problem by empowering the English High Court to make the determination of genocide instead. But the government has repeatedly sought to quash the amendment. At one point, when members of Parliament looked ready to endorse the amendment, the government resorted to an arcane parliamentary procedure (and a touch of bullying) to block the vote. This triggered fury on both sides of the House of Commons.

For whatever reason, likely the fear of Chinese economic retaliation, the government is willing to abandon what should be sacred British principles of justice. But surely, Johnson cannot oppose the basic humanitarian step of recognizing the plight of Beijing’s victims and offering them a path to safety?

Allowing victims of appalling violence and persecution to seek refuge would be the least that a democratic nation like Britain could do. The government belatedly did something similar for residents of Hong Kong, who have also experienced the sharp end of the Chinese Communist Party’s instincts in recent months. A new visa route was opened, offering Hong Kong-based holders of a British National Overseas passport an expedited route to becoming citizens. The scheme has already seen considerable success, with the government at one point granting five passports a minute to Hongkongers.

The move to offer 3 million residents of Hong Kong an escape route was welcome. Still, we implore the government to extend its hand to the Uyghurs, who are also in need of urgent aid. As the Chinese government takes new steps with each passing week to tighten its comprehensive assault on the Uyghur people, such as receiving deported Uyghur dissidents from other countries, the situation is becoming exponentially more pressing.

A sense of urgency should also sustain in our deliberations. Given Xi Jinping’s staunch refusal to allow foreign experts and investigators into Xinjiang to corroborate its blanket denials of any wrongdoing, we will probably not know the true extent of its ethnic cleansing until it is much too late to do anything about it. In turn, it is infinitely better to risk offering refuge to a few more people than need it than to abandon an entire population to be tortured and killed at the hands of a brutal dictatorial regime.

Having traded with China for decades and contributed to its enormous wealth and political power (and turned a blind eye to its various human rights violations over the years), Britain owes a great debt to the victims of its atrocities. It’s time to start paying back.

Originally published here.

Jason Reed is the U.K. liaison at Young Voices and a policy fellow with the Consumer Choice Center. Jason also writes regularly for the Times (of London), the Telegraph, the Independent, and several other publications. (Follow him on Twitter: @JasonReed624.)

What may seem strange in Germany is meeting with increased response in the USA from numerous start-ups, engineers, and doctoral students who are backing nuclear energy for environmental protection.

In the wake of the Fukushima reactor disaster in 2011, Germany phased out nuclear energy relatively quickly. While six nuclear power plants will still be connected to the grid in 2020, they will be shut down by 2022 at the latest.

Could nuclear energy also be seen as something positive for environmental protection? In Germany, that seems hard to imagine. A significant disadvantage of this electricity is the excessively long storage time for radioactive waste. If you care about the environment, it seems you have to simultaneously promote renewable energies, abolish nuclear power, and ignore the fact that this makes you even more dependent on coal energy. 

And this dependence comes at a cost – for the environment in Germany and Europe. About 80% of the still active coal-fired power plants in Germany violate EU directives on the limits of pollutant emissions from nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot particles.

The pollutants emitted do not only hurt Germany: Due to the high number of existing coal-fired power plants, Germany is one of the biggest air polluters in the European Union.

After the nuclear phase-out, the phase-out of coal-fired power is now to be finalised by 2038. However, there is a problem with this: bets are being made that renewable energies will fill the energy supply vacuum after the coal-fired power plants are shut down.

It is not always possible to plan particularly well over such a far-reaching period. And so far, Germany is still clearly reliant on running coal-fired power plants.

Instead of betting that renewables will completely fill the vacuum by 2038, or instead of continuing to rely on coal along with the associated air pollution, there is still an alternative: power plants that rely on nuclear energy and thus emit particularly few emissions of CO2 and other pollutants.

What may seem strange in Germany is meeting with increased response in the USA from numerous start-ups, engineers, and doctoral students who are backing nuclear energy for environmental protection.

Technological innovation for environmental protection: the example of TerraPower

One example is the TerraPower project, which has become particularly well-known in recent months thanks to Bill Gates’s support. TerraPower is trying to solve a problem often cited by critics of nuclear power with a new type of nuclear power plant design: Nuclear waste.

At first glance, this criticism seems plausible. Is it worth relying on a relatively clean form of energy like nuclear power if, in return, we have to live with radioactive waste – without knowing when and in what way we might get rid of it?

The so-called running waves and liquid salt reactors that TerraPower relies on exquisitely solve this problem. Unlike regular nuclear reactors, they accumulate depleted uranium, significantly reducing the resulting stockpiles of nuclear waste. This depleted uranium is already found in the inventories of existing nuclear waste – it is just not being used productively.

TerraPower estimates 700,000 tonnes of enriched uranium in the USA alone – just 8 tonnes of this apparent “waste” could supply 2.5 million homes with electricity each year. Globally, all the nuclear waste that already exists could be used to provide 80 per cent of the world’s population with energy for over a millennium. And this supply would take place at the level of an average US American.

In this respect, TerraPower solves one of the main problems associated with nuclear energy in an incredibly creative way: it is not just a matter of producing relatively little nuclear waste in the construction of new reactors. Instead, the existing nuclear waste serves as a kind of fuel – so it is used productively, and one gradually reduces the waste at the same time.

That the resource of nuclear waste will run out at some point also seems unlikely when one looks at the result of the above calculation.

TerraPower serves as an example here to emphasise one point: Like other technological approaches, nuclear energy can be continuously improved. Critics of nuclear power often refer to existing reactors, some of which are outdated. In doing so, they ignore the fact that problems such as nuclear waste can be solved in new types of construction. One should not make the rash mistake of altogether abandoning a clean and cheap form of energy. Relying on coal energy instead is not in the interest of the environment. Betting that the vacuum after the nuclear and coal phase-out can be filled exclusively by renewable energies is a risky bet.

Originally published here.

Research shows that the lockdowns spurred growth in the black market in alcohol.

What happens when something people really want is banned? Do they stop wanting it? Or do they find other ways to access it? Our experience with the lockdown alcohol ban answers this question and must give policymakers pause when considering their future plans.

According to the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (Tracit), liquor bans have spurred the growth of the black market in alcohol. Research from the Institute for Security Studies supports this conclusion, as does statements from the South African Revenue Service.

And it simply stands to reason: People are not robots and do not suddenly stop craving and desiring certain products just because some politicians said it must be so. Readers of this article likely know very well from personal experience that, on the ground, the booze did not stop flowing. For the formal, lawful alcohol industry, however, South Africa’s alcohol bans have been disastrous.

The justification for the bans was quite intuitive: Expecting a rise in Covid-19 patients to arrive at South African hospitals, government wanted to reduce the number of patients suffering from an alcohol-related condition taking upward space. The healthcare sector needed time, so went the reasoning, to expand its capacity.

The first alcohol ban was imposed between March 27, and June 1, 2020, the second from July 12 to August 17, and the most recent was from 28 December 2020 to 1 February 2021, when it was mostly lifted.

On Monday, 24 August 2020, health minister Zweli Mkhize announced that they “have no started to dismantle some of the field hospitals [because additional] beds are no longer necessary”. This was mere days after the lockdown was downgraded from level 3 to level 2. Cooperative governance minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma cautioned South Africans against the very real possibility of a second wave in the near future as restrictions on their liberties were being taken away.

In December, when he was announcing the renewed alcohol ban, President Cyril Ramaphosa noted how hospitals were being overwhelmed with alcohol-related trauma cases.

Government did expand hospital capacity then dismantled it, knowing well that a second wave was likely on the horizon. It is the stuff of spiteful, arbitrary governance, then, to punish a massive sector of the economy, not to mention the South African public, for government’s own short-sighted planning.

While the lockdown alcohol ban might at the time of writing have been lifted, Dlamini-Zuma has made it clear that banning liquor again was not out of the question. The alcohol industry is therefore now caught in a position of impossible uncertainty.

Minister Dlamini-Zuma says the ban’s intention is not to cause harm to the industry, but such an assurance is cold comfort in light of the facts.

The alcohol industry by 2019 had supported the livelihoods of a million South Africans and contributed more than 3% of GDP, not to mention the more than R15 billion in tax revenue it brought in for government. Indeed, the money the alcohol industry lost due to the lockdown booze ban would have gone a long way to financing South Africa’s vaccine drive.

Tracit found that there was a 900% increase in pineapple sales after the alcohol ban came into effect. The obvious reason for this is that many people started homebrewing pineapple beer, and presumably selling it on the black market.

Even supermarkets, seizing the opportunity, “started selling the fruit as a package with sugar and yeast”. During the ban, the police also reported the smuggling of alcohol contraband from neighbouring states, and losses to the lawful industry in the illicit trade, according to Tracit, were expected to rise to about R13 billion per year.

While the illicit trade is entirely understandable, given the ill-considered policy decisions made by the government, consumers should nonetheless beware of the health risks of purchasing homebrewed booze. Whereas the lawful alcohol industry is subject to strict quality standards, someone selling beer they had just made in their garage is not. Dozens of reported deaths have already resulted from such dangerous consumption.

Some who do not partake in the consumption of alcohol (myself being among them), have admitted the damage this ban has done economically, but do not sympathise with the alcohol industry, who they credit with the exploitation of South Africa’s poor population.

This perspective, unfortunately, misses the point that the “alcohol industry” is not all directly concerned with alcohol. Glass bottling firms, retailers, transportation companies, restaurants, and a multitude of other enterprises are part of this industry and many, in indirect ways, are dependent upon it. Must the staff, and their families, of bottling companies and restaurants also suffer, simply to show up the beverage makers?

Consumer freedom of choice is guaranteed by the Constitution, and means other people – the poor included – may decide to do things that the chattering classes disagree with. This includes consuming alcohol. The marketplace is all about suppliers meeting demand and creating value for their consumers, and this is exactly what those in the alcohol trade are doing. It is not only economically devastating for government, supported by a small elite of intellectuals who disapprove of alcohol consumption, to interfere in this freedom, but it is also profoundly condescending and immoral.

Tracit rightly recommends that bans and prohibition should not be regarded as a legitimate means of responding to Covid-19, for such a response lacks discernible benefits and the consequences are dire for the alcohol industry, the economy, the government, and the entire South African society. It is far safer for South Africans, whose demand for alcohol is not going anywhere, to be able to access it in the lawful market, where it is subject to quality standards and where the point of sale is subject to social distancing and hygienic regulations.

No economy can function efficiently in the presence of the kind of policy uncertainty presently reigning in South Africa. Government must reassure the alcohol industry that further bans are off the table. Otherwise, we should expect further disinvestment by the industry and the further growth of the illicit trade, even now while the ban has been suspended.

While certain common-sense measures to combat Covid-19 can be retained, it is high time for South Africa to return to a healthy respect for freedom of choice.

Martin van Staden is South African Policy Fellow with the Consumer Choice Centre. 

Originally published here.

Trade is not a zero-sum game.

During his speech to the French on 14 June, President Emmanuel Macron outlined a recovery plan based, in part, on economic sovereignty on a national scale: “We must create new jobs by investing in our technological, digital, industrial and agricultural independence” he declared.

The French President’s protectionist turn is surprising. Opposed to Marine Le Pen in the second round of the 2017 presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron ran as the open society candidate. Here he is now defending protectionism! He made fun of trumpet populism, and now he promises to bring jobs home! But the most surprising thing is that he does not limit himself to advocating European sovereignty – as he has already done on several occasions – but national sovereignty, disregarding the principles governing the single market.

This “reinvention” is, unfortunately, not an innovation. On the contrary, Emmanuel Macron is resurrecting the old Ancien Régime fallacy according to which a nation’s wealth is not measured by the number of real goods and services at its disposal but by the amount of gold in its coffers. An ideology championed by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a minister under Louis XIV.  “This country does not only flourish in itself, but also by the punishment it knows how to inflict on neighbouring nations”, such was his philosophy. But if Colbert is remembered as the Minister who was at the origin of the “greatness of France”, it is because history is more interested in the rich and powerful than in the little people. On the surface, France may have shone in Europe, but in reality France was “nothing more than a large and desolate hospital”, as Fénelon testified in a letter to King Louis XIV in 1694.

Behind the mercantilist ideology, such as the one Emmanuel Macron was inspired by when he spoke of a revival based on sovereignism, lies a misconception: that trade is a zero-sum game. But as the classical authors have subsequently shown, trade, by definition, is a positive-sum game. Forcing consumers to buy domestic goods rather than the imported goods they desire is not in their interest and, by extension, not in the interest of the nation. As Paul Krugman points out in a 1993 article, “What a country gets from trade is the ability to import the things it wants. France is therefore going to invest massively in certain technologies to “gain its sovereignty” when it could benefit from the experience and competence of its neighbours. An excellent way of wasting precious resources. 

Emmanuel Macron also said that the advantage of relocation was the creation of “new jobs”, but at what price? Examples of the economic war between China and the United States show the shortcomings of such a policy. A study by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), for example, showed that the cost of the Chinese tyre tax set by the Obama administration was $900,000 per job. Moreover, since this $900,000 could have been spent elsewhere, the increase in tyres’ price has led to a drop in demand for other goods. Thus, the AEI estimates that the preservation of a single job in the tyre industry would have actually cost 3,700 jobs in other sectors. This phenomenon is not exceptional, examples abound. Another is the steel tariffs imposed by the Bush administration: while they have saved 3,500 steel jobs, economists estimate that these tariffs have led to the loss of between 12,000 and 43,000 jobs in steel-dependent industries! Krugman’s lesson still holds today: “Government support for an industry can help that industry to compete with foreign competition, but it also diverts resources from other domestic industries. 

These examples clearly show that the economy is too complicated for a President of the Republic,  to hope to administer it. The idea that an acceptable recovery policy would reduce unemployment is a pipe dream: it is entrepreneurs who create jobs, not bureaucrats. Outside of the crisis, about 10,000 jobs are created every day in a French economy that employs a total of about twenty-five million workers. Who can claim to be the direct source of so many jobs? At best, Emmanuel Macron may manage to create a few thousand jobs in the handful of sectors he has arbitrarily designated. Still, it will be to the detriment of tens of thousands of jobs which will disappear as a result.

Of course, what applies to France also applies to Europe: sovereignty is only legitimate when it is applied on a single scale, that of the consumer.

Originally published here.

While genetic engineering progress promises to revolutionise many sectors, Europe remains very committed to its precautionary principle…

While genetic engineering progress promises to revolutionise many sectors, Europe remains very committed to its precautionary principle. Nowhere is regulation as prohibitive as in Europe!

If the European Union is proud of its precautionary principle, it is, unfortunately, nothing to boast about. The latest innovations in genetic engineering open up unprecedented prospects for humanity: the challenge is not to miss out on such a revolution.

Gene therapy, for example, makes it possible to treat rare diseases of genetic origin. Thanks to regulations favourable to innovation and experimentation, the United States has become one of the world’s leading centres for research into gene therapy, including treatments for sickle cell disease, fatal muscle diseases, HIV and many types of cancer. Britain has also distinguished itself from other European countries by becoming the first country in the world to allow mitochondrial replacement therapy. Across the Atlantic, this technique has already saved a child from Leigh’s Syndrome, a disease that affects the nervous system.

Genetic modification also promises to revolutionise modern agriculture. Thanks to GM crops, it is already possible to produce drought-resistant plants and animals – a significant advantage in the fight against climate change. Genetic engineering can also make crops more resistant to disease, increase their yield and even their fibre content – or conversely reduce their trans fatty acid content. For example, Brazil has developed a tomato-rich in antioxidants and a soybean resistant to a plant pest that destroys crops and reduces yields. 

Finally, new techniques are also safer. Indeed, it should be pointed out that the type of genetic engineering differs from the techniques that result in GMO crops, or biomedicines such as insulin, produced by transgenesis. Here we are talking about GMOs obtained by directed mutagenesis. This technique is similar to the genetic mutations that can occur in nature, except that it allows precise control of these mutations and accelerates the course of biological evolution. 

As biochemist Jean-Yves Déaut points out in an interview for the journal European Scientist, “the scientific world agrees that the technologies developed in NBT (new breeding technologies) are more precise and present fewer risks than the old methods”.

However, the European Union remains blind to these latest advances. On 25 July 2018, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decided, instead of adapting the interpretation of the law to the new technological reality, to completely ignore the evolution of scientific knowledge: “organisms obtained by mutagenesis constitute GMOs and are, in principle, subject to the obligations laid down in the GMO Directive”. The EU, therefore, makes no legal distinction between different generations of GMOs. 

All the more so as the GMO Directive (Directive 2001-18) to which the ECJ refers is already very restrictive.  In its spirit, as Marcel Kuntz, a researcher at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) explains, it authorises the dissemination of GMOs that are recognised as safe. In reality, he continues, this means that “when an issue becomes controversial in the media (…), it will be necessary to demonstrate zero risks, which is of course impossible”. The GMO directive, therefore, provides the naturalist clan with a legal basis to block any innovation. 

As Catherine Regnault-Roger, a member of the French Academy of Agriculture, points out, “in addition to scientific opinions, there is a political phase of votes by the Member States and the European Parliament, which give rise to debates in which scientific considerations are not at the heart of the debate”. 

Therefore, the systematic suspicion towards GMOs today reflects less a scientific consensus on the subject than an anti-progressive ideology inspired by an idealised vision of nature on the one hand, and a demonisation of the human spirit on the other. 

To prevent pressure groups from depriving consumers of the latest technological advances for ideological reasons, as is the case today, the Consumer Choice Center advocates replacing this aberrant regulation with a genuine “Principle of Innovation” which would let scientific agencies independently determine the effectiveness and safety of products. 

Instead of serving as a rational basis for political decision-making, science is entirely subject to the precautionary ideology’s diktat. At a time when science and innovation are the answer to the significant challenges of the 21st century, such subordination amounts to shooting oneself in the foot.  

Europeans should ask themselves the following question: “Who will be responsible if, in the future, we have still not cured today’s diseases with tomorrow’s technology, simply because unfounded fears have got in our way?”. Yesterday’s regulations are no longer adapted to today’s technologies and tomorrow’s progress. We need regulation that looks to the future, not to the past.

Originally published here.