I'm not anti China

Blair Mulholland has an excellent post on how those protesting against human rights abuses in China are NOT anti-Chinese. In response to a NZ Herald report of a planned demonstration by supporters of the Chinese Communist Party authoritarian regime he said:
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"I support China; a China with free speech, freedom of the press, and freed political prisoners, that I will also be going to Aotea Square - to protest against these people and their support for dictatorship. "
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Good for him! I encourage all of you, across the political spectrum who believe in these fundamental rights to join him. If China was free, the Beijing Olympics would be a cause for celebration around the world - like the Olympics were in Athens, Sydney, Atlanta, Barcelona and Seoul.
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The Chinese Communist regime is using its domestic media monopoly (protected literally at gunpoint) and substantial wealth to spread utter lies that the protests are some sort of racist anti-Chinese attack. It claims that people in the West are jealous of China's economic success, which is laughable given that China still has an average GDP per capita a fraction of that of developed countries. After all, the Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea and people didn't protest that - because South Korea had, finally, thrown off its authoritarian regimes and dictators.

The Daily Telegraph reports on websites set up in China to boycott Western companies like KFC and Carrefour (French supermarket chain), and the absurd "anti-CNN" site. Given CNN does not broadcast freely in China (the government there blanks out anything it doesn't like) it is bizarre for anyone to claim that Chinese people in China actually can know what the Western media says. Free speech is unknown in China as is a free press, but hey it's "anti-China" to expect the Chinese people to have these privileges.

You'll notice the anti-CNN website is itself rather bigoted because those who disagree are "ignorant Westerners", a post it attacked was quite reasonable in pitying those who only get the Chinese government side of the story. He also noted, imagine if Chinese created an anti-CCTV website in China. No. The naive are being led astray, and the mighty forces of those who have a vested interest in the Chinese Communist Party are fighting free speech.

Chinese Ambassador to the UK Fu Ying continues the claim that China is being demonised by the Western media. No. India doesn't get demonised, and it is big, a nuclear power and growing fast. That is because Indians have free speech, free press and liberal democracy. She reasonably said:

"Coming to China to report bad stories may not be welcomed but would not be stopped, as China is committed to opening up.

China is far from perfect and it is trying to address the many problems that do exist. It would be helpful to the credibility of the Western media if the issues they care and write about are of today's China, not of the long-gone past."

Fine. How about letting the Chinese people speak up? How about letting them express openly their concerns about government policy, about corruption, about crime, about pollution? How about NOT executing or imprisoning people who disagree with you?

China has gone a long way since the dark days of Mao - I endorse it and I like China. China has reincorporated Hong Kong and it remains a fantastic example of what China could be. Taiwan itself is very much also a great example. You see civilisation does NOT mean using force against those who disagree with you. Civilisation does NOT mean providing aid, trade and support for those who murder (regimes in Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe being some of China's friends with much blood on their hands).

That's what I want to see from China. I want a China as a world power that is open, that has a vibrant free press and media, that unleashes the dynamism of the Chinese people to disagree, argue and be open among themselves. To do this, the Communist Party has to accept criticism, it has to separate the state and the party, and it has to fight hard to make the Chinese judicial system independent.
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Is someone who wants this for China anti-Chinese? Sadly even CNN still reports some protests as being "anti-Chinese". Is it any surprise that when that phrase is used that Chinese people get upset?
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I hope those who protest in Australia do not just protest for Tibet, as important as that is - this should be about China's own domestic freedoms and China's support for murderous regimes elsewhere. I also hope that Chinese who don't support the Communist regime are not scared by those waving People's Republic of China flags.
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Remember when those who say they are pro-Chinese wave the flag of Chairman Mao, they are waving the flag that represents over half a century of political repression, torture and murder. The Communist Party is not China.

Hillary wins but for what?

Hillary Clinton's win in Pennsylvania is seen by her as showing there is life in her campaign - she won by just enough to remain credible. Perfect from the point of view of someone who doesn't want her OR Obama to win. The left leaning New York Times has widely been reported as describing her campaign as "even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it..... It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."

Ouch. The New York Times endorsed her before too.

It hits out at Obama as well "Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign....When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience."

Indeed.

However Hillary has worked her life for this. She is so hungry for power that she wont give in. It is fundamentally disturbing how hungry for power she is. She lies, she evades and pretends to be who she is not. She is strong on foreign policy, but weaker on trade and advocates a grand programme of growing the federal government, with tax increases. She is an electoral liability to the Democrats, which is why so many Republicans can't wait to have her as the candidate. Nothing will get the Christian right, who do not see McCain as their great ally, out to vote like keeping Hillary out of power. If the Democrats are stupid enough to let her win the candidacy then may they reap what the sow.

ALPURT toll road might not be viable

According to the NZ Herald, the Order in Council approving tolling on the motorway extension from Orewa to Puhoi has been amended, in that the Minister no longer needs to be satisfied as to the financial viability of it as a toll road.
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It is not a surprise for two reasons.
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First, ALPURT has been green-plated. Transit deliberately increased the cost of the project because it believed that if a toll road is built it should be of better quality than the similar untolled road. It put a tunnel in where a gully would have done the same job, and made it all four lanes instead of four and three lanes (the latter makes sense, but the tunnel was green-plating). This is even though the toll on ALPURT wouldn't actually pay for the full cost or even more than half of the cost of the road. A road that once was costed by Transit at just over $90 million in 1999 is now $360 million. Part of that is inflation, part of that is the inflation of the contracting sector due to the government spending up large on roads.
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Second, the tolling of ALPURT was politically driven. Transit sought a whole programme of toll roads to be built, including the Tauranga Harbour Link. These would share the cost of the back office and billing systems to operate tolling (which is to be fully electronic free flow with no toll booths). Now with only one and Transit having funding to build the toll system for a whole set of roads, it isn't quite the economies of scale of transactions Transit had hoped. You might think it is odd that road users pay for the cost of building a tolling system, after all shouldn't a tolling system pay for itself? Yes, good question. One that hasn't been properly answered.
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So you see when road users finally pay to use ALPURT as a toll road, they will be using a road other road users have paid for too. Yes every motorist paying fuel tax and road user charges is paying for a road that they have NO right to use. Interesting that. It would be fine if the fuel tax and road user charges used to pay for ALPURT equalised those used by the people USING the road, but this is a subsidised toll road, green-plated for political reasons.
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Will it work? Will it be well used and popular? Will it be empty with people not wanting to pay to use it? or will many use it, fail to pay and face unpopular penalties for not paying a couple of dollars? We can only hope that the new Land Transport Agency - a big government bureaucracy can make it work. Bureaucracies are good at customer service after all....

Future of petrol tax?

Here's a thought. Bearing in mind the report in Stuff today about regional fuel tax being rethought, should the way people pay for roads move away from fuel tax?
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At the moment diesel vehicles pay for road use through road user charges. Now there are some problems with it, but it means you pay directly for the distance you travel. You pay more by weight so the more damage you cause the road, the more you pay. However the system used in New Zealand, while once revolutionary, is being superseded in other countries by an electronic system that allows charging by time and place.
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Now there are plenty of governance issues that ought to be resolved first. For starters who sets the charges and where does the money go. Charges should be set on a reasonably economically efficient basis, to make a commercial return on running roads - and the money should go to road companies. However I don't want to focus on that for now... but on the technology and the practicality of it all.
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Tolls sound like a useful option, but they are really only practical on crossings or motorways which have few alternatives. So that in itself is no solution except for maybe the occasional road - Auckland Harbour Bridge could be tolled and that could pay for another crossing which could be tolled too, for example.
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Congestion charging is more useful, but again you have to be careful how it is applied. It could replace rates funding for cities, but shouldn't be used to pay for public transport. Public transport users should pay for that. If done well, congestion charging can reduce delays and mean road users are paying to use scarce road space. However London is not the way to do it for New Zealand.
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Longer term it would be better if everyone had the option of road user charges, in an electronic form. The first step would be changing the current road user charging system to vary by location, weight and time (if only night and day), so that trucks and diesel cars would pay closer to the costs of using different types of roads - motorways, urban streets, lightly sealed rural roads and unsealed roads. It would also improve enforcement and mean trucks pay according to route, like trains have been. More accurate charging of trucks, buses and diesel cars wouldn't be a bad thing, especially if the money was better linked to the cost of maintaining and building roads. The second step is to offer it to all other vehicles. You pay by distance and road you're on, and you get a fuel tax refund - a full fuel tax refund (including the GST on fuel tax).
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Meanwhile fuel tax can continue to increase, but more and more people would move off of fuel tax onto road user charges, because they would vary only according to what was needed to maintain and upgrade roads. There would also be a change as to how road improvements were funded, because it could be linked directly to money raised from road users on that road. No longer could improvements be made on empty roads, and improvements on busy roads would be less likely to be delayed.
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However there is little sign Labour wants to move away from fuel tax, in wanting to introduce regional fuel taxes for petrol and inexplicably, diesel (for which half is not even used on the roads). National in 2005 supported moving from rates, motor vehicle license fees and fuel tax towards tolls and road user charges.
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Can National get this right? Does it want some help?

40 years since the Wahine

New Zealand's biggest shipping disaster in recent history happened 40 years ago on 10 April. Patrick Dunford's blog reports on the details surrounding that tragedy. It was in the twilight years of the Wellington-Lyttelton ferry service on the long gone Union Steam Ship Company. I remember being taught vividly about this at school in Wellington, it left quite a mark on people in Wellington around at the time.
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The Wahine, along with Tangiwai and Erebus, was one of the three major transport disasters since World War 2. They all seemed to show how small New Zealand's population was (and still is) in that so many knew someone or knew someone who knew someone who was part of it. Indeed, today you can't take a ferry from Wellington to Lyttelton, or an overnight train from Wellington to Auckland or take a sightseeing flight from Christchurch to Antarctica.