China

[blindpig]

Mediated By China Iran And Saudi Arabia Restore Ties - There Are Winners And Losers

This is huge!

Regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to restore ties after years of tensions
The deal, which will see the two countries reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in China and announced Friday in a joint communique.

Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions between the regional rivals.
The deal, which will see the two countries reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in China — a boost to Beijing’s efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage.

The agreement also may put a dampener Israel's ongoing efforts to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors.

The talks were held because of a “shared desire to resolve the disagreements between them through dialogue and diplomacy, and in light of their brotherly ties,” according to a joint communique from Tehran, Riyadh and Beijing that was published by the Saudi Press Agency, the country’s official news agency.

The agreement followed intensive negotiations between Ali Shamkhani, a close adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni, and Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, according to the statement.

It added that the foreign ministers from both countries would “meet to implement this, arrange for the return of their ambassadors, and discuss means of enhancing bilateral relations.”

The joint statement by Saudi Arabia, Iran and China is here:

In response to the noble initiative of His Excellency President Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, of China’s support for developing good neighborly relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran;
And based on the agreement between His Excellency President Xi Jinping and the leaderships in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, whereby the People’s Republic of China would host and sponsor talks between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran;

Proceeding from their shared desire to resolve the disagreements between them through dialogue and diplomacy, and in light of their brotherly ties; ...

Congrats to China for nudging this deal forward and making it possible.

There are winners and losers in this.

The winners are:

*Iran, which will now be even more able to break through the sanctions wall the U.S. has put up around it.
*Saudi Arabia, which now will likely be able to end its disastrous and costly war on Yemen.*China, for outplaying the U.S. State Department by achieving this.
*Iraq, Syria, Yemen as they will become more peaceful as the two middle powers influencing policies on their grounds end their rivalry.

The losers are:

*Israel, because the chances for its attempts to get the U.S. into a war with Iran are now diminished. Its hoped for coalition with the Saudis will not come into being.
*The U.S. for having been outplayed on its traditional 'home grounds' in the Middle East.
*Anti-Iran hawks everywhere.
*The Emirates for losing at least some of the sanction busting trade with Iran to Saudi Arabia.

This renewal of relations will change the Middle East:

Tensions between Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is majority Shiite, have dominated the region for decades.
The two countries have been locked in an intensifying struggle for dominance, their rivalry exacerbated by proxy conflicts, including the war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the site of its two holiest cities, has historically seen itself as the leader of the Muslim world. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 shook Saudi Arabia and other Gulf kingdoms, which saw the regime in Tehran as a rival.

While tensions brewed for years, Saudi Arabia broke off ties in 2016 after protesters stormed Saudi diplomatic posts in Iran and set fire to the embassy in Tehran.

Days earlier, Saudi Arabia had executed the prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

“Clearing up the misunderstandings and looking to the future in Tehran-Riyadh relations will definitely lead to the development of regional stability and security and the increase of cooperation between the countries of the Persian Gulf and the Islamic world to manage the existing challenges,” Shamkhani said Friday after signing the deal, according to Press TV.

In 2016 I describe the killing of Nimr al-Nimr as a smart move in the sense of Saudi domestic realpolitik. But I also said that it would lead to escalating costs in Saudi Arabia's regional policies, predominantly in Yemen. That indeed proved to be the case.

Reviving relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran will make a lot of new things possible.

That Iran and Saudi Arabia accepted China's mediation is a recognition of Beijing's new standing in world policies. That alone is enough reason for the White House to hate the deal.

Posted by b on March 10, 2023 at 14:17 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/m ... l#comments

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Biological lab funded by US sparks alarm
China Daily | Updated: 2023-03-08 07:40


C. Asia unit said to be studying pathogens that could be used in bioterrorism attacks

A controversial biological laboratory in Kazakhstan has caused concerns among local residents. The laboratory used to be controlled by the Soviet Union, but now it is funded and built by the US.

In a suburb near the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, the Central Reference Laboratory, which opened in 2017, is studying some of the deadliest pathogens that could be used in bioterrorism attacks.

The facility is a $102 million biosecurity laboratory funded by the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, and the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, or CTR. The lab is studying the highest-risk diseases such as plague and cholera, the National Geographic channel reported.

TASS news agency last January reported that social media speculated that experts in chemical protective suits were working near the lab due to "a leak of dangerous pathogens".

The lab's existence has been controversial, and the Kazakh government had previously denied any involvement in producing biological weapons.

The lab also provides steady employment for scientists who might otherwise be tempted to sell their high-level and potentially destructive knowledge to hostile groups, said Lieutenant Colonel Charles Carlton, director of the DTRA offices in Kazakhstan, according to National Geographic.

Historically, Kazakhstan monitored high-risk diseases in laboratories of the former Soviet anti-plague system, which fell into severe disrepair after the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent lack of funding, according to the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a California-based nongovernmental organization that aims to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The US then engaged with this former Soviet lab through the CTR program. It was not the first time the US took over former Soviet biological research.

Beginning in the late 1990s, the US started to establish partnerships and develop collaborations in the field of biological research with a number of former Soviet republics to seek "to dismantle the former Soviet Union's massive biological weapons research, development and production infrastructure", according to The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank.

The DTRA and the CTR have carried out various "bio-threat reduction projects" in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, according to The Jamestown Foundation.

'Guise of peaceful research'

Moscow has repeatedly claimed that such cooperation represents a threat to Russia. Major General Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russia's Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops, in 2018 claimed, "under the guise of peaceful research, (the US) is building up its military-biological potential".

"The Pentagon has been doing it since 2005, working with Ukrainians, to quote, 'eliminate biological weapons' left behind by the Soviets. That makes sense," Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in Tucker Carlson Tonight in March 2022.

"But wait, 2005 was 17 years ago. How long does it take to eliminate Soviet bioweapons? Seventeen years seems like a long time. If you had 17 years and ample funding from Congress, you could probably remove and catalog every grain of sand on Waikiki Beach. And yet somehow, over that same period, 17 years, the Pentagon has not finished removing test tubes from Soviet-era freezers," he said.

In fact, the US has an increasing number of biolabs around the world.

The Biological Threat Reduction Program of the US Department of Defense, or DoD, has reportedly supported a total of 336 biolabs across regions, including Africa, East Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, as well as several biosecurity labs operated directly by the DoD overseas, according to a report presented by the US to the Meeting of the Biological Weapons Convention in November 2021.

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland in last March mentioned in a Senate hearing that she feared the labs in Ukraine would "fall into Russian hands", prompting further suspicions on the biological program.

"If nothing bad is happening in these biolabs, why are you concerned about them falling under Russian control?" Scotty A said in comments posted on YouTube.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b2f52.html

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Cheng Enfu: Marx’s Capital still shines with the light of truth

We are pleased to publish this speech by Professor Cheng Enfu on the contemporary relevance of Marx’s Capital, given at a recent webinar organised by the International Manifesto Group.

The core theme of Cheng’s presentation is that Capital has lost none of its relevance or applicability, and indeed is enjoying a resurgence of interest in response to the imperialist crisis. “Whenever the world faces a major dilemma or encounters a major setback, Marx always reappears in a new way, and people always look to Capital to find a way out of the global problems of the day.” Although Volume 1 of Capital appeared over 150 years ago, there is still “no theory in mainstream Western economics comparable to Capital in terms of understanding the reality and development of the contemporary world.”

In terms of the relevance of Marx’s economic teachings to contemporary Chinese socialism, Cheng points to the contradictory nature of capital: as a force for technological progress, and as a force for reproducing poverty and vast inequality. The unlimited expansion of financialized capital “has led to the intensification of the basic contradictions of capitalism in all countries and the whole world, with widening gap between rich and poor in wealth and income distribution within and between countries, leading to increasingly serious global problems.” The key lesson for China’s socialist market economy is the crucial importance of “overcoming the greedy nature and the disorderly expansion and monopoly of non-public capital” such that capital can better serve the interests of the people.

Professor Cheng joins the dots between Marx’s economic analysis and today’s global anti-imperialist struggle, stating that “we must resolutely oppose private monopoly capital, international financial monopoly capitalism and neo-imperialism, work together to actively safeguard the rights and welfare of the working class and the working people at large, resist the US-led West’s efforts to contain the peaceful development of China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and Syria, and bring into better play the economic role of progressive Third World countries such as China.”

Professor Cheng Enfu is Principal Professor of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Editor-in-Chief of World Review of Political Economy and International Critical Thought.

Hello everyone. Today, the title of my presentation is The Essence of Capital and Its Contemporary Value.

The capitalist world has changed dramatically since the publication of Capital, but this work of Marx has not become obsolete. Whenever the world faces a major dilemma or encounters a major setback, Marx always reappears in a new way, and people always look to Capital to find a way out of the global problems of the day. As long as capitalism and the market economy exist, Capital as a work that reveals its mysteries and economic laws, is unlikely to leave the stage. As a “Marxist encyclopedia,” the methodology and principles contained in Capital still shine with the light of truth and are of great practical significance.

First, Capital provides a scientific approach to understanding societies. In Capital, Marx organically integrates philosophy with economics, applies dialectics to the study of political economy, and has historical materialism and dialectics highly unified in the analysis of the evolution of the life and death of the capitalist market economy. Capital is mainly a study of the economic mode of capitalist society. Marx regarded the development of society as the result of contradictory movements and believed that the law of contradictory movements of the productive forces and relations of production as well as that of the economic base and superstructure is the general law of development of human society and its fundamental driving force. It determines the change of social formation and the basic trend of historical development. Marx analyzed the operation and development of capitalist economy by applying the law of unity of opposites, the law of quantitative and qualitative changes, and the law of the negation of negation, as well as methodologies such as class analysis; he studied the process of capitalist social and economic development by applying the scientific findings of historical materialism, and came to the scientific conclusion that capitalist system is not eternal, but is bound to be replaced as the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production evolves. To date, there is no theory in mainstream Western economics comparable to Capital in terms of understanding the reality and development of the contemporary world. I recently edited a textbook titled New Political Economy. The English version will be published soon. It is a synthesis of Marx’s Capital and his planned six volumes on political economy, creating a new system of “five processes” in modern political economy. I wish that the textbook may be available to you in some way since your comments and suggestions would be very valuable.

Second, it establishes the subject status of workers. Labor theory is at the core of Capital, and is a line running through historical materialism, political economy and scientific socialism, which is of great significance to the world today in firmly establishing the subject position of workers in the creation of wealth and value. Marx once pointed out that as long as society does not yet revolve around labor as the earth around the sun, it can never reach a state of equilibrium. Marx’s comparison of labor to the sun is sufficient to see the position of labor in his thought. Labor is the core of the Marxist paradigm and system. Not only does labor determine and condition the structure, nature and appearance of society, but the labor conditions would determine the conditions of human development. Marx presents the labor theory of value in Capital, arguing that living labor is the only source of value creation, making it the cornerstone of the theory of surplus value, and on that basis proposed the idea of labor emancipation. Even under the increasingly mature digital economy, intelligent economy and other high-tech conditions, as long as it is in a capitalist society or a capitalist enterprise in a socialist country centering on private capital, labor would still be characteristic of the dependence on things, workers be enslaved by private capital, and various forms of alienation persist. In future society where the factors of production are publicly owned, labor will become the “sun,” that is, labor will be completely liberated, thus truly realizing the free and comprehensive development of human beings. We must always stand in the position of international working people, establish a view in our value system that respects labor and workers, insist on the subject position of workers in social development and wealth creation, and refute the fallacy of “exploitation creates wealth” that has been popular for thousands of years.

Third, it clarifies the contradictory movement of capital. The theory on capital, as a key term in Marx’s works, is one of the three main categories throughout the book, i.e., labor, capital and surplus value, and is of great importance to our understanding of the nature and role of capital in the context of globalization. Capital is a product of a certain stage of human history. It is a historical category. Capital is a factor of production, a value that can bring surplus value. Capital in essence is not a thing, but a certain social and economic relationship, which in turn must be manifested through things. This gives rise to a double logic: a logic of creating material and economic civilization by the power of things, and a logic of value-added with pursuit of profit maximization. From private capital to private monopoly capital, national monopoly capital, and then to international monopoly capital, the expansionist nature of capital keeps driving forward the process of economic globalization, which constantly intensifies the globalization of production, trade, finance and business operation, with an ever more greedy capital today that is based on private appropriation and characterized by virtual capital. The unlimited expansion of such capital has led to the intensification of the basic contradictions of capitalism in all countries and the whole world, with widening gap between rich and poor in wealth and income distribution within and between countries, leading to increasingly serious global problems. Under the conditions of China’s socialist market economy, while attaching importance to the role of public capital, we must pay close attention to overcoming the greedy nature and the disorderly expansion and monopoly of non-public capital. The relationship between capital and labor as social axis must be well handled, and making various forms of capital better serve the national economy and people’s livelihood.

Fourth, it reveals the laws of development of market economy. In Capital, Marx has scientifically explained many economic laws of human society, such as the general law of commodity production, the common law of socialized mass production, the law of economic globalization and the world market. The laws of capitalist economic operation are systematically analyzed, which covers wage, cost, profit, credit, interest, land rent, reproduction, virtual capital and virtual economy, economic cycle and crisis. All these provide guidance for a correct understanding of the laws of operation of socialist market economy.

Fifth, (Marx’s ideas in) Capital must be applied in a flexible manner in practice. At present, we must resolutely oppose private monopoly capital, international financial monopoly capitalism and neo-imperialism, work together to actively safeguard the rights and welfare of the working class and the working people at large, resist the US-led West’s efforts to contain the peaceful development of China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and Syria, and bring into better play the economic role of progressive Third World countries such as China. Today, China has become a major trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions, ranking first in the world in total trade in goods and leading the world in attracting foreign investment and outbound investment. Between 2012 and 2021, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew from 54 trillion yuan to 114.9 trillion yuan, accounting for 18.5 percent of the world economy and firmly ranking second in the world. In 2021, China’s total GDP at market exchange rates reaches $17.8 trillion, equivalent to 77 percent of the US GDP. Between 2013 and 2021, China’s average contribution to global economic growth reaches 38.6 percent, more than the combined contribution of the G-7 members. China has signed more than 200 cooperation documents with 151 countries and 32 international organizations to build the “Belt and Road.” The Belt and Road Initiative will lift 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty, increase global trade by 1.7–-6.2%, and increase global income by 0.7%–2.9%. Currently, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has grown from 57 founding members to 106 members from six continents, making it the second largest international multilateral development institution in the world. The above achievements have been made through the dominant role of China’s state-owned capital, collective capital and equity-based cooperative capital. In light of that, I would argue, as in an already published paper, that China has got rid of its “dependent” and “semi-dependent” position in the world economic system and is now in a “quasi-center” position and will reach the “center” by 2035. By 2050, it will achieve a status of one of the top “countries in the center,” completing the three major tasks, i.e., Chinese modernization, reunification of the mainland and Taiwan of China, and international anti-hegemonic struggle.

That is all I have to say here. Thank you.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/09/c ... -of-truth/



The enduring significance of the Communist Manifesto to young people in China

We are very pleased to publish below the text of a presentation given by Xin Yuzhou, a young candidate member of the Communist Party of China, on the enduring significance of the Communist Manifesto, particularly to young people in China. The presentation was made at a webinar organised by the International Manifesto Group marking the 175th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto.

Xin Yuzhou notes that the Manifesto continues to have tremendous resonance and influence in China; it is conceived of as “a monumental work that has a scientific perspective on the development of human society and was written to benefit the people and seek liberation for humanity.” Indeed, the CPC considers itself to be “a loyal inheritor of the spirit of the Communist Manifesto”. He further emphasizes that, in spite of having been published for the first time 175 years ago, the fundamental principles outlined in the Manifesto remain entirely valid; and yet he reminds us that Marxism should never be considered a dogma, citing Engels: “Marx’s whole way of thinking is not so much a doctrine as a method. It provides not so much ready-made dogmas as aids to further investigation and the method for such investigation.” In the case of China, Marxist principles have to be integrated with “China’s realities, historical and cultural traditions, and contemporary needs.”

Comrade Xin states that communists “must take reading Marxist classics and understanding Marxist principles as a way of life”, and notes that in the Bureau for North American, Oceanian and Nordic Affairs of the International Department of the CPC in which he works, young people collectively read and discuss key political texts including the Communist Manifesto. He concludes that “Chinese young communists today can still learn a lot from and be inspired by the Communist Manifesto.”

Dear Comrades,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am XIN Yuzhou from the Bureau for North American, Oceanian and Nordic Affairs of the IDCPC. It is such an honor for me to join you and exchange ideas with friends from around the world. As a young, probationary Party member of our Bureau’s Party branch, I would like to share with you why Communist Manifesto still matters today and what our Chinese young people should learn from it.

I. The Importance of the Communist Manifesto
When presiding over a group study session of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the importance of the Communist Manifesto, saying that reviewing the Communist Manifesto is to understand and grasp the power of the truth of Marxism, write a new chapter of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, firm up Marxist belief, and trace back to the source of theory for a Marxist party to maintain the advanced nature and purity.

The CPC is a loyal inheritor of the spirit of the Communist Manifesto. It is necessary to “apply the scientific principles and the spirit of the Communist Manifesto to the overall planning of activities related to the great struggle, great project, great cause, and great dream,” General Secretary Xi Jinping said, calling the Communist Manifesto a monumental work that has a scientific perspective on the development of human society and was written to benefit the people and seek liberation for humanity. Xi called for efforts to further study and interpret the works of Marxism, popularize them and have them embraced by hundreds of millions of people. More efforts should be made to develop Marxism in the 21st century and in contemporary China, and write a new chapter of adapting Marxism to the Chinese context.

It has been 175 years since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, during which time great changes have occurred in human society. However, on the whole, the general principles which Marxism sets forth are still entirely valid. We need to uphold the worldviews and methodologies of dialectical and historical materialism, as well as the Marxist stance, viewpoint and methodology. Furthermore, we should apply Marxist views on the materiality of the world and the laws governing its development, the natural and historic significance of social development and related laws, human emancipation, the full and free development of every individual, and the essence of knowledge and its development.

II. Encouragement to the Young People
As Communists, we must take reading Marxist classics and understanding Marxist principles as a way of life and an intellectual pursuit, and apply the classics to foster our integrity, temper our way of thinking, broaden our horizons, and guide our practice. This is particularly true to our young people. There is a reading club in our Bureau where we can regularly share our thoughts on books we recently read. Some young colleagues of mine recommended Communist Manifesto and invited us to share our views on it, which can be concluded as follows.

First, we should learn theories with a rational approach. Friedrich Engels once pointed out, “Marx’s whole way of thinking is not so much a doctrine as a method. It provides not so much ready-made dogmas as aids to further investigation and the method for such investigation.” He also noted that theories are “a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents.” Therefore, it is reasonable to say that communism is not a fixed dogma. If we look at the case in China, the sweeping social changes that China is undergoing are not simply the extension of China’s historical and cultural experiences, the repetition of socialist practices of other countries, or the duplication of modernization endeavors elsewhere, nor can they be readily slotted into the template devised by earlier writers of Marxist classics. There is no orthodox, fixed version of communism. A blueprint will become a bright reality only when we combine the basic principles of communism with China’s realities, historical and cultural traditions, and contemporary needs, and constantly analyze and summarize the lessons gained from our practice.

Second, we should keep theories relevant with the times. The lifeline of a theory lies in innovation, and it is a sacred duty of Chinese Communists to develop Marxism. We need to use Marxism to observe and understand the world today and develop it in dynamic and abundant practice in contemporary China. We should learn from all the achievements of human civilization with an extensive view. To outdo ourselves we need to protect our foundations while innovating, and learn widely from the strengths of others to improve ourselves. Finally, we need to have a deeper understanding of governance by a communist party, the development of socialism, and the evolution of human society, and open up new prospects for the development of Marxism in contemporary China and the 21st century.

Third, we should translate theories into real practice. We need to study these in a thorough, consistent, and assiduous way, and apply them to problems and reality, so as to better transform such ideas and theories into a material force for understanding and changing the world.

Back in February 1848, Marxism emerged like lightning cutting through dark sky. Decades later, we still see it as a glorious dawn in human spiritual history and a spiritual home for communists. Chinese young communists today can still learn a lot from and be inspired by Communist Manifesto. It is our duty to carry on its spirit and make it enduring with the times.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/04/t ... -in-china/

[blindpig]

End of "strategic uncertainty" over Taiwan
March 13, 18:19



US Director of National Intelligence Confirms Taiwan's 'Strategic Uncertainty' Is Over


Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haynes confirmed what Biden claimed was the US government's official position when he promised to send the US army to war against China if it attacked Taiwan.

During the hearing, Utah Republican Congressman Chris Stewart said, “In the past, the president has said quite unequivocally that we will respond with military force if China attacks Taiwan. And soon after that, the government sort of took those words back, but not once, but several times.”
He asked Haynes: "Has the government's policy on uncertainty changed?"
Haynes replied: "You are right about the President's remarks on this matter." He added, "In this case, I think it's clear to the Chinese that our position is based on the president's remarks."

On four separate occasions, Biden said the US would go to war against China over Taiwan. In September, in response to an interviewer's question: "So, unlike Ukraine, US troops, Americans and Americans, will defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack?" Biden answered "yes."

After this and all previous statements, the White House issued a clarification to the effect that Biden's words do not reflect official US policy. Asked for clarification on Biden's words in September, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden was answering a "hypothetical" question and added: "Whenever the President of the United States wants to announce a change in policy, he will. He didn't."

Haines' statement makes it clear that Biden's remarks were in fact the expression of official US policy, and that the policy of "strategic uncertainty" is over. In the past, the US has been deliberately ambiguous about whether it would enter the war on Taiwan's side against China - and this was aimed at containing both Taipei and Beijing.

Haynes spoke alongside CIA chief William Burns, FBI chief Christopher Wray and representatives from the National Security Agency and the Department of the Interior at one of the many House and Senate hearings this week on the US conflict with China. Their testimony was based on an annual assessment released by the US Director of National Intelligence, which stated that China is seeking to become a "superpower on the world stage" and is trying to "undermine US influence."

Speaking to the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday, Rep. August Pfluger said:
"The US is now in pure competition with the CCP, in which the Chinese government seeks to rise to the top of the world order while undermining US power through military, diplomatic, and economic means."

In another hearing Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who had just returned from Taiwan with a congressional delegation, said, " I know what war looks like, we're at war."
Then he continued:
“I mean, this is a war, maybe a cold war. But this is a war against China, and the PRC invades Taiwan in cyberspace every day… I was a military pilot against China for five years, I know for sure. When they fly out to intercept our planes. They do it every day. And there is danger here, because everything is fine until something happens, a spark, if you like, and turns the cold war into a hot one.

On Thursday in the House Intelligence Committee, members discussed openly what the war against China would be like. Congressman Jim Himes remarked, “Rand did a study that estimated that in the event of a war, China's GDP would fall by a startling 25 to 30 percent. And US GDP by 5-10% if there is a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.”
This study is called "The War Against China: Imagining the Unimaginable." The conclusion is:
Each side is deploying its troops further and each has a growing ability to detect and attack the enemy, which could turn much of the Western Pacific into a "war zone", with dire economic consequences.
But the good news, according to the report's compilers, is that the war may be "moderate" and the losses "tolerable."

Threats against China in House and Senate hearings have been accompanied by attempts to make China the scapegoat for covid-19. Opening Wednesday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner said, "To be frank, despite China's denials, we have every right to ask if the virus that has killed at least 6.8 million to date has not been , accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan."

The White House's rejection of "strategic uncertainty" coincided with the practical abandonment of the "one China" policy, that is, the recognition that Taiwan is part of China and the promise not to encourage Taiwanese separatism.

Under the National Defense Appropriations Act passed last year, the US is committed to directly arming Taiwan. The US has also quadrupled the number of its soldiers in Taiwan, and will train Taiwanese soldiers in Michigan, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The US has already provoked a war in Eastern Europe, with over 200,000 casualties on both sides, and is now increasingly fueling conflict with China, the world's second nuclear-armed economy. The consequences of this for humanity cannot be estimated.

(c) Andre Damon

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/0 ... e-m11.html - original in English

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8221184.html

(Yeah, I could have got the original from WSWS... but this piece is decent and see no need to get aggravated by going there.)

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China's Prestigious Middle East Deal May Soon See Challenges
The big deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which China mediated, may soon lead to new trouble.

The deal included security clauses:

[C]onfidential clauses were inserted into the Beijing Agreement to assure Iran and Saudi Arabia that their security imperatives would be met. Some of these details were provided to The Cradle, courtesy of a source involved in the negotiations:

*Both Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake not to engage in any activity that destabilizes either state, at the security, military or media levels.
*Saudi Arabia pledges not to fund media outlets that seek to destabilize Iran, such as Iran International.
*Saudi Arabia pledges not to fund organizations designated as terrorists by Iran, such as the People’s Mojahedin Organization (MEK), Kurdish groups based in Iraq, or militants operating out of Pakistan.
*Iran pledges to ensure that its allied organizations do not violate Saudi territory from inside Iraqi territory. During negotiations, there were discussions about the targeting of Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia in September 2019, and Iran’s guarantee that an allied organization would not carry out a similar strike from Iraqi lands.
*Saudi Arabia and Iran will seek to exert all possible efforts to resolve conflicts in the region, particularly the conflict in Yemen, in order to secure a political solution that secures lasting peace in that country.

According to sources involved in the Beijing negotiations, no details on Yemen’s conflict were agreed upon as there has already been significant progress achieved in direct talks between Riyadh and Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement in January. These have led to major understandings between the two warring states, which the US and UAE have furiously sought to undermine in order to prevent a resolution of the Yemen war.

In Beijing however, the Iranian and Saudis agreed to help advance the decisions already reached between Riyadh and Sanaa, and build upon these to end the seven-year war.

The Saudi pledges are significant for Iran. Since last October there had been on and off protests and riots combined with terrorist attacks by Sunni militants in Baloch region in southeast Iran and terrorist attacks in northwest Iran by Sunni Kurdish militants which had crossed over from north Iraq.

The protests were fueled by Iran International, a Saudi funded channel in London. That channel is now moving to Washington DC where it seems to have found new funding. Saudi Arabia was also financing the Kurdish and Baloch rebels. They have now stopped their attack in Iran. Today Iran announced an amnesty for some 22,000 people who had been arrested during the riots:

[Iran’s judiciary head Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi] said a total of 82,656 prisoners and those facing charges had been pardoned. Of those, some 22,628 had been arrested amid the demonstrations, he said. Those pardoned had not committed theft or violent crimes, he added.

The Iranian pledges have likewise solved Saudi Arabia security problems. There will be no more attacks on its oil infrastructure.

An additional item in the Cradle report is also significant:

On a slightly separate note related to regional security — but not part of the Beijing Agreement — sources involved in negotiations confirmed to The Cradle that, during talks, the Saudi delegation stressed Riyadh’s commitment to the 2002 Arab peace initiative; refusing normalization with Tel Aviv before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital.

This is of course bad for Israel which had hoped to drag Saudi Arabia onto its site to then attack Iran. That has for now become impossible. The China mediated deal is also a red flag for Washington:

[T]he agreement undercuts the posture of the U.S. in the region. The U.S. has downsized in Syria after withdrawing forces in 2021 from Afghanistan.
The deal also comes as Saudi Arabia is demanding certain security guarantees, a steady flow of arms shipments and assistance with its civilian nuclear program in order to normalize relations with Israel, a major U.S. ally, the White House confirmed on Friday.

Speaking to reporters, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. was “informed” about the Saudi Arabia-Iran talks but played no role in them.

One wonders if the recent anti-Chinese campaign was launched because the U.S. knew of the deal and tried to interrupt it.

The deal may well have implementation issues:

China’s role in the Saudi-Iranian deal is momentous. However, Beijing may find that its relations in the region are undermined by failures in its implementation.
...
As the broker of the deal, or at least the third-party country listed in the statement, the key question is whether China will — or even can — realistically underwrite or support the translation of the agreement into practice. The first issue is one of capabilities. Unlike Washington, China’s power projection capabilities are highly limited. With its sole foreign military base in Djibouti, and no substantial security architecture in the region, Beijing would be unable to enforce the deal with the use — or threat — of force.
While this very absence of military might may be a source of soft power for China in the eyes of regional states, given that it signals a genuine desire to avoid interfering in other states’ affairs, Beijing cannot protect key assets in the region or respond to transgressions. Beijing is still reliant on Washington in this regard.

Who's are the 'key assets' in the region? Are they not owned by the countries they are in? If Iran and the Saudis hold onto the agreement there is no need for the U.S. to be there. Beijing is certainly not relying on anything Washington could do there.

The second, and far more pressing, issue is one of willingness. China’s role in brokering the deal is unlikely to see it raise its head above the parapet if violence or tensions erupt. Beijing has expended decades of diplomatic effort to cultivate good relations with all regional states. We are simply unlikely to see China risk blowing it all by siding with one partner at the expense of the other.

The author seems to believe that China should take sides. If the agreement holds there will be no need to do that. If it doesn't hold China will mediate again until peace returns.

Fundamentally, this deal comes down to the two regional states (and indeed the other GCC states). If they play ball, China can claim a monumental victory in Middle Eastern diplomacy. If, as is more likely, tensions surface, Beijing will find that it has overstretched. It will almost certainly be unable and unwilling to act as a guarantor of the deal. For a quick diplomatic win, China has placed its policy of neutrality in jeopardy.
The current question from China’s perspective is whether it will retain the respect of all parties if the agreement fails.
The real implementation problems the deal and China will face are not the ones the author quoted above mentions.

The U.S. does not like the deal because it diminishes its role in the region. Israel does not like the deal because it lessens its chances to go after Iran:

The U.S. and Israel don’t look kindly on the news of the diplomatic breakthrough. They first fear that China is increasingly assertive in its role in the region, and the U.S. does not want to experience what Britain experienced in Suez in 1956: a watershed moment signaling its global decline. The U.S. stood up to Britain, France and Israel who combined to attack Egypt after its leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. The event is seen as the final act of the British Empire before joining the more powerful U.S. imperium.
...
If the agreement does accomplish the goal of truly bringing peace and amity between the two rivals, China may then enjoy a Suez moment: when the world signals the end of the American Empire like what happened to the British.

Both, Israel and the U.S, are capable and likely willing to do whatever is necessary to prevent an implementation of the deal. They can probable use their good relations with the United Arab Emirates to make things difficult. False flag attacks in Iran and in Saudi Arabia could be a way to do that. If a new 'Iranian' drone attack happens in Saudi oil fields or new 'Saudi financed' terrorist attack in Iran happen the deal could indeed be scraped.

One hopes that China and the other parties involved in the deal are conscious of that.

Posted by b on March 13, 2023 at 17:55 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/c ... .html#more

China-US on collision course?

I make it a rule to accept invitations to appear on televised interviews or panel discussions only when I believe that I am sufficiently informed on the main subject of the given program and have a unique contribution to make based on my core expertise, which is in Russian affairs.

I accepted the invitation from Press TV, Iran’s “Spotlight” to talk about China, because the questions submitted in advance indicated that comparisons and contrasts between the issues of China-Taiwan and Russia-Ukraine in American foreign policy would be foremost in the discussion. And it is very important to get straight how these very different regional conflicts seem to be commingled in the minds of the Neoconservatives who are running the U.S. State Department and the national security agencies of the USA so as to form a single master plan: namely to provoke first Russia and now China into precipitate military action to subdue Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, ending in both cases in a bloody quagmire that weakens the given challenger to U.S. global hegemony.

To my thinking, this overarching idea of current American foreign policy is deeply flawed. The two regional conflicts only have superficial similarity. The relationships between Russia-Ukraine and China-Taiwan are very different. This begins with the degree of agency of the Ukrainian versus Taiwanese governments. It also relates to the relative power of the parties in all dimensions, starting with population: Russia to Ukraine is 3:1 whereas China to Taiwan is 30:1

Ukraine is run by an insane junta first put in place by the United States in the coup d’etat of February 2014 that it stage managed. Zelensky himself may have been democratically elected but the pro-peace platform that brought him victory was turned around under U.S. marching orders and he has allowed his country to be used as a battering ram against Russia without regard to the physical destruction of his cities, implosion of his economy and loss of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

No one will say that the Taiwanese are led by fools of that caliber. Nor has the Taiwanese population been brainwashed and cowed by its present leaders in the way we see in Zelensky’s Ukraine. The issue of independence has been raised repeatedly by candidates in the periodic national elections and each time it has been defeated by Taiwanese voters. They obviously do not share the suicidal tendencies of Ukrainians.

In my opening remarks on this video, I am saying that the Chinese leadership views reunification with Taiwan as foreordained given a sufficient time horizon, and Xi’s speech a day ago calling for a ‘great wall of steel’ indicates that the Chinese military effort is directed against the United States presence in its region, not for the specific purposes of taking Taiwan by force. The Chinese intent is to push back the American naval presence to the first chain of islands in the South China Sea and eventually to send the U.S. Navy back to Honolulu if not to the bottom of the sea.

Of course, in a 25-minute program the discussion also moved on to other highly topical issues of international relations, of which the Chinese brokered restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is the most important.

I once again extend a bouquet to the production team at Press TV and to moderator Marzieh Hashemi, in particular, for not only preparing an interesting show in advance but for reacting at once to what the panelists are saying so as to put forward probing follow-on questions.

©Gilbert Doctorow

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/03/14/ ... on-course/

***********

The Drums Of War With China Are Beating Much Louder Now



Comments from both Washington and Beijing have suddenly become much more pointed and aggressive in recent days, with talk about hot war now being discussed as not just a real possibility but in many cases as a probability. Let’s have a look at some of the most significant recent developments.

Beijing comments on US encirclement
The Chinese government has finally broken from its usual restrained commentary on the way the empire has been aggressively encircling the PRC with war machinery in ways that Washington would never permit itself to be encircled and waging economic warfare that it itself would never tolerate.

“Western countries—led by the U.S.—have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech last week.

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang followed up on Xi’s comments the next day with a warning of “conflict and confrontation” should US aggressions and encirclement continue.

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” he said, adding, “Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”


One of the most hilarious empire narratives we’re being asked to believe today is that the US is militarily encircling its number one rival China, on the other side of the planet, defensively. The US is very plainly the aggressor in this standoff, and China is very clearly reacting defensively to those aggressions.

These comments come not long after PRC Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning issued a stern warning to the US to “stop walking on the edge, stop using the salami tactics, stop pushing the envelope, and stop sowing confusion and trying to mislead the world on Taiwan,” calling the Taiwan issue “the first red line that must not be crossed” in US-China relations. As we’ve discussed previously, these increasingly frequent “red line” warnings are very similar to the ones that were being issued with greater and greater urgency by Moscow before US brinkmanship provoked the invasion of Ukraine.

Committing to war with China over Taiwan
The official head of the US intelligence cartel made some comments before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday which appear to have put the final nail in the coffin of the question of Washington’s “strategic ambiguity” on whether the US would go to war with China in defense of Taiwan.

Asked by Congressman Chris Stewart about President Biden’s increasingly explicit assertions that the US would go to war with China over Taiwan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines asserted that, despite the White House’s repeated walk-backs of those claims, it is clear to China that this is in fact Washington’s actual policy on the Taiwan question.

“In this particular case, I think it is clear to the Chinese what our position is based on the president’s comments,” Haines said.



US officials are talking about war with China like it’s a foregone conclusion

There’s been a marked spike in rhetoric from US officials about war with China being something that’s inevitably going to happen, or even something that is already underway.

At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Senator John Cornyn expressed concern that difficulties in replenishing weapons stocks from the proxy war in Ukraine indicate that the US may not yet be “ready” to fight a “shooting war in Asia.”

“I think the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the weakness of our industrial base when it comes to replenishing the weapons that we are supplying to the Ukrainians,” said Cornyn. “In World War Two we became the Arsenal of Democracy and saved Britain and Europe, but if we got involved in a shooting war in Asia, we would not be ready.”

“I know what war looks like — we’re at war,” Congressman Tony Gonzales said at a House Homeland Security hearing on Thursday.

“I mean, this is a war, maybe a Cold War. But this is a war with China,” Gonzales added, citing things like Chinese aircraft intercepting US aircraft on China’s border and China “invading Taiwan via their cyberspace” as evidence that the US is “at war” with the PRC.


A direct war between nuclear powers
The US war machine is making it more and more explicit that its position on Taiwan is very different from its position on Ukraine, in that it will directly commit American troops to fighting a hot war with China over Taiwan. This is especially concerning because US military encirclement and provocations with Taiwan are making that war more and more likely, in the same way western provocations made the war in Ukraine more likely.

“Sending more weapons to Taiwan isn’t ‘deterrence,’ it’s a provocation,” tweeted Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, who’s been documenting US provocations in Taiwan more thoroughly than anyone else I know of. “It’s clear now that increasing US military support for Taiwan will make a Chinese attack more likely. Anyone who is telling you otherwise is wrong or is purposely deceiving you.”

Indeed, University College Cork professor Geoffrey Roberts has argued that Putin chose to wage a “preventative war” on Ukraine with the calculation that the way the west was turning it into a major military power meant it needed to be confronted early before it became a major threat. The exact same thing could easily be happening with Taiwan.

“China is the big one,” DeCamp also tweeted recently. “Both sides are talking as if war is inevitable. Not a proxy war, a direct war between two nuclear powers. It can’t happen. The US needs to change course and stop its military buildup in the Asia Pacific, or we’re doomed.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself. This must be opposed, and opposed forcefully. Now more than ever, humanity appears to be on track toward the unfolding of a chain of events that leads to the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Some sanity from the mainstream media

To close with some good news, the imperial media are apparently not fully aligned with the war-with-China agenda (at least not yet). All the insane hawkishness mentioned above appears to have scared some sense into some influential voices in the mainstream media, with surprisingly anti-war arguments emerging in the last few days.

In an article titled “Who Benefits From Confrontation With China?“, none other than the New York Times editorial board taps the brakes with a wildly US-biased but still-welcome argument that “America’s increasingly confrontational posture toward China is a significant shift in U.S. foreign policy that warrants greater scrutiny and debate.”

“Americans’ interests are best served by emphasizing competition with China while minimizing confrontation. Glib invocations of the Cold War are misguided,” NYT argues.

In a Washington Post article titled “Democrats and Republicans agree on China. That’s a problem.“, Max Boot (yes, that Max Boot!) argues that the bipartisan foreign policy consensus on escalations against Beijing are a sign that something dangerously ill-advised is in the works.

“The problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China. The problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war,” Boot writes.


CNN’s Fareed Zakaria echoes Boot’s criticism of the Washington foreign policy orthodoxy, saying that “Washington has embraced a wide-ranging consensus on China that has turned into a classic example of groupthink.”

A new Financial Times piece titled “China is right about US containment” acknowledges that Xi Jinping’s aforementioned comments about encirclement and suppression are “not technically wrong,” and says that betting on China’s submission in the new cold war “is not a strategy.”

In a Daily Beast article titled “What the U.S. National Security Community Is Getting Wrong About China,” David Rothkopf argues that “We have passed the crossroads and we are already, unfortunately, dangerously, well on our way down the wrong path” with US-China relations.

It remains to be seen if these sentiments will be sustained in the mainstream media. Even if they are, they may just be the liberal media counterpart to the way some right wingers in the mainstream media like Tucker Carlson are permitted to object to US foreign policy toward Russia as long as they continue to support brinkmanship with China (all the outlets I just mentioned have been enthusiastic supporters of US proxy warfare in Ukraine, after all). This may be yet another instance of the way the empire gets the mainstream herd arguing over how imperial agendas of global domination should be enacted, rather than if they should.

Time will tell whether any sanity erupts from the muck of the empire regarding the possibility of igniting the most horrific war imaginable. As always with such things, I remain cautiously pessimistic.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/13 ... ouder-now/

[blindpig]

China, Covid Origins, and War Propaganda
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 15 Mar 2023


Sen. Joni Ernst, R- Iowa (Photo: Getty Images)

A human cause of covid-19 is possible, but anti-China rhetoric is war propaganda, not scientific evidence.

“I was the first governor to take action to ban Tik Tok here in our state and we saw over two dozen different states take action and congress after that. So we’re thankful that other people are waking up to how China is using all of its assets to conduct surveillance on the American people.
They have a 2,000 year plan to destroy this country. They are very determined to do it and use all the tools in their tool box and that’s why it’s important that we wake up now and we stop their infiltration into our way of life.”

Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/16 ... mp4?tag=12

It was three years ago, in March 2020 that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a worldwide covid-19 pandemic. Cities around the world began to shut down, travel ended, jobs were lost, economies were decimated, and to date an estimated 6.8 million people have died from covid around the world. Here in the United States, for-profit health care consigned people to a system which has the highest covid death rate in the supposedly advanced world, with more than 1 million fatalities.

When reports of this illness first appeared, the obvious question was where did it come from. The first cases were reported in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and it isn’t surprising that theories of a human created origin, commonly referred to as a lab leak, took hold almost immediately. Unfortunately the ability to investigate was always obscured by political considerations. China was blamed for causing the disease or for not doing enough to stop it. The lab leak theory waxed and waned over the last three years but is now back in full force at the very moment that most news stories about China are little more than war propaganda screeds.

This columnist was extremely skeptical about the lab leak theory and always considered it an effort to demonize China. However, in the ensuing years it has turned out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have engaged in experiments involving “gain of function” research that might have caused covid. However, all of the projects in question were conducted jointly with organizations funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Professor Jeffrey Sachs was chosen to head the Lancet Covid-19 Commission but he disbanded the effort when some of the individuals and organizations working on these projects were less than forthcoming about providing information. He and others with no discernible ax to grind against China began to raise the possibility of covid originating from human activity. Sachs testified before congress, “First, the virus may have emerged from dangerous laboratory research. Second, this dangerous research was partly funded by the U.S. government. Third, NIH leadership and a group of scientists associated with NIH hid the possibility of a laboratory origin from the congress and the public.”

Last month the U.S. Department of Energy declared that covid likely emerged as a result of a lab leak, but they also added they had “low confidence” in this finding. In other words, they don’t really have evidence, but they do want to turn up the war propaganda against China. Congress is now holding hearings on covid origins and the Senate and House unanimously passed the Covid Origins Act of 2023, which calls for declassifying any information gathered regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is a glaring and most probably intentional omission in the text of the bill. It only calls for investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and not the NIH or any of the groups which received funding for virology research. If the institute in Wuhan is to blame for creating covid, it did so with the help of U.S. entities.

China is firmly in U.S. crosshairs, as Joe Biden continues Donald Trump’s policies but with even greater threats of economic sanctions or even military action. Biden has allowed the former Speaker of the House to represent him in Taiwan, he is threatening to end the availability of the Tik Tok platform altogether, and is considering revoking export licenses of U.S. companies that do business with Huawei. He even bragged about shooting down a wayward Chinese weather balloon.

In all likelihood it is too late to know if covid was caused by human activity. The Chinese government is disinclined to give any information to the U.S. How can a nation accused of having a 2,000 year plan to destroy the U.S. have any confidence in fair treatment? What should be an unbiased investigation is now a witch hunt run by a country determined to “contain” China, even if the futile effort involves starting a hot war using Taiwan as a proxy, just as Ukraine is used against Russia.

The fanaticism directed at China is not directed at the NIH or against people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was involved in the research that may have been dangerous. For the past three years the political class shielded Americans who may have played a role in covid’s origin and they are even more determined now to blame China as yet another means of expanding influence.

Of course, U.S. actions have resulted in a loss of influence, as the Ukraine proxy war has brought China and Russia closer together, and China has emerged as a world leader in its own right. While the U.S. publicly berated ally Saudi Arabia for refusing to pump more oil and harm itself in the process, China succeeded in bringing the Saudis and Iranians, traditionally enemies, together. Under Xi Jinping’s efforts, the two antagonists have agreed to resume diplomatic relations. The U.S. is left with semi-deranged politicians babbling about Tik Tok because it is the latest means of demonizing a country labeled an adversary.

No one in U.S. political leadership was ever interested in finding out if covid’s origins resulted from human activity. In 2020 Republicans sought to defend Trump and blame China. Democrats wanted to blame Trump, but not touch the government scientific establishment. The cover up benefits both wings of the duopoly. Revealing a possible U.S. role was never on anyone’s agenda in Washington.

But escalating fear and hatred of China is on everyone’s agenda in congress. That’s why their covid origins bill doesn’t mention the people who may have helped cause the pandemic. Any evidence claiming to point to China’s involvement is tainted and should be rejected out of hand. Unfortunately, the answers to covid origins will probably remain unknown, but American bellicosity is and always will be an established fact. Millions of people fear weather balloons and Huawei because that is what they have been told to think.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/china ... propaganda

*********

CovertAction Bulletin – Great Power Conflict: U.S. Puts China in Crosshairs
By Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa - March 15, 2023 0



The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its 2023 Annual Threat Assessment, putting China, Russia, Iran and North Korea directly in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism and regime change operations.

The report is very clear on the motives of the entire establishment: to prevent any other state from challenging U.S. hegemony, the “rules-based global order.” We discuss the lengthy portion of the report dedicated to China and dive into the clear projection of the U.S. empire.

We’re joined today to talk about this and a number of other topics by Amanda Yee, host of the podcast Radio Free Amanda.


Listen to this episode and all CovertAction Bulletin episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and other podcast platforms. New episodes are distributed worldwide on all podcast platforms on Wednesdays at 9am EST.
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We also air a shorter version of CovertAction Bulletin weekly on Wednesdays at 9AM EST on WBAI 99.5FM in New York City, right after Democracy Now!

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https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... rosshairs/

*****

Xi Jinping's visit to Russia will take place on March 20-22.



News of Russia's international isolation.

Xi Jinping's visit to Russia will take place on March 20-22.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed the visit of Chinese President Comrade Xi Jinping to Russia.
According to the official statement, Xi Jinping's visit to Russia will give a new impetus to the development of relations between the two countries and further strengthen mutual trust and understanding. The visit will take place on March 20-22, Xi Jinping will take advantage of Putin's official invitation. During the visit, various bilateral documents will be signed and issues of strategic partnership will be discussed.

1. China will obviously advance its agenda of "peace agreements", which partly suits Russia and completely does not suit the United States.
2. Obviously, trade between the Russian Federation and China will increase, and trade flows will increase. New documents in this direction will be signed.
3. No official statements about the supply of weapons can be expected. These issues are always considered behind the scenes, despite American insinuations. The question is about military drones. So far, China is not preventing the Russian Federation from buying commercial and industrial drones, helmets, body armor, thermal imagers, night vision devices, various optics, first aid kits, etc. and so on.
4. China is interested in Russia supporting China's position on Taiwan in anticipation of the inevitable escalation around the island fueled by the United States.
5. The construction of military blocs QUAD and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific region increases China's interest in cooperation with Russia not only in the military sphere. Beijing sees that a US-led coalition is being forged against them, so they will strengthen their ties with Russia, Iran, Thailand, and so on.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8229424.html

Google Translator

*********

CHINA DUMPS MORE AND MORE US DEBT
Mar 16, 2023 , 5:16 p.m.


Beijing's stock holdings have fallen to their lowest level since May 2009 (Photo: Shutterstock)

China has continued to cut its holdings of US Treasury securities amid the growing threat of unilateral "sanctions" from Washington, according to data released by the US Treasury Department on Wednesday, March 15.

Figures show Beijing's holdings fell to $859.4bn in January, after December's numbers were $867.1bn.

The decline in January was more than double the previous month's $3.1 billion cut, though less than the $7.8 billion reduction in November.

Beijing's stock holdings have fallen to their lowest level since May 2009.
China is the second-largest foreign holder of US government debt, behind only Japan, but has cut debt for six straight months, falling below the symbolic $1 trillion mark in April 2022.

China has already cut its holdings by 34.1% in the past 10 years, including a 16.6% cut in 2022 based on US data, said Zhang Ming, deputy director of the Department of International Finance at the Institute of Finance and Banking. .

https://misionverdad.com/china-se-desha ... dounidense

Google Translator

[blindpig]

THE TURN OF CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY IN THE FACE OF THREATS FROM WASHINGTON
Mar 15, 2023 , 11:16 a.m.


Xi Jinping is sworn in during the third plenary session of China's 14th National People's Congress on March 10, 2023 (Photo: Getty Images)

When Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang spoke about matters within his official competence at a press conference at the First Session of the 14th National People's Congress, he devoted considerable space to the case with the United States.

He said: "Containment and suppression will not make America great, let alone stop China's march toward rebirth." The statement is in line with current Chinese international relations practice, and the Asian country is making it clear to US policymakers.

At the moment, the United States is increasing its strategic competition with China, which has caused the latter to respond with a turn in its diplomatic deployment towards Washington.

TRIGGERS
The US rulers lack the spirit of self-reflection and only look abroad for the reasons for their failures. As China is socially stable, with the fastest GDP growth rate in the world and a narrowing economic gap with the United States, the feeling of anxiety and aversion towards the Asian country, which has positioned itself as the "challenge", is growing. more serious in the long run from Washington's point of view.

Since the Donald Trump administration, the United States has introduced various economic measures to contain and suppress China while saying it is not looking for a new Cold War , when in reality relations between Washington and Beijing are not far from repeating that recent period of twentieth century. It has also intensified its crackdown on Chinese high-tech development.

Added to the above is the "Indo-Pacific Strategy". After the conflict broke out in Ukraine, the United States accelerated the process of NATOization of what it calls the "Indo-Pacific." At the Shangri-La Dialogue meeting in June 2022, defense ministers from Britain, France and other European countries said they would become more involved in the region's affairs.

The leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were invited to participate in the NATO summit for the first time in order to "initiate a roadmap to expand cooperation between NATO and its Asia-Pacific partners." , and ensure closer political consultations and cooperation on issues of mutual interest."


The United States intends to turn Taiwan into a military base, sending troops and weapons to the Chinese region (Photo: Reuters)

On the issue of the Taiwan Strait, it stands out that the provocative behavior of the United States in using the island as a destabilizing pivot towards China has led to a significant escalation of the situation, especially in August 2022 when the president of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, visited the region and the Anglo-US military conducted military activities in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea at the same time.

Currently the United States, with the support of Japan, Australia and other countries, is manipulating international public opinion by promoting a kind of " Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow " with a view to getting more countries to join in this bullying.

US ACTIONS CANNOT STOP CHINA
After decades of globalization, the world has seen the development of an international division of labor heavily dependent on China's industrial chain, which has become the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries while the US and Chinese economies they became very interdependent.

Indeed, while the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods have not yet been lifted, bilateral trade between Washington and Beijing has continued to rise from more than $500 billion in 2016, before the trade war, to more than $500 billion. of 690 billion dollars in 2022. On the other hand, a report by the Brookings Institution , one of the main American research groups, shows that the rhetoric of decoupling from China is unrealistic and that many Washington partners would not go down that path. The Asian country has the advantage of having better logistics, human capital and technical knowledge than many other countries.

In recent years, the chip wars have encouraged China to become self-sufficient in its core technologies. In addition, the "sanctions" are negatively affecting American companies themselves. According to an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group, reported by the Xinhua news agency , "US companies could lose 18 percentage points of global share and 37% of their revenue in the same period if the United States completely bans semiconductor companies from selling to Chinese customers".

The practical usefulness of the "Indo-Pacific strategy" is also highly questionable. The countries of Asia-Pacific sense that the United States is acting without thinking and do not want to take sides or increase regional tensions. The Belt and Road Initiative, after 10 years since its deployment, has brought more and more practical benefits to the participating countries, which has set a more inclined position towards stable relations with China.


Europe is increasingly dependent on China (Photo: Reuters)

Many of America's allies are also deeply tied to the Chinese economy. Reports from the Bruegel economic think tank, published between 2021 and 2022, identify 137 products for which the European Union is highly dependent on imports, mostly Chinese: "The increasing concentration of import sources for many products is due to the rise of China " Bruegel points out .

The Chinese government is preparing to resume high-speed development in 2023: The ongoing National People's Congress sets GDP growth at 5% this year and some international organizations and rating agencies make more optimistic forecasts.

WHAT WILL CHANGE IN CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY WITH THE THIRD TERM OF XI JINPING
Xi Jinping became the first Chinese president in history to be re-elected for a third five-year term. Deputies of the National People's Congress of China voted unanimously in favor of his candidacy on March 10, he received 2,952 votes. The restriction that the President of the People's Republic of China could serve only two terms was lifted in China in 2018.

After taking the oath, the president said, among other things, that he wanted to strengthen China's army and turn it into a " great steel wall ." Days earlier, in a meeting with members of the Democratic Alliance for the Improvement of Hong Kong and the Federation of Industry and Commerce of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPPC), Xi said :

"China's external environment for development has changed rapidly, and the number of uncertainties and unpredictable factors has increased significantly, especially as Western countries, led by the United States, have imposed complete containment, siege and repression on us, which that has brought serious and unprecedented challenges to the development of my country".

Media and analysts noted that it was the first time Xi Jinping had criticized "US-led Western countries" by name on a public occasion, stating that their "total containment, siege and repression" constituted an "unprecedented" challenge and serious for China's development.

Qin Gang recently took over as China's 12th foreign minister, replacing Wang Yi, who rose to an important position as a member of the Communist Party of China politburo. Gang has been ambassador to the United States since July 2021. Prior to that, since September 2018, he served as China's vice foreign minister.

The diplomat is taking over a foreign ministry that recently published a document with extraordinary statements about the United States, exposing the dangers of US hegemony .


Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang answers questions at a press conference on March 7, 2023 (Photo: Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the Chinese foreign minister, during a press conference on March 7, stated that the United States has completely lost its common sense with its destructive policy towards China. Qin Gang likened the two countries to track and field practitioners competing in the Olympic Games, where an athlete constantly tries to trip his rival and even injure him to win. This is not a fair competition but a ruthless confrontation and a violation of the rules.

According to Qin, the US rhetoric of "putting up protective fences" and "avoiding conflict" is actually aimed at preventing China from fighting back and responding to insults. "However, that's not going to happen!" she stated.

These types of statements are quite unusual in Chinese diplomatic rhetoric, which is why they show that the relationship with the United States has entered a new, more intense and confrontational phase. We see that on the side of Beijing, although they have not completely gotten rid of the proposal to normalize the relationship, they understand that the conflict will continue, which makes them adopt a sharper and more reactive stance when confronting Washington.

Xi Jinping's third term as head of the People's Republic of China differs from previous ones in the consolidation of power in his leadership. This is noticeable, in particular, in the composition of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China , which is now fully aligned with the initiatives of the head of state. Taking into account that his projection is aimed at building socialism with Chinese characteristics, it is clear that the government will put all its effort into solving the challenges and obstacles that come along the way.

Considering the good health that China maintains in this deglobalized world and in crisis, trying to contain and repress it will not bring good returns to the United States.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/el ... washington

Google Translator

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Xi: The people are the decisive force for building China into a great modern socialist country

Following his unanimous re-election to serve as President of the People’s Republic of China for a third term, Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) on March 13.

President Xi told the delegates: “The people’s trust has been my greatest source of strength to go forward and also the greatest responsibility on my shoulders.”

He went on to say that, with a civilization spanning over 5,000 years, the Chinese nation, “has created a myriad of glories and also been through a lot of hardships and adversity.”

With the advent of modern times, China was reduced to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, when bullying by foreign powers and frequent wars tore the country apart and plunged the Chinese people into an abyss of great suffering. Since its founding, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has closely united and led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in working hard for a century to put an end to China’s national humiliation. The Chinese people have become the masters of their future, the Chinese nation has achieved the great transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong, and China’s national rejuvenation has become a historical inevitability. From now until the middle of the century, the central task of the Party and all Chinese people is to complete building China into a great modern socialist country.

Xi went on to say that, “we must remain committed to putting the people first. The people are the decisive force for building China into a great modern socialist country,” and called for fully inspiring their enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity. To this end, it was necessary to, “improve the system of income distribution, perfect the social security system, and enhance basic public services. We must ensure that the basic living needs of all our people are met and work hard to resolve the pressing difficulties and problems that concern them most. We must do a better job of seeing to it that the gains of modernization benefit all our people fairly and make more notable and substantive progress in promoting common prosperity for all.”

Having touched on a number of other issues, including ethnic unity, national security, the questions of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and the broad contours of foreign policy, Xi turned his focus to the work of the Party and said: “We must unceasingly exercise full and rigorous Party self-governance, unswervingly fight against corruption, and always maintain the unity and solidarity of the Party. By doing so, we will be able to ensure that the Party will never change its nature, its conviction, or its character.”

We reprint the full text of his speech below. It was originally published by the Xinhua News Agency.

Speech at the first session of the 14th NPC
March 13, 2023
By Xi Jinping

Fellow deputies,

I was elected at this session to continue to serve as the president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for the trust placed in me by all the deputies and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups.

It is my third time to take on this noble position of the president of the PRC. The people’s trust has been my greatest source of strength to go forward and also the greatest responsibility on my shoulders. I will faithfully fulfill the duties prescribed in the Constitution, take the needs of the country as my mission and the people’s interests as the yardstick to follow, be committed and honest in my duties, devote myself to my work without reserve, and never fail to live up to the great trust of the deputies and the people.

Fellow deputies,

The Chinese nation, with a civilization spanning over 5,000 years, has created a myriad of glories and also been through a lot of hardships and adversity. With the advent of modern times, China was reduced to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, when bullying by foreign powers and frequent wars tore the country apart and plunged the Chinese people into an abyss of great suffering. Since its founding, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has closely united and led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in working hard for a century to put an end to China’s national humiliation. The Chinese people have become the masters of their future, the Chinese nation has achieved the great transformation from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong, and China’s national rejuvenation has become a historical inevitability.

From now until the middle of the century, the central task of the Party and all Chinese people is to complete building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and advance national rejuvenation on all fronts. And the baton of this central task has now been historically passed on to our generation. In accordance with the strategic plans made at the 20th CPC National Congress, we must implement the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy, speed up Chinese modernization, strive in unity, and continue to break new ground, so as to make achievements on the new journey that answer the call of our times and history and meet the expectations of our people, and make due contributions of our generation to building a great country and achieving national rejuvenation.

Fellow deputies,

On the new journey to build China into a great country and to achieve national rejuvenation, we must unswervingly promote high-quality development. We must fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts and accelerate the efforts to foster a new development pattern. We must fully implement the strategy for invigorating China through science and education, the workforce development strategy and the innovation-driven development strategy, and focus on achieving greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology. We must also promote transformation and upgrading of industries, promote coordinated urban-rural and regional development, make further efforts to build a green and low-carbon economy and society, and effectively upgrade the quality and appropriately expand the output of our economy, so as to constantly increase our economic strength, scientific and technological capabilities and composite national strength.

We must remain committed to putting the people first. The people are the decisive force for building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects. We must proactively develop whole-process people’s democracy, uphold the unity between the Party leadership, the running of the country by the people and law-based governance, improve the system of institutions through which the people run the country, fulfill the people’s will, protect their rights and interests and fully inspire their enthusiasm, initiative and creativity. We need to implement a people-centered philosophy of development, improve the system of income distribution, perfect the social security system, and enhance basic public services. We must ensure that the basic living needs of all our people are met, and work hard to resolve the pressing difficulties and problems that concern them most. We must do a better job of seeing to it that the gains of modernization benefit all our people fairly, and make more notable and substantive progress in promoting common prosperity for all. We must strengthen the great unity of the Chinese people of all ethnic groups and the great unity of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation at home and abroad, thus mobilizing all positive factors to give shape to a mighty joint force for building a great country and advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

We need to better coordinate development and security. Security is the foundation of development and stability is the prerequisite for prosperity. We must resolutely pursue a holistic approach to national security, improve the national security system, strengthen our capacity for safeguarding national security, enhance public security governance, and improve the social governance system. With this new security architecture, we will be able to better safeguard China’s new pattern of development. We should comprehensively promote the modernization of our national defense and our armed forces, and build the people’s military into a great wall of steel that can effectively safeguard our nation’s sovereignty, security and the interests of our development.

We should solidly promote the practice of “one country, two systems” and the great cause of national reunification. The long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions is indispensable to the building of a great China. We should fully, faithfully, and resolutely implement the policy of “one country, two systems,” under which the people of Hong Kong administer Hong Kong and the people of Macao administer Macao, both with a high degree of autonomy. We will remain committed to law-based governance in Hong Kong and Macao and will support Hong Kong and Macao in developing their economies and improving people’s livelihood, so that they can better integrate themselves into the overall development of the country. Realizing China’s complete reunification is a shared aspiration of all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation as well as the essence of national rejuvenation. We should implement the Party’s overall policy for resolving the Taiwan question in the new era, uphold the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus, actively promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, resolutely oppose foreign interference and separatist activities aimed at “Taiwan independence,” and unswervingly promote progress towards national reunification.

We must strive to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. China’s development benefits the world, and China cannot develop itself in isolation from the world. We must solidly promote high-level opening up, not only making good use of the global market and resources to develop ourselves, but also promoting common development of the world. We must hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, always stand on the right side of history, practice true multilateralism and the common values of mankind, actively participate in the reform and development of the global governance system, and promote the development of an open world economy. We should promote the implementation of Global Development Initiative and Global Security Initiative, so as to add more stability and positive energy to world peace and development, and create a favorable international environment for our country’s development.

Fellow deputies,

To do a good job of governing the country, the Party should do a good job of governing itself; and to build a great country, the Party must be thriving. To promote the building of a great country, it is essential to uphold the leadership of the CPC and the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, and to step up Party building in a solid manner. We must remain sober-minded and resolved about addressing the challenges unique to a big political party as ours, and have the courage to carry out self-reform. We must unceasingly exercise full and rigorous Party self-governance, unswervingly fight against corruption, and always maintain the unity and solidarity of the Party. By doing so, we will be able to ensure that the Party will never change its nature, its conviction, or its character, which will serve as a strong guarantee for building a great country and advancing national rejuvenation.

Fellow deputies,

The grand goal of building a great country and achieving national rejuvenation is encouraging and motivating. We should seize the day, remain confident in our history, exhibit greater historical initiative, uphold fundamental principles and break new ground, maintain strategic resolve, carry forward the fighting spirit, and strive to overcome all difficulties, to contribute to the great cause of building China into a great country and achieving national rejuvenation.

Thank you.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/17/x ... t-country/



The One Child Policy and the Chinese “demographic crisis”

This insightful blog post by Chinese Marxist Leo He Zhao addresses the assorted claims that China is facing a “demographic crisis” as a result of the One Child Policy that was in force from 1980 until 2015.

He Zhao starts by explaining the rationale for the One Child Policy. Generally portrayed in the West as being uniquely authoritarian and inhumane, the policy addressed a very specific and real problem. Largely as a result of economic distortions in the countryside created by the semi-feudal administration (in particular the production of cash crops rather than subsistence agriculture), and with a huge population and relatively little arable land, China was struggling to feed its population. Furthermore, the population was growing extremely fast, thanks to the innovations of the socialist revolution: ending feudalism, giving land to the farmers, and extending basic healthcare and social welfare throughout the country. People were living much longer, and the infant mortality rate dropped massively. “Overpopulation on planetary scale is a myth, but a very real and serious problem within an extremely poor and underdeveloped country. There was simply not enough food to feed 1 billion mouths.” Thus the One Child Policy was introduced to “reduce the previous unsustainable pace of population growth to manageable levels.”

The One Child Policy was ended in 2015, as population levels are stable and China is in a much stronger position to feed its people. However, various Western analysts insist that China will soon find itself in a position where it doesn’t have enough workers and, as a result, its economy will stagnate. He Zhao points out that, increasingly, China’s economic progress is not based on an enormous labour force. “Today, agriculture in the PRC is increasingly high tech, with not only traditional machines doing most of the raking and harvesting, but increasing popularity of drones planting seeds and doing other tasks. Further, the Chinese economy is rapidly transitioning from low level manufacturing (the primary developmental method of any under developed economy) to a high technology service orientation, which also reduces the necessity of large population of workers in urban areas.” As such, it is unlikely that China’s path of socialist modernisation will suffer any major problems as a result of demographic changes.

One Child Policy
First, lets briefly make very clear the historical context and material reasons for the One Child Policy, which, without exception, is always missing from Western narratives.

In the 19th Century, colonial administration switched the focus of agricultural production from rice, vegetables, and other food crops to cash crops like tobacco for export and profit. England forced, at gun point, massive amounts of opium on the country, so that addiction rate was around 20% of adults during the first decades of the 20th Century. Amidst chaos, neglect, and devastation from numerous wars, much infrastructure such as roads and waterways for transport were destroyed. General poverty and extreme under development meant very few hospitals, a severe to total lack of health care and access to medicine.

All of this contributed to average life expectancy being 35 years in China until well after 1949 liberation, a statistic which mostly consisted of infant mortality.

In an agrarian national economy where the vast majority of hundreds of millions of citizens were rural farmers, families needed bodies to work on the farms. When so many babies die, a culture developed of families having 10, 20, 30 children, in the hopes that a few of them will survive and grow up to work in the fields. (This practice was somewhat further increased by the famine of 1962, even if the effects of which has always been greatly exaggerated in Western press)

By 1970, under Communist Party organisation, average life expectancy in the PRC rose rapidly and drastically, doubling to 70 years.

But the rural population, which was the vast majority, still had this culture of having 10, 20, 30 children, which lead to a population explosion.

In 1980, when the policy was implemented, Chinese GDP was lower than average GDP of Africa; and China was poorer than even colonialism and slavery ravaged Sudan or Haiti. Over population on planetary scale is a myth, but a very real and serious problem within an extremely poor and underdeveloped country. There was simply not enough food to feed 1 billion mouths.

Exploding population became a very serious burden on national economy, and a massive dead weight which threatened to make progress impossible.

The One-Child-Policy, rewarding single child families with benefits and placing extra tax on multiple children families, was a solution to a very large scale problem ultimately caused by colonialism and war.

It was largely successful, and reduced the previous unsustainable pace of population growth to manageable levels.

But the coloniser nations, after previously having been for a very long time struck by widespread fear of an over populated China filled with too many Chinese people, have been and are still framing this policy as an example of “authoritarian suppression of basic freedom”, of “communist violation human rights”, and using it and every facet of it to demonise China and its government in every conceivable way.

There were also some families which had more than 1 child, but wanting to avoid taxes, broke the law by not reporting the extra children, leading to these children not having birth certificates and official registry, which barred them from some social institutions in some provinces. This has of course also been often used to paint a picture of oppression, as if the Communist Party simply revels in cruelty.

“Demographic Crisis”?
And in recent few years, after the One Child Policy ended in 2015 and after decades of fear mongering about Chinese overpopulation, Westerners are now all of a sudden very “concerned” that “oh, no! China is experiencing a demographic down turn as a result of that horrible policy, and… they may not have enough people to keep their economy afloat!”

If I’m allowed to speak for all Chinese people: it is heart warming to know that our European, North American, and Australian friends worry about us, our nation, and our future; but there is no need.

Population size stabilizing is a dynamic common to all developed countries, and it will not be a problem for China as it achieves that status, because gone are the days many hundreds of millions of bodies are needed to rake the soil, plant seeds, collect harvest, and increasingly, even work in the factories. Today, agriculture in the PRC is increasingly high tech, with not only traditional machines doing most of the raking and harvesting, but increasing popularity of drones planting seeds and doing other tasks. Further, the Chinese economy is rapidly transitioning from low level manufacturing (the primary developmental method any under developed economy) to a high technology service orientation, which also reduces the necessity of large population of workers in urban areas.

Further, along with accelerated evolution of AI, automation is fast replacing human workers for many types of manufacturing: today there are lights-out factories in ShenZhen operated entirely by robots and thus do not need to be lit, and restaurants which serve thousands with only a handful of human employees.

Market trajectory of recent 20 years also clearly show that manufacturing for export is slowly becoming less important, while domestic consumption is becoming more central. Chinese mixed economy with socialist organisation and planning will be less reliant on large labour forces, and is becoming more self reliant and self-sustainable.

Sex Ratio
There is also still widespread Western apprehension regarding the myth of men exponentially outnumbering women in China (a continuation of the age old racist scaremongering narrative of African and Asian men taking European and Euro-American women), as supposedly a result of the widespread Chinese practice of female infanticide.

While like everywhere else, Chinese feudalism was deeply patriarchal, and male babies were sometimes prised because men could do more physical labour, the Communist revolution has put an end to these practices which existed also in other parts of the world, and has implemented many policies to combat deeply seated sexist attitudes, starting with the correction of structural and material gender inequality.

While the only country which comes to mind when the topic arises in the West is always China, the sex ratio in the PRC is actually far from being globally the most unequal.

“World Domination Requires large Population”?
Another popular Western sentiment is: “Good luck taking over the world with a dwindling population!”, which, they are eager to point out, requires population growth by natural homogeneous birth rate.

The PRC doesn’t need population growth for empire building, because the PRC is not interested in empire building. China ceased to be an expansionist empire past the warring period which ended in 200BC, and socialist PRC has zero such ambitions.

PRC military excels in every category, except aircraft carriers. Why? Because, as Pentagon strategy papers themselves clearly and repeatedly clarify, the People’s Liberation Army is not a military force developed for power projection abroad, but is only for defence of its own territory.

From among the lowest in the world in 1980 until today, surpassing the USA by PPP and most of the most important measures to become number 1 in the world, the recent 40 years of mega-growth of the Chinese economy is the single fastest in all human history, achieved without conducting any coup d’etats in other countries, without installing any puppet regimes, without placing any sanctions or embargoes on disobedient governments, without dropping any bombs, and without firing a single bullet.

This is a continuation of Chinese history: with the most powerful maritime military force consisting of ships 20X the size of European ships, Chinese fleets sailed around the world, around Africa and Asia, and did not conquer, did not take any territory or slaves, but traded.

It must be added here that no, this is of course not due to some elemental peaceful nature of Chinese people, just like the wave of colonisation that happened less than a century later is not due to some innate European higher capacity for violence. China at the time of the 1400s had been a relatively stable, peaceful, unified, self sufficient and self satisfied continent-spanning civilisation for 3000+ years, having gotten their epic internal territorial conflicts over with a very long time ago, and which did not hunger for new territory. Whereas Europe at that time was emerging from many centuries of near continuous warfare after the fall of Rome, its people subjected to oppressive theocratic rule, many famines, and many plagues, thus comparatively accustomed to brutality which became almost a way of life, and at the same time desperate for new opportunities, prospects for a better life, and a change of scenery.

(Historical materialism does not absolve individuals or individual groups of people of crimes and accountabilities, but leads us away from the monstrous mistake of biological, ethnic, or cultural essentialism.)

“Han Ethno-State”?
Within the borders of modern China, since taking power in 1949, the Communist Party completely abandoned the traditional ethnic supremacist mind-set of thousands of years of monarchism, and reversed the Han-chauvinist policies of the Nationalist Party which ordained that anyone living within national borders should be assimilated to Han culture. The CPC has widely implemented strong anti-prejudice and anti-discrimination policies which suppresses Han-supremacy, prioritises the economic empowerment of minorities, and massively funded the protection and development of ethnic minority cultures.

— Ethnic minorities have always been exempt from the One-Child Policy, which was only applied to the ethnic majority Han people. (For example, Uyghur population has grown at a pace 12 X faster than that of Han in the past 70 years.)

— Local governments of ethnic minority regions are all headed by members of the ethnic minority group, without exception.

— Free elementary, middle and high-school-level boarding schools and special college-preparatory classes for minority children.

— Minority children can get into a university with exam scores 20 to 30 points below the minimum score for Han children.

— A separate network of universities exists only for minority students. Similar to HBCUs in the US, but better.

— No-interest loans are offered for small minority businesses.

— Businesses are officially encouraged to hire minorities.

— A comprehensive, bilingual-education program aims at helping minorities learn both their own languages as well as Mandarin. Meanwhile, scholars are creating alphabets for minority languages that had no writing systems to help ensure that these languages do not die.

— Han people living in ethnic minority regions are required to learn the minority languages. For example, Han living in Tibet are required to learn Tibetan.

In conclusion, the civilisational state known as China ceased to be an expansionist empire after 200BC, and under leadership of the Communist Party, is both resolutely against cultural and ethnic supremacy at home, and strictly adheres to a policy of non-interference and mutually beneficial trade and development abroad.

Citizens of Western countries need not worry either about Chinese internal affairs such as the size of population, nor about Chinese foreign policy abroad, and maybe should focus on the myriad of mounting problems created by their own domestic and foreign policies.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/16/t ... ic-crisis/



US is maintaining tensions with North Korea to draw in allies against China

In this detailed and well-researched article, originally published by Truthout, Simone Chun argues that, “the US military encirclement of China threatens to escalate into an Asia-Pacific war, with the Korean Peninsula at the focal point of this dangerous path. Garrisoned with nearly 30,000 combat-ready US forces manning the astonishing 73 US military bases dotting its tiny landmass, South Korea is the most critical frontline component of US military escalation in northeast Asia.” She further notes that, “sixty percent of US naval capacity has been transferred to the Asia-Pacific region, and 400 out of 800 US worldwide military bases and 130,000 troops are now circling China.”

This, Simone observes, is a reflection of Washington’s Asia-Pacific grand strategy, which views China as the US’s top security challenge and prioritizes the maintenance of US regional hegemony through military force. From this, she highlights three important implications, namely:

The accelerated remilitarization of Japan;
The revitalization of extremist hardline North Korea policies in both Washington and Seoul;
The intensification and expansion of belligerent wargames targeted at China and North Korea.
Whilst hosting more than 50,000 American troops, Tokyo, she notes, has steadily laid the groundwork for its own remilitarization program by characterizing North Korea as an existential threat, and designating Beijing’s regional activities as a danger to its homeland. According to the retired Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) Admiral Tomohisa Takei, China has been the main target for Japanese rearmament, “using North Korea’s threat as cover.”

Secondly, Washington’s zero-sum stance against China obstructs its ability to craft a sensible North Korea policy. “The goal of Washington’s North Korea policy…is not to achieve rapprochement with Pyongyang or establish peace in the Korean Peninsula, but rather to nurture and even enhance the purported ‘North Korean threat’ as a pretext to rally South Korea and Japan behind its goal of containing China.” Furthermore, Washington’s policy also serves to empower the extreme right in South Korea.

Third, Washington’s anti-China stance fuels belligerent wargames targeted at China and North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. The world’s largest bilateral peacetime military drills explicitly include the rehearsed attack on and occupation of North Korea as well as the ‘decapitation’ of its leadership. She notes that, “Washington’s resolve to push its exorbitant imperial privilege by any means necessary is forcing South Korea down a risky and self-destructive path that promises little benefit for the Korean nation itself,” and continues: “The greatest threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia is the US Indo-Pacific military encirclement of China, which by design serves to escalate tensions and create a dangerous cycle of provocation and response.”

Yet, “hawkish US policies have consistently failed to garner public support in South Korea. According to a series of polls conducted in 2021, 61 percent of South Koreans support relaxing sanctions against the north and 79 percent support peace with Pyongyang, with an additional 71 percent supporting a formal end-of-war declaration between the two Koreas.” And seven in ten Americans are supportive of a summit between Biden and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Simone Chun is a researcher and activist focusing on inter-Korean relations and US foreign policy on the Korean Peninsula. She has served as an assistant professor at Suffolk University, a lecturer at Northeast University and an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is on the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors, and serves on the advisory board for CODEPINK.

The U.S. military encirclement of China threatens to escalate into an Asia-Pacific war, with the Korean Peninsula at the focal point of this dangerous path. Garrisoned with nearly 30,000 combat-ready U.S. forces manning the astonishing 73 U.S. military bases dotting its tiny landmass, South Korea is the most critical frontline component of U.S. military escalation in northeast Asia.

Since the Obama administration’s 2012 “pivot to Asia,” Washington has intensified tensions with Beijing, doubling down on a “full-scale multi-pronged new Cold War” through the Indo-Pacific Strategy pursued by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Sixty percent of U.S. naval capacity has been transferred to the Asia-Pacific region, and 400 out of 800 U.S. worldwide military bases and 130,000 troops are now circling China.

This is a reflection of Washington’s Asia-Pacific grand strategy, which views China as the U.S.’s top security challenge and prioritizes the maintenance of U.S. regional hegemony through military force by “defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

It promotes the vision of an empire with unipolar hegemonic ambitions, expanding the theater of war in northeast Asia and distributing the totality of threats facing China. Its goal is to force China’s hand by triggering and escalating a hybrid war on multiple fronts, including military, technology, economy, information and media.

This strategy is based on chaining together a regional “anti-hegemonic coalition” of U.S.-armed allies encircling China from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia and Indonesia in the south. In spite of the significant state-level and public resistance in these nations toward U.S. pressure to choose between allegiance to Beijing and allegiance to Washington, this vision has been largely realized thanks to unrelenting U.S. coercion through successive administrations.

Three important implications of this grand strategy, which places the Korean Peninsula at the pernicious center of intensified China-U.S. competition, merit attention: 1) the accelerated remilitarization of Japan; 2) the revitalization of extremist hardline North Korea policies in both Washington and Seoul; and 3) the intensification and expansion of belligerent wargames targeted at China and North Korea.

First, Washington’s military encirclement of China strategy bolsters Japan’s military build-up program. The U.S., despite having imposed a “pacifist” constitution on Japan in the wake of WWII, has for decades aggressively pushed for Japanese rearmament as a necessary adjunct of Washington’s efforts to dominate the Asia-Pacific. Labeling Japan a “failed peace state,” Gavan McCormack points out the ironic trajectory of its transformation into “one of the world’s great military powers” as a state actively girding for war under a so-called pacifist constitution. “With US encouragement, over time Japan built formidable land, sea, and air forces, evading the constitutional proscription by calling them ‘Self-Defence’ forces (rather than Army, Navy, and so on),” McCormack writes. “Other states with good reason to know and fear Japanese militarism (Australia included) also abandoned their commitment to the idea of its permanent demilitarisation…. [Its] constitution steadily sidelined, by early 21st century Japan was one of the world’s great military powers.”

Thus, Japan’s Security Policy echoes U.S. goals such as the complete denuclearization of North Korea, the stoking of tensions on Taiwan and the continued U.S. military presence in Okinawa. Home to more than 50,000 U.S. troops, Tokyo has steadily laid the groundwork for its own remilitarization program by characterizing North Korea as an existential threat, and designating Beijing’s regional activities as a danger to its homeland. According to the retired Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) Admiral Tomohisa Takei, China has been the main target for Japanese rearmament, “using North Korea’s threat as cover.”

At their most recent summit in January, President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to work together to “transform Japan into a potent military power” to counterbalance China. Tokyo’s defense budget will grow 56 percent over the next five years, from $215 billion to $324 billion, raising its military spending to parity with that of NATO countries. Tokyo is also adopting a new policy of acquiring “counterstrike” capabilities against other nations as part of a recharacterized “self-defense” posture — an alarming development in a region still suffering from the historical legacy of Japan’s brutal imperial policy during WWII, and raising the fear that Japan may decide to carry out a unilateral attack against North Korea. Washington considers the remilitarization of Japan — which aspires to become the world’s third-largest military power after the U.S. and China — to be the linchpin of U.S. security interests in Asia.

Second, Washington’s zero-sum stance against China obstructs its ability to craft a sensible North Korea policy. Thus far, despite Washington’s rhetoric of “seeking diplomacy and deterrence with North Korea,” and repeated claims of having “reached out to Pyongyang multiple times,” the Biden administration has not moved beyond its standing offer for talks with no preconditions. Moreover, the Biden administration’s recent appointment of a new special envoy for North Korean human rights issues shows that Washington intends to maintain its heavy handed policy of employing military threats and economic sanctions against Pyongyang. In other words, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated, the United States will “maintain pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang changes course,” i.e. surrenders to U.S. terms. Even moderate experts have warned against the Biden administration’s preference for relying on “ineffective [and] ill-suited tools” such as “isolation, pressure, and deterrence,” intensifying U.S.-South Korea military exercises, and redeploying U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. The goal of Washington’s North Korea policy, however, is not to achieve rapprochement with Pyongyang or establish peace in the Korean Peninsula, but rather to nurture and even enhance the purported “North Korean threat” as a pretext to rally South Korea and Japan behind its goal of containing China.

Washington’s anti-China policy, which binds South Korea to the service of U.S. geopolitical strategic interests and keeps it in a subservient client-patron relationship with the U.S., also has the ancillary effect of empowering extremist far right factions in South Korea. These politicians exploit the North Korean threat as justification for domestic repression under South Korea’s National Security Laws — among the most draconian in the world — empowering them to leverage red-baiting and worse against any critics or perceived threats to their grip on power.

Case in point: South Korea’s far right president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who was elected by a razor-thin margin of 0.7 percent barely eight months ago, is already leaving his mark, having established a “republic of prosecution” that pursues the politics of fear and prosecution domestically on the one hand, and subordinates South Korea’s sovereignty to Washington’s interests on the other. The “most disliked leader in the world” garnered a disapproval rating of 70 percent in a recent Morning Consulting survey, and faces massive and sustained public demand for his immediate resignation. It is noteworthy that in spite of Washington’s stated foreign policy goal of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights, the U.S. remains silent on Yoon’s “atavistic reversion” of vitally democratic South Korea into a newly repressive national security state. According to K.J. Noh, “South Korea’s essential role as the closest and largest military force projection platform against China, its role in a ‘JAKUS’ (Japan-South Korea-U.S. military alliance), its cooperation with NATO, its stated plans to join a Quad-plus, and its assumption of a submissive position toward U.S. decoupling and economic enclosure against China make it far too valuable to criticize or undermine regardless of its excesses.”

Indeed, Yoon has tirelessly pressed ahead with dangerous hawkish foreign policies. Against the absolute majority of Korean public opinion (over 65 percent) who prefer neutrality and a “balanced policy,” Yoon has unwaveringly committed to stand with the U.S. in its hegemonic strategic rivalry with China. During the 2022 Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, Yoon unveiled Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which is effectively cribbed from Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy designed to contain China. Moreover, Yoon has repeatedly advocated not only the redeployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, but has also declared his intention to arm South Korea with nuclear weapons, significantly raising the danger of a regional nuclear arms race.

Third, Washington’s stance against China fuels belligerent ongoing wargames targeted at China and North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises — the world’s largest bilateral peacetime military drills — involve live fire drills, carrier battle group and submarine maneuvers and strategic nuclear bombing raids by aircraft. They have also explicitly included the rehearsed attack and occupation of North Korea as well as the “decapitation” of its leadership: a “plan for regime collapse and occupation.”

Since the 2022 Biden-Yoon summit when Yoon agreed to the repositioning U.S. strategic nuclear-capable assets closer to the Korean Peninsula, South Korea has conducted near-monthly joint military exercises with U.S. forces. Under the GSOMIA (General Security of Military Information Agreement), which aims to create a “three eyes” intelligence-sharing grouping against China, these exercises also include joint maneuvers with the Japanese military. Coupled with the deployment of U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries in South Korea, these drills form a crucial aspect of regional U.S. war preparations. Leveraging South Korea and Japan to collect and share military intelligence as military subcontractors is a principal component of U.S.-led military action. In the case of South Korea, the reduction of sovereign military assets to virtual pawns in a U.S.-led conflict goes even further, with Washington explicitly accorded the authority to take full control of the South Korean military in the event of any war.

The frequency and intensity of regional U.S.-led joint exercises have increased exponentially in the past year, ramping up tensions. In June 2022, the U.S. and South Korean militaries, for the first time in more than four years, held a three-day joint naval exercise involving U.S. strategic nuclear assets with the stated purpose of “reinforcing allies” against “North Korea’s mounting weapons ambitions.” Two months later, South Korea and Japan participated in the U.S.-led RIMPAC — the “grandest of all war games” — with the nominal goal of countering “North Korea’s evolving missile threats.”

In spite of U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s claim that Washington does not “seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, or a region split into hostile blocs,” the U.S. is promoting NATO’s Asia-Pacific expansion to close the military circle around China, as demonstrated by its drive to extend NATO’s influence to Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. South Korea is fast becoming an important part of NATO’s Asia-Pacific expansion, as attested by Yoon’s attendance at the 2022 NATO meeting in Spain, in which China was singled out as a state that “challenge[s] our interests, security, and values and seek[s] to undermine the rules-based international order.” South Korea also became the first Asian country to join NATO’s Cyber Defense Group, a move that critics argue is laying the groundwork for war in Asia.

Moreover, the scope and scale of U.S. regional military exercises will increase by a factor of 20 for the first six months of 2023 alone. The resumption of U.S.-South Korean joint live-fire exercises will be augmented by the addition of new and highly provocative “nuclear table-top drills,” which simulate region-wide nuclear conflict under the guise of deterring a North Korean nuclear attack. The proliferation of these U.S.-led military exercises in the Korean Peninsula and the Asia-Pacific region reveal Washington’s mounting resolve to drag South Korea into conflicts beyond the Korean Peninsula for the simple reason that South Korea, which has remained a U.S. garrison state since the Korean War, hosts the most lethal U.S. military footprint proximate to Beijing, including the world’s newest and largest U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek.

U.S. officials have been quite blunt about South Korea’s subordinate role in Washington’s imperial quest. Gen. Robert Abrams, U.S. Forces Korea commander from 2018 to 2021, stated in 2021 that in addition to “threats from North Korea,” South Korea must join the U.S. in developing “new operational war plans” to counter China’s military influence in the region. Accordingly, former U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper predicted in 2022 that South Korea would inevitably “intervene with the United States in the Taiwan Strait should a conflict break out between Taiwan and China.” There is little doubt that under the far right Yoon administration, U.S. pressure on South Korea to serve in a vanguard role as a pawn against China will increase. Washington’s resolve to push its exorbitant imperial privilege by any means necessary is forcing South Korea down a risky and self-destructive path that promises little benefit for the Korean nation itself.

What is happening now is the U.S. empire’s response to its most significant challenge to date, and represents an evolution of its militaristic posture in order to prevent its demise. As Tim Beal points out:

For American hegemony the struggle is existential, and without hegemony the United States will be much diminished and poorer; it will have to live within its means rather than drawing sustenance from its empire. Hegemonic power has various dimensions — political, military, ideational, economic and financial. The US is being challenged, indeed is faltering, in each of these in various ways and to differing degrees.

First and foremost, in intensifying its offensive against Beijing, Washington has shifted both risk and burden to allies that form its “vanguard against China,” enabling the U.S. to dictate decisions and procure imperial benefits while distributing the costs to vassal states. In order to justify its burgeoning military regional presence and intensified control over South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to bolster its posture against China, the U.S. needs to keep regional tension high. Despite the U.S. position that it is “open to talks” with North Korea, continued sanctions (including those targeting the civilian and medical sector), expansion of the U.S. military presence in the region, intensification of multinational military drills, and continued political rhetoric from Washington ensure that tensions with the north remain elevated. This benefits both Washington and the extremist regime in Seoul, and ensures South Korea’s perpetual relegation to the status of a U.S. neocolonial state.

The greatest threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia is the U.S. Indo-Pacific military encirclement of China, which by design serves to escalate tensions and create a dangerous cycle of provocation and response. Washington’s hegemonic quest — the highest manifestation of 21st-century imperialism — is the antithesis of peace in the Korean Peninsula, the Asia-Pacific region, and beyond. When one factors in the Pentagon’s openly aggressive National Defense Strategy, which sanctions the use of nuclear weapons against non-adversaries, the intensified U.S. focus on maintaining hegemony and regional dominance at all costs takes on an even more ominous character, suggesting that the Korean Peninsula has the potential to serve as the flashpoint for a conflict of much wider scale and scope.

Hawkish U.S. policies have consistently failed to garner public support in South Korea. According to a series of polls conducted in 2021, 61 percent of South Koreans support relaxing sanctions against the north and 79 percent support peace with Pyongyang, with an additional 71 percent supporting a formal end-of-war declaration between the two Koreas. These sentiments persist even among Yoon supporters, a majority of whom support an inter-Korean peace treaty, breaking with his rhetoric of a tougher stance toward North Korea. The South Korean Democratic and Progressive Parties, as well as major civil and labor organizations, support military deescalation with the North and maintenance of neutrality in the Washington-Beijing competition. Democratic Party Chairman Lee Jae-myung has repeatedly warned against South Korea becoming a “pawn in the plans of other states,” pledging his party to the principles of independence and sovereignty.

A few years from now, after the Biden and Yoon administrations have ended, North Korea will likely not have been denuclearized and South Korea may emerge as the nuclear front line in the U.S. rivalry with China and Russia, setting the stage for the Korean Peninsula to serve as the main battleground in a new Cold War. If Biden has a genuine interest in achieving lasting regional security, he should pursue a broader vision in which nations can coexist. According to the latest poll, a significant majority of Americans support tension-reducing policies with North Korea and China, and 7 in 10 Americans are supportive of a summit between Biden and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Over half of those polled support a full-fledged peace agreement to finally end the 73-year-old Korean War — an unresolved conflict that has left nearly 5 million casualties and forcibly separated 10 million Korean families on either side of the 38th parallel, including more than 100,000 Korean Americans.

Instead of narrowly focusing on the threat of China and exploiting the North Korean threat as a cover for a militaristic and volatile anti-China policy, the Biden administration should recognize that peace in the Korean Peninsula is not only obtainable, but can lay the groundwork for a broader and more stable regional order based on coexistence.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/13/u ... nst-china/

[blindpig]

Securing US global primacy: how the US prepares for war on China

In this detailed essay, British author and peace campaigner Jenny Clegg provides a comprehensive overview of the US drive to war against China.

Jenny describes the attempts being made to construct a Global NATO, leveraging AUKUS, the remilitarisation of Japan, the undermining of the One China Principle and the prolonging of the Ukraine crisis in order to link the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres of war. Britain and Japan are emerging as the most important partners in this phenomenally dangerous strategy which, taken as a whole, constitutes “a historic restructuring of the international security order: strengthening of the NATO transatlantic military axis against Russia whilst elevating the US-Japan trans-pacific military axis at the core of newly created regional NATO-like multilateral security frame.”

The aim of this strategy is, of course, “to contain the growing multipolar trend”.

We must build a formidable global opposition to this warmongering. Thanks to an already-developing multipolarity, countries of the Global South are “starting to wake up to the real nature of US intentions”, and as such “a non-aligned resistance is taking shape”, with these countries asserting their sovereignty and interests. For anti-war activists in the West meanwhile, as we recall the historic protests against the Iraq War 20 years ago, Jenny writes that the task of playing our part in a worldwide mass movement for peace will require us to “resist the insidious influence of imperialism permeating through social democracy”.

The trajectory of war: Iraq then, China now?

Back in September 2002, Dan Plesch wrote an article in the Guardian entitled ‘Iraq first, Iran and China next’. Less than a year earlier, George W. Bush had put China on a nuclear ‘hit list’ along with Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea. Twenty years on, it seems China’s turn has arrived, now identified as ‘America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge’.

Iraq was a turning point for the world as Bush ‘seized the unipolar moment’: ‘shock and awe’ and ‘full spectrum dominance’ in air, land, sea and space presaged a new militarism to secure US global primacy; and, blatantly displacing the UN on the pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the US found a new means of rallying allies in a ‘coalition of the willing’, embedding key NATO partners into ‘out of area’ operations.

All this was in line with the neocons’ Project for a New American Century which had advocated for the US pursuit of hegemony through the preeminence of its military forces.

As Plesch foresaw, the 2003 war set precedents to be used against other states that stood up against US global control. US militarism has advanced into ‘air sea battle’ plans to wipe out multiple cities across China at a single strike, with trillions of dollars sunk into upgrading ‘full spectrum dominance’ capabilities; ‘humanitarian intervention’ has evolved into a New Cold War of ‘democracies against autocracies’ edging the UN further aside. And now, using the Ukraine war to subjugate Europe and weaken Russia, the US is starting to assemble a new ‘coalition of the willing’ in the ‘defence of Taiwan’, ordering the global security architecture anew as it sets the stage for a new war on China.

But much has also changed over twenty years with the rise of China and the emergence of a multipolar world: as the economic balance shifts from West to East, countries in the Global South are not so easily influenced to follow US leadership.

What does China want?
US political elites have convinced themselves that China is bent on global hegemony. Despite Xi Jinping’s assurances to Biden that China ‘has no intention to challenge or displace the United States’, they revert to racialised stereotypes of the Chinese as inveterate liars – recall the words of the popular 1880s music hall song: ‘for ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, the Heathen China is peculiar’ – rather than face history.[1]

That China was its ally in WW2 is something the West conveniently forgets. KMT Nationalist and Communist armies successfully blocked the bulk of the Japanese forces from advancing west, a vital contribution recognised by Churchill and Roosevelt when they signed, with Chiang Kaishek, the 1943 Cairo Agreement. This stipulated that the territories seized by Japan from China, including Taiwan, be restored, and that Japan be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific seized or occupied since 1914.

As one of the allies, China took part in the establishment of the United Nations, assuming a permanent seat on the Security Council. But the UN order as based on the Cairo Agreement, confirmed in the 1945 Potsdam Declaration, was not to be. Instead, the Japan peace settlement was determined at the behest of the US by the 1951 San Francisco Conference from which both the PRC and RoC (Republic of China) and the two sides of the Korean war were excluded, with the USSR refusing to attend. US power came to prevail over the Pacific through a series of bilateral alliances and an extensive array of US military bases.[2]

Despite political improvements over time – the PRC regained the UN seat,the US and China established official ‘One China’ ties, the USSR and China reached their own peace deals with Japan – the US-dominated military pattern remained and a number of territorial issues covered by the WW2 agreements affecting the USSR/Russia as well as China were left to fester.

What China wants is to see the promise of the Yalta of the East system realised through reunification with Taiwan and from this the construction of a cooperative security arrangement for the Pacific together with the US.

Militarising the Indo-Pacific
US control over the Pacific was never complete in the face of the armed resistance of the peoples of China, Korean and Indo-China and the non-aligned leanings of South East Asia states. The US was never satisfied.

Today, claiming the Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘raises the spectre of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan’, the US is creating a new militarised order for the Indo-Pacific. Increasing its own military capabilities to hem in China’s coastline and reinforce control across the wider oceans, the US is at the same time upgrading the key regional axis of power, its alliance with Japan, now elevated into a major military player. Taking the Japan alliance and AUKUS as the core, the US is attempting to pull together a group of militarily committed powers covering the whole Pacific to oppose China.

Where previously the US pursuit of a ‘free and open’ Indo-Pacific has focused on the South China Sea, the prospect of a war over Taiwan has become the new focus.

The US is now reinforcing its force structure across the region, increasing manoeuvrability along the first island chain and plugging the gaps in this arc of alliances and bases from Japan in the North stretching down to the Philippines in the South. The US has now secured agreement with the Philippines for four new bases, three in the Northern island of Luzon, within striking distance of Taiwan. Meanwhile under the terms of the new Japan alliance, the US Okinawa base north of Taiwan is being strengthened whilst the Japanese island of Mage is being rebuilt to serve US forces. A new base is opening in Guam, the first in decades and a US nuclear submarine base is under construction in Australia.[3]

However it is the rehabilitation of Japan as a military power that is the biggest change in the region’s security pattern just as the US shifts its primary focus to the China challenge.

Japan also now identifies China as the main strategic challenge under a new National Security Strategy, the only US ally to do so. With the endorsement of its new US alliance, the country is undergoing the most radical overhaul in its regional positioning since WW2, vastly increasing its war-fighting capacity as it embarks on its largest military buildup in decades. Military spending is set to double from 1% to 2% of GDP over 5 years – from some $50 bn a year to an accumulated $318 bn – to see Japan leap to the third or fourth largest military power in the world.

Matching Japan in the North, Australia too is reconfiguring itself as a military power in the South Pacific, its military spend set to rise from around $49 bn to $57 bn per year by 2025-6. Meanwhile Taiwan’s increased budget of $19bn is being backed by the US-pledged $10bn in military aid.

For the US neocon Right, their long-held aspirations for a remilitarised Japan and an armed Taiwan serving as an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ – passed from MacArthur and the McCarthyites to John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz and now to Kagan and Blinken – are materialising.

As the US advances plans to catch Taiwan between the pincer of its forces in Okinawa and the Philippines, Biden’s constant vacillations between the One China policy and the defence of Taiwan are highly destabilising. China is committed to a peaceful reunification, yet states it will never renounce the use of force directed against interference by outside forces. The military display by the PLA following Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to the island demonstrates it is serious about this. It has the capacity: in its vast naval fleet capable of imposing a blockade on the island, and with missiles capable of sinking US aircraft carriers and destroying US warships on the far side of the island, as its recent missile overflights demonstrated.

Lying 100 miles to the north of Taiwan and less than 300 miles from the massive US airbase in Okinawa, are the disputed islands known as the Diaoyutai in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese which may become the locus of battle given their critical importance in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan.

These uninhabited islands are claimed not only by China and Japan but also by Taiwan (the Republic of China); they were taken under control by the Japanese government in 2012 and now are increasingly patrolled not only by Japanese and Chinese but also by US forces.

To defeat any move by China, the US would need a coalition of forces – and this is what the Pentagon is seeking to construct.

Towards a Global NATO
With the transatlantic NATO alliance strengthened against Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, and a new Indo-Pacific regional security architecture emerging, the US is also working to construct a third axis under its control between the European and Asian theatres to serve as a counter to China’s Eurasian Belt and Road initiative.

AUKUS and the US-Japan alliance both offer access points for linking the security of the Euro-Atlantic to the security of the Indo-Pacific in accordance with NATO’s New Security Concept adopted at its 2022 summit.

NATO allies are getting drawn into the Indo-Pacific security pattern step by step. Military exercises have multiplied in the last year or two as a way of involving outside powers, not only the UK, but also France, which is boosting its military presence in the region. Germany has also sent in warships. NATO forces made up at least half of last year’s US-led RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises.[4] Australia, South Korea and Japan are again to attend the 2023 NATO summit, and Japan has become a regular participant in NATO Chief of Staff meetings.[5]

So far, NATO is committed to addressing the ‘systemic competition’ from China, but Stoltenburg’s recent visits to South Korea and Japan were looking for a more strategic undertaking. Japanese PM Kishida, mirrored by Zelensky’s visits around Europe, had embarked earlier in January on a diplomatic tour to rally support, visiting the UK, France, Italy and Canada as well as the US to gain approval for Japan’s new militarist orientation.

Eliciting statements of stronger support from Macron and Trudeau, Kishida was to agree a form of strategic partnership with Meloni of Italy.

But it was Sunak that took things furthest, signing a Reciprocal Access Agreement to allow the two nations to deploy military forces on each other’s soil. This represents Japan’s first military agreement with a European power.

The UK leads the way
The UK and Japan began to deepen military cooperation with the visit of the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group in 2021.

This was followed in November 2022 with an agreement on new UK-Japan-Italy partnership – the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) – a hi-tech programme for unmanned aircraft and cutting-edge weapons heralded as an ‘unprecedented international aerospace coalition’. BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and MBDA are to work together with Leopard in Italy and Mitsubishi in Japan to deliver next generation combat fighter jets. The Tempest is to replace the Typhoon aircraft by the mid 2030s; its capacity to carry hypersonic missiles will significantly increase Japan’s capabilities in joining a US war with China.[6]

Also in November 2022, a ‘Vigilant Isles 22’ joint exercise simulated the retaking of an island under enemy control. The new RAA aims to regularise such exercises in ‘island defence’.[7] This should set alarm bells ringing.

Similar to ones agreed by the US and Australia with Japan, these arrangements gain significance together as providing the US with the means to break a blockade of Taiwan: the RAA could bring British forces into direct conflict with China given the deepening Sino-Japanese island dispute.[8]

The RAA and GCAP are designed to sit alongside AUKUS and with the US and Australia also having access agreements, few barriers remain for Japan to join the ‘Asian NATO’.

For the UK, the deals cement Global Britain’s Indo-Pacific tilt, breaking new ground in military relations with Japan as an example for other NATO members to follow. As it opens the door for a wider international recognition of Japan’s rehabilitation as a military power countering any residual reluctance to do so given its past history, the UK is playing a significant role in the shift to a new Indo-Pacific security architecture.

At the same time, as the US’s key ally in the West, its links with Japan the US’ key ally in the East create a new global axis linking the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theatres of war.

As it looks to build a future beyond Brexit, Global Britain follows the US in tying future prosperity to military development – arms manufacture and arms exports. Here it aims to serve as a new model of Western 21st century power ‘creating jobs, saving lives’ as through GCAP it boosts its ‘world beating defence industry’ to promote high-high-skilled employment, drive innovation, and open up markets in both Europe and Asia.

Aiding and abetting the US, the UK similarly indulges the military aspirations of Japan’s right wingers, long held in restraint by its constitutional pacifism. Now GCAP subverts Article 9 of Japan’s constitution, the ‘peace clause’, by developing Japan’s counterstrike – that is – offensive capabilities.

Shockingly, the UK Prime Minister’s office was to draw parallels between the RAA and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902.[9] Forged to counter Russia’s expansion to the East at the time, the alliance oversaw a twenty year period of Japan’s rapid military industrialisation which then drove its bloody expansion across Asia.

US progress after WW2 on democratising and demilitarising Japan ground to a halt after the CPC victory in China in 1949. Suspected Class A war criminals, such as the grandfather of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, were released from jail to help form the Liberal Democratic Party which has now held power almost continuously over the last 70 years. Senior political figures in Kishida’s government continue to visit the Yasukuni shrine to the war dead which still memorialises those convicted of war crimes.

It did not seem to bother either Biden or Sunak in promoting collaboration between Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems respectively with Mitsubishi to restore its role in arms manufacturer, that the company’s owners are yet to meet South Korean demands for compensation for the use of forced labour in WW2. South Korea and Japan have recently announced some measures to ease these particular tensions.[10]

Constructing a new coalition
The US perceives the ‘security threats of the future’ – China – to be of such an order as to demand an entirely new response. Learning the lesson from the Iraq war not to alienate allies, the US seeks to secure military pacts and alliances through a fusing of economic and technological resources into their structure.

US Secretary of State Blinken states: ‘whether techno-democracies or techno-autocracies are the ones who get to define how technology is used … will go a long way toward shaping the next decades.’

AUKUS and the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP have both been designed to set the pace in the military use of new technologies, integrating security- and defence-related science and technology as well as arms production bases and supply chains centred on US core technologies. France, Italy, Germany as well as the UK are mentioned in Japan’s National Defense Strategy as partners with whom the government will work for training and exercises, defence equipment and technology cooperation.[11]

Meanwhile the Quad, falling short of a fully-fledged military alliance, uses Australia and Japan as a means to draw India closer to the US.

Rather, then, than relying simply on formal alliance structures, the US is making good use of unconventional arrangements and linkages to draw others along in the slipstream of its agenda, knitting an array of supporters together around the militarised core – all singing from the same hymn sheet of ‘freedom and democracy’.

Revolutions in technology and communications are opening new opportunities to broaden the more flexible ‘coalition of the willing’ format to a wider range of partners involved in a hybridised warfare.

Short of actual military engagement, support can come in various ways – through the provision of material, arms, logistics, economic and technological assistance, and through participation in economic warfare with sanctions along the lines of the informal groups now aiding Ukraine. Arrangements involving data- and technology-sharing, and exclusive supply chains can serve as a dragnet to draw ‘democratic’ states away from economic and diplomatic links with ‘authoritarian regimes’.

In this way the emerging pattern of US military hegemony is being underpinned by the globalisation of what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has called a new Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT).[12]

Towards a new World War
With the Iraq war underway by March 2003, the US effectively stepped back from a fight on two fronts, agreeing within months to join the six-party talks on Korean denuclearisation. Today, in contrast, it is shifting from the strategy of containment, prolonging the conflict with Russia in Ukraine in order to gear up for war with China.

What is taking place is a historic restructuring of the international security order: strengthening of the NATO transatlantic military axis against Russia whilst elevating the US-Japan trans-pacific military axis at the core of newly created regional NATO-like multilateral security frame. Meanwhile the UK-Japan military pact together with the increasing presence of NATO in Asia are laying the preliminary groundwork to complete the third axis of its triangle of global power, between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific.

Not since WW2 with the Axis powers of Japan, Italy and Nazi Germany coordinating the worldwide fascist offensive, have these two theatres of war been bridged in this way, and not for want of the US trying.

Through these three axes of a Global NATO, the US aims to contain the growing multipolar trend. A key here is to block the Eurasian link: the prolongation of the Ukraine war is helping to drive China and Europe apart, as China maintains neutrality whilst Europe demands it take a position on what it sees as its existential priority.

The US is applying immense pressure to achieve this, endeavouring to break the remaining post WW2 pacifist restraints in the Indo-Pacific as it has been doing in Europe so as to achieve these goals.

Actually it is NATO that is being positioned to cover and play the coordinating role between the two theatres, with the US pushing plans at the next summit to prepare for fighting on the home front and beyond NATO borders simultaneously. Europe will be under great pressure to increase spending on weapons procurement to free the US to move more of its assets closer to China.[13]

The major world powers are close to a stand-off – the last time this happened it ended indeed in world war. The UN has become a battleground for the New Cold War as US-influenced motions are designed to divide the ‘democracies’ from the ‘autocracies’. The UN Charter represents the deep learning from the horrors of the two world wars, lessons which are embodied in its institutional design built to maintain world peace. The UN is now under existential threat. Should war break out directly between the permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US and UK versus Russia and China – this would finally finish off the organisation. What then is left to prevent another word war?

One cannot help but wonder at the key players following the US into this deadly situation: the Anglosphere AUKUS pact intervening in an Asia becoming accustomed to managing its own affairs and a remilitarised Japan with its dark past to lead the region, partnering up in Europe with Italy, its former fascist ally and a Britain deluded by fantasies of past imperial glory.

But countries in the Global South are starting to wake up to the real nature of US intentions – to perpetuate its own and the West’s supremacy – and a non-aligned resistance is taking shape as they refuse to take sides over Ukraine.

More and more developing countries will be looking to China and others in the BRICS for economic stabilisation with the prolongation of the war further damaging further the prospects of world economic recovery after COVID.

The Iraq war unleashed over a decade of disruption for the Middle East, leaving the region even further divided: the countries of East Asia hardly want to see this happen to them. US plans to remilitarise and divide East Asia threaten to derail their promising prospects of further economic development, destabilising a region vital to the world’s future prosperity and the battle against climate catastrophe and not least at risk of nuclear proliferation.

Nor is Japan’s rearmament welcome in the region: not only China and the Koreas remain sceptical as to the sincerity of Japan’s apologies for its past, but other Asian nations, whose memories of Japan’s WW2 brutality and military-colonial occupations live on, may also be wary. Indications are that the Japanese public themselves will not support increased taxes to cover the proposed rise in military spending.

Meanwhile, new US proposals that allies host more intermediate range missiles in the region are being met with reluctance not only Thailand and the Philippines but also Australia, South Korea and Japan.[14]

Ahead of the G7 summit, planned to take place in Hiroshima and built up by Kishida’s January tour of the Western powers, is intended to send a strong signal of their unity both to Russia and China. A visit by Kishida to Kiev is also on the cards.

With the Ukraine crisis threatening to escalate into a direct clash between major powers, China has stepped forward with guidelines for a political settlement backed by a concept paper for a new global security. It may be that the Global South, still rather disorganised, will find direction under China’s proposals and start to set a limit to the US-led wider war preparations.[15]

The world is changing very fast indeed.

Peace and anti-war activists in the West seek to draw inspiration from the massive protests against the Iraq war, but to resist the insidious influence of imperialism permeating through social democracy requires a deeper historical and international understanding to unite a new worldwide mass movement for peace and common security.

[1] E.Ayketin “China has no intention of challenging the US: Xi Jinping” Nov 15, 2022 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/c ... ng/2738050

[2] John W. Dower, The San Francisco System: past, Present and Future in US-Japan-China Relations, Asia Pacific Journal February 23, 2014, Vol. 12, Issue 8, No. 2 https://apjjf.org/2014/12/8/John-W-Dowe ... tcile.html

[3] For details on the US military build up in the Pacific see Michael Klare, The Pentagon prepares for island combat in the Pacific as US-China tensions rise https://truthout.org/articles/pentagon- ... ions-rise/

[4] A. Wright “Largest ever US-Nato naval war drills in Pacific a Threat to Peace and Marine Life”, June 22, 2002 https://www.codepink.org/us-nato-naval-war-drills

[5] R. Nemoto, “Japan’s top uniformed officer to attend 1st NATO military chiefs meeting” May 17, 2022 https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Intern ... fs-meeting

[6] K. Inagaki, L. Lewis and S. Pfeifer, “The fighter jet that could create a new alliance between the UK and Japan” Financial Times Nov. 27, 2022 https://www.ft.com/content/a013530d-82f ... 76032d8c47

[7] A. Chuter, UK, Japan ink agreement to enable bilateral troop deployments, Defence News, Jan 11, 2023 https://www.defensenews.com/global/euro ... ployments/

[8] The US is also now pushing the Philippines into a similar arrangement so that not only could Philippines’ forces be deployed in Japan but Japanese forces be deployed say in Luzon.

[9] Downing Street Press release, Jan 11 2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prim ... -agreement

[10] A. Jung-a and K. Inagaki “US hails thaw between Seoul and Tokyo” Financial Times March 7 2023

[11] National Defense Strategy Dec 16, 2022 https://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/agenda ... egy_en.pdf

[12] R. McGovern US-Russia Talk About Where Not To Place Missiles, Jan 11, 2022
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2 ... -missiles/

[13] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newslett ... ing-target

[14] Rand Corporation, Ground-Based Intermediate-Range Missiles in the IndoPacific: assessing the positions of US Allies https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_repo ... 393-3.html

[15] China’s Foreign Ministry Proposals for a Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_6 ... 30713.html

https://socialistchina.org/2023/03/20/s ... -on-china/

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The DF-41 is a road mobile beast. The 8 axle vehicle can transport, erect and launch the missile. The DF-41 is supposedly a solid fuel missile. That means that it only requires a very short time to deploy and launch. It will be difficult to interdict while it is still on the ground. There were a total of 16 of these monsters in the parade. The DF-41 has a 9400. mile reach, making it a serious enry in the intercontinental class.

STRATCOM says China has more ICBM launchers than the United States – we have questions
Originally published: Federation of American Scientists (FAS) on February 10, 2023 by Hans Kristensen, Eliana Reynolds and Matt Korda (more by Federation of American Scientists (FAS)) | (Posted Mar 24, 2023)

In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening strategic competition between the world’s nuclear weapon states. It is important to monitor China’s developments to understand what it means for Chinese nuclear strategy and intensions, but it is also important to avoid overreactions and exaggerations.

First, a reminder about what the STRATCOM letter says and does not say. It does not say that China has more ICBMs or warheads on them than the United States, or that the United States is at an overall disadvantage. The letter has three findings (in that order):

The number of ICBMs in the active inventory of China has not exceeded the number of ICBMs in the active inventory of the United States.
The number of nuclear warheads equipped on such missiles of China has not exceeded the number of nuclear warheads equipped on such missiles of the United States.
The number of land-based fixed and mobile ICBM launchers in China exceeds the number of ICBM launchers in the United States.
It is already well-known that China is building several hundred new missile silos. We documented many of them (see here, here and here), as did other analysts (here and here). It was expected that sooner or later some of them would be completed and bring China’s total number of ICBM launchers (silo and road-mobile) above the number of U.S. ICBM launchers. That is what STRATCOM says has now happened.

STRATCOM ICBM Counting
The number of Chinese ICBM launchers included in the STRATCOM report to Congress was counted at a cut-off date of October 2022. It is unclear precisely how STRATCOM counts the Chinese silos, but the number appears to include hundreds of silos that were not yet operational with missiles at the time. So, at what point in its construction process did STRATCOM include a silo as part of the count? Does it have to be completely finished with everything ready except a loaded missile?

We have examined satellite photos of every single silo under construction in the three new large missile silo fields (Hami, Julin, and Yumen). It is impossible to determine with certainty from a satellite photo if a silo is completely finished, much less whether it is loaded with a missile. However, the available images indicate it is possible that most of the silos at Hami might have been complete by October 2022, that many of the silos at the Yumen field were still under construction, and that none of the silos at the Julin (Ordos) fields had been completed at the time of STRATCOM’s cutoff date (see image below).


Commercial satellite images help assess STRATCOM claim about China’s missile silos.

The number of Chinese ICBM launchers reported by the Pentagon over the past three years has increased significantly from 100 launchers at the end of 2020, to 300 launchers at the end of 2021, to now more than 450 launchers as of October 2022. That is an increase of 350 launchers in only three years.

To exceed the number of U.S. ICBM launchers as most recently reported by STRATCOM, China would have to have more than 450 launchers (mobile and silo)— the U.S. Air Force has 400 silos with missiles and another 50 empty silos that could be loaded as well if necessary. Without counting the new silos under construction, we estimate that China has approximately 140 operational ICBM launchers with as many missiles. To get to 300 launchers with as many missiles, as the 2022 China Military Power Report (CMPR) estimated, the Pentagon would have to include about 160 launchers from the new silo fields—half of all the silos—as not only finished but with missiles loaded in them. We have not yet seen a missile loading—training or otherwise—on any of the satellite photos. To reach 450 launchers as of October 2022, STRATCOM would have to count nearly all the silos in the three new missile silo fields (see graph below).

The point at which a silo is loaded with a missile depends not only on the silo itself but also on the operational status of support facilities, command and control systems, and security perimeters. Construction of that infrastructure is still ongoing at all the three missile silo fields.


Pentagon estimates of Chinese completed ICBM launchers appear to include hundreds of new silos at three missile silo fields.

It is also possible that the number of launchers and missiles in the Pentagon estimate is less directly linked. The number could potentially refer to the number of missiles for operational launchers plus missiles produced for launchers that have been more or less completed but not yet loaded with missiles.

All of that to underscore that there is considerable uncertainty about the operational status of the Chinese ICBM force.

However—in time for the Congressional debate on the FY2024 defense budget—some appear to be using the STRATCOM letter to suggest the United States also needs to increase its nuclear arsenal.

Comparing The Full Arsenals
The rapid increase of the Chinese ICBM force is important and unprecedented. Yet, it is also crucial to keep things in perspective. In his response to the STRATCOM letter, Rep. Mike Rogers—the new conservative chairman of the House Armed Services Committee—claimed that China is “rapidly approaching parity with the United States” in nuclear forces. That is not accurate.


Even if China increases it nuclear weapons stockpile to 1,500 by 2035, it will only make up a fraction of the much larger U.S. and Russian stockpiles.

Even if China ends up with more ICBMs than the United States and increases its nuclear stockpile to 1,500 warheads by 2035, as projected by the Pentagon, that does not give China parity. The United States has 800 launchers for strategic nuclear weapons and a stockpile of 3,700 warheads (see graph below).

The worst-case projection about China’s nuclear expansion assumes that it will fill everything with missiles with multiple warheads. In reality, it is unknown how many of the new silos will be filled with missiles, how many warheads each missile will carry, and how many warheads China can actually produce over the next decade.

The nuclear arsenals do not exist in a vacuum but are linked to the overall military capabilities and the policies and strategies of the owners.

The Political Dimension
STRATCOM initially informed Congress about its assessment that the number of Chinese ICBM launchers exceeded that of the United States back in November 2022. But the letter was classified, so four conservative members of the Senate and House armed services committees reminded STRATCOM that it was required to also release an unclassified version. They then used the unclassified letter to argue for more nuclear weapons stating (see screen shot of Committee web page below):

We have no time to waste in adjusting our nuclear force posture to deter both Russia and China. This will have to mean higher numbers and new capabilities. (Emphasis added.)


Lawmakers immediately used STRATCOM assessment of Chinese ICBM launchers to call for more U.S. nuclear weapons.

Although defense contractors probably would be happy about that response, it is less clear why ‘higher numbers’ are necessary for U.S. nuclear strategy. Increasing U.S. nuclear weapons could in fact end up worsening the problem by causing China and Russia to increase their arsenals even further. And as we have already seen, that would likely cause a heightened demand for more U.S. nuclear weapons.

We have seen this playbook before during the Cold War nuclear arms race. Only this time, it’s not just between the United States and the Soviet Union, but with Russia and a growing China.

Even before China will reach the force levels projected by the Pentagon, the last remaining arms control treaty with Russia—the New START Treaty—will expire in February 2026. Without a follow-on agreement, Russia could potentially double the number of warheads it deploys on its strategic launchers.

Even if the defense hawks in Congress have their way, the United States does not seem to be in a position to compete in a nuclear arms race with both Russia and China. The modernization program is already overwhelmed with little room for expansion, and the warhead production capacity will not be able to produce large numbers of additional nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future.

What the Chinese nuclear buildup means for Chinese nuclear policy and how the United States should respond to it (as well as to Russia) is much more complicated and important to address than a rush to get more nuclear weapons. It would be more constructive for the United States to focus on engaging with Russia and China on nuclear risk reduction and arms control rather than engage in a build-up of its nuclear forces.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/24/stratco ... questions/

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Former prisoner tells his Xinjiang story to UN rights body
Xinhua | Updated: 2023-03-23 09:21


GENEVA -- A former prisoner in China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Wednesday told his story to the ongoing 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, saying that in the prison where he served the sentence, there had never been mistreatment of prisoners such as beating, abuse, discrimination, violence or torture.

Naibijiang Turupu, head of Xinjiang Babilu Trading Co., Ltd., told the UN rights body that when he was in the prison, the officers had a heart-to-heart with him regularly and offered him psychological counselling.

"They also bought me textbooks to facilitate my study and exams," he said. "With the support of the prison and the encouragement of the officers, I passed the self-taught examinations and obtained the junior college and undergraduate diplomas in law and translation from Xinjiang University."

He added that because of his good behavior, he received commutations and returned to his hometown three years earlier.

"Thanks to the help of the government, I got a job in a taxi company before I set up my own company, and the business has been growing. I make more than 100,000 yuan (14,533 US dollars) a year, and my whole family is living a happy life," he said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b60b0.html

[blindpig]

The Rise of China and the Decline of the West
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 28, 2023
Henry Heller


A view of the CBD in Beijing. [Photo/IC]

The focal point of the world’s economy is shifting to Asia and Eurasia

China’s place on the world’s stage advances year by year. It is arguably already the world’s largest economy. Its Belt and Road Initiative and its other international links like the BRICS have helped to magnify its economic but also political and cultural influence worldwide.

More and more countries in the Global South are benefiting from these connections and are looking to China for leadership on the basis of mutual benefit. There is every reason to believe these trends will continue. Moreover, we can see that the focal point of the world’s economy is shifting to Asia and Eurasia.

At the same time, geopolitically we are headed for a multipolar world with no country able to impose itself as hegemon. It is a notable that the Ukraine-Russia war is accelerating these changes.

All of this is becoming possible because of the growing importance of China. In my eyes the success of these policies is rooted in its economic system. The reemergence of China on the world stage has been made possible by the maturation of its distinctive brand of socialism.

As we know capitalism plays a big role in the Chinese economy and links it with the rest of the world. But in my view this has to be understood in terms of the overall dominance of the Chinese state over the economy and the direction of its development by the Chinese Communist Party.

I am sure that there are ongoing political and other problems with this mode of development. It is a work in progress. But up to now and looking ahead I think we are looking at a model which is brilliantly successful and notably is outpacing the West. Moreover there is reason to believe that its success is going to become more apparent in future years as China becomes still more important on the global stage.

For China this achievement is an enormous vindication. One can only imagine the meaning of these developments for the Chinese people especially in light of the 1949 revolution which liberated China from more than a century of humiliation at the hands of imperialism and has brought about the modernization of the country.

The immense Belt and Road Initiative, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion, represents nothing less than a historic reversal of a Western current which began with the entry of the Portuguese Vasco de Gama into the Indian Ocean over 500 years ago.

Rather than emphasizing this astonishing turn of events I want to focus on the hostile reaction of the West to the reemergence of China and Eurasia on the world stage. This refusal is itself a fact of utmost political and historical significance fraught with danger as it is.

Led by the United States the reaction of the West is one of denial and rejection. The West so far has been unable or unwilling to accept these momentous transformations presently underway. Since the Obama administration we have seen this hostility reflected in terms of a rising crescendo of sanctions, military threats and media attacks against China’s supposed human rights record and interference in the political life of other states designed somehow to bring China back to heel under the West.

The centre of this campaign has been the reassertion of the idea of Taiwanese separatism—a pure relic of the Cold War. Taiwan is once more seen as the keystone of the American military containment of China.

Indeed, the posture of the United States conforms to the whole history of modern imperialism.

We know how bitterly the imperialist countries fought with one another for hegemonic control of the world. But in turn these powers, England, France but also Germany and Japan had to bow to American primacy by 1945. But American hegemony should be seen as heir to the legacy of overall Western domination of the world which began as early as the eighteenth century.

Intrinsic to this domination is a mindset which presumes the dominance of the West or even the white race over the rest of the world as intrinsic to the ‘rules-based’ and natural order of the world. Faced with the threat of China the West denounces the lack of democracy in China while refusing to acknowledge that its own representative democracy has transformed itself into oligarchy and a kind of liberal totalitarianism.

The ruling class in the United States and the other Western states are infected with these ideas. The reason for this is that it accords with the material interests of these classes. Faced with the emergence of China and the growing current to multipolarity their reaction has been a crude attempt to somehow intimidate China into accepting continued Western dominance.

The primary weapons they have for doing so are military, financial and media.

As a result we are seeing a global conflict initiated by the West against the rise of Eurasia the focal points being the South China Sea but also Ukraine. Russia is seen as itself the source of endless riches but also as the backdoor to China.

In a certain sense this conflict reflects a continuation of the imperialist struggles of the past. But the West’s hostility is not simply based on the threat of China as a new world power. It is China’s socialism which above all is seen as a menace.

The power of the ruling class in the West rests on the private accumulation of wealth through exploitation of people and resources. The idea of a state which ultimately bases itself on the predominance of workers and the primacy of use values over exchange values is anathema.

That China is that kind of state and that it is performing at a higher level than world capitalism is terrifying to them.

Given these circumstances China and the peoples of the world are faced with a complex and difficult situation.

The politics of the West is characterized by a sense of desperation and bravado strikingly reminiscent of the fascists during the Second World War. The logic of the so-called political realism it is pursuing is exposed as a deeply irrational form of Neitzschean will to power.

The potential for a war even more destructive than that last great world conflict is real. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that the peoples of the Global South are resisting attempts to continue to subordinate them to Western imperialism.

They realize that the conflict between the exploitive West and the rest of the world is a struggle over their own future.

Moreover, while they have been quiescent up to now, the working class in the West has yet to be heard from.

For how long will it put up with the deterioration in its economic circumstances, ecological irresponsibility and reckless pro-war policies pursued by the ruling classes? Furthermore, there is every sign that the capitalist system which this class controls is weakening or has entered a state of permanent crisis. The growing recklessness of their imperialism is a sign of this.

China with its strong state and party has the possibility of rationally responding and adjusting to this situation which is not true of the West. Time is on the side of China and the Global South.

It is impossible to say how far the crackpot realists in the West are prepared to go in defending their system. Hopefully they will bow to the force of circumstances which are not in their favour. But short of all out war we are looking at the emergence of new world system in which China has provided a key model of independent development for other states.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/03/ ... -the-west/

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Taiwan leader's 'transit' through US protested
By MINLU ZHANG in New York | China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-03-31 09:55

Protests opposed to the US visit of Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen continued on Thursday in New York City, with many people calling for a focus on economic issues instead of helping to arm Taiwan and agitate for its independence.

"Tsai Ing-wen here is to sell a war, and we Americans don't want that war. We love our country, we want jobs and schools for Americans, not more weapons to Taiwan, not a new war against China," Caleb Maupin told China Daily.

A crowd of 100 people in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday waved Chinese and American national flags and held signs saying, "There is only one China in the world", "Support China's reunification and resolutely oppose Taiwan independence" and "Taiwan independence has no way out; Taiwan independence is a dead end".

Many of them are from Fujian province, a province on the southeast coast of China. The island of Taiwan lies to its east, across the Taiwan Straits.

"Fujian and Taiwan are very close. We had a very good friendship, and we are connected by blood. Many people in Taiwan were originally from Fujian. Tsai's 'transit' hurts our feelings," Chen Heng, the chairman of the Fukien American Association, told China Daily.

Also gathered nearby, other protesters held signs saying, "Money for jobs and infrastructure in America! No more weapons to Taiwan", "Tsai Ing-wen is selling war. No more tax money for weapons to Taiwan".


A crowd of protesters on Thursday gathered in front of a hotel in Manhattan where Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen was scheduled to appear, holding signs saying, "Taiwan is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory," and "There is only one China in the world." MINLU ZHANG / CHINA DAILY
"We should build high-speed railway in this country; we should have better schools in this country; we should have better healthcare; we don't need wars," Maupin said.

"We should do business with China, and get a booming economy, lifting people out of poverty. Imagine if American companies and Chinese companies can team up, we can get richer as a country," he continued.

Thursday's protest was the third of its kind. When Tsai arrived in New York City on Wednesday, a large crowd of protesters also gathered near the Manhattan hotel where she was staying. Those protests, organized by about 105 local Chinese communities, were attended by more than 700 people.

On Thursday, a senior Taiwan official alleged Chinese authorities were paying people to attend the protests.

Deputy Chinese Consul General in New York Qian Jin later refuted the claim and said the protests were spontaneous.

It's not organized by the consulate, Qian said at a media breakfast on Thursday. "There's no need of involvement of the Chinese consulate" in the demonstrations, said Qian. "It's a reflection and demonstration of the real needs and heart of the Chinese communities here.

"I have the feeling that the majority of the Chinese community living here want peace in the Taiwan Straits," he said. "They don't want it to become a war zone. That's why they are against Tsai's so-called 'transit' to the US."

A healthy relationship between China and the US and a stable situation in the Taiwan Straits is in the best interests of Chinese communities here, said Qian.

"That's why I feel no surprise to see the news that there are demonstrations, especially from the Chinses communities here."


MINLU ZHANG / CHINA DAILY
Tsai is reportedly scheduled to travel through New York and Los Angeles on a 10-day trip to and from some Central American countries, during which she plans to meet with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

"It doesn't look like a private visit; it is not so much a transit," said Qian. He said it would be the first time the Biden administration allowed the "transit" of Tsai Ing-wen; it would be the first time for the US House speaker to meet Tsai on US soil if it happens; and it would be the first time for Tsai to give public speeches in the US.

"If all these are the case, how can you call it a transit? I think it's just using the name of transit to seek official interactions with the US to make a breakthrough and seek to propagate Taiwan independence," said Qian.

Chi Tai, president of Chinese for Peaceful Unification-Northern California, said Tsai has never considered the consequences of her visit.

"What Tsai is doing will not bring safety to Taiwan. It will only provoke more tensions. It will not do any good to the Taiwan people," Tai told China Daily.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b7982.html

CPC to launch Party-wide study drive
By XU WEI | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2023-03-31 02:08

The Communist Party of China has decided to launch a thematic campaign for the entire Party to study and implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, highlighting the need to advance the Party's self-reform and maintain its advanced nature and purity.

A meeting on Thursday of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee — the Party's central decision-making body — adopted the decision to conduct the campaign within the Party starting from April, focusing on officials at and above the county and director level, according to a statement issued after the meeting.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the meeting.

It was pointed out at the meeting that the campaign is to use the Party's new theories to achieve unity in thought, will and action, carry forward the great founding spirit of the Party, and see that the whole Party strives in unity to build a modern socialist country in all respects and advance the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts.

The meeting highlighted the significance of the campaign in enabling Party members to comprehensively study, grasp and put in place the guiding principles of the 20th CPC National Congress, apply the new development philosophy, foster a new pattern of development, promote high-quality development and advance the Chinese path to modernization.

It is also instrumental to forging ahead with the Party's self-reform, staying alert and determined to tackle the special challenges that a large party like the CPC faces, always remaining close to the people and maintaining the Party's advanced nature and purity, the statement said.

The campaign is also key to providing strong and powerful political guidance and a political guarantee in forging ahead in the new journey and making greater contributions in the new era, according to the statement.

The meeting laid out the overall requirements and fundamental tasks for the thematic campaign, calling on Party members to apply what they have learned in practice, act on their beliefs, and turn Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into a powerful force for strengthening ideals, enhancing Party consciousness, guiding practice and advancing work.

The purpose is to ensure that the entire Party can always maintain unity in thought, firm beliefs, coordinated actions and strong vigor, the statement said.

The campaign is expected to attain goals for strengthening the spirit of Party members, building up their character and loyalty, and enabling them to promote development through concrete actions, enhancing the people's well-being through acting on the fundamental purposes of the CPC and promoting clean governance.

The meeting called on Party committees and leading Party members groups at all levels to address the pressing concerns of the people, make special efforts in tackling prominent problems, and ensure that the campaign is carried out in an effective and sustainable manner.

The meeting also deliberated on the regulations on the reporting of personal information by officials.

Reporting personal information to authorities truthfully is a political and organizational discipline that officials must abide by, said the meeting, calling on officials to willingly submit to organizational oversight.

The meeting called on senior officials to take the lead in implementation by reporting their personal information, thereby setting a good example.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b7808.html

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A sign outside the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa. (Photo: Chris Wattie.)

The ‘Chinese interference’ story is rooted in xenophobia, economic decline
By Owen Schalk (Posted Mar 31, 2023)

Originally published: Canadian Dimension on March 30, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension) |

One of the stories dominating Canadian media right now—the baseless accusation that Beijing interfered in Canadian elections to secure Justin Trudeau’s victory—appears similar to the “Russiagate” hoax of a few years ago.

Russiagate, which was peddled by liberal elements of the U.S. media and political establishment following Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, groundlessly asserted that a foreign government to the East had meddled in supposedly pristine Western elections and tipped the scale in favour of their preferred candidate. That general outline also seems applicable to the anonymous “leaks” coming out of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) of late.

To both Trump and Trudeau’s opponents, the conspiracy theories simply make sense. Many U.S. liberals were so shocked by Trump’s victory that they refused to recognize him as a legitimate president, and the allegation that Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services had placed him in the White House let the Democratic Party off the hook for running such a widely despised candidate in Hillary Clinton.

In Canada, many conservatives continue to view Trudeau as a dictatorial, even communistic figure whose values don’t align with their myopic understanding of Canadian history. As such, the allegation that China placed him in power makes sense to them, despite the dearth of evidence.

Sinophobia has played a significant part in the ongoing non-scandal. While Russiagate borrowed from the deep well of cultural Russophobia in the U.S., the “Chinese election interference” story also has its roots in xenophobia—in this case, the “yellow peril” fears that many would have thought Canada had outgrown.

When paired with the acute decline of Canadian capitalism and the slow decay of the U.S. empire—the one-time imperial hegemon to which Canada has sutured itself—Ottawa’s anxieties about a power to the East are neuralgic, irrational, and grimly familiar. The Chinese interference fantasy is merely their latest manifestation.

The precarious balance of multiculturalism and xenophobia

After the founding of Canada, Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism served as a way for the new nation’s leaders to define their vision of “Canadian-ness” as “whiteness.” While encouraging the immigration of white settlers, Asian immigration was stiffly curtailed on the grounds that it represented a threat to the whiteness of the state—a “yellow peril.” The head tax on Chinese immigration and the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act were two of the state’s most aggressive attempts to reduce Asian immigration in defence of the normative ideal of a “white” Canada. These views continued into the postwar era, with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King declaring that Asian immigration threatened the “fundamental composition of the Canadian population.”


A cartoon encouraging the exclusion of Chinese immigrants appeared in a BC newspaper on August 24, 1907. (Image courtesy the Vancouver Public Library.)

Restrictions on Chinese immigration were not repealed until after the Second World War. Similarly, Chinese Canadians were not given the right to vote until 1947.

Multiculturalism as an institutionalized framework emerged in subsequent decades. In Canada and the World since 1867, historian Asa McKercher explains that the Canadian government’s move away from overtly racist immigration restrictions toward multiculturalism was partly motivated by Cold War geopolitics.

In decolonizing nations across the Global South, it was obvious that Canada’s claim to be a democracy with equal opportunities for all was not commensurate with the realities of its racist policies. On one occasion, the Soviet Union even countered Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s criticism by threatening to launch a complaint against Canada at the UN Human Rights Commission “highlighting racial discrimination faced by black Canadians, ethnic minorities, and indigenous peoples” in Canada. It was following criticism such as this that Canada began to open new immigration centres outside Europe, including in Japan, India, and Pakistan.

Multiculturalism was officially adopted under Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. There were economic reasons for doing so. After all, it is hard to believe a government that had proposed the White Paper two years earlier—a document that called for the total assimilation of Indigenous peoples in Canada—cared about protecting the languages and traditions of different groups on principle.

As Justin Podur of the Anti-Empire Project outlines:

multiculturalism… has always carried both an anti-racist and a sinister element. It is based on the belief that people from any country of origin could become as ‘Canadian’ as the British colonists who seized it in the name of the English Crown. The resulting Canada would be a ‘mosaic of cultures,’ not a melting pot that pressures people to sever ties with the old country and assimilate as happens in the United States.

Multiculturalism basically represented the widening of the category of socially accepted settler, which undermined the normative idea of Canadian whiteness while simultaneously “try[ing] to lower the special status of First Nations down to the level of any other part of the mosaic and hide the fact that they retain sovereignty over the land.”

Canadian multiculturalism also served an important foreign policy goal: weaponizing diasporas against the targeted governments of their home countries. As Podur explains:

These diaspora communities of the mosaic are assumed to have homogeneous politics as regards foreign policy: their visible leaders and their community media are of course vocally against the Chinese government, but also pro-US sanctions and wars, anti-Communist, against Palestinian sovereignty, etc.

There were long-term economic considerations behind the Canadian state’s institutionalization of a system of multiculturalism. However, the recent uproar around Chinese election interference, and the public calls for Chinese Canadian officials to prove their loyalty to Ottawa over Beijing, shows that multiculturalism did not succeed in rooting out the entrenched xenophobia of the settler state.

From an Atlantic to an “Indo-Pacific” power

After the Second World War, Canadian leaders supported American predominance in Asia on the grounds that the region fell within the U.S. empire’s sphere of influence. As John Price writes in Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific:

the Canadian government displayed a strong inclination to support the U.S. agenda in the Pacific regardless of the implications for the peoples there, for democracy, or for multilateral institutions. The rationale for this conduct was that Japan and Asia were within the U.S. sphere of influence, an imperial concept that still held sway.

Canadian leaders were not coerced into supporting U.S. aims in Asia. They backed them heartily on the grounds that “We were all Atlantic men,” as Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie put it.

More recently, conservative think tanks and elements of the Canadian government have urged Ottawa to take a more aggressive stance in Asia, citing the amorphous threat of China which, at its core, is the Chinese threat to U.S. hegemony in Asia. Trudeau has by and large given these pro-confrontation forces what they want, deploying more Canadian troops to the Pacific, announcing an anti-China “Indo-Pacific Strategy,” and playing a lead role in the antagonistic RIMPAC 2022 exercises. Trudeau has also aimed to limit academic collaboration with Chinese scientists who reportedly have ties to China’s National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), while doing nothing to reduce Canadian universities’ far more significant collaboration with the U.S. military-industrial complex, which has sent tens of millions of dollars to Canadian academics and universities.

Imperial anxieties in a multipolar world

China’s rise has not only exacerbated U.S. anxieties about the American empire’s decline. Canadian elites have been feeling a similar sense of unease. This is because, for many decades, Canada has benefitted economically from an almost total geopolitical alignment with the U.S. By latching onto the U.S. empire like a remora, Canadian corporations and consumers have been able to drain profits and goods from the Global South through pro-business dictatorships and free trade agreements imposed by Washington.


Canadian Member of Parliament Han Dong in Toronto, June 12, 2014. (Photo by Rene Johnston/Toronto Star.)

Meanwhile, Ottawa’s military objectives have been served by the U.S. government’s globe-spanning collection of military bases, which has allowed Canada to step back from military confrontation and cultivate a benevolent peacekeeper image for itself.

Now the rise of China and Russia have brought a new era of multipolarity. At the same time, Western capitalism has been widely discredited to the people living under its regimes. Everyone knows that Canada, the U.S., and Europe are run by an unaccountable class of business aristocrats who, regardless of party, care nothing about the livelihoods of ordinary people. Whether it’s due to bank bailouts, industrial disasters, or devastating “greedflation” caused by the collusion of price gougers, these systems have largely lost their legitimacy. As University of Manitoba professor Henry Heller recently wrote,

[the West’s] representative democracy has transformed itself into oligarchy and a kind of liberal totalitarianism.

With the rise of China, the dawn of multipolarity, and the decay of Western capitalism, the Canadian elite’s anxieties have risen sharply. Taken together, these are fundamentally imperial anxieties, concerned not only with Canada’s economic decline but with the country’s global role and its privileged position under the lagging U.S. hegemon.

After the Second World War, Canada drifted away from the dwindling British Empire and toward the ascendant American one. As the U.S. empire declines, there is no up-and-coming Western empire that Canada can ally with to retain its global privilege, and Canadian leaders know it. These imperial anxieties in a multipolar world have contributed to an ugly, unashamed resurgence of Sinophobia in Canadian political culture, which is once again constructing Chinese people as threats to the very essence of the Canadian state.

A manufactured crisis

The “Chinese interference” story has all the trappings of a manufactured crisis. Unless one is willing to take the word of some anonymous “security officials” in the Canadian intelligence apparatus—an apparatus that has its own logic, motives, and agenda—it seems obvious that the story is without substantive import to Canadians. Even one of the CSIS “leakers” admits that China’s alleged interference did not influence the outcome of any Canadian election.

Al Jazeera columnist Andrew Mitrovica studied CSIS for his book Covert Entry: Spies, Lies and Crimes Inside Canada’s Secret Service. He found “a rogue agency rife with laziness, incompetence, corruption and lawbreaking.” He added that “too few reporters, editors, columnists or editorial writers in Canada have made the effort to understand how CSIS functions with impunity and hold it to account.” CSIS’s mendacity has been documented by many others, including Yves Engler, who wrote that in its call for an inquiry into China’s supposed interference, the NDP “is demonstrating a remarkable level of trust in leaks from an intelligence agency that lied about Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik and many others.”

Sources have contradicted themselves on key elements of the allegations. Global News sources alleged that China had covertly passed $250,000 to 11 federal cabinet ministers, whereas Globe and Mail sources said there was no evidence of such funding. Meanwhile, CSIS director David Vigneault has asserted,

We have not seen money going to 11 candidates, period.

The articles that make claims about specific MPs by name, effectively accusing them of being fifth columnists who are disloyal to Canada, do not provide any proof of their allegations.

Meanwhile, some of the claims made by anonymous sources don’t stand up to basic scrutiny. Some allege that Beijing wanted Trudeau to win, but wanted his power constrained by a majority government—a claim that makes no sense, because if Trudeau was a Chinese asset, they would surely want him to be as powerful as possible.

Others claim that Liberal MP Han Dong urged China to delay the release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig because releasing them would help the Conservative opposition, but that showing “progress” in the case would help the Trudeau government. It is not explained how securing the Michaels’ release would have done anything but increase goodwill for Trudeau.

The Globe and Mail later reported that the transcript of Dong’s call with the Chinese consul-general, when he allegedly called for the delay of the Michaels’ release, showed no evidence that he’d made such suggestions. For his part, Dong has retained a lawyer and plans to sue Global News for defamation.

As Davide Mastracci writes in Passage, the Global article on Dong “relies almost entirely on anonymous CSIS sources. It fails to confirm many of the allegations these sources make. It doesn’t attempt to address any of the inconsistencies in their stories. It has no interest in interrogating why they may be making the claims.”

In short, there are no hard facts that confirm the core of the allegations—and yet, that hasn’t stopped scrupulous Canadian media outlets from breathlessly reporting on the accusations.

A degraded political culture

Deep-seated Sinophobia in Canadian culture, mixed with anxieties about economic and imperial decline, have converged to produce the ongoing “Chinese interference” story.

It is unclear why CSIS chose this moment to accuse Chinese-Canadian MPs of disloyalty to Canada, but the fact that much of the media and political class has embraced these accusations and called for an inquiry shows how degraded this country’s political culture has remained. The Conservatives have unsurprisingly amplified the anonymous allegations, but even NDP leader Jagmeet Singh called for Han Dong’s removal and a public inquiry into Chinese interference.

While we don’t know the exact reasons why CSIS chose to make these accusations, it is clear what they have produced: more anti-China frenzy, “yellow peril”-esque fears of Chinese infiltration through government officials and community organizations, and plenty of media coverage implying that Chinese-Canadian MPs are fifth columnists of Beijing.

Perhaps this was the agency’s goal. During the first Cold War, Western intelligence agencies spent enormous time and resources germinating fears of communist infiltration in the minds of their populations. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that, in the second Cold War, organizations like CSIS would return to tactics such as these.

What is different about the current Cold War, however, is the domestic and global context in which Canada finds itself. Economic decline has discredited capitalism to a large section of the population in the West, particularly young people. Even a series of polls by the right-wing Fraser Institute found that “there is a clear net preference for socialism [over capitalism] amongst those aged 18—34” in Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

It is also undeniable that the U.S. government views China’s economic success as a threat to its imperial hegemony. By extension, Ottawa views China’s rise as a threat to the Western hegemony from which elements of the Canadian population have derived huge benefits.

We need to view the “Chinese interference” accusations in light of the xenophobia, economic decline, and imperial anxieties that are resurgent in Canadian culture at this moment. When we take this holistic view, it becomes clearer than ever that the scandal on which Canadian media and politicians have expended so much time and energy says far more about the current state of Canada than anything else.

https://mronline.org/2023/03/31/the-chi ... c-decline/

******

AUKUS Exists To Manage The Risks Created By Its Existence



“NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence,” Professor Richard Sakwa once wrote in an attempt to articulate the absurdity of the military alliance’s provocative nature on the world stage. At some point Australians must wake up to the fact that this is equally true of AUKUS: we’re told the military alliance exists for our protection, but its very existence makes us less safe.

As former prime minister Paul Keating recently observed in the Australian Financial Review, this government’s justification for the AUKUS alliance and the obscenely expensive nuclear submarine deal that goes with it has been all over the map, first claiming that it’s to protect our own shores from a Chinese attack, then pivoting to claiming it’s to protect sea lanes from being blocked off by China after Keating dismantled the first claim at the National Press Club two weeks ago.

One thing Canberra has struggled to do is to explain exactly why China would launch an unprovoked attack on Australia or its shipping routes; the former couldn’t yield any benefit that would outweigh the immense cost even if it succeeded, and the latter is absurd because open trade routes are what makes China an economic superpower in the first place.

Luckily for us, the Pentagon pets cited in the Australian media’s recent propaganda blitz to promote war with China explained precisely what the argument is on Canberra’s behalf. They say Australia would be at risk of being attacked by China because the US wants to use Australia to attack China.


In Part Two of the infamous joint “Red Alert” war propaganda series by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, imperial spinmeisters Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott wrote the following:

But why would China use its limited resources to attack Australia instead of focusing solely on seizing Taiwan? Because of the strategically crucial role Australia is expected to play for the United States in the conflict.



“Our geography means we are a southern base for the Americans for what comes next,” Ryan says. “That’s how they’re seeing us. They want our geography. They want us to build bases for several hundred thousand Americans in due course like in World War II.”



Jennings says Americans would defend Taiwan by fighting from bases in Australia.



“America has a strategy called dispersal, which means when there’s a hint of a crisis, the Air Force gets out of Guam, the marines get out of Okinawa. Why? Because they know there is a high chance they will be obliterated. Where do they come? They come here. One risk our government is very concerned about is the phone rings, and it’s the US President asking for 150,000 Americans to be in the Northern Territory by next Tuesday.”



Ryan says as many as 200,000 US troops could descend on northern Australia.

Interestingly, the article also contains a rare acknowledgement in the mainstream press that the presence of the American surveillance base Pine Gap makes Australia a legitimate target for ICBMs:

“Distance is no longer equivalent to safety from our strategic perspective,” he says. In the first three days of a war, he says Beijing would be tempted to target Australian military bases with a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile attack to minimise our usefulness in the conflict.



“If China seriously wants to go after Taiwan in a military sense, the only way they can really contemplate quick success is to pre-emptively attack those assets that might be a threat to them. That means Pine Gap goes,” he says, referring to the top secret US-Australian base in the Northern Territory that the US uses to detect nuclear missile launches.

In their haste to make the case for more militarism and brinkmanship, these war propagandists admit what’s long been obvious to anyone paying attention: that the only thing putting Australia in danger from China is its alliances and agreements with the United States. The difference between them and normal human beings is that they see no problem with this.


Other empire lackeys have been making similar admissions. In a recent article by Foreign Policy, Lowy Institute think tanker Sam Roggeveen is quoted as saying the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal will make it “almost impossible” for Australia to avoid getting entangled in a war between the US and China:

“When you build a weapon system that is almost specifically designed to operate thousands of kilometers to our north, and which is perfectly suited to fighting a military campaign against China,” he said, “then at the final moment when the call comes from the White House—‘Will you take part in this war, or won’t you?’—it will be very difficult, almost impossible, for Australia to say no.”

The only way China attacks Australia is if Australia’s role as a US military asset makes us a target when the US attacks China, possibly over Taiwan or some other internal issue that’s nobody’s business but the Chinese. We’re told we’re allied with the US to protect ourselves, but that “protection” reminds me of an old joke by Willie Barcena:

“My homeboy Tito was always trying to get me to join a gang. Tito, with two black eyes, arm in a sling, and crutches, saying, ‘Hey, Willie, why don’t you join the gang? You get protection!’”

This obvious point gets flipped upside-down by those desperate to manufacture consent for militarism and empire, as we saw on a recent episode of ABC’s Q+A where South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas called Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John an “isolationist” (my God I hate that word) for questioning AUKUS and said if we’re attacked it’s because we didn’t travel rapidly enough along this self-destructive trajectory.



“Do you worry because of the AUKUS deal, because of South Australia’s role in this, do you believe South Australia becomes a target?” Malinauskas was asked by host Stan Grant.

“No,” Malinauskas said. “Because if Australia becomes a target, that speaks to the fact that we haven’t been making the decisions that we should’ve a long time ago to ensure that we don’t become a target, and the best way to do that is to improve our defence posture.”

Of course this is bullshit. AUKUS has nothing to do with “defence”. You don’t need long-range submarines to defend Australia’s easily-defended shores, you need long-range submarines to attack China. Australia’s “defence posture” is an attack posture.

Keating expanded on this point in the aforementioned National Press Club appearance, suggesting that the real plan for those nuclear submarines is to take out China’s nuclear-armed submarines to cripple their “second strike capability”, i.e. to allow the US to win a nuclear war with China. Keating gave the following comments after arguing that many short-range submarines are a much better way to defend Australia’s coast than a few vastly more expensive long-range nuclear submarines:

“That’s the better defense policy for Australia than joining with the Americans up there in the shallow waters of the Chinese coast, trying to knock out — see look, you know this, Phil, or you may know this — the Chinese, in the air-sea battle plan they had eight or ten years ago, is whether they could knock out all the Chinese nuclear weapons in one strike. And people doubt that this could happen, you know, you can find the sites and knock them out.



“So what big states do is they have submarines in deep water that carry the same nuclear weapons that are not subject to a strike — it’s called a second-strike capability. What the Americans are trying to do is deny the Chinese a second-strike capability, and we’d be the mugs up there helping them. We’ll be up there saying Oh no, we’ll put our boats into jeopardy in the shallow waters of China.”



So stop babbling about AUKUS having anything to do with defending Australia or its shipping lanes, or defending anything at all besides the US empire’s last desperate hopes of securing unipolar planetary hegemony.

AUKUS is not a defense partnership because it’s got nothing to do with defense, and it’s also not a defense partnership because it is not a “partnership”. It’s the US empire driving Australia to its doom, to nobody’s benefit but the US empire.

AUKUS exists to manage the risks created by its existence, and the same is true of ANZUS and all the other ways our nation has become knit into the workings of the US war machine. If we’re being told that our entanglements with the US war machine will make it almost impossible for us to avoid entering into a horrific war that will destroy our country, then the obvious conclusion is that we must disentangle ourselves from it immediately.

The problem is not that Australia’s corrupt media are saying our nation will have to follow the US into war with China, the problem is that they’re almost certainly correct. The Australian media aren’t criminal in telling us the US is going to drag us into a war of unimaginable horror; that’s just telling the truth. No, the Australian media are criminal for telling us that we just need to accept that and get comfortable with the idea.

No. Absolutely not. This war cannot happen. Must not happen. We cannot go to war with a nuclear-armed country that also happens to be propping up our economy as our number one trading partner. We need to shred whatever alliances need to be shredded, enrage whatever powers we need to enrage, kick the US troops out of this country, get ourselves out of the Commonwealth while we’re at it, bring Assange home where he belongs, and become a real nation.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/30 ... existence/

[blindpig]

China’s Historical Destiny Is to Stand with the Third World: The Thirteenth Newsletter (2023)

MARCH 30, 2023


Xiong Wenyun (China), Moving Rainbow, 1998–2001.


Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 20 March 2023, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spent over four hours in private conversation. According to official statements after the meeting, the two leaders talked about the increasing economic and strategic partnership between China and Russia – including building the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline – and the Chinese peace initiative for the war in Ukraine. Putin said that ‘many of the provisions of the peace plan put forward by China are consonant with Russian approaches and can be taken as the basis for a peaceful settlement when the West and Kiev are ready for it’.

These steps towards peace have not received a warm welcome in Washington. Ahead of Xi’s visit to Moscow, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the US National Security Council, declared that any ‘call for a ceasefire’ in Ukraine by China and Russia would be ‘unacceptable’. As details of the meeting emerged, US officials reportedly expressed fear that the world might embrace China and Russia’s efforts to secure a peaceful resolution and end the war. The Atlantic powers are, in fact, redoubling their efforts to prolong the conflict.

On the day of the meeting between Xi and Putin, the United Kingdom’s minister of state at the Ministry of Defence, Baroness Annabel Goldie, told the House of Lords that ‘[a]longside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour-piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium’. Goldie’s statement came on the twentieth anniversary of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, in which the West used depleted uranium on the Iraqi population to deleterious effect. In reference to the UK’s provision of depleted uranium to Ukrainian forces, Putin said that ‘it seems that the West really has decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian – no longer in words, but in deeds’. In response, Putin said that Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.


Liu Xiaodong (China), East, 2012.

Within China, Xi’s visit to Russia was widely discussed with a general sense of pride that China’s government is taking leadership both to block the ambitions of the West and to seek peace in the conflict. These discussions, reflected in journals and on social media platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, LittleRedBook, Bilibili, and Zhihu, emphasised how China, a developing country, has nonetheless been able to overcome its limitations and take on a leadership position in the world.

These discussions within China are largely unavailable to people outside the country for at least three reasons: first, they take place in Chinese and are not often translated into other languages; second, they take place on social media platforms that, in addition to being in Chinese, are not used by people from outside the Chinese-speaking community; and third, growing Sinophobia, stemming from a longstanding colonial history of thought and exacerbated by the New Cold War, has deepened a disregard for discussions in China that do not adopt the Western worldview. For these reasons, and more, there is a genuine lack of understanding about the range of opinions in China concerning the shifts in the world order and the country’s role in these shifts.

Within China, there is a rich tradition of intellectual debate that takes place in journals inspired in one way or another by Chen Duxiu’s Xīn Qīngnián, or New Youth, first published in 1915. In the first issue of that journal, Chen (1879–1942), who was a founding member of the Communist Party of China, published a letter to the youth which included a list of admonitions that seems to have set the terms for the intellectual agenda of the next hundred years:

Be independent and not enslaved (自主的而非奴隶的)
Be progressive and not conservative (进步的而非保守的)
Be in the forefront and not lagging behind (进取的而非退隐的)
Be internationalist and not isolationist (世界的而非锁国的)
Be practical and not rhetorical (实利的而非虚文的)
Be scientific and not superstitious (科学的而非想象的)

The experience of New Youth set in motion journal after journal, each with an agenda to build more adequate theories about developments in China that seek to establish the country’s sovereignty and lift them out of the so-called ‘century of humiliation’ (百年屈辱), a period that was characterised by Western and Japanese imperialist intervention. In 2008, several leading intellectuals in the country founded a new journal, Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), which has increasingly become a platform to debate what Xi called the ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ (中华民族伟大复兴). The bi-monthly journal features the country’s leading voices, who offer various perspectives on important issues of the day such as the state of the post-COVID-19 world and the importance of rural revitalisation.



Last year, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Dongsheng began a conversation with the editors of Wenhua Zongheng which led to the production of a quarterly international edition of the journal. Through this partnership, select essays from the Chinese editions of the journal are translated into English, Portuguese, and Spanish, and an additional column is featured in the Chinese edition that brings voices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America into dialogue with China. We are proud to say that the first issue of this international edition (vol. 1, no. 1) launched this week, with the theme ‘On the Threshold of a New International Order’.

This issue features three essays by leading scholars in China – Yang Ping (editor of Wenhua Zongheng), Yao Zhongqiu (professor at the School of International Studies and dean of the Centre for Historical Political Studies, Renmin University of China), and Cheng Yawen (dean of the Department of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University), as well as my brief editorial. Both Professors Yao and Cheng discuss the changes in the current international order, mainly the decline of US unipolarity and the emergence of regionalism. Professor Yao’s contribution, which goes back to the Ming dynasty (1388–1644), makes the case that the changes taking place today are not necessarily the creation of a new order, but the return of a more balanced world system as China ‘revives’ its place in the world and as the ambitions of the US find their limits in the emergence of key countries in developing countries, including China, India, and Brazil.


Zhou Chunya (China), New Generation Tibetan, 1980.

All three essays focus on the importance of China’s role in the developing world, both in economic terms (such as through the ten-year-old Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI) and in political terms (such as through China’s attempt to restart a peace process in Ukraine). Editor Yang Ping is firm in his view that ‘China’s historical destiny is to stand with the Third World’, both because – despite its major advances – China remains a developing country and because China’s insistence upon multilateralism, as Professor Cheng argues, means that it does not seek to displace the US and become a new global hegemon. Yang ends his account with three considerations: first, that China must not be led merely by commercial interests but must ‘prioritise what is necessary to ensure strategic survival and national development’; second, that China must intervene in debates about the new international system by introducing the BRI’s principles of ‘consultation, contribution, and shared benefits’, which include seeking to expand the zone of peace against the habits of war; and third, that China must encourage the creation of an institutional mechanism beyond economic cooperation – such as a ‘Development International’ – to promote the genuine sovereignty of nations, the dignity of peoples faced with the International Monetary Fund’s debt-austerity trap, and a new internationalism.


Zhu Wei (China), China Diary, No. 52, 2001.

Yang, Yao, and Chen’s perspectives are essential reading as part of an important initiative for global dialogue. We look forward to your feedback about the first international edition of Wenhua Zongheng and are currently working on the second edition, which will focus on China’s path to modernisation.

As the United States pushes for a major power conflict in the Asia-Pacific, it is essential to develop lines of communication and build bridges towards mutual understanding between China, the West, and the developing world. As I wrote in the closing words of my editorial, ‘nstead of the global division pursued by the New Cold War, our mission is to learn from each other towards a world of collaboration rather than confrontation’.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... -zongheng/

*****

China Urges US To Disclose Data About Fort Detrick Bio-Labs


Chinese Diplomat Mao Ning, March 31, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @upholdreality

Published 31 March 2023

"We hope WHO will keep its position science-based, objective and impartial, not let politicization get in the way, and carry out origins-tracing in the U.S.," Diplomat Mao said.


On Friday, Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning urged the U.S. to disclose information about its bio-labs at Fort Detrick and immediately stop political manipulation on the origins-tracing of SARS-CoV-2.

"China's position on this issue is consistent. China has supported and participated in global science-based COVID origins-tracing since day one, and has been firmly opposed to all forms of political manipulation," Mao said.

Since COVID-19 hit, the Chinese side has twice received World Health Organization (WHO) experts for origins-tracing cooperation, which produced a scientific and authoritative joint report and laid a solid foundation for global origins-tracing.

After the WHO established the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins on Novel Pathogens (SAGO), China recommended experts to join the group and organized events for Chinese experts to share research findings with the WHO Secretariat and SAGO.

"Recently Chinese scientists have shared more data of the early samples of the disease with the rest of the world," Mao said, adding that China has shared more data and research findings than any other country and made the most contribution to the origins study.


"Doubts have been raised... regarding the accident in and shutdown of the U.S. bio-lab at Fort Detrick," she pointed out, adding that the outbreak of a cluster of pneumonia cases with an unknown cause in the U.S. in 2019, and the possibility that the first COVID-19 case in the United States preceded the officially announced date based on many reports.

So far, however, the U.S. has taken no responsible step for origins-tracing. It has never invited WHO expert groups for joint study in the U.S. or shared any early data.

It has ignored the world's concerns about its bio-military bases at Fort Detrick and around the world. And it has not yet responded to the WHO request for data sharing, said the Chinese spokesperson.

"We hope WHO will keep its position science-based, objective and impartial, not let politicization get in the way, and carry out origins-tracing in the U.S., among other countries, and play a positive role in global science-based origins-tracing," said Mao.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0008.html

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Enslaving The World To Stop Chinese Tyranny: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix



Trump should have stuck to just doing legal things like assassinating foreign leaders, deliberately starving civilians, imprisoning journalists, and dropping military explosives on foreign nations.


If you’re just tuning in, US dollar hegemony and diplomatic dominance are rapidly eroding while the US and its allies accelerate aggressions and provocations against Russia and China simultaneously in a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world. I’m a bit less excited about the mounting threats posed to US hegemony than other anti-imperialists, only because a desperate unipolarist empire is a dangerous unipolarist empire. The deadliest time for a battered wife is right when she leaves.

A cornered animal is dangerous, especially when it has sharp teeth. A cornered empire is dangerous, especially when it has nuclear weapons. “If I can’t have you no one can” is a line that can be said to a partner or to a planet.

Abuse victims need to escape, but we may also be heading into the most perilous moment in all of history.

It’s so crazy that the immensely authoritarian RESTRICT Act is getting shoved through on a tidal wave of consent that’s based on literally nothing besides people’s fuzzbrained artificially-manufactured hysteria about China.

Consent for the PATRIOT Act was manufactured by planes crashing into American skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. Consent for the RESTRICT Act was manufactured by a few right wing pundits stoking a dopey moral panic about an app where kids post dancing videos.

It just says so much about the lies the west tells about itself and its values that the second any social media service becomes widely used you see the entire US security state converge upon it and demand control over it.


The US needs to stop China’s rise by militarily encircling it and crippling nations who are aligned with it and waging economic warfare and staging proxy wars and saturating the world in propaganda and crushing free speech, because otherwise a tyrannical regime might take over.


In the year 2023 there’s really no excuse for ordinary Americans to believe any politician is on their side in either major party. The very best of them will only once in a while do the bare-minimum not-evil thing. Don’t make heroes of these scumbags. They’re not your friends.

Don’t celebrate on those rare occasions when one of them does the bare-minimum not-evil thing. Don’t “give them credit”. Don’t think it proves anything about who they are as people. All it means is a shitty empire manager did one bare-minimum not-evil thing. They’re still trash. Believing anyone in either mainstream party is your friend is believing that institutions which are explicitly designed to promote the interests of oligarchy and empire are going to help ordinary people like you. It’s like believing you can put out a fire with enough gasoline.

There are no solutions to America’s dysfunction in electoral politics. That doesn’t mean there are no solutions, it just means you can’t use something that’s specifically designed to perpetuate the thing you don’t like to end the thing you don’t like. Any time you’re being told that a major figure in mainstream politics is fighting for you, you’re being sold a psyop; you’re being sold the false belief that the system works and can be used to achieve positive change. This is done to keep you from dispensing with that system.

In 2016 you could be forgiven for thinking electoral politics had some hope, but after watching Trump facilitate every deep state agenda in the book and watching Bernie cave and capitulate at every turn year after year, there’s no excuse anymore. Stop buying into the puppet show.

Western journalists are some of the most herd-minded, approval-seeking losers you’ll ever meet. Their entire lives revolve around seeking the approval of other journalists, when they should be doing the exact opposite: working to expose journalistic malpractice in the media.

Journalists should have an oppositional relationship with power, and that means all power. Not only should they have an aggressively oppositional relationship with their government and its oligarchs, they should have an oppositional relationship with the mass media itself. They should spurn the approval of other journalists and media institutions; all the best journalists do.

It’s not okay for journalists to let themselves become tools of power. It’s not okay for journalists to be friends with politicians and government officials. It’s not okay for journalists to have tribal loyalty to other journalists or seek to ingratiate themselves to them.

Journalists should have loyalty to the truth and the truth only. Not to the high-level people they schmooze with at the nation’s capital. Not to government officials in the name of maintaining “access”. Not to their government’s geopolitical interests. Not even to each other.

And of course everything I just described is career suicide to anyone who’s looking to make it anywhere in the mass media. If what you want is to have the story of “being a journalist” and all the social clout that comes with it, you’re going to do the exact opposite of what I said. That’s a big part of what makes western journalists such herd-minded, approval-seeking losers; that’s the only type of personality that can make it to any level of prominence in the mass media today. That’s a problem, and if we’re ever going to have a healthy society it’s going to have to change.

The only way to do real critical reporting and still keep your job is to go independent, but that means going without all the resources people have at mainstream news outlets to get their information. Nobody’s found a great solution to this yet, which is perfectly understandable because we live in a sick society where money and power are closely related and it takes money to produce good investigative journalism. So you’ll see things like “independent” media outlets cozying up with plutocrats to pay the bills, and they always run into problems down the track.

Really it’s a bit of a catch-22; we can’t have healthy media until we have a healthy society, and we can’t have a healthy society until we have healthy media. We just muddle through as best we can, telling the truth the entire time, come what may.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/02 ... ve-matrix/

[blindpig]

The U.S. is trying to persuade China to commit suicide
By John Ross (Posted Apr 04, 2023)

Originally published: Guancha (more by Guancha)

China has not only set a goal of short-term economic acceleration in 2023 compared to the pandemic period but also a clear strategic economic target for 2035. At the 20th Party Congress the latter was stated as reaching the level of a “medium-developed country by 2035”. Slightly earlier, in 2020’s discussion around the 14th Five Year plan, it was concluded that by 2035 for China: “It is entirely possible to double the total or per capita income”. These two goals are essentially the same. This target requires an average annual growth of GDP of at least 4.6% a year by 2035.

Recently, however, a series of concerted Western attempts have been made to claim that China cannot achieve this target. The IMF report on China for 2023, for example, projects that’s China’s growth will decline to only 3.4% a year by 2028 and to 3.1% a year by 2031.i Blackrock published a report stating: “the potential growth rate of the Chinese economy… could fall… to around 3% by the turn of the decade.”ii

The consequences of such a slowdown are evident—China will fail to achieve its 2035 goals. In many of these analyses it is claimed China will remain a middle-income economy. Thus the Financial Times carried an article, with the self-explanatory title, “The implications of China’s mid-income trap”, claiming that: “China has now found itself in a classic middle-income trap, a term the World Bank invented back in 2006 to describe the phenomenon of emerging economies that never, well, actually emerge.“iii The most comprehensive statement of this position is a report by Goldman Sachs also with a self-explanatory title of “Middle Kingdom: Middle Income”—i.e. China will not be able to achieve the level of a “medium-developed country” but will remain a middle income one. The basis of this claim is that the Goldman Sachs report claims: “China’s growth rate will slow to 3.5% by 2027 and 2.5% by 2032 for a 10-year annualized growth rate of 3.4%.”iv

Despite what will be seen are quite erroneous conclusions the Goldman Sachs does have one virtue which is absent from other similar claims. Instead of basing itself on a series of anecdotes, or assertions which do not show how cited facts create the effects they are alleged to have, i.e. the unserious method of many of these Western claims, the Goldman Sachs report does attempt to give a seriously quantified basis for the links between its claims and their supposed effects. Therefore, the Goldman Sachs report is analysed here not because it is the worst, but because it is the most serious of such studies. But what such analysis actually shows is that the Goldman Sachs report anticipates that China will commit economic suicide under the influence of Western economic ideas! As the confusions in vulgar Western economic ideas involved in this are sometimes repeated in sections of the Chinese media, examining the errors of the Goldman Sachs report therefore is highly educative as it shows the mistakes of such Western economic thinking contained in many similar analyses and their dangers for China.

The Method of Distortion
First the Goldman Sachs report carries out the most typical forms of distortion. That is, it combines statements which are simply not true, purely invented material, i.e., “fake news”, with huge distortion of the relative weight of real factors in the situation—i.e., claims that factors which do not have great weight on the outcome are in fact the most important in deciding it. Thus, for example the more than 100-page Goldman Sachs reports devotes dozens of pages to claims such as that that China “will curtail growth and innovation.” v That: “Policy uncertainty… hampers innovation.” vi That: “China’s population is largely uneducated.” vii That: “We believe China will remain a middle-income country, not only because of its weakening growth, but also because of its low rankings across key metrics that boost productivity… ranks below many emerging market economies.” viii

It is easy to refute these specific charges. Far from hindering innovation China is the only economy in the world which is a serious competitor to the U.S. in high technology industries, China has the highest growth of total factor productivity (TFP) of any major economy. Regarding labour productivity, China has the fastest GDP growth of any major developing country, and as China’s working age population has been slightly declining since 2015, reflected in a fall in the total number of hours worked in the country, all of this increase in increase in output has come from factors increasing labour productivity etc.

But examination shows that the easy refutation of such errors is really not the point because the Goldman Sachs report’s own data, which it is forced to include because otherwise the study would be openly unserious, shows that in reality even if all these charges were true, which they are certainly not, they would not at all be decisive. The Goldman Sachs report’s own data shows that the overwhelming reason they project China’s economic growth to fall to the level they claim is simply due to the one fact. This is of a projected decline in the share of investment in China’s economy, as shown in Goldman’s chart below—this which causes 92% of the fall in GDP growth.

To be precise, on the Goldman Sachs reports calculations, China’s GDP growth is projected to fall from an annual average 6.0% in 2013-2022 to 3.4% in 2023-2032, that is a decline of 2.6%. But the reason for this is because of the overwhelming effect of the single fact that the annual increase in GDP growth created by capital investment s projected to fall by 2.4%—from 4.8% to 2.4%.ix As this fall in capital investment accounts for 92% of the decline in the GDP growth rate, only 8% of the decline the Goldman Sachs report projects, or 0.2% GDP growth a year, is attributable to factors other than the decline in investment. Without the investment decline, the Goldman Sachs report’s data shows that China’s annual GDP growth would only fall from 6.0% to 5.8%—a level which would easily allow China to exceed its own targets for 2035. In short, the Goldman Sachs report spends large numbers of words on charges which are untrue but also which its own data shows wouldn’t make much difference even if they were true! Only the decline in investment makes a decisive difference. Therefore, most of the Goldman Sachs report is simply a form of distortion “by smokescreen”—to list a series of things which their own data shows wouldn’t make much difference.


Goldman Sachs report analysis on the reasons for the fall they project in China’s growth rate.

When it comes to the reasons for this fall in the contribution of capital investment to GDP growth the Goldman Sachs report says that this is because “Investment as a share of GDP is forecast to decline from 42% in 2022 to 35% by 2032.” x Undoubtedly a 7% of GDP decline in investment in a 10-year period would lead to a big fall in China’s growth rate—as analysed below. But why should China carry it out? That is why should China commit economic suicide by such a huge cut in investment?

China and Other Upper Middle-Income Economies
The report believes that the reason that China will cut investment in this economically suicidal way, ensuring China cannot achieve the goals it has sent for 2035, is because average “Investment as a share of GDP in upper-middle-income countries is 34%.”xi This average 34% of fixed investment in GDP in upper middle income economies is shown in Figure 1.

But, first, this is a bizarre logic. China has far outperformed other upper-middle-income economies, so why should it wish to abandon a path which has been the most successful and adopt one that has been less successful? On the contrary the logical thing would be that other upper-middle-income economies should adopt the China path.

But apparently for the Goldman Sachs report the most successful country should adopt the policies of the less successful ones! Imagine if Goldman Sachs applied that to their advice regarding companies. Then it would call for the most successful company to abandon its strategy and instead adapt the strategy of the less successful ones. If that were the type of advice Goldman Sachs gave out regarding companies, it would lose all its clients in almost no time! But regarding countries it precisely advocates this bizarre logic that the most successful country, China, should adopt the approach of the less successful ones. Given the relative results, Goldman Sachs should be advising other countries to learn from China.


Figure 1

It is also unclear if Goldman Sachs have actually thought through their research properly. China, at present, itself belongs to the ranks of upper middle-income economies (and developing economies). Indeed, the only reason that the level of fixed investment in GDP in upper middle incomes economies is as high as 34% is because that figure includes China. Excluding China, the percentage of gross fixed investment in GDP is only a total of 20% in all other upper middle-income economies and only 23% in all developing economies—as shown in Figure 2.

In any case the consequences of a sharp reduction in the percentage of fixed investment in GDP are clear. Evidently if the rate of fixed investment in GDP in China were reduced to the average for all developing economies, or that for other upper middle-income economies, then it would be expected that China’s growth rate would also fall towards that of other middle-income economies. As most middle-income economies are not making the transition to high income status that would indeed mean also China would not make the transition to a high-income economy. But, as already seen, the reason for that would be that China cut the percentage of fixed investment in GDP—that is China would not reach the ranks of high-income economies because it had decided to commit economic suicide.


Figure 2

The U.S. Forces a Cut in Investment in Successful Competitors
In fact, there is also nothing new in the U.S. slowing competitor economies by reducing their level of investment in GDP. On the contrary it is historically the most tried and tested of all U.S. methods of slowing down competitors. In particular, it was used on the three previous occasions since World War II when the U.S. found other significant economies growing more rapidly than it was. These were:

*Germany in the 1950s and 1960s.
*Japan in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
*The East Asian Tiger economies from the 1970s to the late 1990s.

To understand in more detail the methods by which the U.S. sought to, and succeeded, in slowing competitor economies it is necessary to understand the historically new economic situation the U.S. faced after World War II. The U.S. prior to 1914 overtook the previous global economic superpower the UK, due to a higher level of fixed investment in GDP. The U.S. also outgrew, except during the Great Depression, the other claimant to replace declining UK power—Germany.

By the early 1950s, however, the U.S. found itself in a new global economic situation. For the first-time major capitalist economies, initially West Germany and then Japan, achieved far higher levels of fixed investment in GDP than the U.S. and were growing much more rapidly than the U.S..

*By 1955 West Germany’s fixed investment was 26.9% of GDP, compared to 21.9% for the U.S., and by 1964 Germany’s fixed investment was 30.0% of GDP.
*Japan’s level of fixed investment in the same year was 34.6% of GDP, compared to 22.7% for the U.S.
Accompanying this, by 1955 West Germany’s economy was growing at 8.9% a year, compared to 4.6% for the U.S., and by 1965 Japan’s economy was growing at 9.4% a year compared to 5.1% for the U.S.

For the first time in its history the U.S. was therefore being outgrown and outcompeted by other capitalist economies, producing a huge drain on the U.S.’s only significant non-dollar foreign exchange reserves—its gold holdings. Between 1950 and 1971 U.S. gold reserves fell by more than half, from 20,000 metric tons to 9,000 tons.

The U.S., in a pattern that was to be repeated in the future, defeated this competitive threat not by accelerating its own growth but by sharply slowing its competitors. The U.S. used a combination of political and economic means to achieve this. The U.S. was Germany and Japan’s military protector—and therefore the U.S. could use a strong leverage to influence their economic policies. Therefore, in the late 1960s the U.S. used the power this gave it over Germany to compel Germany to revalue the D-mark, reducing its competitiveness, and to no longer exchange its dollar holdings for gold. The link of U.S. military protection to German economic policy was made entirely clear in March 1967 in the ‘Blessing Letter,’ named after the then president of Germany’s central bank, which was sent to the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve. This explicitly noted:

There occasionally has been some concern… that… expenditures resulting from the presence of American troops in Germany [could] lead to United States losses of gold…

You are, of course, well aware of the fact that the Bundesbank over the last few years has not converted any… dollars… into gold

You may be assured that also in the future the Bundesbank intends to continue this policy.

However, as even this step proved insufficient to resolve U.S. economic problems, in August 1971 the U.S. proceeded to further unilateral measures against competitors—most importantly Germany and Japan.

Over the weekend of August 13, U.S. suspended the commitment to provide gold to foreign holders of dollars. It imposed a 10% surcharge on merchandise imports. The U.S. informed other countries it would only rescind the 10% tariff if they increased the exchange rate of their currencies against the dollar—thereby reducing their competitiveness compared to the U.S. In late September 1971 the U.S. similarly unilaterally informed the Group of 10, the wealthiest nations of the time, that the U.S. required a $13 billion improvement in its trade balance, a movement from a $5 billion deficit to an $8 billion surplus, and this demand was non-negotiable. Under such pressure the Smithsonian Agreement of December 1971 increased the exchange rate of other major trading currencies, including the mark and the yen, against the dollar by 11-17%.

These measures did not accelerate the U.S. economy. The long-term U.S. slow growth continued—as Figure 3 shows. But these measures were highly successful in slowing Germany and Japan. By the mid-1970s both German and Japanese economies had decelerated to the point where their economies were no longer growing faster than the United States. Those in the U.S. favouring a confrontational approach had therefore demonstrated that it was possible to win a competitive struggle not by accelerating the United States own economy but by slowing others. It was a lesson which was to be used again—as will be seen.


Figure 3

The precise effect the U.S. achieved to radically reduce Germany and Japan’s growth rate was to cut their level of fixed investment in GDP. Gross fixed investment fell sharply from their peak levels—in the case of Germany from 30.6% of GDP in 1964 to 22.0% of GDP by 2021, and in Japan’s from 41.2% of GDP in 1969 to 25.0% in 2021. Germany’s level of fixed investment was reduced to near the U.S. level of slightly above 20% of GDP and the gap between Japan’s level of gross fixed investment and the U.S. was reduced from a peak of 19.2% of GDP to only 4.2% of GDP. In terms of its relation to the highest-level Germany’s level of gross fixed investment was reduced by 29% from its maximum rate, and Japan’s was reduced by 39% from its highest level. Figure 4 shows the declines.


Figure 4

The Fall in Germany and Japan’s Net Fixed Investment
But in reality, this data for gross fixed investment considerably understates the significance of the fall in Germany and Japan’s investment because it does not take into account depreciation—that is consumption of fixed capital. A substantial part of gross fixed investment simply goes to replacing worn out/depreciated capital and does not increase the capital stock and the contribution this makes to growth. The data for the level of net fixed investment in GDP for the U.S., Germany, and Japan, that is taking into account depreciation, is shown in Figure 5—internationally comparable World Bank data for this is only available from 1970.

As may be seen, in 1970, that is before the U.S. launched its 1971 measures against Germany and Japan, Japan’s level of net fixed investment was 21.9% of GDP, Germany’s 15.8%, and the U.S. 8.9%. That is, Germany’s level of net fixed investment, contributing to the increase of its capital stock, was 6.9% of GDP higher than the U.S. and Japan’s was 13.0% of GDP higher. By 2020, the latest internationally comparable World Bank data, the U.S. level of net fixed capital investment was actually higher than both Germany and Japan—as was its annual rate of GDP growth. Between 1970 and 2020 the U.S. level of net fixed investment had been reduced by 4.2% of GDP, from 8.5% to 4.3%, while Germany’s had been reduced by 13.5% of GDP, from 15.8% to 2.3%, and Japan’s had been reduced by an astonishing 20.5% of GDP—from 21.9% to 1.4%. As annual growth in Japan’s capital stock were therefore minimal its prolonged GDP stagnation was entirely explicable.

Put as a proportion of its 1970 level, Germany’s level of net fixed investment in GDP had been reduced to only 15% of its peak level, and Japan’s to only 7%. Inevitably, given the key role played by capital investment in growth, Germany and Japan’s economies sharply decelerated. The U.S. competitive position was consequently restored not by acceleration of its own economy but by deceleration of Germany and Japan caused by the drastic fall in their level of fixed investment.


Figure 5

The U.S. Slows the “Asian Tigers”
Following the defeat of Germany and Japan’s competition in the period of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the U.S. faced a similar phenomenon of economies growing more rapidly than its own, due to higher fixed investment levels. This was from the 1980s with the rapid growth of the ‘Asian Tigers’. Although this competitive challenge, due to the relatively small size of these economies, was of an entirely lower order of magnitude than from Germany or Japan it provides a further example of the means by which the U.S. slowed competitor economies.

The ‘Asian Tigers’ achieved even higher levels of fixed investment than West Germany and Japan—Singapore reaching a peak level of fixed investment of 46.2% of GDP in 1984, and South Korea of 39.0% in 1991. The corresponding result was extremely rapid growth—in 1984 Singapore’s economy was expanding at an annual 8.5% and in 1991 South Korea was growing at 9.7%.

But critical weakness of these economies was that the domestic savings of some of the key East Asian developing economies were insufficient to finance such high investment levels. By 1997 both Thailand’s and South Korea’s domestic savings were inadequate to finance their own domestic fixed investment—they were financing part of their capital accumulation from abroad, including even by short term bank loans. By 1996 $110 billion a year was flowing to Asia, and primarily in the form of interbank loans rather than equity investment or other forms of FDI.xii

To facilitate these short-term inflows, several East Asian developing economies had been persuaded to liberalise their international capital account. Elimination of capital controls in turn permitted funds to flow out of the East Asian developing economies in 1997—creating the devastating Asian financial crisis of that year. As Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, noted regarding this: “excessively rapid financial and capital market liberalization was probably the single most important cause of the crisis.”xiii

While deliberate unilateral U.S. action before and after 1971 directly slowed Germany and Japan’s economies, there are differing interpretations as to whether the U.S. did or did not deliberately precipitate the 1997 crisis to slow the Asian Tiger economies. What is clear, however, is that once the crisis began the U.S. supported policies which made the results worse and opposed steps that would have alleviated it. In particular, the U.S. strongly opposed a proposal by Japan to set up an Asian Monetary Fund to provide funds to deal with the crisis.xiv

For present purposes it is unnecessary to judge U.S. administrations subjective policy intentions in the Asian financial crisis—it is sufficient to note that the result was the same as in the earlier cases of Germany and Japan. Fixed investment levels in the affected Asian economies fell sharply after the crisis and remained lower, and therefore their growth rates necessarily also greatly declined. Taking precise data, as shown in Figure 6, taking the period 1996-2021:

*Singapore’s gross fixed investment fell from 37.5% to 23.2% of GDP.
*South Korea’s fixed investment fell from 37.5% of GDP to 31.4%.
*Malaysia’s fixed investment fell from 42.5% to 19.3% of GDP.
*Thailand’s fixed investment fell from 41.7% of GDP to 23.6%.


Figure 6

Net fixed investment, under the impact of the falls in gross fixed investment, showed the same pattern. Taking the difference between 1996, the last year before the East Asian financial crisis struck, and 2020, the latest available data, as shown in Figure 7:

*Thailand’s net fixed investment fell from 28.0% to 6.5% of GDP.
*Singapore’s net fixed investment fell from 25.3% of GDP to 4.0% of GDP.
*South Korea’s net fixed investment fell from 22.4% of GDP to 10.4%.

The results in terms of growth were clear. Under the impact of the fall in fixed investment, taking five year moving averages, Figure 8 shows that from 1996 to 2021:

*South Korea’s annual average GDP growth fell from 8.0% to 2.3%.
*Singapore’s annual average GDP growth from 8.% to 2.5%.
*Thailand’s annual average GDP growth fell from 7.9% to 1.7%.
*Malaysia’s annual average GDP growth fell from 9.6% to 2.5%.


Figure 7

Therefore, whether the U.S. deliberately initiated the 1997 Asian financial crisis or not, and whatever the U.S. subjective intentions in the solutions that were imposed on the region, the results were clear. As would be predicted by economic theory, and as was illustrated earlier by Germany and Japan, the Asian financial crisis once again showed that if a country’s fixed investment level could be reduced its economy would necessarily decelerate. Here again the U.S. demonstrated that reducing the level of investment in competitors drastically slowed their growth rates—thereby allowing the U.S. to succeed in competition not by accelerating its own growth rate but by slowing its competitors.


Figure 8

Murder versus Suicide
Turning to U.S. policy to China, there is, however, a decisive difference between China on the one hand, and Germany, Japan, or the ‘Asian Tigers’ on the other. Germany, Japan and the Asian Tigers were all politically and militarily subordinate to the U.S. and it could use this to compel them to adopt policies maintaining the supremacy of the U.S. even if it was against those countries national interests. As the U.S. was the military protector of Germany and Japan the U.S. could pressure them to revalue their currencies, thereby lowering their competitiveness, and adopt other damaging policies forcing down the rate of investment in the way that was shown in Figure 8. That is, to express it in these terms, the U.S. could use its domination to “murder” Germany, Japan, and the Asian Tigers economies.

But in contrast China is not militarily dependent on the U.S. and the U.S. has no equivalent politico-military means, as with Japan, Germany, or the Asian Tigers to force China to carry out a damaging scale of currency revaluations or any similar policy that would lower the proportion of China’s economy used for investment. China is also not dependent on inflows of capital to finance domestic investment, as were some of the Asian Tigers—on the contrary, China has run a persistent balance of payments surplus, meaning that its domestic savings are even larger than its domestic investment.

A full-scale military war by the U.S. against a nuclear armed China also carries extreme risks for the U.S. and there is U.S. majority within the U.S., either among the population or military/foreign policy circles for such a policy at present—although the U.S. is prepared to use the indirect consequences of its military strength by carrying out provocations around Taiwan, trying to create a crisis in the South China Sea etc.

This is to say the U.S. cannot “murder” China: China can only be defeated if it can be persuaded to slow or stop its own economic rise. That is, China has to be persuaded to commit economic “suicide”.

Economic Suicide
On the face of it, the idea that a great state, such as China, can be persuaded to commit suicide might appear ludicrous. But history shows it is not, indeed, the U.S. already successfully achieved this in the case of the former U.S.S.R. This suicide was carried out by the undermining of the CPSU, even prior to collapse of the U.S.S.R in 1991, by policies pursued by its General Secretary Gorbachev—Gorbachev had the illusion that the U.S. was attempting to aid the U.S.S.R.

Gorbachev, after becoming CPSU General Secretary, allowed the development of currents within the CPSU, led by Yeltsin, who were oriented to restoring capitalism. A collapse of discipline within the CPSU was then permitted that allowed Yeltsin to campaign against the policies of the central government long before he formally left the CPSU in July 1990. Following Yeltsin’s destruction of the U.S.S.R in December 1991 the restoration of capitalism and the privatisation of state-owned companies led in Russia to the greatest peacetime economic collapse in recorded history since at least the Industrial Revolution—the consequences of “shock therapy”. The U.S.SR disintegrated, Russia’s GDP fell by 40% between 1991 and 1998, Russian male life expectancy declined by six years, wars began on the territory of the former Soviet Union that are still continuing more than 30 years later—the war in Ukraine being just the latest and largest of a series of wars.

The Soviet Union might have possessed immensely strong military forces—with essential military parity with the U.S. But in the end, they could not defend the Soviet Union nor prevent historical catastrophe for Russia. The collapse of the U.S.S.R.—in Putin’s words, “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century”—the victory of separatism, the national humiliation of Russia, the collapse in living standards, the fall in life expectancy, the outbreak of civil wars, the advance of hostile military alliances almost to Russia’s borders, all flowed from this fundamental course of Gorbachev. The U.S.S.R.’s submarines rotted, its tanks rusted, and the military infrastructure collapsed. The U.S.S.R. had collapsed from within. It had not been murdered; it had committed suicide. It was a stunning success for the U.S., an historic catastrophe for Russia. It has long been the hope of the U.S. to find a “Chinese Gorbachev” who could also produce China’s national suicide.

But, it may be said, that the U.S. cannot achieve such an outcome for China for a simple political reason—the CPC is not the CPSU, and Xi Jinping is the exact opposite of a Chinese Gorbachev. Instead of leading China into a disaster socialism is being strengthened in China. This is indeed a formidable obstacle. There is no possibility at present for the U.S. to overthrow and destroy the CPC in the way that it did the CPSU. Therefore, unable to succeed in a central attack, the U.S. aims to pursue flanking attacks—that is the U.S. hopes to attempt to undermine the central political strength of the CPC by the U.S. achieving gains on individual issues by internal and external pressure. Taking only a few, of which some are well known, they include:

*Encouraging separatism—the U.S. provoked riots in Hong Kong, and almost continuously carries out provocations attempting to build up separatist, or potentially separatist, forces in Taiwan (visit of Pelosi to Taiwan, arms sales to Taipei etc).
*Attempts to create regional tension around China—for example for a long period the U.S. has been attempting to create a crisis in the South China Sea. The fact that the U.S. has been unsuccessful in this, because the countries in the region want to get on with their successful peaceful economic development, does not stop the U.S. creating provocations such as sailing warships through the area, trying to create anti-China forces in other countries in the region etc.
*The U.S. encouraging companies to violate Chinese law—the U.S. media, in particular, presented in a distorted and unfavourable way China’s actions against companies attempting to circumvent China’s financial laws.
*Corruption—the U.S. in reality encourages corruption within China by presenting those found guilty by the anti-corruption campaign in China not as criminals but as political victims.
*Tariffs—as is well known since 2018 the U.S. has attempted to pursue a trade war against China by introduction of tariffs against Chinese exports to the U.S.
*Technology sanctions—also as is well known the U.S. is attempting to block China from developing high technology industries by trying to prevent not only its own companies but those of other states from exporting advanced products to China.

But these attacks, while in some cases they can cause short term crises and problems, are failing in preventing China’s national regeneration. The reason for this is contained in the point emphasised by Xi Jinping that it is economic development which is the decisive issue: “The path of Chinese socialism is the only way to achieve China’s socialist modernization and create a better life. This path takes economic development as the central task, and brings along economic, political, cultural, social, ecological and other forms of progress.”xv

The U.S. knows from its experience in defeating Germany, Japan, and the Asian Tigers that a decisive way to slow a competitor’s growth rate is to get it to reduce its level of investment. This is the reality that Goldman Sachs correctly identifies. Indeed, it is true that if China greatly reduces its level of fixed investment in GDP its economy will greatly slow down and it will fail to achieve its 2035 goals. Goldman Sachs does show accurately the way in which the reduction of China’s level of investment in GDP will translate into greatly reduced growth. It rightly identifies the way to greatly damage China’s economic development. But the problem for the U.S. is that it has no means to force China to reduce its level of investment—that is the U.S. cannot economically murder China. Instead, the U.S. must try to find the ways to persuade China to lower its level of investment. That is, the U.S. has to attempt to persuade China to commit economic suicide–just as seen in the Goldman Sachs study.

The means by which the U.S. attempts to do this will form the subject of the second article in this series.

This article originally appeared in Chinese at Guancha.cn.

i (International Monetary Fund, 2023, p. 65).
ii (Brazier & Jiang, 2022)
iii (Wigglesworth, 2023)
iv (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 69)
v (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 1)
vi (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 14)
vii (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 13)
viii (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 16)
ix (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 69)
x (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 69)
xi (Goldman Sachs, 2022, p. 69)
xii (Panitch & Gindin, 2012, p. 254)
xiii (Stiglitz, 2002, p. 89)
xiv For a detailed analysis see (Stiglitz, 2002, pp. 89-132)
xv (Xi, 2012 November 17, p. Location 219)

References
Brazier, A., & Jiang, S. (2022, October 17). China’s growth challenges go beyond Covid. Retrieved from Blackrock.com.

Goldman Sachs. (2022). Middle Kingdom: Middle Income. Goldman Sachs Investment Strategy Group. New York: Goldman Sachs.

International Monetary Fund. (2023). People’s Republic of China—Staff Report for the 2022 Article Iv Consultation. Washington: International Monetary Fund.

Panitch, L., & Gindin, S. (2012). The Making of Global Capitalism. London: Verso.

Stiglitz, J. (2002). Gobalization and its Discontents. London: Penguin.

Wigglesworth, R. (2023, February 27). The implications of China’s mid-income trap. Retrieved from FT.com

Xi, J. (2012 November 17). Study, Disseminate and Implement the Guiding Principles of the 18th CPC National Congress. In J. Xi, The Governance of China (Kindle Edition) (2014 ed., Vol. 1, pp. Location 165-449). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/04/the-u-s ... t-suicide/

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U.S. Push to Strip China's Developing Country Status an Attack on Development Itself
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 05 Apr 2023


The U.S. attempt to diminish China's economic success is a bipartisan project, and a unanimous congressional vote to strip China of developing nation status is just the latest act in the aggressive but futile effort.

On March 28, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" by a unanimous vote of 415-0 in yet another demonstration of the solid bipartisanship that exists in the United States when it comes to containing and isolating China. Under the terms of the bill, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would be directed to seek the removal of China's status as a developing country from international organizations and institutions.

The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank all recognize China as a developing country for good reason. China's GDP per capita, while rising, is $12,700 or about five times smaller than the U.S.'s. China's Human Development Index is 79th in the world. It's committed to improving living standards for all people and has taken its commitments to the international community seriously. Of course, the "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with curbing China's development.

Ending China's developing country status prematurely would come with consequences. The World Bank and IMF could rescind tariff preferences and low-interest loans. China's carbon emissions target may increase and the time-frame for meeting them decrease. In other words, China's development path would become more difficult, which is exactly what the "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" hopes to achieve.

The legislation represents just one example of where the U.S. has sought to rig the rules of economic development against China. In late 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an export ban on China's semiconductor industry to slow down its tech sector.

Both the Biden administration and U.S. lawmakers are pursuing a McCarthyist witch hunt against TikTok with the hope that TikTok's parent company, Bytedance, can be forced to sell its shares to a U.S. corporation. This would further legitimize the U.S.'s demonization of Chinese tech over the past several years and eliminate a key competitor to U.S. tech monopolies such as Meta.

The U.S.'s attack on China's tech sector sends a clear message: If the U.S. cannot compete with China, then it must violate every rule of the "free-market" to undermine the latter's economic rise. A "China threat" narrative has been repeated ad nauseum by the U.S. political establishment to justify the economic sabotage and Cold War aggression necessary to pursue this goal.

Ending China's developing country status would give a much-needed public relations boost to what most in the Global South view as a purely fictitious narrative. China's economic miracle has been peaceful and massively beneficial to the world. China enjoys robust economic relations with all nations around the world, and its leadership role in facilitating South-South development through the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and other multilateral institutions has been widely embraced.

The "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" is thus an attack on development itself. It is a warning to nations around the world that they risk economic warfare should their success be perceived as a "threat" to U.S. hegemony. The world has become quite familiar with this warning. It has been sent not only in the U.S.'s economic aggression against China, but also in the use of unilateral sanctions against Russia and dozens of other nations.

However, the U.S. faces a major problem with its strategy to undermine development. The more it attempts to aggressively curb China's economic rise, the clearer it becomes that the U.S. is the one taking a wrecking ball to human progress. Sanctions and economic war produce only poverty and instability. They compound the historical problems of underdevelopment imposed by the Western-led imperial order, now under the leadership of the United States. As economic instability has increased from U.S.-led sanctions, trust in the U.S.-led "rules-based international order" has also declined.

China, however, has gained the trust of nations in the Global South by developing robust mechanisms for South-South development. No U.S. law can change this fact. The proof is everywhere. Saudi Arabia is joining the SCO and eventually, BRICS. Brazil and China have agreed to trade in their own respective currencies, bypassing the U.S. dollar. These are just two examples in recent weeks of China's leadership in developing a multipolar world.

China and several other nations are making concerted decisions to write a new story of development, one that respects the sovereignty and the right of nations to peaceful development. The "PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act" represents the latest attempt to keep the book of U.S. hegemony open at the expense of development itself.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/us-pu ... ent-itself

[blindpig]

Chinese Foreign Ministry statement on Tsai Ing-wen’s ‘transit’ through the US

The following statement, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China on 6 April 2023, expresses China’s strong objection to the US’s facilitation of Tsai Ing-wen’s transit through the US, during which she had a high-profile meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The statement points out that this visit forms part of an increasingly consistent pattern by the US of undermining the One China principle and encouraging Taiwanese separatism, with a view to stoking cross-Strait tensions and weakening China.

The statement urges the US to return to a framework of international law and to its obligations under the three China-US joint communiqués.

Through the past few days, in disregard of China’s serious representations and repeated warnings, the United States deliberately greenlighted the transit of Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Taiwan region, through the United States. US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the number three in the US government, had a high-profile meeting with Tsai. Other US officials and lawmakers also had contact with Tsai and provided the platform for her separatist rhetoric for “Taiwan independence”. This is essentially the United States acting with Taiwan to connive at “Taiwan independence” separatists’ political activities in the United States, conduct official contact with Taiwan and upgrade the substantive relations with Taiwan, and frame it as a “transit”. This is a serious violation of the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués. It seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and sends an egregiously wrong signal to the “Taiwan independence” separatist forces. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns it.

The one-China principle is a prevailing consensus of the international community and a basic norm in international relations. It is also the prerequisite and basis for the establishment and development of China-US diplomatic relations. In the three China-US joint communiqués, the United States made a clear commitment of maintaining only unofficial relations with Taiwan. Over the years, however, the United States has obdurately attempted to contain China by exploiting the Taiwan question and betrayed its commitments. The United States has been crossing the line and acting provocatively on issues such as US-Taiwan official exchanges, arms sales to and military dealings with Taiwan and creating chances for Taiwan to expand its so-called “international space”, and kept fudging and hollowing out the one-China principle. Since taking office, Tsai has refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus which embodies the one-China principle. Instead of reining in separatist rhetoric and activities in Taiwan for “Taiwan independence”, Tsai has supported and encouraged them, and sought to push for “incremental independence” under various pretenses. This has put cross-Strait relations in serious difficulty.

The Taiwan question is at the core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations. “Taiwan independence” and cross-Strait peace and stability are as irreconcilable as fire and water. The pursuit of “Taiwan independence” will lead nowhere. In response to the egregiously wrong action taken by the United States and Taiwan, China will take strong and resolute measures to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity. We once again urge the United States to adhere to the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués, act on the US leader’s assurances of not supporting “Taiwan independence” and not supporting “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan”, stop at once any form of official exchanges with Taiwan, stop upgrading substantive relations with Taiwan, stop creating factors that could cause tensions in the Taiwan Strait, stop containing China by exploiting the Taiwan question, and not go further down the wrong and dangerous path.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/04/06/c ... gh-the-us/



China isn’t our enemy, targeting of Tiktok is xenophobic

In this brief interview for CGTN, North American anti-war activist Calla Walsh – one of the co-chairs of the National Network on Cuba, and a speaker at our Counter-Summit for Democracy – explains that a growing number of young people in the US do not see China as their enemy but rather as a friend; “as a global leader that is really paving the way to a more peaceful and multi-polar world where all countries have a right to sovereignty, instead of living under the yoke of the United States.” Although young people in the West are exposed to a relentless barrage of anti-China propaganda, increasingly people are able to see and understand certain powerful facts: that it’s the US and its allies that go round the world waging war and imposing domination, while China stands with the Global South; that it’s the US that’s failing to make meaningful progress addressing the climate crisis, while China has emerged as a global leader in green energy. In summary, “China is a progressive force, and the US is extremely regressive.”

Calla also addresses the attack on TikTok – an attack based on xenophobia, anticommunism, and a fear of China’s economic rise. However, this attack is having the opposite of its intended effect: “I think it’ll make the entire user base, which is hundreds of millions of people, even more skeptical of the US government’s narrative on TikTok and on China as a whole.”

The anti-China onslaught in the U.S. doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect on its younger population. A recent survey by The Economist and YouGov reveals that younger Americans are friendlier to China than their older counterparts. Nearly a quarter of Americans aged 18 to 44 view China as “friendly,” only 4 percent of Americans above the age of 45 view China this way.

The report comes amid the U.S. efforts to ban TikTok, a video app that has become a craze among American youth in recent years. At the Congressional hearing of TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, U.S. lawmakers couldn’t hide their racism and xenophobia.

To understand how a large number of young Americans are contesting the anti-China narrative within the U.S., CGTN spoke with Calla Walsh, a youth anti-war activist who is on the board of Massachusetts Peace Action and one of the co-chairs of the National Network on Cuba.

Edited Excerpts:

CGTN: Let me ask you the question that The Economist-YouGov poll asked its respondents: Do you consider China to be a friendly nation or an enemy of the United States?

Walsh: China is not our enemy and I’m among the substantial group of young people in the U.S. that sees China as a friend. And I see China not only as a friend, but as a global leader that is really paving the way to a more peaceful and multi-polar world where all countries have a right to sovereignty, instead of living under the yoke of the United States. And it’s really hard to buy the U.S. demonization of China as this existential threat when in the past several decades the U.S. is the country that has committed hundreds of military interventions and invasions.

And I think young people can see through these warmongering lies that the U.S. is spreading about China. And we can also see China is actually delivering on the issues we care about, for example, climate. [U.S. President Joe] Biden is signing off on the willow project; he’s breaking his campaign promises to stop new drilling on federal land while China’s leading the world and reducing carbon emissions, building green infrastructure. So it’s very easy to tell China is a progressive force, and the U.S. is extremely regressive.

CGTN: Does the poll indicate that we are witnessing a slow but gradual generational change in perception about China?

Walsh: I think there is a slow generational shift in how we regard China and how we regard U.S. imperialism as a whole. We are not the generation of the first Cold War against the Soviet Union. I think our generation has been much more shaped by social movements that have really made us more skeptical of the U.S. government narrative on things. We’re the generation of these mass mobilizations against Climate Change, against gun violence, against racism and police brutality. And young people are becoming more civically engaged, having record-breaking voter turnout, and I think we’re much more skeptical of the U.S. government because of the failures on those issues I just mentioned.

CGTN: How do you see the ongoing targeting of TikTok? How will the Congressional hearing of the TikTok CEO affect the view of its user base?

Walsh: The ongoing targeting of TikTok is very much xenophobic, and red-scare tactic. And just when I’ve logged on to TikTok in the past few days, I’ve seen lots of popular accounts, ones that are even apolitical, that are calling this hearing a witch hunt. They’re mocking U.S. Congress members, for not even understanding how the internet works. So it’s really putting into light how ridiculous this anti-China propaganda is. And I think that’ll make the entire user base which is hundreds of millions of people even more skeptical of the U.S. government’s narrative on TikTok and on China as a whole.

And of course the U.S. government literally mass spies on its own citizens. So we know this isn’t about privacy at all. And other U.S. social media companies, like Meta, engage in very harmful data sharing practices. So what we should be talking about is why the U.S. really is doing this and that’s because of the economic competition that China poses.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/04/01/c ... enophobic/



Guangzhou 1927: the Paris Commune of the East

The Paris Commune, which lasted from March 18-May 28 1871, is generally regarded as the first seizure of power by the proletariat, and formation of a workers’ government, in history. As such, it has continued to inspire varied attempts to establish workers power and build socialism, whether in terms of inspiration or direct emulation.

One such example was the 1927 uprising in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which became known as the ‘Paris Commune of the East’.

In the following article, originally published in the March-April 2021 issue of the Funambulist journal, which took as its theme ‘The Paris Commune & The World’, Tings Chak locates the background to this heroic struggle and the events that led up to it within the broader sweep of the Chinese revolution.

She begins by foregrounding the work of Qu Qiubai, one of the earliest Chinese communists , who was first politicized by the May 4th Movement of 1919, whose leaders included two key founders of the Communist Party of China two years later, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. It was Qu who first translated the Internationale, written by the communard Eugène Pottier, after he first heard whilst attending the third anniversary cerebration of the October Revolution in Russia.

Tings notes the key importance of the Work-Study Program, which drew some 2,000 Chinese young people to France, including Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, both in introducing Marxist ideas to China and particularly knowledge of the Paris Commune. In 1922, writing in the journal New Youth, Zhou Enlai observed that the “short-lived flower” of the Paris Commune had found its continuation in the October Revolution.

China’s first mass commemoration of the Paris Commune marked its 55th anniversary on March 18 1926 in Guangzhou. Mao Zedong, too, spoke of the Commune as a “bright flower”, which had brought forth a “happy fruit” in the October Revolution, from which, in turn, more fruits could be born.

The next year, up to one million workers and peasants celebrated the Commune across China. In Wuhan, Liu Shaoqi, later President of the People’s Republic of China, called on the working class to combine the spirit of the Paris Commune with the struggle against imperialism and warlordism. But shortly after, frightened by the rising power of the workers, Chiang Kai-shek unleashed the Shanghai Massacre, ending the Kuomintang’s first united front with the Communist Party. Subsequent communist-led urban uprisings, culminating in the Guangzhou Uprising on December 11, were equally brutally suppressed. However, as the great British communist Ralph Fox, who was later killed fighting with the International Brigades in Spain, wrote:

“For three days a great city in an eastern country dominated by imperialism was seized and held by the oppressed classes ruling through their Soviet. Technical and military errors there were, but, politically, no mistakes were made. The Communist Party of China, which led and organized the revolt, has reason to be proud of its application of Lenin’s teachings in the difficult circumstances of China. The work of the Party in the insurrection showed not only that it had the closest contacts with workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and soldiers, but that it understood how to rally the widest masses of all these classes to the support of the revolution by correct slogans and a sure political line.”

The Commune of Canton, 1928

On March 19, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett, along with our advisory group members Professors Ken Hammond and Radhika Desai, and Carlos Garrido of Midwestern Marx, spoke at an International Manifesto Group webinar on The Paris Commune: Its Revolutionary Significance.

It was in the Russian autumn of 1920 when Qu Qiubai first heard L’Internationale, the socialist anthem born of the 1871 Paris Commune. Eugène Pottier, author of the song’s lyrics, was a Communard and elected member of the workers’ state that lasted 72 days in the French capital. Though written nearly half a century earlier, that song had been adopted only recently as the anthem of the Bolshevik Party. Until today, this song is one of the most translated and sung anthems of the oppressed around the world. Qu was attending the third anniversary celebration of the October Revolution, having traveled through Harbin (China’s northernmost provincial capital) to reach Russia. Fluent in French and Russian, he was sent to be a correspondent in Moscow for the Beijing Morning News (晨报), covering the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution.

In 1920, the communist movement in China had barely begun, but the nation was hungry for its ideas. The colonial plunders of two Opium Wars marked the beginning of the “century of humiliation,” which saw the ceding of Hong Kong to the British and the sacking of the Old Summer Palace by Anglo-French forces. The Qing dynasty fell in 1911 only to be succeeded by a puppet Republican government. The country was divided, feudalism and warlordism were rampant. The Chinese people were hungry — physically and spiritually — for its nation to be set free.

Like the thousands of young radicals of the time, Qu was politicized in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. The Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I saw the ultimate betrayal of China’s interests — instead of having its territories returned, the Western Allies would agree to transfer Shandong Province from the colonial hands of Japan to Germany. In response, a national movement led by students in Beijing was born, anchored in anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and anti-patriarchal politics. This awakening gave birth to the New Culture Movement — with New Youth as its key publication — and an opening for new ideas to guide the country’s transformation. Among its leaders were Beijing University professors, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, who were pivotal in bringing Marxist ideas into China. They both helped found the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921.

The betrayal by Western Allies was felt all the more after the contributions that the Chinese people made to the Great War. To meet their growing labor shortages, French and British states relied heavily on the colonies across Africa, Indochina and China. 140,000 Chinese people — mostly peasants — joined the French and British war efforts, while another 200,000 fought on the Eastern Front with the Russian Red Army. The Chinese Labor Corps did every task but bear arms: they dug trenches, worked in munition factories, repaired equipment on the frontlines, buried the dead. Thousands died, though this part of history is little told in the West. Around that same time, there was another group of young Chinese people heading to France. Originally initiated by Chinese anarchists in 1908, the program became formalized into the Diligent Work-Frugal Study program in 1919 that brought 2000 Chinese workers and peasants to Paris: they would work in factories in return for their Western education. The poor living and working conditions politicized many of these students. On February 28, 1921, 400 Chinese work-study students demonstrated against further reductions in bursaries. Events like this one brought the movement closer to the World War I generation workers as they began organizing together in the Renault factories from the industrial banlieues (suburbs) of Boulogne-Billancourt and La Garenne-Colombes. It was from the factory floors and in the university halls where Marxism would enter the Chinese revolutionary thought. Among the students were Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, founders of the European branch of the CPC. Zhou Enlai would serve as Premier for 26 years and Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who succeeded Mao Zedong upon the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Bright Flower, Happy Fruit

Though the Paris Commune was largely unknown to the Chinese public up until that point, these exchanges among workers and intellectuals in France, and the ideological opening that the May Fourth Movement created, helped bring that history forward. Several early communist leaders studied, wrote and popularized the history of the workers’ state. In 1920, Li Da, one of the 12 founding members of the CPC, wrote about the need for the Chinese Revolution to take the path of armed struggle. In 1922, Zhou Enlai wrote in New Youth (新靑年) about the “short-lived flower” of the Paris Commune and its continuation in the October Revolution. The following year, in the 50th anniversary edition of Shen Bao (申報) — one of China’s first modern newspapers — Li Dazhao first explained the concept of the “commune” to a Chinese public. First transliterated as kangmiaoen (康妙恩), the revolutionary concept gained its own form in the Chinese language, gongshe (公社): a workers’ republic.

Qu Qiubai was among the communists who not only translated essential texts on the Commune’s history but was also the first to translate L’Internationale into Chinese, three years after he first heard it in Russia. While playing the organ, he painstakingly revised the lyrics to find a translation of the word “international” — which only has two syllables in Chinese (国际) — that could suit the melody. He finally settled on the transliterated ying te na xiong nai er (英特纳雄耐尔) to keep true to the cadence of the song, which remains in the officially adopted version until today.

By this time, Qu had already joined the CPC, upon the invitation of Zhang Tailei in 1922. A year earlier, Qu also met the Bolshevik leader Lenin, who had studied intimately the lessons of the Paris Commune. Just months before leading his own country to revolution, Lenin dedicates a chapter on it in The State and Revolution (1917):

“The Commune is the first attempt by a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine; and it is the political form “at last discovered,” by which the smashed state machine can and must be replaced.

We shall see further on that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, in different circumstances and under different conditions, continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx’s brilliant historical analysis.”

In some short months after its publication, the October Revolution would indeed continue the work of the Commune and confirm Marx’s analysis. In this tradition, the Chinese communists would also carry on these the legacy of these two revolutionary experiences.

On March 18, 1926, the first mass commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the Paris Commune took place in China. Ten thousands people gathered in the southern capital of Guangzhou. They sang L’Internationale and chanted “Vive la Commune de Paris!,” despite the rain. On this occasion Mao Zedong writes, if the Paris Commune was a “bright flower,” then the October Revolution was the “happy fruit,” from which more fruits could be born. On the Commune’s ultimate defeat, Mao points to two reasons: the lack of a unified and centralized party to lead the workers, and the compromise of showing too much mercy to the enemy. In his keynote speech at the celebration, the Cantonese leader, Zhang Tailei, pointed to the concrete experience that the Paris Commune gave for Chinese workers to take power — a foreshadowing of what would come in the following year.

From the City to the Countryside

The 1920s saw a rapid expansion of the urban working class: trade unions multiplied, strikes were frequent, and the CPC’s ranks grew with the organization of the masses. In the industrial centre of Shanghai alone, 1926 saw 169 strikes affecting 165 factories involving over 200,000 workers. In Guangdong, the Seamen’s Strike of 1922 was victorious and the Guangzhou-Hong Kong General Strike of 1925 lasted 16 months and garnered unprecedented mass support from domestic workers, dockworkers, rickshaw drivers and so-called “coolies.” These experiences showed how organized labor could threaten colonial life and capitalist order.

Despite industrialization, China was still an overwhelmingly peasant society. In his 1926 Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society, Mao studied the composition of China’s 450 million population. The urban proletariat, however quickly it was growing, still only totalled two million people — the vast majority of Chinese people were peasants. Mao estimated 400 million people were “semi-proletariat” who farmed their own land, but also earned wages as tenant farmers or wage laborers: he called them “our closest friends” (Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, 1926).


“Commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Paris Commune.” / Poster from 1971.

In this foreboding text, Mao also warned that the national bourgeoisie forces could not be trusted. At that historical moment, the CPC was in an alliance with the national bourgeoisie led by the Nationalist Party (KMT) in a “United Front” against warlordism and imperialism. That pivotal year would see an abrupt end to this alliance and the subsequent “White Terror” of mass killings of communists at the hands of the nationalists and their hired hands. The mass insurrections of 1927 were attempts at transforming the symbol of the Paris Commune into a living practice in China, and necessitated a strategic shift in the revolutionary process.

The 1927 commemoration of the Paris Commune ballooned in size, drawing up to one million workers and peasants across the country. At the Wuhan celebration, labor leader Liu Shaoqi called on the workers to carry on the spirit of the Paris Commune jointly with the struggle against imperialism and warlordism. Three days later, 800,000 workers led by Zhou Enlai launched a general strike in Shanghai that overthrew the warlord-controlled government and established a Provisional Municipal Government. Shanghai became the first large city under the leadership of the CPC. But on April 12, defying the United Front strategy, the KMT under Chiang Kaishek would stage a coup and order the slaughter and disappearance of thousands of Communists with the aid of police of the foreign-occupied areas and criminal organizations. The CPC-KMT alliance was over. The subsequent communist-led urban uprisings from Nanchang (1 August) to Hunan (7 September), and finally to Guangzhou (11 December), would all be brutally crushed.

“All Power to the Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Soviets!”

At 3:30 am on December 11, 1927, the first attack began at the police stations. It was led by commander Zhang Tailei, who was killed in an ambush the following day — he was 29 years-old. A series of coordinated actions took over the city. Their demands were: “Rice for the workers, land for the peasants!” “Down with militarist wars!” “All power to the Workers’, Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Soviets!” Behind this mobilization was the Guangzhou Soviet, covering an area of half a million peasants working in conjunction with the urban workers unions. A war council with a 10:3:3 ratio of workers, soldiers and peasants, respectively, led the uprising that lasted three days. Upon taking the city, this body issued a series of eight decrees, mass printed and distributed.

The first three focused on the establishment of Soviet power, arming of the people and retaliation against counter-revolutionaries. The fourth secured an eight-hour working day and rights for the waged and unemployed. The fifth dealt with the economy and the nationalization of industry. The sixth demand looked at the property of the bourgeoisie. The seventh to the army wages and restructuring. The eighth and final demanded the reorganization of trade unions. At that moment, however, the military organization of the bourgeoisie was still too strong. Had they held the city long enough for the peasant reinforcements — a six-day march away — history may have turned out differently. Ralph Fox, British journalist and communist later killed fighting in the Spanish Civil War, wrote on the significance of the “Guangzhou Commune”:

“For three days a great city in an eastern country dominated by imperialism was seized and held by the oppressed classes ruling through their Soviet. Technical and military errors there were, but, politically, no mistakes were made. The Communist Party of China, which led and organized the revolt, has reason to be proud of its application of Lenin’s teachings in the difficult circumstances of China. The work of the Party in the insurrection showed not only that it had the closest contacts with workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and soldiers, but that it understood how to rally the widest masses of all these classes to the support of the revolution by correct slogans and a sure political line.” (The Commune of Canton, 1928)

1927 was a turning point for the Chinese Revolution. That the uprisings were brutally repressed was pivotal in the CPC’s strategic shift from the cities to the countryside — towards the creation of a people’s army and towards the peasantry — “our closest friends”. In Lessons of the Commune (1908), Lenin writes, “And although these magnificent uprisings of the working class were crushed, there will be another uprising, in face of which the forces of the enemies of the proletariat will prove ineffective, and from which the socialist proletariat will emerge completely victorious.” Something similar could be said of the Chinese uprisings. After that year of White Terror, at the Sixth Congress of the CPC in 1928, December 11 was officially marked as the anniversary of the Guangzhou Uprising, which “not only opened a new chapter for the Chinese Revolution but also has great significance in the history of world revolution, with the same value as the great Paris Commune.” Holding true to this, the Guangzhou Commune has indeed been remembered, studied and honored since.

2020 was the 93rd anniversary of the Guangzhou Uprising, which became known as the “Paris Commune of the East.” For this occasion a new “red drama” was produced in conjunction with an exhibition at the Guangzhou Uprising Memorial Hall. The late-Qing dynasty building was once used as a Police Academy before being transformed into the seat of the Guangzhou Soviet. In 1987, this site was turned into an official memorial. At the December 12 commemoration event, students from the People’s Liberation Army school recited the tale of Zhang Tailei, a puppet show told the story of the Uprising’s female leaders and the great granddaughter of hero Yang Yin tied a red ribbon around a student’s collar — the symbolic passing on of a revolutionary legacy from one generation to the next.

Up until the anniversary, the immersive drama was performed four times a week. Actors and audience members alike jointly reenact the uprising, donning costumes and taking up weapon props, all the while singing L’Internationale. When Qu Qiubai first heard this song in Russia a century ago, he probably had little idea what role he would play in bringing this anthem from the “bright flower” of the Paris Commune to the Guangzhou Commune. He never lived to see the “happy fruit” in the establishment of PRC in 1949, nor the centenary of the founding of the CPC on July 1st of this year. In 1935, he was captured, tortured and executed by KMT forces. It is said that he sang L’Internationale until his last breath.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/04/05/g ... -the-east/

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The West Has Been Planning To Crush China For A Very Long Time



“China is preparing to kill Americans and we’ve got to prepare to defend ourselves,” empire propagandist Gordon Chang told Fox Business during an interview on Monday.

Chang, who has famously spent more than two decades incorrectly predicting the imminent collapse of China, bizarrely made these comments while discussing a future attack on Taiwan. Taiwan is of course not the United States and any potential war between Taiwan and the mainland would be an inter-Chinese conflict that needn’t involve a single American, and Chang is most assuredly not part of any “we” who will ever be engaged in combat with the Chinese military under any circumstances.

Chang frames his narrative as though China is menacing Americans in their homes, when in reality only the exact opposite is true: the US has been militarily encircling China for many years, and is rapidly accelerating its efforts to do so.



Just the other day the Philippines announced the locations of four military bases the US will now have access to in its ongoing encirclement operation, most of them in the northern provinces closest to China.

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes:

Three of the Philippine bases will be located in northern Philippine provinces, a move that angers China since they can be used as staging grounds for a fight over Taiwan. The US will be granted access to the Lal-lo Airport and the Naval Base Camilo Osias, which are both located in the northern Cagayan province. In the neighboring Isabela province, the US will gain access to Camp Melchor Dela Cruz.



The US military will also be able to expand to Palawan, an island province in the South China Sea, disputed waters that are a major source of tensions between the US and China. The US will be granted access to Balabac Island, the southernmost island of Palawan.



The new locations are on top of five bases the US currently has access to, bringing the total number of bases the US can rotate forces through in the Philippines to nine. The expansion in the Philippines is a significant step in the US effort to build up its military assets in the region to prepare for a future war with China.

So it’s very clear who the aggressor is here and who is preparing to attack whom. Imperial spinmeisters like Gordon Chang are just lying when they frame China’s militarizing to defend itself against undisguised US encirclement as China militarizing to attack Americans.

Fun fact: US officials used to pretend China was crazy and paranoid for saying this encirclement was happening. In the 1995 book “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II,” William Blum wrote the following:

In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional committee about American policy toward China. Mr. Rusk, it seems, was perplexed that “At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled.” He spoke of China’s “imaginary, almost pathological, notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping [Peking] regime”. The Secretary then added:

“How much Peiping’s ‘fear’ of the United States is genuine and how much it is artificially induced for domestic political purposes only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know. I am convinced, however, that their desire to expel our influence and activity from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia is not motivated by fears that we are threatening them.”

Another fun fact: thanks to a 2021 revelation by Daniel Ellsberg, we now know that the secretary of state’s comments about how crazy and paranoid China was for thinking the US wanted to attack it came just eight years after the US had seriously considered acting on plans it had drawn up to launch a nuclear strike on the Chinese mainland.


Mainstream western imperialists of all stripes have long recognized that a hard conflict with China will be necessary at some point in the future if they’re to continue their domination of the world. In his 2005 book “Superpatriot”, Michael Parenti wrote that the unipolarist neoconservative “PNAC” (Project for the New American Century) ideology that had by that point taken over US foreign policy was ultimately geared toward a future conflict with China:

“The PNAC plan envisions a strategic confrontation with China, and a still greater permanent military presence in every corner of the world. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world’s natural resources and markets, power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere — including North America — the blessings of an untrammeled global ‘free market.’ The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of American global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower.”

But you can see the twinkle of this looming conflict in the eyes of western imperialists long before any of this. In a 1902 interview (which was not published until 1966 — a year after Churchill’s death), Churchill candidly voiced his support for partitioning China at some point in the future in order to preserve the dominance of the “Aryan stock” over “barbaric nations”:

The East is interesting, and to no one can it be more valuable and interesting than to anyone who comes from the West.

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.

The word “partition” here means breaking a nation up into smaller nations, i.e. balkanization. To this day we see western imperialists pushing for the partitioning of disobedient nations like Russia and Syria, and we still see this with China in the push to permanently amputate regions like Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan from Beijing.

China’s sheer size, social cohesion and geostrategic location have long been recognized as a potential problem in the future for western imperialists who wish to ensure their ability to dominate and control, and now we’re seeing that all come to a head. Churchill said of a future confrontation with China “I hope we shall not have to do it in our day” because that confrontation has always been certain to be horrific, and today in the Atomic Age this is far more true than it was in 1902.

And in fact we do not have to do it in our day, either. We don’t have to do it in any day. The only reason we’re being pushed toward a profoundly dangerous conflict with China is because it’s the only way for western imperialists to maintain their hegemonic control of this planet, but their hegemonic control of this planet has brought us to a point of endlessly escalating nuclear brinkmanship and looming ecosystemic collapse. It hasn’t exactly been working out great, is what I am saying.

There’s no reason the west can’t simply accept the existence of other powers and stop trying to dominate everyone on earth. We have long been ruled by tyrants who continually push our world toward suffering and death in the name of securing more power and control, but we don’t need to accept their rule. They do not have a healthy vision for our species, and there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them. Their rule is done as soon as enough of us decide it is.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/07 ... long-time/

[blindpig]

China's countermeasures against Tsai's 'transit' trip through US necessary, justified: experts
Xinhua | Updated: 2023-04-08 15:34


Members of local Chinese American community protest against the "stopover" by Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen in the US that violates the one-China principle in front of the hotel where Tsai is to be accommodated in Los Angeles April 4, 2023. [Photo by Lia Liu/chinadaily.com.cn]

BEIJING - Experts on cross-Strait relations said as Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen conducted political activities in the United States under the guise of a "transit" trip, which in essence was a provocation aimed at seeking "Taiwan independence" by relying on the United States, it is completely justified, reasonable and necessary for Chinese authorities to take countermeasures.

The countermeasures show China's rational and responsible attitude to safeguarding peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, according to the experts.

"The US anti-China forces and Tsai hit it off right away, and the former openly supported her provocative moves to seek 'Taiwan independence,'" said Li Peng, head of the Graduate Institute for Taiwan Studies of Xiamen University.

As pointed out by Taiwan news commentator Lai Yueh-tchienn, Tsai's activities during her "transit" trip through the United States were a political show to pander to US anti-China forces.

Tsai's "transit" trip has brought new turmoil across the Taiwan Strait, said Li Zhenguang, a Taiwan affairs professor at Beijing Union University, adding that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities colluding with US anti-China forces violated the one-China principle first, and China has no choice but to take countermeasures, which is fully justified, reasonable and necessary.

"China is determined to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity and will honor its words with deeds. Also, China upholds peace and stability in the Strait with a rational and responsible attitude," Li Zhenguang said.

Liu Xiangping, an expert on Taiwan studies at Nanjing University, pointed out that the DPP authorities' attempts to seek "Taiwan independence" by relying on the United States have escalated tensions across the Strait, leading to growing dissatisfaction and criticism on the island.

"It is mainstream public opinion on the island to choose peace over war, and development over confrontation," said Zhu Songling, professor at Beijing Union University, citing the strong call on the island to resume cross-Strait exchanges.

The future of Taiwan lies in national reunification, Liu said. He called on people in Taiwan to resolutely oppose "Taiwan independence" and interference by external forces, and join hands with mainland compatriots to safeguard the overall interests of the Chinese nation.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b9069.html

China provided all known COVID-19 tracing data to intl community
By Yang Zekun and Zhang Zhihao | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2023-04-08 16:53

China provided the joint experts team for tracing the origin of COVID-19 with all data and materials available at that time and did not hide any cases, samples, test and analysis results, said Shen Hongbing, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, at a news conference on Saturday.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, China has been upholding a scientific attitude on tracing the origin of the virus and actively communicating and cooperating with the World Health Organization and has taken the initiative to invite the WHO to send an international experts team to China to conduct joint origin-tracing studies, said Shen.

Recently, some WHO officials and experts recklessly denied the joint studies results, which is totally against the spirit of science and is offensive to the scientists from all over the world who have participated in the early origin-tracing studies, he said.

After the first stage of joint research, China has continued to pool resources to carry out comprehensive scientific investigation and research, and shared related progress and conclusions with the international scientific community and scientists. The results of the first phase joint study were further confirmed by numerous findings, he said.

"We hope that the scientific community will follow a scientific attitude; keep scientists as the main body of the origin-tracing study; and strengthen exchanges, cooperation and information sharing ," he said, urging that certain individuals from the WHO return to a scientific and impartial position, and not become a tool for individual countries to politicize the origin of COVID-19.

Zhou Lei, a researcher of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention who participated in the joint study, said that, in Wuhan in Hubei province, Chinese scientists shared all the data and materials with the joint experts team, including the early case information and the case data of over 76,000 people who were suspected to have possibly been infected COVID-19 during the early stage in Wuhan.

"We conducted in-depth joint analysis and studies of these data and materials, and the results were collectively confirmed by the experts at that time," Zhou said.

To study the possibility of laboratory leakage, experts also carried out field investigation and research in several laboratories in Wuhan and analyzed all the health monitoring data and possible clinical data of staff of the laboratories, she said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20230 ... b907f.html
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China’s President on Ukraine Conflict: All Sides Involved Should Assume Responsibility
APRIL 8, 2023


Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and French President Emmanuel Macron (right) during their meeting in Beijing, China, April 6, 2023. Photo: CGTN.

The president of China, Xi Jinping, commented to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that all parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine “must assume their responsibilities” and “create the conditions” for a political solution and avoid escalation.

President Xi made this remark after Macron told the Chinese leader that he “knows” that he has the Chinese president’s support “to make Russia come to its senses and bring all parties to the negotiating table.”

The dialogue took place on Thursday, April 6, during the French president’s visit to China.

During the meeting, Xi told Macron that China supports peace, and will continue to promote dialogue and a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis.

In this regard, he said that in seeking a political solution to the Ukrainian crisis, “the legitimate security concerns of all sides” should be taken into account.

Therefore, he urged “the international community to be on the side of reason and avoid actions that would deteriorate the situation.”

President Xi stressed the need to exercise restraint so as not to further aggravate the crisis.

The French president insisted that in no case should Russia deploy its nuclear weapons in the territory of Belarus, claiming that no state has the right to deploy its nuclear arsenal in other countries.

However, he did not mention that France’s ally, the United States, has hundreds of its nuclear warheads deployed in several countries of Europe, such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

In this regard, the Chinese president stated that the “solemn pledge” that nuclear weapons will not be used and nuclear wars will not be waged must be seriously implemented.

Macron is the second European head of state to travel to China—after the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez last week—since Xi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In that meeting, the Chinese president presented his proposal for achieving peace in Ukraine and the world, and the final declaration of the meeting highlighted the strength of the China-Russia relationship.

https://orinocotribune.com/chinese-pres ... nsibility/

What is it with this clown Macron that he can spout such a serious lie to a leader of Xi's stature? I doubt the Chinese will overlook this.

China Invites Venezuela to Join International Lunar Research Station
APRIL 9, 2023


Prototype of China's International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Photo: CGTN.

Caracas, April 8, 2023 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Venezuela has been invited by China to join the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project. This was officially announced on Saturday, April 8, by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil.

The ILRS project was inaugurated in June 2021 by China and Russia, with the aim of setting up a research station in the south pole of the moon. It is expected to be completed by 2028, and to land on the Moon within a decade, according to the Chinese news outlet Global Times. Venezuela becomes the first country to be invited by China to join the project.

On March 30, Marglad Bencomo, executive director of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Agency for Space Activities (ABAE), made an official visit to China’s new national Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) to discuss potential cooperation. There she met with the executive vice chairman of DSEL, Wu Yanhua.

Potential China-Venezuela collaboration in space research has already caused some stir in Washington. According to SpaceNews, Victoria Samson, Washington Office director of the Secure World Foundation, an NGO with several US military officials in top positions, commented, “It doesn’t surprise me as China and Venezuela have years of cooperating in space.”

Samson noted that China has built and launched a number of Venezuelan satellites in recent years, and that Venezuela’s participation in the ILRS will be mostly symbolic given the huge difference between the space research capabilities of the two countries.

The Venezuelan government made the news of China’s invitation public through an official statement issued on Saturday.


An unofficial translation of the statement is presented here:

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela welcomes the invitation of the government of the People’s Republic of China to participate in the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, thus becoming the first country invited to join this important project, currently under developement and scheduled to be funcional from 2030.

The strategic association between Venezuela and China transcends all areas of cooperation and today constitutes recognition of the efforts that the Bolivarian government has made for the scientific development of our country.

Venezuela views with great expectation the results of the recent meeting held between the Bolivarian Agency for Space Activities (ABAE) and the National Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) of China.

The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reiterates the sincere brotherhood, friendship and solidarity that unites it with the government of the People’s Republic of China, with the commitment to continue strengthening the strategic association that has given our countries so many benefits.

Caracas, April 8, 2023

https://orinocotribune.com/china-invite ... h-station/

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Clare Daly: Europe has become the tail of the U.S. dog, shot itself in its feet
Originally published: Li Jingjing 李菁菁 Youtube Channel on April 8, 2023 by Li Jingjing (more by Li Jingjing 李菁菁 Youtube Channel) (Posted Apr 10, 2023)



China and Europe’s economy is deeply interconnected, yet the anti-China rhetoric still has been rising in Europe. In this episode, member of the European Parliament, Clare Daly, shares the struggles that Europe is facing, and her thoughts on how Europe has been under increasing U.S. pressure to worsen relations with China, against the interests of people in Europe.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/10/clare-d ... -its-feet/