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With today's agreement that China will buy $200 billion of US goods, are the US and China becoming more integrated economically?If you want to see the ghastly sad state of “Free Press”, this has got to be a prime example of it.Google shows you the top 50 publications, from New York Times, BBC, to Wall Street Journal, 50 ways to spin the story, without a single one publishing the plain text of the US-China Joint Communique.The Chinese government Xinhua News Agency published the text of the Joint Communique within 12 hours, followed by several “explainer” articles on what it means, and what the rationale is behind the agreement. Obviously the “Democratic Free Press” doesn’t have to make itself accountable to the public, while the “authoritarian, not democratic” Chinese government does. How ludicrous!Well here is the complete text of the Joint Communique. 中美就经贸磋商发表联合声明--财经--人民网 Google Translate does a pretty good job translating it.According to the instructions of President Xi Jinping and President Trump, from May 17th to 18th, 2018, the Chinese delegation led by Chairman Xi Jinping’s special envoy and vice-premier Liu He, and representatives from the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Mukuchin, Secretary of Commerce Ross, and trade representatives. The U.S. delegation of members such as Letsigze has conducted constructive consultations on trade issues.The two sides agreed that effective measures will be taken to substantially reduce the US trade deficit with China’s goods. In order to meet the growing consumer demand of the Chinese people and promote high-quality economic development, China will greatly increase the purchase of goods and services from the United States. This also helps the U.S. economic growth and employment.The two sides agreed to meaningfully increase the export of US agricultural products and energy. The US will send a delegation to China to discuss specific issues.The two sides discussed the expansion of manufacturing products and services, and reached consensus on creating favorable conditions for increasing trade in the above-mentioned areas.The two sides attach great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and agreed to strengthen cooperation. China will promote the revision of relevant laws and regulations, including the Patent Law.Both parties agree to encourage two-way investment and will strive to create a fair and competitive business environment.The two sides agreed to continue to maintain high-level communication in this regard and actively seek solutions to their respective economic and trade issues.So the agreement is that China will increase purchase of US agro and energy, both sides will work to create favorable conditions for manufactured goods and services, and two-way investment. That’s the essence of it. No dollar amount is specified.Thus it’s obvious that the US and China will become more integrated economically. In the accompanied People’s Daily “explainer”, the Chinese government explained that trade wars are bad for both countries, and the US has comparative advantage in both energy and agriculture, so why not buy from the US. China is becoming the world’s biggest retail market, we not only want to buy more from the US, we want to buy more from the rest of the world, and make the Chinese market more competitive, which means that we’ll only buy things that are of good quality and good price. Good for the Chinese people.That’s the gist of it. 不打贸易战，是中美双方共识--观点--人民网 You can read it with Google Translate, compare it with the White House talk show circus, and draw your own conclusions.The current state of the “Free Press” is that you have nothing but spin doctors in the main stream, and nothing but conspiracy theorists on the Net. Some of these “spins” are downright lies, even from some of the most respected newspapers. Such as this article from New York Times. Trump’s Charm and Threats May Not Be Working on China. Here’s Why.China’s propaganda machine took a victory lap after the talks, proclaiming that a strong challenge from the United States had been turned aside, at least for now.OK, here you have the opportunity to read the articles yourself, with the help of online translator. Where in the world is this “victory lap” that New York Time is talking about? It’s obvious that the Chinese government is trying to suppress overt nationalism and frame the trade issue in a reasonable, “searching for common interest” manner. And why is it that this “propaganda machine” published the real text of the US-China Communique and New York Times only published its own spins? It’s ridiculous. And this is when I personally rank New York Times as the BEST American newspaper…

As someone who has studied and taught about the history of political parties, my take on this topic may be somewhat skewed. That is, I know the way parties chose their nominees for most of American history, and so there’s nothing about these revelations that seem especially shocking to me. Certainly the exact mechanism used here — a Joint Fundraising Committee agreement (JFC) between Clinton and the DNC — was of interest to me, since it revealed a lot about the exact relationship between the DNC and the Clinton campaign. But beyond that it’s hard for me to get really animated about this, because… well, by the standards of American political parties this kind of coordination is really not surprising or new.People need to understand that primaries themselves are pretty new concepts in American politics. I’m going to try to avoid a long history lesson on party conventions and the emergence of the primary system in the 20th century here, because that’s not really what this question is asking about. Suffice it to say, the modern system of binding primaries and/or caucuses in both parties was only established in 1972. Prior to that time, a few states had primaries, but they served as “beauty contests,” a chance for candidates to show off their ability to appeal to voters. Up to 1972, the voters had very little say in the choice of presidential candidates; delegates were largely selected by state party organizations, and the choice of a nominee was made during the conventions by the delegates under the close supervision of party leaders.The idea that a nominee would be chosen who was not supported by a majority of party leaders was unthinkable for most of the history of American parties. So the fact that party leaders were in some way coordinating with a favored candidate is hardly surprising. What’s more, I’d be surprised if you looked at past nominating contests over the last 30–40 years, and any time there was a contest with one clear frontrunner, you did not find some form of coordination. I’d be really surprised, for example, if the RNC wasn’t in some way coordinating with George W. Bush against John McCain in 2000, though I wouldn’t speculate as to the exact nature of that coordination. This is what parties do, or at least what they have historically done; they choose candidates who are acceptable to the existing party leadership, and then market that candidate to voters.There was even a prominent book about this process written by some political scientists back in 2008; it was called The Party Decides, and it made the argument that presidential nominations were actually decided BEFORE the primaries, by candidates lining up support of party leaders and state party committees before any votes were cast. A Review of “The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform”So in many respects I don’t find any of this surprising. That is, I’m conditioned NOT to think of party nominating contests as “fair and open”, especially to outsiders like Sanders, who was not even formally a member of the Democratic Party. I’d argue that, to one degree or another, the notion that ANY party’s nominating contest has ever been “fair” in the sense that most people mean when they talk about this.I do, however, think that the revelations are very unseemly. In the modern information age, some people follow these nominating contests more closely and intensely than they used to. There is a greater expectation of a fair and open process, and when information comes out that calls that into doubt, it’s a legitimate problem for the party involved. It may be that all party nominating contests have always been “unfair” to at least a certain degree, but when people start thinking of and recognizing it as unfair, that can lead to a crisis of legitimacy. So I think the DNC is going to have to make some reforms that will prevent this kind of overt coordination with a favored candidate from happening again. But because the DNC, like all party committees, is ultimately an organization of party officials, it’s foolish to think that there won’t be races in the future where those officials have a private preference for one candidate, and that this will affect, to one degree or another, how the DNC operates within that race.So did it change my mind about whether Clinton won “fairly”? Not really, because I always assumed that the support of party leaders was an advantage for Clinton in the race. Did it change my opinion about how the DNC should operate in the future? Absolutely.As to the subject of “rigging,” however, I still take issue with the idea that the primary was “rigged.” A rigged primary would be one in which the outcome was preordained; one in which Sanders never had a chance to win. I did not think that was the case before these revelations and I don’t think it’s the case now. Let me explain why.One of the things that really amazed and dismayed me during the 2016 Democratic primary was the degree to which people started dramatically, DRAMATICALLY overstating the importance of both the national party committee and committee chairperson in determining the outcome of the primaries.The DNC and RNC are basically fundraising organizations. Their respective chairs are basically fundraising coordinators. They don’t control how people vote. They don’t even have much influence over how people vote.Now, the JFC Clinton set up with the DNC allowed her to raise more money than she’d have been able to on her own under campaign finance laws, because some of that money was supposed to be shared with the DNC and the state party committees. Sanders, it is important to note, ALSO had a JFC agreement with the DNC, and I’d bet that Martin O’Malley did too. Trump had one with the RNC. The difference for Clinton was that her agreement allowed her some control over the personnel in executive positions within the DNC. She also appears to have kept a lot more of the money than she was supposed to. So the deal gave her greater say in decisions the DNC made, and allowed her to raise more money.Did this “rig” the primary for Clinton, denying Sanders any chance to win? I’m not really sure how it would. The DNC scheduled debates in a way that favored Clinton; this is the clearest consequence of this agreement. But Sanders matched or exceeded Clinton’s fundraising during the primaries. He did not lose for lack of money. The fundraising advantage Clinton’s JFC agreement gave her doesn’t seem to have mattered much in the primary because of how good Sanders was at raising money. And if anything, the dispute over the scheduling of the debates probably created more attention for them than they might otherwise have received, and the simple fact that you can STILL stream video of the debates online today shows that issues like “TV scheduling” matter less and less in modern politics. I just don’t see how this became a decisive advantage. And I don’t really know much of anything else the DNC could or did do that might have influenced how voters voted in the primaries. The DNC did not count the votes; county boards of elections do that, and they are set up with the intention of being nonpartisan, and in the case of primaries allow every campaign to observe the counting process. So this wasn’t a “stolen” or “rigged” election, but it also wasn’t one in which the candidates started out on a level playing field.Clinton had an advantage in that the party leadership supported her going into the race. The deal she made with the DNC was one reflection of that advantage. In that sense, it was never a “fair” contest in that Clinton had a lot of party leaders acting as surrogates for her, providing her with organizational and fundraising help in their states, and voting for her as superdelegates. So it was never really “fair” in the sense that they each started in the same position. Sanders was an outsider who was not a member of the party and whom few people had heard of prior to his entry into the race. It wasn’t a “fair” fight, but it also was not one in which the outcome was predetermined. It would have been a major upset if Sanders won, but upsets HAVE happened before, and will again.Again, I think the DNC needs to make sure nothing like this agreement ever happens again. But beyond that… the public’s expectation of “fairness” in nominating contests has not matched the historical reality of those contests.

An Ambassador’s work can be defined in a few words such as ‘maintenance and promotion of bilateral relations between two countries’ or one could even write a book to describe it since her/his work covers everything that can be construed as relations between two countries. Giving visas is bilateral work and so are visits of Heads of State/Government. Participating in a trade promotion event is bilateral work. So are signing of agreements. And because there are so many components to bilateral work, no two days in an Ambassador’s official life are the same.Therefore, I will divide a day’s work of an Ambassador into various simple categories. These are only for explanatory purposes to give a broad overview. A day’s work may involve some or all or none of what is mentioned below. For example, when a big event happens such as the visit of a President or a Prime Minister, the whole Mission gets busy in its preparation for a month or more before the visit. During the visit, the Embassy and the Ambassador may find time just enough to do the bare minimum of the daily work, which could be called routine.Keeping above things in mind, a day in Ambassador’s life would look somewhat like this:Work before office: An Ambassador has to keep herself/himself abreast of developments in her/his country, the country of her/his posting and the world, in general. Therefore, an Ambassador would read newspapers, check news on Internet and watch television while still at home before leaving for office. Sometimes, events at the beginning of the day or the night ahead determine the course of the day. For example, an Ambassador may wake up to the news that a high profile businessman has landed in her/his country of posting after evading the law enforcement agencies of her/his country. The Ambassador can rest assured that he would be besieged with calls, queries, messages and instructions from various directions the time she/he lands in office and most of her/his day may be devoted to handling this single issue.Correspondence: Ambassadors receive a lot of correspondence. It is usual for them to begin their day in office going through the mails and letters. There may be messages from the home government on certain action that needs to be taken, or messages just for information to ensure that all Missions are in the loop. Messages may range from letters from one head of government/state to another about a substantive issue or a congratulatory new year greetings. Messages could be an invitation to the Ambassador to attend an event or a media query. Most of the messages get marked down to respective Departments for taking action. Some messages may be required to be handled by the Ambassador herself/himself. Ambassadors have to send replies to some of the messages themselves.Files: Files may be on paper or online. Departments in the Mission maintain files subject-wise. These may be put up to the Ambassador for her/his approval. Certain actions may be taken only with the Ambassador’s approval. Certain files may be put up to the Ambassador for information only because the issue is important. Sometimes, a letter or a message may have come to Ambassador for which she/he may have requested the background material or a draft letter and a file may have been put up to her/him later with all necessary material to enable her/him to take action.Internal discussions and meetings: Other diplomats meet the Ambassador to discuss issues related to their department. There might be one-to-one (most frequent), one-to-some or a full meeting involving all departments. Some issues need to be discussed before they are put down in a written form, some before action is to be taken and some because it is better or easier to discuss them rather than put them up on file. Issues for discussions may again be on a wide range of topics from a commercial report to a cultural event.Administrative work: An Ambassador is also the administrative head of the Mission. When the Mission size is big, a lot of management work may be involved. Even in a smaller Mission, an Ambassador has to deal with administrative issues on a day to day basis. This may be a disciplinary matter or repair work of the Chancery or budgetary issues and so on.Delegations: Delegations from home country visiting the host country may call on the Ambassador either to brief her/him on their local meetings or seek her/his guidance. Delegations from the host country also meet the Ambassador. The delegations may be from the government departments or they may be private such as from commercial establishments. The Ambassador also accompanies visiting official delegations for important meetings.Reports: An Ambassador sends periodic reports on bilateral issues. Sometimes, she/he may also need to send messages on important internal and external developments (relation between host country and other countries/international organisations). A part of Mission’s work is to keep the home government updated regarding important issues and events and the Ambassador also has to play her/his part in this.Protocol: When important dignitaries visit the host country, the Ambassador may receive/see them off at the airport, host receptions/working lunch/dinner for the delegation to interact with local officials or accompany the dignitary.Meetings: The Ambassador has to meet local ministers and high officials in ministries of the host government to make, discuss or follow up on proposals and resolve pending matters. Ambassadors frequently have meetings with their counterparts in the foreign ministry of the host government to ‘synchronize their watches’.Participation in events: These may be events organized by the Embassy, which the Ambassador may be inaugurating or she/may be delivering a speech at the event. These may be events organized by the host government, where the Ambassador is an active participant or a ceremonial event where the President or the Prime Minister of the host government is participating and Ambassadors have been invited. Ambassadors also participate in events such as national day receptions of other countries.Firefighting: It is not rare for an Ambassador to see an urgent situation crop up from nowhere. This may be a consular issue or an input that needs to be sent to the home government within a few hours. Such sudden work may sometimes consume a lot of time in an Ambassador’s day in office since they have to be sorted out in a limited amount of time.As I have mentioned earlier, an Ambassador’s day does not end at what is mentioned above. For example, I am just back from a regional visit to five States of Venezuela. In the last four days, my work has primarily involved getting to know these States, meetings with the regional government and finding out ways for promotion of relations between India and these States. I have had very little time to do most of the work mentioned above.