http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20200 ... 56a85.html
China
Re: China
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
The Chinese communists and the concept of moderately prosperous society
by Davide Clementi
Approaching contemporary Chinese politics will most likely come across the expression "moderately prosperous society", translated from Chinese 小康 社会 (pinyin xiǎokāngshèhuì ).
The concept of Xiaokang comes from afar and finds its first expression in the Shījīng (it. "Book of Hates"), the oldest collection of Chinese poetic texts, dating back to the first and middle period of the western Zhou dynasty (X-VII century. BC) and constituting one of the Five Classics (五 經, wǔjīng ) of the Confucian canon. More precisely, in the poem Minlao , the alleged author Zhao Hu, minister during the western Zhou dynasty (11th century BC), invited his corrupt sovereign Zhou Liwang to show benevolence towards a population burdened by suffering and fatigue.
Confucianism will then develop Xiaokang as a lower level of society than the idea of Datong (大同), that "Great Unity" or "Great Community" that appears in the Book of Rites and corresponds to a state of peace and harmony between people and in the 'environment.
If Datong in fact refers to a golden age, to an era of history (or prehistory) in which an ideal society then declined, in which old and young, women and men, robust and infirm, had their reason being not in the accumulation and waste of goods, but in a life immersed in affection and harmony [1] , Xiaokang refers to a period of less prosperity, where human beings are forced to "make humanity the their law and humility their practice [2] ". In Xiaokang society, the rites ( li ), used to regulate the relations between sovereign and subjects, between men, between brothers, between fathers and sons, between husbands and wives, assume centrality .
Contrary to Datong , Xiaokang society requires rites, institutions, customs and norms - that is, obligations, borrowing the Roman legal lexicon - to avoid the inevitable: discord, competition, wars. Xiaokang society is shaken by a radical inequality: “The world has families. Each looks like parents only their own, and children like only their own; goods and work are used for selfish purposes. "
After more than two millennia, Deng Xiaoping, de facto [3] Leader of the People's Republic of China, revived the concept of Xiaokang starting from the observation that Chinese society was in difficult economic, social and cultural conditions. The little helmsman , during a visit to Japan by Masayoshi Ohira in October 1979, reaffirms the goal of building a moderately prosperous society. For Deng, moderately prosperous society is seen not only as a half to be reached to which a raw figure is connected, that of quadrupling GDP per capita in the 1980-2000 period, but also as a phase of social development that adheres to the socialist path undertaken in 1949 through the improvement of people's living standards. Through the dominant role of public and state property, the increase in per capita GDP and the conditions of the whole population, China will be able to achieve the goal of being, by 2021 one hundred years after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a society moderately prosperous, necessary but insufficient prerequisite of socialism and communism.
In the rereading of the Chinese Communist Party, Xiaokang society does not identify a harmonious and ideal stage - the latter assimilable, albeit with different clarifications to be made, to the Datong [4] - in which inequalities are canceled and the institutions through which power is exercised they have disappeared because they are no longer needed. On the contrary, the recognition of being on the way to reach a moderately prosperous society means precisely assessing the existence of difficulties, backwardnesses, minorities: Marxianly, of contradictions.
At the expense of what is supported by the most orthodox fringes of Western Marxism, China maintains macro-economic planning by setting five-year objectives and standards to be achieved: "The development and perfection of socialism is a long historical process [5] ". As Mao well summarized, "in the process of developing everything, a movement of opposites exists from the beginning to the end of the process [6] ". Already Mao had highlighted how, in the aftermath of the victory over Guomindang, New China was at the initial stage of socialism , a specific period in which to build socialism in conditions of backwardness of the productive forces, of unequal economic development and inadequacy of the newly formed institutions.
The period of reform and opening inaugurated by the Chinese Communist Party set itself the goal of modernizing the country in a new, great revolution: «The purpose of our revolution is to free and expand the productive forces. Without expanding the productive forces, making our country prosper and increase in power, and improving people's living standards, the revolution is only empty talk. We oppose the old society and the old system because they oppressed the people and chained the productive forces [7] ».
Just to give some data: while Deng Xiaoping spoke these words, the Chinese GDP reached 178 billion dollars; that per capita was not even $ 185; absolute poverty was close to 89% of the population. Today, China's GDP exceeds $ 13.610 billion; that per capita reaches almost $ 10,000 and absolute poverty affects just 0.4% of the Chinese, with a struggle without quarter that has brought 800 million people out of the most hateful of human conditions [8] .
The internal organization of China - and of any nation in the world - "depends on the degree of development of its production and its internal and external relations [9] ". During its first thirty years of life, the government of the People's Republic has experimented with various economic models, recognizing the inevitability of the people's democratic dictatorship.
By weighing up the inevitable mistakes and painful distortions committed along the socialist path, the Chinese Communist Party set itself the goal, already prefigured by Marx and Engels, of "increasing the total productive forces as quickly as possible [10] " while maintaining the "Political supremacy" of the proletariat in order to "tear, gradually, all the capital of the bourgeoisie, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, that is, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class".
By degrees, not ex abrupto, and increasing the productive forces as quickly as possible . Already in Lenin's very first writings it is possible to observe the attention that the great revolutionary has given to the development of the productive forces of society, "a development that is accomplished precisely through contradictions and disproportions" [11] . Attention that does not fail in the aftermath of the conquest of power: among the immediate tasks of the Bolsheviks is the need to "create a social regime superior to capitalism; that is, to increase the productivity of work and, in connection with it (and for this purpose), to organize work in a superior way. […] The increase in labor productivity requires above all that the material bases of large industry are guaranteed [12]».
The objective of building a moderately prosperous society is linked to the advancement of ten fundamental criteria: per capita GDP, the Engel coefficient - the proportion of domestic expenditure on food - the square meters occupied in urban areas, the urbanization rate, the expenditure on research and development on GDP, the rate of urban unemployment, the relationship between people covered by social assistance and people who should be, life expectancy.
If in 2000 the completion rate of a moderately prosperous company stood at 59.3%, in 2010 it reached 80.1% [13] .
As Domenico Losurdo said, "Deng Xiaoping [has] the historical merit of understanding that socialism had nothing to do with the more or less egalitarian distribution of poverty and deprivation. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, socialism was superior to capitalism not only because it ensured a more equitable distribution of resources but also, and above all, because it ensured a faster and fairer development of social wealth, and to achieve this goal, socialism it stimulates competition by affirming and putting into practice the principle of remuneration based on the quantity and quality of the work done [14] ».
The medium-term goal of achieving a moderately prosperous society was already set by Deng Xiaoping for 2020, as the first of the "Two Centenary Goals" (两个 一 百年, Liang Ge Yibai Nian ) that the Chinese Communist Party faces in itself: the first, in fact, to build a moderately prosperous society on the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the CCP; the second, in 2049, at the end of the first hundred years of the People's Republic of China, corresponding with the achievement of the primary stage of socialism, or the building of a "modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious [ 15] ".
Only "at a higher stage in communist society [...] after the productive forces have also increased with the individual's global development, and all sources of common wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of the bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribes on its banners: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! [16] ".
[1] See De Bary, WT, Chan, Wing-tsit, & Watson, B. (1960). Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume I. New York: Columbia University Press., Pp. 175-176
[2] ibidem
[3] It should be remembered that, formally, Deng Xiaoping never assumed the role of President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party and Premier of the Council of State, leading the People's Republic from the position of President of the Central Military Commission .
[4] Cfr, Chen, AHY, The concept of 'Datong' in Chinese philosophy as an expression of the idea of the Common Good , in University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 2011/020
[5] See Paragraph 3 of the Preamble to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, according to the 2007 amendments.
[6] Mao Zedong, On the contradiction
[7] Deng Xiaoping, We can develop a market economy under socialism , 26/1979, contained in "Selected works of Deng Xiaoping, Volume II (1975-1982), Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, p. 235
[8] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview#3
[9] Marx, Karl, The materialistic conception of history , pp. 36-37
[10] Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich, Manifesto of the Communist Party ,
[11] Lenin, Complete Works, vol. II , p. 226
[12] Lenin, The immediate tasks of Soviet power
[13] https://www.oecd.org/site/progresskorea/44120516.pdf
[14] Losurdo, Domenico, "Has China Turned to Capitalism? —Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism" from International Critical Thought, vol. 7. no. 1, 2017, pp. 19-20
[15] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-1 ... 686770.htm
[16] Marx, Karl, Marginal notes on the program of the German Workers Party (Criticism of the Gotha program ) in K. Marx, Karl Marx Frederich Engels Collected Works (1989 ed., Vol. 24, pp. 81-99) . London: Lawrence and Wishart
https://ottobre.info/2020/06/30/i-comun ... -prospera/
Google Translator
by Davide Clementi
Approaching contemporary Chinese politics will most likely come across the expression "moderately prosperous society", translated from Chinese 小康 社会 (pinyin xiǎokāngshèhuì ).
The concept of Xiaokang comes from afar and finds its first expression in the Shījīng (it. "Book of Hates"), the oldest collection of Chinese poetic texts, dating back to the first and middle period of the western Zhou dynasty (X-VII century. BC) and constituting one of the Five Classics (五 經, wǔjīng ) of the Confucian canon. More precisely, in the poem Minlao , the alleged author Zhao Hu, minister during the western Zhou dynasty (11th century BC), invited his corrupt sovereign Zhou Liwang to show benevolence towards a population burdened by suffering and fatigue.
Confucianism will then develop Xiaokang as a lower level of society than the idea of Datong (大同), that "Great Unity" or "Great Community" that appears in the Book of Rites and corresponds to a state of peace and harmony between people and in the 'environment.
If Datong in fact refers to a golden age, to an era of history (or prehistory) in which an ideal society then declined, in which old and young, women and men, robust and infirm, had their reason being not in the accumulation and waste of goods, but in a life immersed in affection and harmony [1] , Xiaokang refers to a period of less prosperity, where human beings are forced to "make humanity the their law and humility their practice [2] ". In Xiaokang society, the rites ( li ), used to regulate the relations between sovereign and subjects, between men, between brothers, between fathers and sons, between husbands and wives, assume centrality .
Contrary to Datong , Xiaokang society requires rites, institutions, customs and norms - that is, obligations, borrowing the Roman legal lexicon - to avoid the inevitable: discord, competition, wars. Xiaokang society is shaken by a radical inequality: “The world has families. Each looks like parents only their own, and children like only their own; goods and work are used for selfish purposes. "
After more than two millennia, Deng Xiaoping, de facto [3] Leader of the People's Republic of China, revived the concept of Xiaokang starting from the observation that Chinese society was in difficult economic, social and cultural conditions. The little helmsman , during a visit to Japan by Masayoshi Ohira in October 1979, reaffirms the goal of building a moderately prosperous society. For Deng, moderately prosperous society is seen not only as a half to be reached to which a raw figure is connected, that of quadrupling GDP per capita in the 1980-2000 period, but also as a phase of social development that adheres to the socialist path undertaken in 1949 through the improvement of people's living standards. Through the dominant role of public and state property, the increase in per capita GDP and the conditions of the whole population, China will be able to achieve the goal of being, by 2021 one hundred years after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a society moderately prosperous, necessary but insufficient prerequisite of socialism and communism.
In the rereading of the Chinese Communist Party, Xiaokang society does not identify a harmonious and ideal stage - the latter assimilable, albeit with different clarifications to be made, to the Datong [4] - in which inequalities are canceled and the institutions through which power is exercised they have disappeared because they are no longer needed. On the contrary, the recognition of being on the way to reach a moderately prosperous society means precisely assessing the existence of difficulties, backwardnesses, minorities: Marxianly, of contradictions.
At the expense of what is supported by the most orthodox fringes of Western Marxism, China maintains macro-economic planning by setting five-year objectives and standards to be achieved: "The development and perfection of socialism is a long historical process [5] ". As Mao well summarized, "in the process of developing everything, a movement of opposites exists from the beginning to the end of the process [6] ". Already Mao had highlighted how, in the aftermath of the victory over Guomindang, New China was at the initial stage of socialism , a specific period in which to build socialism in conditions of backwardness of the productive forces, of unequal economic development and inadequacy of the newly formed institutions.
The period of reform and opening inaugurated by the Chinese Communist Party set itself the goal of modernizing the country in a new, great revolution: «The purpose of our revolution is to free and expand the productive forces. Without expanding the productive forces, making our country prosper and increase in power, and improving people's living standards, the revolution is only empty talk. We oppose the old society and the old system because they oppressed the people and chained the productive forces [7] ».
Just to give some data: while Deng Xiaoping spoke these words, the Chinese GDP reached 178 billion dollars; that per capita was not even $ 185; absolute poverty was close to 89% of the population. Today, China's GDP exceeds $ 13.610 billion; that per capita reaches almost $ 10,000 and absolute poverty affects just 0.4% of the Chinese, with a struggle without quarter that has brought 800 million people out of the most hateful of human conditions [8] .
The internal organization of China - and of any nation in the world - "depends on the degree of development of its production and its internal and external relations [9] ". During its first thirty years of life, the government of the People's Republic has experimented with various economic models, recognizing the inevitability of the people's democratic dictatorship.
By weighing up the inevitable mistakes and painful distortions committed along the socialist path, the Chinese Communist Party set itself the goal, already prefigured by Marx and Engels, of "increasing the total productive forces as quickly as possible [10] " while maintaining the "Political supremacy" of the proletariat in order to "tear, gradually, all the capital of the bourgeoisie, to centralize all the instruments of production in the hands of the state, that is, of the proletariat organized as the ruling class".
By degrees, not ex abrupto, and increasing the productive forces as quickly as possible . Already in Lenin's very first writings it is possible to observe the attention that the great revolutionary has given to the development of the productive forces of society, "a development that is accomplished precisely through contradictions and disproportions" [11] . Attention that does not fail in the aftermath of the conquest of power: among the immediate tasks of the Bolsheviks is the need to "create a social regime superior to capitalism; that is, to increase the productivity of work and, in connection with it (and for this purpose), to organize work in a superior way. […] The increase in labor productivity requires above all that the material bases of large industry are guaranteed [12]».
The objective of building a moderately prosperous society is linked to the advancement of ten fundamental criteria: per capita GDP, the Engel coefficient - the proportion of domestic expenditure on food - the square meters occupied in urban areas, the urbanization rate, the expenditure on research and development on GDP, the rate of urban unemployment, the relationship between people covered by social assistance and people who should be, life expectancy.
If in 2000 the completion rate of a moderately prosperous company stood at 59.3%, in 2010 it reached 80.1% [13] .
As Domenico Losurdo said, "Deng Xiaoping [has] the historical merit of understanding that socialism had nothing to do with the more or less egalitarian distribution of poverty and deprivation. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, socialism was superior to capitalism not only because it ensured a more equitable distribution of resources but also, and above all, because it ensured a faster and fairer development of social wealth, and to achieve this goal, socialism it stimulates competition by affirming and putting into practice the principle of remuneration based on the quantity and quality of the work done [14] ».
The medium-term goal of achieving a moderately prosperous society was already set by Deng Xiaoping for 2020, as the first of the "Two Centenary Goals" (两个 一 百年, Liang Ge Yibai Nian ) that the Chinese Communist Party faces in itself: the first, in fact, to build a moderately prosperous society on the occasion of the centenary of the founding of the CCP; the second, in 2049, at the end of the first hundred years of the People's Republic of China, corresponding with the achievement of the primary stage of socialism, or the building of a "modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious [ 15] ".
Only "at a higher stage in communist society [...] after the productive forces have also increased with the individual's global development, and all sources of common wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of the bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribes on its banners: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! [16] ".
[1] See De Bary, WT, Chan, Wing-tsit, & Watson, B. (1960). Sources of Chinese Tradition, volume I. New York: Columbia University Press., Pp. 175-176
[2] ibidem
[3] It should be remembered that, formally, Deng Xiaoping never assumed the role of President of the Republic, Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party and Premier of the Council of State, leading the People's Republic from the position of President of the Central Military Commission .
[4] Cfr, Chen, AHY, The concept of 'Datong' in Chinese philosophy as an expression of the idea of the Common Good , in University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 2011/020
[5] See Paragraph 3 of the Preamble to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, according to the 2007 amendments.
[6] Mao Zedong, On the contradiction
[7] Deng Xiaoping, We can develop a market economy under socialism , 26/1979, contained in "Selected works of Deng Xiaoping, Volume II (1975-1982), Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, p. 235
[8] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview#3
[9] Marx, Karl, The materialistic conception of history , pp. 36-37
[10] Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich, Manifesto of the Communist Party ,
[11] Lenin, Complete Works, vol. II , p. 226
[12] Lenin, The immediate tasks of Soviet power
[13] https://www.oecd.org/site/progresskorea/44120516.pdf
[14] Losurdo, Domenico, "Has China Turned to Capitalism? —Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism" from International Critical Thought, vol. 7. no. 1, 2017, pp. 19-20
[15] http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-1 ... 686770.htm
[16] Marx, Karl, Marginal notes on the program of the German Workers Party (Criticism of the Gotha program ) in K. Marx, Karl Marx Frederich Engels Collected Works (1989 ed., Vol. 24, pp. 81-99) . London: Lawrence and Wishart
https://ottobre.info/2020/06/30/i-comun ... -prospera/
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
US has Been Exposed for Funding Last Year’s Hong Kong Protests
July 3, 2020
The little-known but powerful US Agency for Global Media has financed protesters in the city and helped them with technical support
By Alex Lo – Jul 2, 2020
Imagine how the American government would react if multiple Chinese state agencies such as Xinhua were exposed secretly helping protest groups across the United States to evade surveillance and crackdowns by law enforcement agencies.
Washington would probably threaten China with war. Roughly, though, the little-known but powerful US Agency for Global Media has been doing just that in Hong Kong. It oversees funding for various news and information operations around the world, including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
About US$2 million was earmarked for the protest movement in Hong Kong, but has now been frozen as part of a general overhaul and restructuring by a new agency boss. An ally of President Donald Trump, CEO Michael Pack didn’t specifically target the Hong Kong funding, which was apparently caught up in his management overhaul.
The restructuring, though, has inadvertently exposed the US funding long denied by local protesters and pan-democrats.
According to Time magazine, the held-up funds were to have been distributed by the Washington-based Open Technology Fund (OTF), supposedly an independent non-profit, but financed by the US Congress. One cancelled project was to set up “a cybersecurity incident response team” to provide protesters with “secure communications apps” after analysing “Chinese surveillance techniques”.
According to Time, OTF “was a key early funder of Signal, the encrypted messaging app of choice for many Hong Kong protesters. Between 2012 and 2016, it donated nearly US$3 million to the development of the encryption protocol the app is built on”.
Another suspended project was “a rapid response fund”, which “has made several payouts to groups in Hong Kong since unrest began” in June last year. “The freeze,” reported Time, “has so far prevented at least one Hong Kong-related payout from the rapid response fund.”
Libby Liu, the former CEO of OTF who resigned over the funding freeze, acknowledged the operations. “We have several projects housed in Hong Kong,” Liu told Time. “We can’t help [people in Hong Kong] get ready if we can’t be in business.”
The agency and OTF are not the only ones. The National Endowment for Democracy, another Congress-funded entity, spent US$643,000 in Hong Kong last year. In 2013, according to its own records, it was US$695,031. Those amounts seem roughly to be recurrent annual spending in the city, at least until December when Beijing imposed sanctions against it.
They are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and Fire is a new book of essays that chronicles the political confrontation that has gripped the city since June 2019. Edited by the South China Morning Post’s Zuraidah Ibrahim and Jeffie Lam, the book draws on work from the Post’s newsrooms across Hong Kong, Beijing, Washington and Singapore, with unmatched insights into all sides of the conflict. Buy directly from SCMP today and get a 15% discount (regular price HKD$198). It is available at major bookshops worldwide or online through Amazon, Kobo, Google Books, and eBooks.com.
Featured image: Protesters at a December 2019 rally in Hong Kong appealed to US President Donald Trump for help. Photo: AP
(South China Morning Post)
https://orinocotribune.com/us-has-been- ... -protests/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
How far are we from a global financial alternative to the dollar?
Mission Truth
Jul 15 · 6 min read
By Ernesto Cazal
The renminbi or digital yuan is China's next financial project. Image: Crypto 247
Venezuelans ask ourselves how we can challenge the financial power of the United States, whose currency, the dollar, remains afloat because it is backed by the transaction of oil and other commodities , in addition to the hackneyed argument that it generates "confidence" in investors and accounts with a backup army deployed worldwide.
It is not an easy task for a peripheral-oil country like Venezuela to get around the ins and outs of the US-dominated financial system, supported by the Eurodollar. When President Hugo Chávez proposed an alternative regional exchange currency (SUCRE), he warned, among other things, that a scenario of suffocation of commercial transactions and local currency was an example of how a country can be extorted or destroyed and its population.
The interest of the Venezuelan state, led by Nicolás Maduro, to trade freely has also led to experiencing financial mechanisms (Petro) and to strengthening its strategic alliances with national powers that are on the rise in the multipolar struggle. China stands out for its loose manufacturing economy and its global project, the Belt and Road Initiative (ICR), which obviously has an important economic interest for the Asian country and geopolitical and geoeconomic ramifications.
The People's Republic, in its assumption as the main world economic power, includes a financial alternative to its project, which attracts Venezuela and many other countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia since it avoids the use of the dollar as an ongoing currency, always instrumented by the United States at their convenience.
Know the digital yuan
The launch of a sovereign Chinese digital currency, announced a few weeks ago by 2022, is intended to replace paper, an issue that could change the global economic balance definitively towards the Asian side.
The People's Bank of China is currently testing the digital yuan in four cities in the country: Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong'an. That is why Beijing has been reluctant to the circulation of other currencies such as Bitcoin, a direct competitor to the Chinese financial project.
The Chinese digital currency is already being tested in four cities in the People's Republic. Image: Coin Mod
The digital renminbi will be directly connected to the phone number of the owner of a smartphone, while the transactions take place through an application. Users will be able to transfer money from account to account by crashing their phones. You do not need banks as intermediaries.
This initiative would provide the opportunity to call many countries to the technological and monetary framework that China seeks as an economic power, through a network of available blockchains. Not surprisingly, Iran has just strengthened its relations with the Xi Jinping government, as have other states in Africa and Asia. Venezuela, very surely, will enter that orbit as a mechanism against the financial blockade.
At first glance, it seems the ideal currency for Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and other states, financially encircled via unilateral coercive measures issued from Washington, to be able to trade seamlessly with other countries. What does this mean, in quantitative terms ?
The 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represent 15.1% of Chinese trade; on the other hand, the exchange with South Korea and Japan is 13.7%; And the trade relationship with Russia means another 15%: almost 50% of the nations closest to China would be willing to abandon commercial transactions in US dollars and Eurodollars and use the digital yuan.
To this we must add that the ICR embraces around 160 partners on a global scale (between countries and multinational organizations).
Likewise, today's dollarized commodities will be offered in renminbi and exchanged for crypto-yuan. In fact, the prices of gold, oil and iron in the Chinese currency are already a fact. The current pandemic has accelerated this process with different sectors of raw materials.
As important as the above, and to the extent that the digital yuan gains strength in international trade, it is that China consolidates it as a reserve currency. This would cause an earthquake in the financial architecture of the dollar, especially if the People's Republic decides to get rid of the large reserves in US Treasury bonds (about 1.2 trillion dollars) that it still owns.
The truth is that the digital yuan, supported by the goods and services of the mega factory 'Made in China', could also incorporate gold as financial support , although this has not been confirmed. However, its value would correspond to what the global money market dictates, such as Bitcoin.
While there is some enthusiasm for a scenario in which China takes over the world economic and financial baton, is it really as simple as it is written and read?
A stage in motion
The path of this digital currency towards its internationalization will not be smooth. In fact, it has been torpedoed by the Donald Trump administration since it launched the so-called trade war against Beijing.
Simultaneously, the United States has been mounting a multifactorial offensive, with an emphasis on the economic-financial-commercial, on the different countries that represent a strategic interest for the Asian giant and that potentially represent a geopolitical and geoeconomic advantage, such as Venezuela and Iran. , to the block facing Anglo-imperial hegemony.
Threats from just flirting with a new financial architecture are sure to come at critical moments, but there are systemic problems in the global economic balance that could delay and even impede a normal stabilization of the digital yuan on an international scale.
Russian economist Mikhail Khazin explains that the Bretton Woods model includes
“A system to balance all productive and financial flows. That is, it means that even if the product flows are not balanced (well, for example, the United States consumes significantly more goods than they produce), then the balance is made through financial flows. Including those created by issue ”.
He argues that the balancing mechanism of this model "has been broken", and provides some interesting information:
“For example, there are only two figures: the participation of the financial sector in the redistribution of profits today is around 50%, and for its normal operation today it is necessary that it be already less than 100%. And the US participation in world GDP is already less than 20% (that is, less than that of the USSR in the 80s of the last century), and at the beginning of the project, in 1944, more than 50% ”.
Khazin emphasizes that the global economy based on the Bretton Woods agreements is no longer effective, since the balance he promised between the production of goods and services has been overwhelmed by Western financial capital, which distorted through of the issuance of dollars (or Eurodollars) "significantly flows of goods".
That is why the stabilization of a new financial mechanism, which replaces the previous one, can take decades, when “then automatically the economic system will begin to return to a balanced state. In particular, household expenditures and incomes around the world will become consistent, structural imbalances will, in many ways, level off naturally. ”
Hence, "the rational solution is that the global equilibrium system (which cannot be restored) needs to be replaced by various regional systems." In this sense, and as we have been exposing, China "is creating the right tool", in the opinion of Khazin and other economic and geopolitical analysts.
Building an alternative system takes time. Venezuela and other countries that are seeking to escape from the dollar networks cannot wait for the consolidation of the digital renminbi. Rather, they should accelerate regional mechanisms that connect jointly with the Chinese initiative. Tools are available; what is needed, explicitly in Venezuela, is an economic project to promote them.
https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/a- ... a0264b92a9
Google Translator
Mission Truth
Jul 15 · 6 min read
By Ernesto Cazal
The renminbi or digital yuan is China's next financial project. Image: Crypto 247
Venezuelans ask ourselves how we can challenge the financial power of the United States, whose currency, the dollar, remains afloat because it is backed by the transaction of oil and other commodities , in addition to the hackneyed argument that it generates "confidence" in investors and accounts with a backup army deployed worldwide.
It is not an easy task for a peripheral-oil country like Venezuela to get around the ins and outs of the US-dominated financial system, supported by the Eurodollar. When President Hugo Chávez proposed an alternative regional exchange currency (SUCRE), he warned, among other things, that a scenario of suffocation of commercial transactions and local currency was an example of how a country can be extorted or destroyed and its population.
The interest of the Venezuelan state, led by Nicolás Maduro, to trade freely has also led to experiencing financial mechanisms (Petro) and to strengthening its strategic alliances with national powers that are on the rise in the multipolar struggle. China stands out for its loose manufacturing economy and its global project, the Belt and Road Initiative (ICR), which obviously has an important economic interest for the Asian country and geopolitical and geoeconomic ramifications.
The People's Republic, in its assumption as the main world economic power, includes a financial alternative to its project, which attracts Venezuela and many other countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia since it avoids the use of the dollar as an ongoing currency, always instrumented by the United States at their convenience.
Know the digital yuan
The launch of a sovereign Chinese digital currency, announced a few weeks ago by 2022, is intended to replace paper, an issue that could change the global economic balance definitively towards the Asian side.
The People's Bank of China is currently testing the digital yuan in four cities in the country: Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong'an. That is why Beijing has been reluctant to the circulation of other currencies such as Bitcoin, a direct competitor to the Chinese financial project.
The Chinese digital currency is already being tested in four cities in the People's Republic. Image: Coin Mod
The digital renminbi will be directly connected to the phone number of the owner of a smartphone, while the transactions take place through an application. Users will be able to transfer money from account to account by crashing their phones. You do not need banks as intermediaries.
This initiative would provide the opportunity to call many countries to the technological and monetary framework that China seeks as an economic power, through a network of available blockchains. Not surprisingly, Iran has just strengthened its relations with the Xi Jinping government, as have other states in Africa and Asia. Venezuela, very surely, will enter that orbit as a mechanism against the financial blockade.
At first glance, it seems the ideal currency for Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and other states, financially encircled via unilateral coercive measures issued from Washington, to be able to trade seamlessly with other countries. What does this mean, in quantitative terms ?
The 10 countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) represent 15.1% of Chinese trade; on the other hand, the exchange with South Korea and Japan is 13.7%; And the trade relationship with Russia means another 15%: almost 50% of the nations closest to China would be willing to abandon commercial transactions in US dollars and Eurodollars and use the digital yuan.
To this we must add that the ICR embraces around 160 partners on a global scale (between countries and multinational organizations).
Likewise, today's dollarized commodities will be offered in renminbi and exchanged for crypto-yuan. In fact, the prices of gold, oil and iron in the Chinese currency are already a fact. The current pandemic has accelerated this process with different sectors of raw materials.
As important as the above, and to the extent that the digital yuan gains strength in international trade, it is that China consolidates it as a reserve currency. This would cause an earthquake in the financial architecture of the dollar, especially if the People's Republic decides to get rid of the large reserves in US Treasury bonds (about 1.2 trillion dollars) that it still owns.
The truth is that the digital yuan, supported by the goods and services of the mega factory 'Made in China', could also incorporate gold as financial support , although this has not been confirmed. However, its value would correspond to what the global money market dictates, such as Bitcoin.
While there is some enthusiasm for a scenario in which China takes over the world economic and financial baton, is it really as simple as it is written and read?
A stage in motion
The path of this digital currency towards its internationalization will not be smooth. In fact, it has been torpedoed by the Donald Trump administration since it launched the so-called trade war against Beijing.
Simultaneously, the United States has been mounting a multifactorial offensive, with an emphasis on the economic-financial-commercial, on the different countries that represent a strategic interest for the Asian giant and that potentially represent a geopolitical and geoeconomic advantage, such as Venezuela and Iran. , to the block facing Anglo-imperial hegemony.
Threats from just flirting with a new financial architecture are sure to come at critical moments, but there are systemic problems in the global economic balance that could delay and even impede a normal stabilization of the digital yuan on an international scale.
Russian economist Mikhail Khazin explains that the Bretton Woods model includes
“A system to balance all productive and financial flows. That is, it means that even if the product flows are not balanced (well, for example, the United States consumes significantly more goods than they produce), then the balance is made through financial flows. Including those created by issue ”.
He argues that the balancing mechanism of this model "has been broken", and provides some interesting information:
“For example, there are only two figures: the participation of the financial sector in the redistribution of profits today is around 50%, and for its normal operation today it is necessary that it be already less than 100%. And the US participation in world GDP is already less than 20% (that is, less than that of the USSR in the 80s of the last century), and at the beginning of the project, in 1944, more than 50% ”.
Khazin emphasizes that the global economy based on the Bretton Woods agreements is no longer effective, since the balance he promised between the production of goods and services has been overwhelmed by Western financial capital, which distorted through of the issuance of dollars (or Eurodollars) "significantly flows of goods".
That is why the stabilization of a new financial mechanism, which replaces the previous one, can take decades, when “then automatically the economic system will begin to return to a balanced state. In particular, household expenditures and incomes around the world will become consistent, structural imbalances will, in many ways, level off naturally. ”
Hence, "the rational solution is that the global equilibrium system (which cannot be restored) needs to be replaced by various regional systems." In this sense, and as we have been exposing, China "is creating the right tool", in the opinion of Khazin and other economic and geopolitical analysts.
Building an alternative system takes time. Venezuela and other countries that are seeking to escape from the dollar networks cannot wait for the consolidation of the digital renminbi. Rather, they should accelerate regional mechanisms that connect jointly with the Chinese initiative. Tools are available; what is needed, explicitly in Venezuela, is an economic project to promote them.
https://medium.com/@misionverdad2012/a- ... a0264b92a9
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
U.S. Claims Diplomatic Immunity For Covid-19 - Shuts Down Chinese Consulate
On Tuesday the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas. The move comes amongst a slew of factless accusations of Chinese hacking and surveillance.
While Trump, like Biden, is using anti-China propaganda as part of his campaign, the closure of the Houston consulate has nothing to do with it. But U.S. media fail to mention the real and unreasonable motive behind this move:
The United States ordered China to close its diplomatic consulate in Houston within 72 hours, dealing another blow to the rapidly deteriorating relations between the two countries. China promptly vowed to retaliate, calling the move illegal.
The State Department said the closure was made in response to repeated Chinese violations of American sovereignty, including “massive illegal spying and influence operations.”
The unmentioned reason for the State Department's move is a squabble over virus testing and quarantining of U.S. diplomats who are supposed to return to China.
In January, when the first outbreak of Covid-19 happened in the Chinese city of Wuhan the U.S. evacuated its consulate in the city. In total some 1,300 diplomats and their family members were moved out of China in January and February.
In June, after China had defeated the outbreak, the U.S. announced that that it diplomats would return:
U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, “intends to resume operations in Wuhan in the near future”, Frank Whitaker, minister counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, said in an email to Reuters, without giving a specific date.
But by then the U.S. had become Cootiestan while China had defeated the virus. Chinese public health officials insisted on testing and quarantining everyone who entered from the U.S. to protect their country from another outbreak.
The State Department however rejected that:
The United States has postponed flights for dozens of American diplomats who had planned to return to China later this month, after failing to reach agreement with Beijing over issues including COVID-19 testing and quarantine.
...
In a previously unreported June 30 email, Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China, told the mission staff that two charter flights for diplomats returning to Shanghai and Tianjin planned for July 8 and July 10 respectively had been scrapped and would be rescheduled.
“Protecting the health and safety of our community remains our guiding principle and our top priority in this unprecedented situation,” Branstad wrote. “This means that flight plans will not be confirmed until we have reached an agreement that meets these goals.”
...
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said there had been close communication regarding the return of U.S. diplomats to China.
“The virus is still spreading overseas and China continues to be under a fair amount of pressure to prevent the import of cases from overseas,” the spokesperson said in fax response to Reuters’ questions.
“The epidemic control measures for the diplomatic corps in China are applied equally across the board. China strives to preserve its hard-won achievement in countering the virus together with the diplomatic corps, and to provide good conditions and a good living environment for everyone to work and live in China.”
I have found no U.S. media which reported on this diplomatic conflict. Only Reuters and Asia Times noted it.
China's request to test and to quarantine for fourteen days everyone who is coming from abroad is not unreasonable. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut demand similar for people coming from Florida and Texas. China has already had an expensive second outbreak with several hundred of cases in Beijing that was traced back to a visitor from abroad. It does not want another one.
The U.S. says that its diplomats are immune under the Vienna Conventions. But Chinese officials claim that the virus is not a party of those agreements. They insist that legal and disease immunity are not the same:
While Beijing agrees that US envoys and emissaries should retain their diplomatic immunity, China’s public health authority insists no one is immune to the highly contagious novel coronavirus, and that the nation must not expose itself to the risk of returning Americans infecting the local population.
...
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday that Beijing would accord courteous and equitable treatment to all foreign representatives. He also revealed that his ministry had already “fast-tracked procedures” and helped a “plane load” of US diplomats to return to China at the end of May, without confirming if they had all been quarantined upon arrival.
On his Weibo account, Zhao also took a swipe at Washington’s call for China to be more hospitable, saying if US President Donald Trump wants Americans to feel more welcome elsewhere, he should “make America well again,” alluding to the alarming resurgence of the respiratory disease across the country.
But other posts on Weibo noted that when the first batch of about 60 US diplomats flew into Tianjin at the end of May, they were immediately flanked by more than 150 paramedics in hazmat gear, who whisked them to a fully-enclosed facility on the tarmac to collect their saliva samples. These Americans then spent more hours than their flight to China waiting in a partitioned lounge before Chinese doctors could given them a clean slate and allow them to leave.
The squabble continues. The U.S. diplomats have not returned and the consulate in Wuhan has still not reopened. The U.S. order to close the Chinese consulate in Houston is obviously an attempt to press China into lifting its testing and quarantine demands for U.S. diplomats.
The BBC falsely claimed that the Houston consulate was ordered to close because of a fire:
That however turns cause and effect around. The consulate in Houston started to burn its confidential papers after it was informed that it had to close within 72 hours:
The consulate was informed of the decision Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, calling it "an outrageous and unjustified move that will sabotage relations between the two countries."
...
KHOU-TV reports authorities responded to reports of a fire at the Chinese Consulate. Witnesses said people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, the Houston Chronicle reported, citing police.
...
Houston police said in a tweet that officers responded to "a meet the firefighter" call at the Chinese Consulate building at 3417 Montrose Blvd. The tweet said smoke was observed in an outdoor courtyard area, and that officers were not allowed to enter the building.
The real motive for the consulate closure can be discerned from the State Department's coded statement:
The U.S., in a brief statement, did not provide any details on why the consulate in Texas was targeted.
"The United States will not tolerate (China's) violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated (its) unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior," said the statement, which was attributed to State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus.
The "violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people" are an obvious reference to the Chinese demands towards arriving diplomats.
In a tit for tat reaction the Chinese government is likely to permanently close the U.S. consulate in Wuhan:
Late on Tuesday in Houston, media reported that documents had been burned in a courtyard at the consulate. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the consulate was operating normally, declining to comment further on those reports.
...
“We urge the U.S. to immediately revoke this erroneous decision. Should it insist on going down this wrong path, China will react with firm countermeasures.”
...
A source with direct knowledge of the matter said China was considering closing the U.S. consulate in Wuhan, where the State Department withdrew staff and their families early this year amid the coronavirus outbreak that first emerged in the central city.
Closing the consulate in Wuhan will of course solve the problem for the U.S. diplomats who left Wuhan during the January outbreak and now expect to be allowed to return without being tested.
That all U.S. media which I have read on the issue have failed to mention the diplomatic spat about testing should be of concern.
But it of course relieves them from explaining the unreasonable behavior of the State Department which demands that its cooties infested diplomats can return to China without taking the necessary precautions.
Posted by b on July 22, 2020 at 16:36 UTC | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/07/u ... .html#more
On Tuesday the U.S. government ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas. The move comes amongst a slew of factless accusations of Chinese hacking and surveillance.
While Trump, like Biden, is using anti-China propaganda as part of his campaign, the closure of the Houston consulate has nothing to do with it. But U.S. media fail to mention the real and unreasonable motive behind this move:
The United States ordered China to close its diplomatic consulate in Houston within 72 hours, dealing another blow to the rapidly deteriorating relations between the two countries. China promptly vowed to retaliate, calling the move illegal.
The State Department said the closure was made in response to repeated Chinese violations of American sovereignty, including “massive illegal spying and influence operations.”
The unmentioned reason for the State Department's move is a squabble over virus testing and quarantining of U.S. diplomats who are supposed to return to China.
In January, when the first outbreak of Covid-19 happened in the Chinese city of Wuhan the U.S. evacuated its consulate in the city. In total some 1,300 diplomats and their family members were moved out of China in January and February.
In June, after China had defeated the outbreak, the U.S. announced that that it diplomats would return:
U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, “intends to resume operations in Wuhan in the near future”, Frank Whitaker, minister counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, said in an email to Reuters, without giving a specific date.
But by then the U.S. had become Cootiestan while China had defeated the virus. Chinese public health officials insisted on testing and quarantining everyone who entered from the U.S. to protect their country from another outbreak.
The State Department however rejected that:
The United States has postponed flights for dozens of American diplomats who had planned to return to China later this month, after failing to reach agreement with Beijing over issues including COVID-19 testing and quarantine.
...
In a previously unreported June 30 email, Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China, told the mission staff that two charter flights for diplomats returning to Shanghai and Tianjin planned for July 8 and July 10 respectively had been scrapped and would be rescheduled.
“Protecting the health and safety of our community remains our guiding principle and our top priority in this unprecedented situation,” Branstad wrote. “This means that flight plans will not be confirmed until we have reached an agreement that meets these goals.”
...
A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said there had been close communication regarding the return of U.S. diplomats to China.
“The virus is still spreading overseas and China continues to be under a fair amount of pressure to prevent the import of cases from overseas,” the spokesperson said in fax response to Reuters’ questions.
“The epidemic control measures for the diplomatic corps in China are applied equally across the board. China strives to preserve its hard-won achievement in countering the virus together with the diplomatic corps, and to provide good conditions and a good living environment for everyone to work and live in China.”
I have found no U.S. media which reported on this diplomatic conflict. Only Reuters and Asia Times noted it.
China's request to test and to quarantine for fourteen days everyone who is coming from abroad is not unreasonable. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut demand similar for people coming from Florida and Texas. China has already had an expensive second outbreak with several hundred of cases in Beijing that was traced back to a visitor from abroad. It does not want another one.
The U.S. says that its diplomats are immune under the Vienna Conventions. But Chinese officials claim that the virus is not a party of those agreements. They insist that legal and disease immunity are not the same:
While Beijing agrees that US envoys and emissaries should retain their diplomatic immunity, China’s public health authority insists no one is immune to the highly contagious novel coronavirus, and that the nation must not expose itself to the risk of returning Americans infecting the local population.
...
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday that Beijing would accord courteous and equitable treatment to all foreign representatives. He also revealed that his ministry had already “fast-tracked procedures” and helped a “plane load” of US diplomats to return to China at the end of May, without confirming if they had all been quarantined upon arrival.
On his Weibo account, Zhao also took a swipe at Washington’s call for China to be more hospitable, saying if US President Donald Trump wants Americans to feel more welcome elsewhere, he should “make America well again,” alluding to the alarming resurgence of the respiratory disease across the country.
But other posts on Weibo noted that when the first batch of about 60 US diplomats flew into Tianjin at the end of May, they were immediately flanked by more than 150 paramedics in hazmat gear, who whisked them to a fully-enclosed facility on the tarmac to collect their saliva samples. These Americans then spent more hours than their flight to China waiting in a partitioned lounge before Chinese doctors could given them a clean slate and allow them to leave.
The squabble continues. The U.S. diplomats have not returned and the consulate in Wuhan has still not reopened. The U.S. order to close the Chinese consulate in Houston is obviously an attempt to press China into lifting its testing and quarantine demands for U.S. diplomats.
The BBC falsely claimed that the Houston consulate was ordered to close because of a fire:
That however turns cause and effect around. The consulate in Houston started to burn its confidential papers after it was informed that it had to close within 72 hours:
The consulate was informed of the decision Tuesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, calling it "an outrageous and unjustified move that will sabotage relations between the two countries."
...
KHOU-TV reports authorities responded to reports of a fire at the Chinese Consulate. Witnesses said people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, the Houston Chronicle reported, citing police.
...
Houston police said in a tweet that officers responded to "a meet the firefighter" call at the Chinese Consulate building at 3417 Montrose Blvd. The tweet said smoke was observed in an outdoor courtyard area, and that officers were not allowed to enter the building.
The real motive for the consulate closure can be discerned from the State Department's coded statement:
The U.S., in a brief statement, did not provide any details on why the consulate in Texas was targeted.
"The United States will not tolerate (China's) violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated (its) unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior," said the statement, which was attributed to State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus.
The "violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people" are an obvious reference to the Chinese demands towards arriving diplomats.
In a tit for tat reaction the Chinese government is likely to permanently close the U.S. consulate in Wuhan:
Late on Tuesday in Houston, media reported that documents had been burned in a courtyard at the consulate. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the consulate was operating normally, declining to comment further on those reports.
...
“We urge the U.S. to immediately revoke this erroneous decision. Should it insist on going down this wrong path, China will react with firm countermeasures.”
...
A source with direct knowledge of the matter said China was considering closing the U.S. consulate in Wuhan, where the State Department withdrew staff and their families early this year amid the coronavirus outbreak that first emerged in the central city.
Closing the consulate in Wuhan will of course solve the problem for the U.S. diplomats who left Wuhan during the January outbreak and now expect to be allowed to return without being tested.
That all U.S. media which I have read on the issue have failed to mention the diplomatic spat about testing should be of concern.
But it of course relieves them from explaining the unreasonable behavior of the State Department which demands that its cooties infested diplomats can return to China without taking the necessary precautions.
Posted by b on July 22, 2020 at 16:36 UTC | Permalink
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/07/u ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
China marching to Mars for humanity's better shared future
(Xinhua) 16:54, July 23, 2020
A Mars probe is launched on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province, July 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Cai Yang)
With the carrier rocket Long March-5 lifting off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Thursday, China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 has embarked on its maiden voyage to brave the challenge of orbiting, landing and deploying a rover on the red planet in one single mission.
"Tianwen," the name of China's Martian exploration project, comes from the long poem "Tianwen," meaning Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven, written by one of the greatest poets in ancient China.
The triple-task expedition of Tianwen-1 marks another milestone in China's aerospace science and technology development, as well as a fresh daring adventure in the country's long march of outer space exploration following its lunar program and the endeavor to build a space station.
Looking up into the starlit sky, the human race has had a long-standing obsession with Mars. It is now widely known that Mars and Earth, both with warm temperatures, thick and wet atmospheres around the surface, are like twin brothers who have grown apart. Scientists always have a strong interest in exploring this planetary sibling to discover secrets of the origin of life, and decode more mysteries of the vast universe.
Every 26 months, Mars reaches the closest point to Earth in its orbit, opening up a launch window that will allow spacecraft to complete this interplanetary voyage with the least amount of fuel. Recent weeks fall in the latest window.
So far, three countries -- the United Arab Emirates, China and the United States -- have either launched or prepared to send up unmanned spacecraft to the planet more than 55 million km away.
Since mankind's first trial to launch a Mars probe in 1960, a total of 15 landing missions have successfully entered the atmosphere of the planet, but only eight missions have finally landed and carried out exploration work. Thus, Mars has become a "probe cemetery" due to a failure rate as high as nearly 50 percent. If China can succeed this time, it will join the rank of the world's pioneering Martian explorers.
China's march to Mars has been closely followed around the world. While many expect China to succeed, some are seeking to distort its purpose of developing space science and technology, demonizing the country's exploration programs as a display of ambition to challenge America's leadership in space, and to conquer what many call the final frontier of humanity.
That zero-sum mentality belongs to the Cold War era when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a you-win-I-lose space race, but does not fit in with this age when outer space exploration ought to be about pooling global talents and resources for the benefit of the entire human race.
China's steadfast commitments to space probes and the development of the related science and technologies are not only aimed at lifting its own capacity to go deeper into space, but also at serving the progress of all mankind.
As China strives to explore the heavens, it has shared with the international community the scientific findings during its lunar exploration, and provided free satellite navigation services to global users via its Beidou global positioning system. It has also invited UN member states to conduct scientific experiments aboard the China space station, which is expected to be completed around 2022. In stark contrast, the U.S. Congress legislated in 2011 to ban any form of space cooperation with China.
With an explosion of human population, declining natural resources and a daunting global challenge of climate change on Earth, the ultimate goal of space exploration to planets like Mars is to secure the longer-term survival and development of mankind.
Therefore, outer space should not be allowed to become a new battleground for another Cold War, but a whole new frontier where all can work together for the better future of the human race. Zero summers in countries like the United States should abandon their confrontational attitude, and contribute to an open and inclusive international space cooperation.
In the sci-fi movie "The Martian," Mark Watney, a botanist who is trapped on Mars, eventually returns to Earth under joint rescue operation by China and the United States; in another film "The Wandering Earth," people of all colors and nationalities work together and save Earth.
That message of cooperation conveyed in those motion pictures echoes the ideal of China's space enterprise, and should be the very spirit that guides humanity's space endeavor for their better, shared future.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0723/c90000-9714148.html
(Xinhua) 16:54, July 23, 2020
A Mars probe is launched on a Long March-5 rocket from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province, July 23, 2020. (Xinhua/Cai Yang)
With the carrier rocket Long March-5 lifting off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on Thursday, China's Mars probe Tianwen-1 has embarked on its maiden voyage to brave the challenge of orbiting, landing and deploying a rover on the red planet in one single mission.
"Tianwen," the name of China's Martian exploration project, comes from the long poem "Tianwen," meaning Heavenly Questions or Questions to Heaven, written by one of the greatest poets in ancient China.
The triple-task expedition of Tianwen-1 marks another milestone in China's aerospace science and technology development, as well as a fresh daring adventure in the country's long march of outer space exploration following its lunar program and the endeavor to build a space station.
Looking up into the starlit sky, the human race has had a long-standing obsession with Mars. It is now widely known that Mars and Earth, both with warm temperatures, thick and wet atmospheres around the surface, are like twin brothers who have grown apart. Scientists always have a strong interest in exploring this planetary sibling to discover secrets of the origin of life, and decode more mysteries of the vast universe.
Every 26 months, Mars reaches the closest point to Earth in its orbit, opening up a launch window that will allow spacecraft to complete this interplanetary voyage with the least amount of fuel. Recent weeks fall in the latest window.
So far, three countries -- the United Arab Emirates, China and the United States -- have either launched or prepared to send up unmanned spacecraft to the planet more than 55 million km away.
Since mankind's first trial to launch a Mars probe in 1960, a total of 15 landing missions have successfully entered the atmosphere of the planet, but only eight missions have finally landed and carried out exploration work. Thus, Mars has become a "probe cemetery" due to a failure rate as high as nearly 50 percent. If China can succeed this time, it will join the rank of the world's pioneering Martian explorers.
China's march to Mars has been closely followed around the world. While many expect China to succeed, some are seeking to distort its purpose of developing space science and technology, demonizing the country's exploration programs as a display of ambition to challenge America's leadership in space, and to conquer what many call the final frontier of humanity.
That zero-sum mentality belongs to the Cold War era when the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a you-win-I-lose space race, but does not fit in with this age when outer space exploration ought to be about pooling global talents and resources for the benefit of the entire human race.
China's steadfast commitments to space probes and the development of the related science and technologies are not only aimed at lifting its own capacity to go deeper into space, but also at serving the progress of all mankind.
As China strives to explore the heavens, it has shared with the international community the scientific findings during its lunar exploration, and provided free satellite navigation services to global users via its Beidou global positioning system. It has also invited UN member states to conduct scientific experiments aboard the China space station, which is expected to be completed around 2022. In stark contrast, the U.S. Congress legislated in 2011 to ban any form of space cooperation with China.
With an explosion of human population, declining natural resources and a daunting global challenge of climate change on Earth, the ultimate goal of space exploration to planets like Mars is to secure the longer-term survival and development of mankind.
Therefore, outer space should not be allowed to become a new battleground for another Cold War, but a whole new frontier where all can work together for the better future of the human race. Zero summers in countries like the United States should abandon their confrontational attitude, and contribute to an open and inclusive international space cooperation.
In the sci-fi movie "The Martian," Mark Watney, a botanist who is trapped on Mars, eventually returns to Earth under joint rescue operation by China and the United States; in another film "The Wandering Earth," people of all colors and nationalities work together and save Earth.
That message of cooperation conveyed in those motion pictures echoes the ideal of China's space enterprise, and should be the very spirit that guides humanity's space endeavor for their better, shared future.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0723/c90000-9714148.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
Latest on the novel coronavirus outbreak
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2020-08-04 08:00
The novel coronavirus has spread across China and beyond.
Aug 4
Outside China
The latest figures reported by each government's health authority as of Aug 4, 2020.
- Latin America exceeds 5 million COVID-19 cases, Reuters tally shows
- WHO urges caution about hopes for COVID-19 vaccine (Read more)
- Italy's coronavirus reproduction rate approaches 1.0 threshold (Read more)
- Pandemic could set back Peru's poverty fight a decade: official (Read more)
- White House mandates random coronavirus tests for staffers (Read more)
- Plasma therapy cures critically ill COVID-19 patient in Nepal (Read more)
China
Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, Aug 3, 2020.
- Chinese mainland reports 36 new COVID-19 cases, with 30 locally transmitted (Read more)
- Dalian, Liaoning province, has completed the first round of its massive coronavirus testing program in both urban and rural areas (Read more)
- Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has recorded its largest number of daily cases discharged from hospitals (Read more)
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20200 ... 5d877.html
***********************************************
Public health or economic growth that's the White House's dilemma
SFCCN.COM | Updated: 2020-08-04 08:12
A nurse wearing personal protective equipment watches an ambulance driving away outside of Elmhurst Hospital during the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Queens borough of New York, US, April 20, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]
The United States economy declined about 9 percent in the second quarter year-on-year. But that's the best result it could expect, as the US administration has resorted to unprecedented quantitative easing to bail out the economy.
With each US citizen receiving a $1,200 dole from the government to increase spending, their disposable income rose by 12 percent in the second quarter, despite rising unemployment following the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Were it not for the injection of liquidity, the world's largest economy could have shrunk by as much as 20 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.
In spite of the US dollar enjoying advantages as a global currency, a limitless quantitative easing policy is not sustainable in the long run, as it will unavoidably add to the woes of the US government which has already been heavily in debt.
The pandemic's impact on the US economy will be heavier and last longer than that on the Chinese economy, which has rebounded quickly, from minus 6.8 percent growth in the first quarter to a 3.2 percent growth in the second quarter. This is not only because China has contained the spread of the virus to a large extent, but also because of their different economic structures.
The service sector accounts for 77 percent of the US economy, while it is 52 percent for China; and consumption contributes to about 68 percent of the US economy's growth as against 39 percent for China's. As both the service and consumption sectors have borne the brunt of the outbreak, if the US administration fails to control the pandemic, its economy will continue to suffer.
What is also predictable is that with the presidential elections due in the US in November, the administration will continue to turn a deaf ear to warnings from health professionals and leave no stone unturned to revive the economy.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20200 ... 5df2a.html
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2020-08-04 08:00
The novel coronavirus has spread across China and beyond.
Aug 4
Outside China
The latest figures reported by each government's health authority as of Aug 4, 2020.
- Latin America exceeds 5 million COVID-19 cases, Reuters tally shows
- WHO urges caution about hopes for COVID-19 vaccine (Read more)
- Italy's coronavirus reproduction rate approaches 1.0 threshold (Read more)
- Pandemic could set back Peru's poverty fight a decade: official (Read more)
- White House mandates random coronavirus tests for staffers (Read more)
- Plasma therapy cures critically ill COVID-19 patient in Nepal (Read more)
China
Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, Aug 3, 2020.
- Chinese mainland reports 36 new COVID-19 cases, with 30 locally transmitted (Read more)
- Dalian, Liaoning province, has completed the first round of its massive coronavirus testing program in both urban and rural areas (Read more)
- Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has recorded its largest number of daily cases discharged from hospitals (Read more)
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20200 ... 5d877.html
***********************************************
Public health or economic growth that's the White House's dilemma
SFCCN.COM | Updated: 2020-08-04 08:12
A nurse wearing personal protective equipment watches an ambulance driving away outside of Elmhurst Hospital during the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Queens borough of New York, US, April 20, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]
The United States economy declined about 9 percent in the second quarter year-on-year. But that's the best result it could expect, as the US administration has resorted to unprecedented quantitative easing to bail out the economy.
With each US citizen receiving a $1,200 dole from the government to increase spending, their disposable income rose by 12 percent in the second quarter, despite rising unemployment following the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Were it not for the injection of liquidity, the world's largest economy could have shrunk by as much as 20 percent year-on-year in the second quarter.
In spite of the US dollar enjoying advantages as a global currency, a limitless quantitative easing policy is not sustainable in the long run, as it will unavoidably add to the woes of the US government which has already been heavily in debt.
The pandemic's impact on the US economy will be heavier and last longer than that on the Chinese economy, which has rebounded quickly, from minus 6.8 percent growth in the first quarter to a 3.2 percent growth in the second quarter. This is not only because China has contained the spread of the virus to a large extent, but also because of their different economic structures.
The service sector accounts for 77 percent of the US economy, while it is 52 percent for China; and consumption contributes to about 68 percent of the US economy's growth as against 39 percent for China's. As both the service and consumption sectors have borne the brunt of the outbreak, if the US administration fails to control the pandemic, its economy will continue to suffer.
What is also predictable is that with the presidential elections due in the US in November, the administration will continue to turn a deaf ear to warnings from health professionals and leave no stone unturned to revive the economy.
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20200 ... 5df2a.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
Xi Jinping: on the new horizons of contemporary Marxist economic policy
In n. 12/2020 of the Qiushi magazine an important speech by Secretary General Xi Jinping was published, structured in twelve questions and answers, entitled ' Ceaselessly exploring the new horizons of contemporary Marxist economic policy' . This speech was given by Xi Jinping on November 23, 2015 at the 28th Collective Study [1] of the 18th Politburo on the basic principles and methodology of Marxist economics. [...]
QUESTION 1: WHY STUDY MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMICS?
The purpose of organizing this study is to strengthen the study and understanding of the fundamental principles of Marxism. Through the revision of the Marxist political economy, we must deepen our understanding of the laws of economic development and improve our ability to guide China's economic development.
Now, during the mutation of the world economy, being able to steer well the great ship of our country's economy is an important test for our party. Coping with the complex national and international economic situation and the different economic phenomena, learning the basic principles and methodology of Marxist political economy will help us to master the methods of scientific economic analysis, understand the process of economic movement, master the laws of social development and economic, improve the ability to control the socialist market economy and better answer the theoretical and practical questions of China's economic development.
QUESTION 2: WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY?
Marxist political economy is an important part of Marxism. It is also a necessary subject for us to adhere to Marxism and develop it.
Based on the world view and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, Marx and Engels criticized and continued the ideological achievements of classical economics, particularly the British one, and founded Marxist political economy through in-depth research on human economic activities. This has made us aware of the laws of economic movement in human society and especially in capitalist society. Engels affirmed that "all the theories of the proletarian party derive from the study of political economy". Lenin regarded political economy as "the deepest, most complete and detailed proof and application" of Marxist theory.
There are currently various types of economic theories, but the foundation of our political economy can only be Marxist political economy, not other economic theories.
QUESTION 3: IS MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY OBSOLETE ?
Some people believe that the Marxist political economy is obsolete and that ' Capital ' is obsolete. This conclusion is arbitrary and wrong.
Putting Marxist political economy aside, from the point of view of the international financial crisis, many capitalist countries have continued to suffer from economic recessions, severe unemployment problems, greater polarization and deepening social conflicts. The facts show that the intrinsic contradiction between the socialization of production and the private possession of the means of production still exists in capitalism, but the ways in which they are expressed and the characteristics of this contradiction have differentiated.
After the international financial crisis, many Western scholars are also re-studying Marxist political economy and ' Capital ' to reflect on the disadvantages of capitalism. Last year, ' Capital in the 21st century', written by French scholar Thomas Piketty, has sparked widespread discussion in the international academic community. He used detailed data to show that the degree of inequality in the United States and other Western countries has reached or exceeded the highest level in history. Piketty believes that uncontrolled capitalism has exacerbated wealth inequalities and that it will continue to deteriorate. His analysis was carried out primarily in the field of distribution and did not involve much more fundamental ownership issues, but the conclusions he reached deserve our deep consideration.
QUESTION 4: IN THE STUDY, RESEARCH AND APPLICATION OF THE MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY, WHAT RESULTS HAS OUR PARTY GET?
Comrade Mao Zedong has studied ' Capital ' four times and has hosted several seminars on the ' Manual of Political Economy'Soviet, emphasizing that "the study of questions of political economy has great theoretical and practical significance". He creatively proposed a new democratic economic program during the 'New Democracy' period. In the process of exploring the road of socialist construction he advanced original visions on the development of our country's economy, such as the theory of the basic contradiction of socialist society, general planning, attention to global balance, agriculture as a foundation , industry as a driving factor, its coordination with agriculture and the development of light and heavy industry. This is the creative development advanced by our party in Marxist political economy.
Since the third plenary session of the 11th Party Central Committee, our party has combined the fundamental principles of Marxist political economy with the new practice of reform and openness to continuously enrich and develop Marxist political economy. After the approval of the ' Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Reform of the Economic System ' in October 1984, Comrade Deng Xiaoping commented: “I have written a first draft of political economy, which is a political economy that combines the fundamental principles of Marxism and the practice of Chinese socialism ”.
For more than 30 years, with the continued deepening of reforms and openness, we have achieved many important theoretical achievements in contemporary Chinese Marxist political economy, such as theories about the nature of socialism, the basic economic system in the primary stage of socialism and the theories on the definition and implementation of an innovative, coordinated, ecological and shared development; the development of a socialist market economy, which allows the market to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources and gives a better game to the role of government; the theories on the economic development of China entering a new normal. Theories on promoting the coordination of new industrialization, computerization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, theories on the characteristics of property, the rights to procure and manage land contracted by farmers and theories on how to make good use of the two markets, national and international; theories about the promotion of equity and social justice and the gradual realization of a common prosperity for all the people,etc .
These theoretical results were not discussed by the classical Marxist writers and we had no practice and knowledge in this area before the reform and opening up . They are political economies that adapt to national conditions and the characteristics of the times in contemporary China. Not only have they strongly guided China's practice of economic development, but they are also pioneers of the new boundaries of Marxist political economy.
QUESTION 5: HOW TO JOIN THE THOUGHT OF DEVELOPMENT CENTERED ON THE PEOPLE?
People-centered development is the fundamental position of Marxist political economy.
Marx and Engels stressed: "The proletariat movement is the movement for the independence and well-being of the vast majority of the population." In the future, "production will aim for the prosperity of all people". Comrade Deng Xiaoping stressed that the essence of socialism is to liberate and develop productive forces, to eliminate exploitation and polarization, and ultimately to achieve common prosperity.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that it is necessary to adhere to the concept of people-centered development, promote their well-being and make steady progress in the direction of common prosperity as the starting point and goal of economic development. We must never forget this point: we must firmly adhere to this fundamental position when we distribute economic work, formulate economic policies and promote economic development.
QUESTION 6: HOW TO PERSIST IN LEADING AND PROMOTING THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA WITH NEW CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT?
In response to the new changes in China's economic development context […], the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Party Central Committee proposed establishing and adhering to the concepts of innovative, coordinated, ecological, open and shared development .
These five development concepts are based on a deep synthesis of the experience and lessons of domestic and foreign development and an in-depth analysis of the general trend of it. They collectively reflect our party's new understanding of the laws of Chinese economic development and are intertwined with Marxist views of political economy. The points of view are the same. For example, Marx and Engels imagined that in the future society "all people share the benefits created by all", "people are directly natural beings" and "natural history and human history limit each other".
At the same time, these five development concepts are also a sublimation of the perceptual knowledge we have acquired in promoting economic development and a theoretical synthesis of our practice of promoting it. We must persist in using the new concepts to guide and promote China's economic development.
QUESTION 7: WHY It SHOULD SUPPORT AND IMPROVE THE ECONOMIC BASE OF THE SOCIALIST?
Marxist political economy believes that ownership of the means of production is the heart of the relations of production and determines the fundamental nature and direction of the development of society.
After reform and opening up, our party summarized both positive and negative experiences, established the basic economic system for the primary stage of socialism, emphasized adherence to public property as a pillar and the common development of multiple proprietary models and made it clear that both publicly owned and non-public economies are socialist market economies.
We need to firmly consolidate and develop the public sector of the economy, encourage, support and lead the development of the non-public sector and promote various ownership systems to complement each other's strengths, promoting and developing them synergistically. At the same time, we must be very clear that China's basic economic system is an important pillar of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the foundation of the socialist market economic system. The dominant position of public ownership cannot be shakenand the leading role of the state economy cannot be shaken. This is an institutional guarantee to ensure that people of all ethnic groups in our country share the fruits of development, but also an important guarantee to consolidate the party's government position and join the Chinese socialist system.
QUESTION 8: HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE CHINESE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM?
Marxist political economy believes that distribution is determined by production [ … ] Starting from the reality of our country, we have established a method whereby distribution based on work is the main way and in the meantime other ways of distribution coexist.
Practice has shown that this institutional set-up is able to mobilize enthusiasm from all directions and promotes overall efficiency and balance. For various reasons, there are still some outstanding problems in our country's income distribution, mainly the growing income gap, the low proportion of work pay in the primary distribution and the low proportion of residents' income in the national income distribution. In this regard, we must attach great importance to efforts to promote the synchronization of income growth of residents with economic growth, increase in labor remuneration and increase in labor productivity, continue to improve systems, mechanisms and specific policies,income gap .
QUESTION 9: HOW TO SUPPORT AND IMPROVE THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF THE SOCIALIST MARKET?
The development of a market economy under socialist conditions is a great pioneering work of our party.
A key factor in the great success of China's economic development is that we have not only brought into play the strengths of the market economy, but also the advantages of the socialist system. We are developing a market economy under the main premise of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system. We must never forget "socialism" is the modifying attribute.
The reason for saying that this is a socialist market economy is to support the superiority of our system and effectively prevent the disadvantages of the capitalist market economy. We must insist on dialectics and the "theory of two points [2] ", continue to work hard on the combination of the basic socialist system and the market economy, and give the maximum advantage to both. We must not only achieve an "effective market", but also a "promising government", and strive to solve this global economic problem in practice.
QUESTION 10: WHY It JOIN THE NATIONAL POLICY FOR OPENING?
Marxist political economy believes that human society will eventually pass from the history of all individual nations to the history of the world.
At the moment, our country has close ties to the world like never before. The influence of our economy on the world economy and the influence of the world economy on our economy are unprecedented. In the conditions of the development of economic globalization, we cannot engage in construction behind closed doors, but we must be good at coordinating the overall national and international situations and make good use of the two markets, domestic and foreign.
It is necessary to follow the trend of the Chinese economy to integrate deeply into the world economy, develop a higher level open economy, actively participate in global economic governance and promote the development of the international economic order in the direction of equality, justice and win - win cooperation . At the same time, we must resolutely safeguard China's development interests, actively protect ourselves from various risks, and ensure national economic security. There are many theoretical and practical issues that require in-depth study.
QUESTION 11: WHY DOES THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE SOCIALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY TAKE SPECIAL LESSONS?
We adhere to the basic principles and methodology of Marxist political economy and do not exclude reasonable elements of foreign economic theories.
Knowledge of the Western economy in matters of finance, prices, currency, markets, competition, trade, exchange rates, industries, businesses, growth, management, etc. , reflects the general laws of socialized mass production and the economy of market and should be used as a reference.
At the same time, unlike the foreign economy - especially the Western economy - we must insist on separating the wheat from the chaff, removing the falsehood and preserving the truth. We cannot copy the contents that reflect the attributes and values of the capitalist system and the substance that has the ideological color of the West.
Although economics is the study of economic issues, it cannot be separated from social policy. In teaching economics we must continue to talk about Marxist political economy and the political economy of socialism in contemporary China should talk about it in a big way, without marginalizing it.
QUESTION 12: HOW TO CONTEMPORARY OPENING NEW HORIZONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE MARXIST ECONOMY?
For Marxist political economy to have vitality, it must advance with the times.
Practice is the source of theory. It took us decades to complete the development process that developed countries have gone through for hundreds of years. China's economic development process is magnificent and its achievements have attracted worldwide attention. It contains great motivation, vitality and potential for theoretical creation.
At present, both the world economy and the Chinese economy are facing many big new questions, which require scientific theoretical answers. Based on China's national conditions and our development practices, we must thoroughly study the world economy and the new conditions and problems facing the Chinese economy, reveal new features and new laws, refine and summarize the results of the practice of Chinese economic development and update practical experience to systematization. The theory of economics in China continues to open new horizons to contemporary Chinese Marxist political economy and contributes to Chinese wisdom, innovation and development of Marxist political economy.
[1] Collective study (集体 学习) is an extremely important practice for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Since the days of the Yan'an Soviet (延安 時期), the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has established a central study group and a central group of senior cadres to guide cadres in the study of Marxism. Falling into disuse in the following decades, the collective study was taken up by Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai in study groups on economic subjects. Only with Deng Xiaoping did the CCP Central Committee Secretariat resume holding various lectures and conferences on economic, scientific and legal knowledge. For more information, see: https://chiculture.org.hk/en/china-today/1972
[2] The theory of two points, or ' dichotomy theory ', was developed by Mao Zedong in the speech ' On the ten major relations'held on the occasion of an enlarged session of the political office of the Chinese Communist Party on April 25, 1956. It is based on the relationship between the primary and secondary contradiction and the relationship between the primary and secondary aspects of the contradiction. The primary and secondary contradictions are interrelated and interdependent, influencing each other and transforming one into the other under certain conditions. The primary and secondary aspects of the contradictions are realized instead in the unity of opposites, which are mutually exclusive and implicate. The main aspect of the contradiction defines the nature of things and the main contradiction solves the problem about the development of things. Mao urges the Chinese Communists to "examine the problems comprehensively and completely".See on the topic 'On contradiction' .
Translation and notes by Davide Clementi
Original article: 12 个 问答 ， 一起 学习 习近平 总书记 关于 马克思 主义 政治 经济学 重要 讲话
https://ottobre.info/2020/08/27/xi-jinp ... emporanea/
Google Translator
In n. 12/2020 of the Qiushi magazine an important speech by Secretary General Xi Jinping was published, structured in twelve questions and answers, entitled ' Ceaselessly exploring the new horizons of contemporary Marxist economic policy' . This speech was given by Xi Jinping on November 23, 2015 at the 28th Collective Study [1] of the 18th Politburo on the basic principles and methodology of Marxist economics. [...]
QUESTION 1: WHY STUDY MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMICS?
The purpose of organizing this study is to strengthen the study and understanding of the fundamental principles of Marxism. Through the revision of the Marxist political economy, we must deepen our understanding of the laws of economic development and improve our ability to guide China's economic development.
Now, during the mutation of the world economy, being able to steer well the great ship of our country's economy is an important test for our party. Coping with the complex national and international economic situation and the different economic phenomena, learning the basic principles and methodology of Marxist political economy will help us to master the methods of scientific economic analysis, understand the process of economic movement, master the laws of social development and economic, improve the ability to control the socialist market economy and better answer the theoretical and practical questions of China's economic development.
QUESTION 2: WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY?
Marxist political economy is an important part of Marxism. It is also a necessary subject for us to adhere to Marxism and develop it.
Based on the world view and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, Marx and Engels criticized and continued the ideological achievements of classical economics, particularly the British one, and founded Marxist political economy through in-depth research on human economic activities. This has made us aware of the laws of economic movement in human society and especially in capitalist society. Engels affirmed that "all the theories of the proletarian party derive from the study of political economy". Lenin regarded political economy as "the deepest, most complete and detailed proof and application" of Marxist theory.
There are currently various types of economic theories, but the foundation of our political economy can only be Marxist political economy, not other economic theories.
QUESTION 3: IS MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY OBSOLETE ?
Some people believe that the Marxist political economy is obsolete and that ' Capital ' is obsolete. This conclusion is arbitrary and wrong.
Putting Marxist political economy aside, from the point of view of the international financial crisis, many capitalist countries have continued to suffer from economic recessions, severe unemployment problems, greater polarization and deepening social conflicts. The facts show that the intrinsic contradiction between the socialization of production and the private possession of the means of production still exists in capitalism, but the ways in which they are expressed and the characteristics of this contradiction have differentiated.
After the international financial crisis, many Western scholars are also re-studying Marxist political economy and ' Capital ' to reflect on the disadvantages of capitalism. Last year, ' Capital in the 21st century', written by French scholar Thomas Piketty, has sparked widespread discussion in the international academic community. He used detailed data to show that the degree of inequality in the United States and other Western countries has reached or exceeded the highest level in history. Piketty believes that uncontrolled capitalism has exacerbated wealth inequalities and that it will continue to deteriorate. His analysis was carried out primarily in the field of distribution and did not involve much more fundamental ownership issues, but the conclusions he reached deserve our deep consideration.
QUESTION 4: IN THE STUDY, RESEARCH AND APPLICATION OF THE MARXIST POLITICAL ECONOMY, WHAT RESULTS HAS OUR PARTY GET?
Comrade Mao Zedong has studied ' Capital ' four times and has hosted several seminars on the ' Manual of Political Economy'Soviet, emphasizing that "the study of questions of political economy has great theoretical and practical significance". He creatively proposed a new democratic economic program during the 'New Democracy' period. In the process of exploring the road of socialist construction he advanced original visions on the development of our country's economy, such as the theory of the basic contradiction of socialist society, general planning, attention to global balance, agriculture as a foundation , industry as a driving factor, its coordination with agriculture and the development of light and heavy industry. This is the creative development advanced by our party in Marxist political economy.
Since the third plenary session of the 11th Party Central Committee, our party has combined the fundamental principles of Marxist political economy with the new practice of reform and openness to continuously enrich and develop Marxist political economy. After the approval of the ' Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Reform of the Economic System ' in October 1984, Comrade Deng Xiaoping commented: “I have written a first draft of political economy, which is a political economy that combines the fundamental principles of Marxism and the practice of Chinese socialism ”.
For more than 30 years, with the continued deepening of reforms and openness, we have achieved many important theoretical achievements in contemporary Chinese Marxist political economy, such as theories about the nature of socialism, the basic economic system in the primary stage of socialism and the theories on the definition and implementation of an innovative, coordinated, ecological and shared development; the development of a socialist market economy, which allows the market to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources and gives a better game to the role of government; the theories on the economic development of China entering a new normal. Theories on promoting the coordination of new industrialization, computerization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, theories on the characteristics of property, the rights to procure and manage land contracted by farmers and theories on how to make good use of the two markets, national and international; theories about the promotion of equity and social justice and the gradual realization of a common prosperity for all the people,etc .
These theoretical results were not discussed by the classical Marxist writers and we had no practice and knowledge in this area before the reform and opening up . They are political economies that adapt to national conditions and the characteristics of the times in contemporary China. Not only have they strongly guided China's practice of economic development, but they are also pioneers of the new boundaries of Marxist political economy.
QUESTION 5: HOW TO JOIN THE THOUGHT OF DEVELOPMENT CENTERED ON THE PEOPLE?
People-centered development is the fundamental position of Marxist political economy.
Marx and Engels stressed: "The proletariat movement is the movement for the independence and well-being of the vast majority of the population." In the future, "production will aim for the prosperity of all people". Comrade Deng Xiaoping stressed that the essence of socialism is to liberate and develop productive forces, to eliminate exploitation and polarization, and ultimately to achieve common prosperity.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that it is necessary to adhere to the concept of people-centered development, promote their well-being and make steady progress in the direction of common prosperity as the starting point and goal of economic development. We must never forget this point: we must firmly adhere to this fundamental position when we distribute economic work, formulate economic policies and promote economic development.
QUESTION 6: HOW TO PERSIST IN LEADING AND PROMOTING THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA WITH NEW CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT?
In response to the new changes in China's economic development context […], the Fifth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Party Central Committee proposed establishing and adhering to the concepts of innovative, coordinated, ecological, open and shared development .
These five development concepts are based on a deep synthesis of the experience and lessons of domestic and foreign development and an in-depth analysis of the general trend of it. They collectively reflect our party's new understanding of the laws of Chinese economic development and are intertwined with Marxist views of political economy. The points of view are the same. For example, Marx and Engels imagined that in the future society "all people share the benefits created by all", "people are directly natural beings" and "natural history and human history limit each other".
At the same time, these five development concepts are also a sublimation of the perceptual knowledge we have acquired in promoting economic development and a theoretical synthesis of our practice of promoting it. We must persist in using the new concepts to guide and promote China's economic development.
QUESTION 7: WHY It SHOULD SUPPORT AND IMPROVE THE ECONOMIC BASE OF THE SOCIALIST?
Marxist political economy believes that ownership of the means of production is the heart of the relations of production and determines the fundamental nature and direction of the development of society.
After reform and opening up, our party summarized both positive and negative experiences, established the basic economic system for the primary stage of socialism, emphasized adherence to public property as a pillar and the common development of multiple proprietary models and made it clear that both publicly owned and non-public economies are socialist market economies.
We need to firmly consolidate and develop the public sector of the economy, encourage, support and lead the development of the non-public sector and promote various ownership systems to complement each other's strengths, promoting and developing them synergistically. At the same time, we must be very clear that China's basic economic system is an important pillar of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the foundation of the socialist market economic system. The dominant position of public ownership cannot be shakenand the leading role of the state economy cannot be shaken. This is an institutional guarantee to ensure that people of all ethnic groups in our country share the fruits of development, but also an important guarantee to consolidate the party's government position and join the Chinese socialist system.
QUESTION 8: HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE CHINESE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM?
Marxist political economy believes that distribution is determined by production [ … ] Starting from the reality of our country, we have established a method whereby distribution based on work is the main way and in the meantime other ways of distribution coexist.
Practice has shown that this institutional set-up is able to mobilize enthusiasm from all directions and promotes overall efficiency and balance. For various reasons, there are still some outstanding problems in our country's income distribution, mainly the growing income gap, the low proportion of work pay in the primary distribution and the low proportion of residents' income in the national income distribution. In this regard, we must attach great importance to efforts to promote the synchronization of income growth of residents with economic growth, increase in labor remuneration and increase in labor productivity, continue to improve systems, mechanisms and specific policies,income gap .
QUESTION 9: HOW TO SUPPORT AND IMPROVE THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF THE SOCIALIST MARKET?
The development of a market economy under socialist conditions is a great pioneering work of our party.
A key factor in the great success of China's economic development is that we have not only brought into play the strengths of the market economy, but also the advantages of the socialist system. We are developing a market economy under the main premise of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system. We must never forget "socialism" is the modifying attribute.
The reason for saying that this is a socialist market economy is to support the superiority of our system and effectively prevent the disadvantages of the capitalist market economy. We must insist on dialectics and the "theory of two points [2] ", continue to work hard on the combination of the basic socialist system and the market economy, and give the maximum advantage to both. We must not only achieve an "effective market", but also a "promising government", and strive to solve this global economic problem in practice.
QUESTION 10: WHY It JOIN THE NATIONAL POLICY FOR OPENING?
Marxist political economy believes that human society will eventually pass from the history of all individual nations to the history of the world.
At the moment, our country has close ties to the world like never before. The influence of our economy on the world economy and the influence of the world economy on our economy are unprecedented. In the conditions of the development of economic globalization, we cannot engage in construction behind closed doors, but we must be good at coordinating the overall national and international situations and make good use of the two markets, domestic and foreign.
It is necessary to follow the trend of the Chinese economy to integrate deeply into the world economy, develop a higher level open economy, actively participate in global economic governance and promote the development of the international economic order in the direction of equality, justice and win - win cooperation . At the same time, we must resolutely safeguard China's development interests, actively protect ourselves from various risks, and ensure national economic security. There are many theoretical and practical issues that require in-depth study.
QUESTION 11: WHY DOES THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE SOCIALIST POLITICAL ECONOMY TAKE SPECIAL LESSONS?
We adhere to the basic principles and methodology of Marxist political economy and do not exclude reasonable elements of foreign economic theories.
Knowledge of the Western economy in matters of finance, prices, currency, markets, competition, trade, exchange rates, industries, businesses, growth, management, etc. , reflects the general laws of socialized mass production and the economy of market and should be used as a reference.
At the same time, unlike the foreign economy - especially the Western economy - we must insist on separating the wheat from the chaff, removing the falsehood and preserving the truth. We cannot copy the contents that reflect the attributes and values of the capitalist system and the substance that has the ideological color of the West.
Although economics is the study of economic issues, it cannot be separated from social policy. In teaching economics we must continue to talk about Marxist political economy and the political economy of socialism in contemporary China should talk about it in a big way, without marginalizing it.
QUESTION 12: HOW TO CONTEMPORARY OPENING NEW HORIZONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE MARXIST ECONOMY?
For Marxist political economy to have vitality, it must advance with the times.
Practice is the source of theory. It took us decades to complete the development process that developed countries have gone through for hundreds of years. China's economic development process is magnificent and its achievements have attracted worldwide attention. It contains great motivation, vitality and potential for theoretical creation.
At present, both the world economy and the Chinese economy are facing many big new questions, which require scientific theoretical answers. Based on China's national conditions and our development practices, we must thoroughly study the world economy and the new conditions and problems facing the Chinese economy, reveal new features and new laws, refine and summarize the results of the practice of Chinese economic development and update practical experience to systematization. The theory of economics in China continues to open new horizons to contemporary Chinese Marxist political economy and contributes to Chinese wisdom, innovation and development of Marxist political economy.
[1] Collective study (集体 学习) is an extremely important practice for the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Since the days of the Yan'an Soviet (延安 時期), the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has established a central study group and a central group of senior cadres to guide cadres in the study of Marxism. Falling into disuse in the following decades, the collective study was taken up by Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai in study groups on economic subjects. Only with Deng Xiaoping did the CCP Central Committee Secretariat resume holding various lectures and conferences on economic, scientific and legal knowledge. For more information, see: https://chiculture.org.hk/en/china-today/1972
[2] The theory of two points, or ' dichotomy theory ', was developed by Mao Zedong in the speech ' On the ten major relations'held on the occasion of an enlarged session of the political office of the Chinese Communist Party on April 25, 1956. It is based on the relationship between the primary and secondary contradiction and the relationship between the primary and secondary aspects of the contradiction. The primary and secondary contradictions are interrelated and interdependent, influencing each other and transforming one into the other under certain conditions. The primary and secondary aspects of the contradictions are realized instead in the unity of opposites, which are mutually exclusive and implicate. The main aspect of the contradiction defines the nature of things and the main contradiction solves the problem about the development of things. Mao urges the Chinese Communists to "examine the problems comprehensively and completely".See on the topic 'On contradiction' .
Translation and notes by Davide Clementi
Original article: 12 个 问答 ， 一起 学习 习近平 总书记 关于 马克思 主义 政治 经济学 重要 讲话
https://ottobre.info/2020/08/27/xi-jinp ... emporanea/
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
China Could Sell US Sovereign Debt due to Tensions
September 6, 2020
China could gradually reduce its holdings of US Treasury bonds and notes amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington, according to a Chinese news outlet.
With Chinese-US relations deteriorating over issues such as the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, trade and technology, global financial markets are increasingly concerned that China will sell US government debt to face mounting pressure from Washington, and that could trigger disruption in global financial markets, the Global Times newspaper noted on Friday.
“China would gradually decrease its holdings of US debt to about 800 billion dollars under normal circumstances, Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Chinese media.
Of course, the proffesor adds, China could sell all of its US bonds in an extreme case, such as a military conflict, which could occur in the near future in the South China Sea region if the US Navy does not puts an end to its provocation maneuvers.
China, the second largest holder of Treasury bonds after the United States, had 1.074 billion dollars in June, less than 1.083 billion from the previous month, according to the latest official data collected by the local newspaper. The Chinese authorities have been steadily decreasing their holdings of US bonds this year, the report added.
Some market watchers suspect that Beijing has not necessarily sold US papers, as it may have used other custodians to buy US debt papers.
Analysts say that a large-scale Chinese sale, often referred to as a “nuclear option,” could trigger disruption in global financial markets.
The potential risk of default for the United States, according to the informative piece, for having sharply increased its debt until reaching approximately the same size of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a level not seen since the end of World War II and well above the internationally recognized safety line of 60%, could be another reason for Beijing to gradually reduce its position in bonds and Treasury notes from the world’s largest economy.
Finally, the report says that China is heavily exposed to the US dollar and dollar assets. In fact, its official foreign exchange reserves stood at $ 3.15 trillion at the end of July.
Featured image: US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019 (Photo: AFP)
(HispanTV)
Translation: OT/JRE
https://orinocotribune.com/china-could- ... -tensions/
The arrogance of the US, printing unlimited money with the nonchalance of a demented Roman emperor, could not go unnoticed even without current tensions, is giving China a big stick. Of course there will be reciprocal pain but Covid 19 has shown the resilience of Chinese society and economy.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: China
Washington Finally Admits it has Been Interfering in Hong Kong
September 26, 2020
By Alex Lo – Sep 25, 2020
Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee have blasted Michael Pack, the new czar of the US government’s global media services, for stymieing US influence operations in the city
American politicians sometimes become so sanctimonious they inadvertently admit to the dirty laundry of their government.
In a bipartisan grilling of Michael Pack, the new head of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, members of Congress finally owned up to the significant role agents of the American government and official media had played in fomenting unrest in Hong Kong, not only during last year’s protests and riots, but many years before that.
Time magazine had already published an expose in late June about the previous activities of US agencies in Hong Kong and Pack’s house-cleaning efforts, quite unrelated to the city. And this is the government that claims China has been trying to interfere in US domestic politics, including the coming November presidential election!
The House committee blasted Pack for sacking several top US government experts in countering Chinese propaganda, withholding funds for anti-surveillance tools for protesters, and harming American efforts to support the democracy movement in Hong Kong.
In other words, Pack sacked a few top US official propagandists and stopped funding the development and provision of cyber tools for activists against the Hong Kong government, including the police.
“I believe his [Pack’s] actions damaged support during the height of unrest in Hong Kong,” said Texas congressman Michael McCaul.
It’s worth noting that Pack only assumed office in June this year. Whatever he did only affected the agency after that time. In other words, the committee members were upset that the agency had failed to continue its good work in Hong Kong from last year, which marked the height of the unrest.
According to expert witnesses at the hearing, many protesters and journalists in Hong Kong rely on tools produced by the USAGM’s technology arm, the Open Technology Fund (OTF). “The Hong Kong protesters are protecting their identities from surveillance by OTF tools,” said Grant Turner, who was removed by Pack in August as the USAGM’s chief financial officer.
Karen Kornbluh, chairwoman of the OTF board, testified that Pack had withheld funding. “OTF has a long history of supporting internet freedom efforts, and was poised to expand its efforts in Hong Kong,” she said. “It was going to serve support for circumvention tools and expand support for digital training. And then USAGM froze, and continues to withhold, its funding.”
None of these are new; Time has already reported them. It’s nice, though, to have the US government confirm them.
(South China Morning Post)
https://orinocotribune.com/washington-f ... hong-kong/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."