China Wants To Take Over the South China Sea: Here's How We Can Stop Them Securing the highest degree of freedom and access throughout the global commons should be the ultimate goal of an international effort. by Jeff Becker

China appears to be accelerating its campaign to control the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Beijing does itself no favours with the highly ambiguous nature of its claims in the region. Its internationally condemned ‘nine-dash line’ sometimes appears to be delineating its claims to the island features within it. More ominously, Beijing sometimes insinuates the line as a maritime delineation, carving out sovereign control of the sea itself as well as the airspace above it.

China’s ongoing militarisation of many artificial features in disputed waters is well known. A less well known, but highly consequential implication of this militarisation is the vastly increased capacity it gives China to project power not only to control the reefs and rocks of the South China Sea, but, in the future, to assert control over the high seas and airspace above it. Beijing is vocal about its opposition to innocent passage and other military activities within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones.

Beijing has tried hard to keep its dispute resolution efforts focused on bilateral negotiations between itself and the various claimants, effectively fracturing a united response by ASEAN. Pushback in the region is only now beginning. China’s sweeping claims also impact many countries that lie far beyond the shores of the South China Sea. The US, Japan, Australia, India and many others around the world have critical interests in using the sea directly for economic, scientific and military purposes. More urgently, maintaining an open and free system of movement through the high seas—and in the future, in outer space—is of critical importance.

The decisive rejection of China’s claims in the South China Sea by an arbitral tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2016 only accelerated Beijing’s continued bad-faith efforts to construct features, militarise them, and extend administrative control over others’ presence and activities to the furthest reaches of the nine-dash line. In fact, the ruling decisively rejects both China’s claims to many rocks and maritime features and the idea that these islands can generate territorial seas and exclusive economic zones.

This studied strategic ambiguity by China (on display on other fronts as well) should encourage the international community to confront an alternative and altogether darker explanation for Beijing’s behaviour—that it is building forces and positions in the region so that over the long term it can assert sovereign authority over the South China Sea.

This interpretation of China’s actions, though difficult to accept, should be considered as a possibility in military and strategic planning efforts around the world with an eye towards avoiding this worst-case outcome. It is important to remember that the scope and scale of China’s claims are unprecedented in international law and have no real analogue anywhere else on earth. An unwillingness to confront this scenario risks ceding Beijing permanent control over economic and military activities over a large and critical section of the world’s oceans—and beyond.

The South China Sea is a third larger than the Mediterranean Sea and more than twice as large as the Gulf of Mexico. Acknowledging China’s sweeping claims to sovereignty over this massive space would increase the possibility of a future international environment in which ever larger portions of the global commons are cut off and controlled by individual nations.

Either the international community believes in maintaining a free and open global commons and protects international law or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then China’s potential annexation of this vast space will guarantee similar claims over the world’s oceans. To foreclose on this future will require an active and aggressive response by the widest grouping of states possible. Regardless of how individual claims over the various land features in the South China Sea are resolved, the entire globe has a stake in free and open access to the region.

For this reason, the US, along with all major allies and partners, should explicitly link China’s own access to the global commons with its behaviour in the South China Sea. Washington’s announcement of its rejection of Beijing’s maritime claims, underscored by the US Navy dual aircraft carrier strike group exercises in the region, is a good beginning. However, operations in the South China Sea play to China’s strengths. The US and the widest range of allies and partners in the international community should begin to articulate and apply escalating administrative and technical restrictions globally on Chinese shipping, air travel and transport in and through exclusive economic zones around the world by participating countries.

Restrictions on economic and military transit and scientific exploration should be pre-planned and scalable so that they are similar to Chinese moves in the South China Sea. These allied ‘grey zone’ competitive activities could be problematic for Beijing; they would drastically increase the cost and complication of accessing the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. For example, contiguous US, Japanese and Philippine zones restrict direct Chinese access to the Western Pacific. This possibility should be communicated to Beijing should it attempt to assert sovereign control in the South China Sea through force.

Securing the highest degree of freedom and access throughout the global commons should be the ultimate goal of this international effort. Focused and reciprocal restrictions on China throughout the exclusive economic zones of the world should be coupled with strong assurances that they remain open for participating nations. Moreover, these restrictions on China should be easily and quickly reversible. When Beijing comes to its senses on the use of the South China Sea, its access to the global maritime commons should be both restored and encouraged.

Although this strategic approach to countering Beijing’s most aggressive designs in the South China Sea appears to be rather drastic, like-minded nations around the world should be prepared to deliver a decisive shock to Beijing’s calculations about any gains it may achieve by limiting access to the South China Sea and rejecting the free use of the global commons more generally. Even hinting that a global response on this scale is possible should concentrate minds in Beijing on their strong and growing dependence on the global commons to reach their much vaunted ‘centenary goals’. Together, allied nations should encourage China to support an open and free global commons today in the South China Sea.

Coronavirus Is Hurting Airlines but Job Cuts Aren't the Only Option The coronavirus pandemic has been especially cruel to the aviation industry: COVID-19 had an immediate and severe impact on aviation that is unlike any other shock in the industry’s history. However, previous crises show that there are viable alternatives to job cuts. by Geraint Harvey, Daniel Wintersberger and Peter Turnbull

The coronavirus pandemic has been especially cruel to the aviation industry. COVID-19 had an immediate and severe impact on aviation that is unlike any other shock in the industry’s history. Whereas the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers undermined confidence and disrupted passenger flights and the financial crisis was hard on airlines, neither of these events come close to the damage inflicted on airlines from global lockdowns. 

When airlines don’t fly, they incur heavy losses. The health of the passenger airline industry is measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPK). This represents the number of kilometres travelled by paying passengers. As data presented by the International Civil Aviation Organisation show, passenger traffic drops sharply after a crisis, but it usually only takes a couple of years before there is significant growth. 

While the losses of airlines worldwide stood at US$26.1 billion (£20.5 billion) in 2008, the following year losses were just US$4.6 billion and in 2010 the airline industry was back in the black with net profits of US$17.3 billion. Predictions for 2020 and 2021 follow a similar but more severe pattern of minus US$84 billion and minus US$15 billion, respectively. 

Bearing the brunt 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, several airlines have announced sizeable redundancy programmes as a result. British Airways says it plans to make up to 12,000 staff redundant and reduce the terms and conditions of 30,000 others. Meanwhile easyJet announced cuts of 4,500 jobs in June and Ryanair of 3,000 in May. 

Asking the workforce to bear the brunt of falling demand may save the airline in the short-run but it will hurt relationships in the long-run. In fact, relationships have soured already as job cuts come on the back of very healthy pre-tax profits in 2019. IAG, the parent company of British Airways, posted pre-tax results of £2.6 billion, easyJet £0.4 billion, and Ryanair £0.9 billion. 

Moreover, these airlines have also taken loans from the UK government’s coronavirus fund: British Airways £300 million, easyJet £600 million and Ryanair £600 million. 

Terms and conditions of employment in the airline industry in Europe have deteriorated in recent years. This has been the result of intensified competition within Europe’s single market for aviation services, most notably as a result of the increasing market share of low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz. 

As labour represents one of the few variable cost that airlines have immediate control over – unlike fuel, aircraft, landing charges and the like – many, but by no means all, tend to move quickly to reduce these costs in the event of a sudden downturn. This was certainly the case after 9/11 and the financial crisis. 

Airlines regard this as good business, especially when they can either hire new staff on inferior terms and conditions or fire and rehire the same staff on lower terms and conditions, without incurring training costs. Trade unions regard this as simple opportunism: in the eyes of aviation unions and aircrew, job cuts not only constitute a cynical (short-term) policy to cut labour costs but a longer term strategy to further undermine terms and conditions of employment. 

The new redundancy plans may not come to fruition. They might be used instead to browbeat staff and secure further concessions from them, as has happened in the past. Pilots at Ryanair, for example, recently voted in favour of a 20% pay cut in order to save 260 pilot jobs at the airline, which were part of the cuts it announced in May. The pilots have negotiated that pay will be restored to pre-COVID-19 levels within four years (which would still constitute a pay cut due to inflation). 

There is an alternative 

Previous crises show that there are viable alternatives to job cuts. Following the 2008 financial crisis airlines like Southwest adopted a wider range of measures including work-sharing, temporary pay cuts and furlough. As a result, they were less likely to experience industrial strife and the business recovered more quickly. 

Airline staff today are certainly willing to negotiate alternatives, as demonstrated at Ryanair. COVID-19 might hit harder and last longer than previous crises, but the industry will not disappear. Indeed, the majority of participants in a recent poll of aviation professionals predicted a return to 2019 levels of revenue within three years. 

The big question is what the recovery will look like for the workforce. Will the European aviation sector continue to offer decent work for the 2 million people who currently work in it, or will jobs in this sector go the same way as precarious gig work, which now characterises so many other sectors of the economy? 

The U.S. Navy Could Soon Operate Drone Swarms—Underwater Watch out for robot wolfpacks. by Jared Keller

 

The robo-subs are a potential game-changer for the Navy.

On Feb. 13, 2019, the Navy awarded Boeing a $43 million contract to produce four of the 51-foot Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs) that are capable of traveling some 6,500 nautical miles unaided, the U.S. Naval Institute reported.

According to USNI, the Navy could potentially deploy the Orcas from existing vessels to conduct "mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and strike missions."

But as Popular Mechanics points out, the Orca's modular design and relatively inexpensive price tag make the robo-subs a potential game-changer for a Navy that's struggling to grow to 335 hulls:

Orca could even pack a Mk. 46 lightweight torpedo to take a shot at an enemy sub itself. It could also carry heavier Mk. 48 heavyweight torpedoes to attack surface ships, or even conceivably anti-ship missiles. Orca could drop off cargos on the seabed, detect, or even lay mines. The modular hardware payload system and open architecture software ensures Orca could be rapidly configured based on need.

This sort of versatility in a single, low-cost package is fairly unheard of in military spending. The nearest rough equivalent is the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship, which costs $584 million each and has a crew of 40. While LCS is faster, has the benefit of an onboard crew, and carries a larger payload, Orca is autonomous—and cheaper by orders of magnitude.

The purchase comes amid a push into autonomous vessels for the Navy, and not just because of President Donald Trump's newfound focus on artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, the Navy's autonomous Sea Hunter trimaran, engineered for minesweeping and sub-hunting, traveled from San Diego to Hawaii and back again without a single sailor aboard in a historic voyage.

More broadly, the service is eyeing potential unmanned systems for "robot wolfpacks" of remotely-operated surface vessels to function as scouts, decoys, and forward electronic warfare platforms, as Breaking Defense reported in January.

The Navy has pulled all the stops in "the last six or seven months," Navy surface ship executive Rear Adm. William Galinis told Breaking Defense. "We've got a set of RFIs [that] we're going to be putting out here probably in the next few days to industry to really start that process, put some proverbial meat on the bones."

A World with Less People? Why You Shouldn't Panic Over Population Forecasts Here is how population forecasts are made. Media coverage surrounding future population scenarios needs to be less alarmist. by Brienna Perelli-Harris and Jason Hilton

When the BBC reported on the results of a new study on global population in mid July, the tone was alarmist. “Jaw-dropping” declines in births were foretold, while one of the study’s authors revealed worries about his daughter’s future in light of “enormous social change”. 

The study by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics Evaluation (IHME), published in The Lancet, projects that global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064 and then fall to 8.8 billion by 2100. 

However, we needn’t start panicking just yet. Understanding how such forecasts are produced can help to explain why. 

To predict how global population will evolve over the next century, we must make predictions about two key components of population change: mortality and fertility. These can then be combined to estimate population growth or decline. 

Forecasting these components over such a long time period is hard, as social and economic change and technological advances may alter their path. Nevertheless, global population forecasts are important, for example to help coordinate responses to climate change. And so organisations such as the UN regularly produce world population forecasts. 

Estimating fertility 

Fertility is the most important of the three components for determining global population change. Demographers have known for decades that the total fertility rate, a measure used to calculate the number of children a woman would have in her lifetime, has been declining around the world. 

By 2020, more than 90 states and territories in the world had fertility rates below 2.1. This is the average number of children women would have to have in order to replace themselves and their partners, taking into account those who die before they reach adulthood. 

Some countries in southern and eastern Europe have had extremely low fertility since the early 1990s, with total fertility rates of 1.3 or below. East Asia, including Japan and South Korea, have had very low fertility rates throughout most of the 2000s, and Korea currently has a total fertility rate of 1.1. So “jaw dropping” falls in fertility occurred in these areas some time ago. 

It is the speed of decline and eventual level of fertility in low income countries that is the major difference between the IHME and other population forecasts. A key element of the IHME forecasts is that they predict fertility based on women’s education and access to contraceptive methods. 

Intuitively, this makes sense: education and contraception are known to reduce fertility, as women gain autonomy and are better able to make choices about childbearing. However, predicting fertility based on future access to education and contraception is not easy. 

This is why the UN focuses on predicting fertility and mortality alone. It bases predictions for countries that have high fertility and mortality on the average patterns of decline for countries that have already reached lower levels. These projections result in a world population peaking at 11 billion in 2100, much higher than the IHME projections. 

What will happen in Africa 

Another approach is to base projections on expert opinion. In 2014, researchers at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital interviewed over 550 population experts around the globe, and used their informed opinions to guide their estimates. 

They predicted that world population would peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and then decline to 9 billion by 2100 – not so different from the IHME. However, these demographers made it very clear that the size of the world’s future population would depend on how quickly girls’ education expands, especially in Africa. 

The IHME also notes that Africa’s population will grow, and Nigeria will become one of the world’s most populous countries. Yet how large depends on the underlying assumptions about how quickly societies change. The IHME tends to assume that Africa will achieve higher education level and meet the need for contraception, resulting in fertility rates far below replacement level. 

But most demographers are more cautious, noting that many countries in Africa have experienced stalls in declining fertility rates, potentially due to the failure to educate girls and a resurgence in religion and patriarchal ideas. Demographers studying Africa tend to think that fertility will remain high, due to lack of political will and unequal development across the continent. So whether fertility does start to decline throughout Africa is still very unclear. 

Dollops of uncertainty 

Most demographers recognise that we need to include estimates of uncertainty in their projections to make sure that we are realistic about how well we can predict future populations. While the IHME has produced alternative scenarios, these nuances seem to have been lost in the publicity surrounding the study. Of course, conservative estimates of future population forecasts noting considerable uncertainty do not make for attention-grabbing headlines. 

A group of demographers are now preparing a letter – which we have signed – for the Lancet about the IHME study. It notes concerns that the models, data and underlying assumptions have not received sufficient scrutiny. 

The doomsday scenario publicised in the media does not recognise that declining fertility often represents positive developments, such as increasing female autonomy and education. Nor does it recognise that such alarmist predictions may lead governments to pursue policies which undermine reproductive rights. 

So, such studies must receive critical scrutiny, and the media coverage surrounding future population scenarios needs to be less alarmist and more cautious. 

Are Teachers Unions' Reactions To Coronavirus Accidentally Creating School Choice? Families work together to recruit teachers that they pay out-of-pocket to teach small groups—“pods”—of children. It’s a way for clusters of students to receive professional instruction for several hours each day. by Lindsey Burke

The practice of organizing “pandemic pods,” in which parents team up with other families in their neighborhoods or social circles to hire teachers for their children, is getting more and more popular by the minute.

With many school districts around the country planning not to reopen classrooms this fall—or, at best, planning to offer some combination of virtual and in-class instruction—families are clamoring to secure education consistency for their children as the school year quickly approaches.

So what, exactly, do these pods look like?

Families work together to recruit teachers that they pay out-of-pocket to teach small groups—“pods”—of children. It’s a way for clusters of students to receive professional instruction for several hours each day.

Some parents are using their pod arrangements to hire teachers who will supplement the online classes being provided by their school districts.

As Laura Meckler and Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post observe, pandemic pods are “a 2020 version of the one-room schoolhouse, privately funded.”

In the case of one northern Virginia family that Meckler and Natanson profiled, the parents pay around $500 per month to get in on an arrangement with other families in their neighborhood to share a teacher they are hiring for their pod of children.

As one mother named J Li wrote in a viral Facebook post last week, thousands of parents are “scrambling” to form pods through “an absolute explosion of Facebook groups, matchups, spreadsheets, etc.”

J Li describes the pod phenomenon as “clusters of three to six families with similar aged (and sometimes same-school) children co-quarantined with each other, who hire one tutor for in-person support for their kids.” The tutor may serve as a full-time teacher for the pod of students, or may only teach on a part-time basis or outdoor classes.

“Suddenly teachers who are able to co-quarantine with a pod are in incredible demand,” J Li said.

One pod tutor interview by Meckler and Natanson, Christy Kian from Broward County, Florida, formerly a private-school teacher, said she will earn more this year teaching two families (with four total children) than she did in her prior teaching position.

She said as soon as she had set up the arrangement with those two families, she was immediately contacted by five others.

As noted by J Li:

This is maybe the fastest and most intense, purely grassroots [sic], economic hard pivot I’ve seen, including the rise of the masking industry a few months ago. Startups have nothing compared to thousands of moms on Facebook trying to arrange for their kids’ education in a crisis with zero school-district support.

I swear that in a decade they are going to study this… trends that would typically take months or years to form are developing on the literal scale of hours.

The pods approach is analogous to microschooling, which only recently, through providers like Prenda, had started to take root. Similar to homeschooling co-ops, microschools allow small groups of students to work together in flexible learning environments alongside older and younger students, sharing resources and teachers.

The pandemic pod is catapulting microschooling to the forefront of education provision during quarantine. As Meckler and Natanson write:

Alexandra Marshak, who lives in Manhattan with her husband and two young sons, is exploring a learning pod with three other families. The original idea was that parents would take turns teaching, rotating hosting duties. But then one parent suggested they rent a studio apartment for the venture. They are also now considering hiring a professional to do the teaching. Marshak, who is out of work, said she’s concerned about spiraling costs. But at this point, she said, ‘Everything is on the table.’

Podding is also similar to the “cottage school” concept. As the hosts of CottageSchoolLife.com explain,

Our cottage school is made up of four families with 16 kids between us all! We meet once a week for about 24 weeks of the school year to learn together.

One aspect that makes a cottage school different from other homeschool co-ops is its size. It’s purposefully small—cottage-like! It allows us to have encouragement and support from each other as we teach our kids.

 Paradoxically, the teachers unions may be enabling this free-market, parent-driven reform of K-12 education to unfold.

The Los Angeles teachers unions, for example, released a list of demands last week that they want to see fulfilled before blessing the school reopening of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the country. Those demands included everything from raising taxes and “Medicare for All” to eliminating charter schools and defunding the police.

While union policy demands are leading district schools to remain closed, podding is reinforcing the old adage that the market finds a way.

Understandably, equity and access concerns have arisen as quickly as podding itself.

For parents who cannot afford to pay out of pocket to contribute to a neighborhood pod, providing resources through education savings accounts will be a crucial support moving forward.

Several states across the country have provided, or are considering providing, emergency education savings accounts to families, allowing them to take a portion of their child’s public education funds to private tutoring or online options of choice. Freeing up those dollars is the policy reform needed to make access to pods, microschools, and cottage classes in reach for all families.  

It’s time for policy to catch up with families.