Welcome back to a new, shorter and more frequent Global Translations for 2021. Responding to your wish for sharp but shorter news and analysis, I'll be arriving in your inbox on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Send your tips and thoughts to rheath@politico.com. Turning heads: GE's 85-story-tall wind turbines. A single unit can power 12,000 or more homes. DECIDING TO MANAGE CHINA DIFFERENTLY Democracies have long been able to claim an advantage in creating wealth, and have been backed by a rules-based international system designed around their interests and even their currency. That looks tenuous heading into 2021, with China owning the best economic growth prospects (again) and intent on proving not only that non-democracies can prosper, but that it will help them to do so, while punishing democracies that stand up to it. For years, China also has been building its influence across the U.N. while developing alternative finance institutions to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, whose members have sidelined it. The West has had no collective response to this, allowing a "shift of competence from West to East," in the words of former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani. While the 2008 global recession gave birth to the G20, there was no deeper reform, giving President Donald Trump the chance to cannibalize the global democratic order from the inside. While Covid-19 is reshaping globalization — pushing companies and countries to diversify supply chains away from China, and potentially limiting the impact of many Chinese influence-building projects — hoping that China falters, or believing that America alone can shape it, is a poor strategy. That's why Biden's nominees will face a China gauntlet in their Senate confirmation hearings, and why Retired Lieutenant General James Clapper, former U.S. director of national intelligence, told Global Translations ,"the only hope of inducing change in Chinese economic behavior is through multilateral pressure." There are growing calls for revamped military structures or even a new civilian forum among democracies to counter China. Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative chair of the U.K. Parliament's foreign affairs committee, told Global Translations he wants the U.K. and U.S. to forget about a piddling bilateral trade deal for now, and focus on jointly joining the revamped Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc. (Read my full story here on the Boris - Biden relationship.) But instead of banding together in a meaningful way, allies continue to plow their own paths. DECODING THE EU'S INVESTMENT DEAL WITH CHINA A German trio of Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Commission's top trade official, Sabine Weyand, pushed through a deal as New Year champagne glasses were being lifted. For years, Brussels has been desperate to gain fairer market access in China — "reciprocity" in EU-speak — especially for banks and for government contracts, but economic experts rate China as the biggest winner of the deal. One reason for the rush: The Biden administration wanted to be consulted. That means Merkel and her allies have publicly snubbed Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser designate, who politely expressed his displeasure in a recent tweet. It's not a great way to start a new era of collectively managing China. Reality check 1 — The EU is not united on the deal: My POLITICO colleagues in Brussels report that Italy, Poland, Belgium and Spain are already expressing frustration at the way Germany pushed through the China deal in the last days of the German presidency of the EU. The EU machine says ambassadors had two chances to raise a red flag, and didn't. We've been here before: The EU couldn't ratify a trade deal even with like-minded Canada in 2016 and 2017 until traumatic revisions were made. You can therefore expect surgery on the China deal. Reality check 2 — Beijing is tightening its rules on foreign investment, starting Jan. 18. Authorities are reserving the right to veto the sorts of investments made possible in the EU deal on national security grounds. Reality check 3 — Deals don't deliver leverage. As the EU and WTO know well from membership negotiations, leverage is often greatest before you sign over market access. Once you have a deal, any signatory with poor governance tends to ignore parts of it. Australia has a trade deal with China, but it also has complaints about China's coronavirus transparency. The result: China slapped punitive tariffs on Aussie exports (including barley and wine) and imposed a de-facto ban on its meat, cotton, lobster, timber and coal. Beijing also published a 14-point list of grievances with the Australian government, including complaints about "antagonistic" reporting and Canberra's ban on Huawei building 5G networks. Critics outside Europe warn that Beijing is already flouting its commitments under a host of its existing treaties, and that the West needs a common approach to China. Danny Russel, a senior China hand in the Obama White House who is now at Asia Society, told Global Translations, "We want China's eyebrow to get burned here." The heart of the matter, Russel said, "is that if this intimidation play works against Australia, and in due course third countries — if it's seen to have hurt Australia and to some degree cowed Australia — there is going to be more of this behavior." "Other countries simply can't trust the Chinese government to live up to their commitments," warned Michael Shoebridge, director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which the Chinese government attacked in its grievance list. The Chinese ambassador to Australia did not respond to POLITICO's request for an interview. GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS WIDESPREAD VACCINATION FAILURE WILL HURT ECONOMIC GROWTH: From slow production and rollout to wasted doses, onto most of the world having no access, the problems are piling up. Entering the fourth week of U.S. coronavirus vaccinations, fewer than 4 million people have had jabs. America will now have to complete 12 million vaccinations per week if herd immunity is to be achieved by the July 4 holiday. Joe Biden's plan to use the Defense Production Act to administer 100 million vaccine shots by May 1 will get the U.S. around halfway to herd immunity — and that's assuming the plan works. Israel is the only country doing well: Around 1 in 7 Israelis have received their first vaccination dose. But even Israel's success pales in comparison to past efforts. In 1947 New York City vaccinated six million people in three weeks after a smallpox outbreak, versus the 100,000 it's vaccinated so far this time. Governments in Europe are complaining about the slow pace of dose delivery. Before asking for more federal coordination, U.S. states should call Finland: The Finns received a lousy 10,000 doses instead of the 300,000 expected ahead of a Dec. 27 EU-wide rollout. France and Ireland take the cake for self-inflicted tardiness. France may have administered as few as 350 vaccinations in the first week (out of around 500,000 doses), while in Ireland it was 1,800 doses out of 40,000. In the U.K., Boris Johnson has been forced to ditch a system that required retired doctors to fill in more than a dozen forms before being allowed to administer vaccination jabs. CHALLENGE YOUR 2021 ECONOMIC GROWTH HOPES: Nearly everyone expects strong economic growth in 2021. While Fitch Ratings warned Dec. 7 that "vaccine rollout problems or delays are the key downside risk," and Global Translations raised a big red flag in this recent podcast episode, most professional forecasts are based on recent optimistic vaccination assumptions. But vaccine reality and lack of professional consensus (the IMF predicts 3.1 percent global growth and Morgan Stanley 5.9 percent) are signs that the numbers will be revised down. Slow and patchy vaccination will keep tourism-dependent economies in recession, and nudge those with tough quarantine rules from Hong Kong to New Zealand largely closed. Foreign Policy's Laurie Garrett believes that "given inevitable delays in rolling out vaccines, the coronavirus isn't going to vanish soon. That's why the pandemic will continue to rapidly alter the landscapes of globalization and manufacturing." Israel is so far vaccinating 50 times faster than Germany, leading Markus Söder, the leader of Bavaria, Germany's most populous state, to worry about disadvantage compared to speedy Israel and early movers U.K. and U.S.: "The question of how we get through corona economically is closely related to how quickly we get through with vaccination," he said. AFRICA UNLEASHED: The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — a proto-customs union that covers 55 countries and $3 trillion of GDP — became operational Jan. 1, enabling $84 billion in new intra-African exports. Africa will need it: After escaping relatively lightly from Covid-19 in 2020, the arrival of a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus from South Africa along with the continent's lack of vaccine access means 2021 will not be pretty. | 
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