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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 01, 2022 2:44 pm

No Mention of Uyghur ‘Genocide’ After UN Human Rights Commissioner Visits Xinjiang
MAY 30, 2022

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The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Photo: Xinhua.

May 30, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Saturday, May 28, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, wrapped up her six-day visit to the People’s Republic of China by meeting virtually with the country’s president, Xi Jinping.

Bachelet visited China at a time when the country is being victimized by accusations that it is carrying out a genocide against the Uyghur population of the country’s Xinjiang region. These claims frequently cite research and publications issued by Adrian Zenz, senior fellow at the anti-communist think-tank Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, established by the US government and based in Washington, DC. Disgraced US President Donald Trump made these allegations into an official US position when he declared—on his final day in office, two weeks after the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters—that China was committing genocide against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang province.

The visit to China, Bachelet has emphasized, was not an investigation. However, Bachelet confirmed that her trip did include numerous meetings with people from various sectors of Xinjiang autonomous region. She visited and spoke with prisoners and with former trainees from the vocational education and training centers that detractors claim are giant prison camps. These meetings, she stated, were organized by her delegation independently of the government of China.

All these meetings were “unsupervised and [they were] organized by us,” said the high commissioner at a press conference. The purpose of the trip was to hold a direct discussion with the government of the People’s Republic of China, said Bachelet, in order to share each party’s concerns and explore the path towards “more regular and meaningful interactions in the future.”

In statements issued after the trip’s conclusion, Bachelet did say that she had posed questions about the People’s Republic of China’s use “counterterrorism and de-radicalization measures,” but she did not corroborate any of the outlandish genocide claims made by Zenz and his ilk.

In response to a question posed during the press conference, Bachelet also referred to mass shootings in the US: “We will continue monitoring and reporting every time it is needed because unfortunately, we still see many killings… The killing in Texas was very sad. It shows that the problem is not solved and everybody should continue fighting against racial discrimination.” On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers and wounded seventeen other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Since that day, less than a week ago, at least 79 other US residents have been killed in 16 additional mass shootings.

Prior to Bachelet’s trip, the US and Western media outlets published numerous articles criticizing the visit of the UN top official, and NGOs pre-emptively attacked Bachelet for deigning to visit the People’s Republic of China and speak with Xi Jinping. Perhaps they were worried that she would not find any evidence to back up their claims. However, prior to her trip, these same voices had clamored for the multilateral organization to travel to China to witness the alleged genocide.

US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), for example, criticized Bachelet for speaking with President Xi Jinping, claiming through spokesperson Sophie Richardson that the issue “requires a credible investigation in the face of mountains of evidence of atrocity crimes, not another toothless dialogue.”

But in July 2019, HRW had written that 22 nations “called on China to cooperate with the UN high commissioner for human rights and UN experts to allow meaningful access to the region.” Following the UN trip, Human Rights Watch has changed its tone: “Nothing that we’ve seen from the high commissioner’s trip to China dispels our worry that this will be used as a massive propaganda victory for the Chinese government,” says HRW spokesperson Louis Charbonneau.

As condemnation of the US smear campaign becomes widespread, social media accounts and independent media have shared numerous memes and graphs mocking the allegations of genocide. For example, the following graph from Eurasia & Multipolarity was shared by Venezuela’s Misión Verdad outlet:

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Graphic comparing the genocide of Native Americans, in terms of population, with the increase of Uyghur population from 1950 to 2022. Photo: Eurasia and Multipolarity.
Following her trip, Bachelet also took the time to praise China’s success fighting poverty. The People’s Republic has lifted 800 million citizens out of poverty in the last 40 years, according to a report issued by the Washington, DC-based World Bank. In addition, Bachelet commended China for its success passing legislation to defend the rights of women, and for the Asian giant’s support of United Nations sustainable development goals.


Special for Orinoco Tribune by Steve Lalla

https://orinocotribune.com/no-mention-o ... -xinjiang/

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Abhorrent Western lies about Xinjiang
By Khalid TaimurAkram | China Daily | Updated: 2022-06-01 08:07


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A girl has fun with birds at an amusement park in Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, at 7:20 pm Dec 21, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, which is also a center of activities and logistics hub of the Belt and Road Initiative, has seen unprecedented development and progress, and people of all ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds in the region enjoy equality and equal rights, and live with dignity.

Xinjiang's cotton output accounts for about a fifth of the world total, and it has helped China to increase its cotton production over the past six decades. As per a report, China's textile industry is the biggest exporter to major and leading brands worldwide.

For many major Western clothing brands, China has been their biggest growth market for the past couple of decades. In fact, China is the world's biggest apparel market, accounting for more than 24 percent of global sales, according to one report. And while Chinese-made fabrics may contain cotton from both Chinese regional and international sources, China exports both cotton yarn and fabrics to apparel-manufacturing countries.

Xinjiang's cotton is relatively of high yield and good quality, and the region is an important production area of upland cotton and sea-island cotton with perfect cultivation and management technology.

However, this undeniable reality is now being disregarded, distorted and politicized by a number of malicious mainstream media in the West through their baseless narratives about so-called human rights violations, child labor and Muslim genocide in Xinjiang. This US-led propaganda is the main cause behind the West's boycott of Xinjiang cotton and cotton products.

The ban on Xinjiang cotton, along with the vaccine conspiracy, G7's opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative, and the AUKUS alliance among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and other hostile activities manifest the West's continued hypocrisy over China.

The US is claiming to be sympathetic toward Muslims, yet it is responsible for the biggest humanitarian disasters haunting millions of Muslims and the violations of sovereignty in the contemporary world, from the infamous American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the bombings of Libya, Syria, and many other states.

The US is the most prominent opposition to China-led initiatives and programs. It has been trying to check China's rise through dirty propaganda and media campaigns. At a time when many countries are helping each other to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the US has been using offensive means to sabotage China's inclusive economic development projects and strong global outreach.

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the country holds that development is the right of all countries rather than the exclusive privilege of a few. The visionary leadership is committed to pursuing development for China and the world and bringing benefits to all. China has been contributing in great measure to the global economy thanks to its continuous, stable development. Also, China's achievements in many fields have brought greater convenience for people worldwide and injected new impetus into the field of technological innovation worldwide and the global economy.

Given the many challenges facing the world, there is a need for wider integration, not rivalries or fierce competitions. The West, especially the US, must abandon its Cold War mentality that jeopardizes global stability and peace. The US seems to be pursuing its vicious agendas via coercive actions and negative rhetoric against China. But by doing so, the US would be lifting the proverbial rock only to drop it on its own feet because such political maneuvers cannot impact China's irreversible global outreach.

The malicious attempts to start conflicts and demonize China are doomed to failure, because truth will inevitably win over all lies. The Muslim community in Xinjiang is being portrayed as being mired in abysmal poverty, and subjected to acute injustice and grave oppression. Such allegations are baseless and mere political campaigns against a rising China, and the Western media's fabricated stories are aimed at maligning China's global image.

I have been to Xinjiang many times and witnessed in person the region's development over the years. Xinjiang residents' per capita income and quality of life have improved manifolds thanks to the sustainable projects implemented by the central government. And all evidence supports the view that the central government has always treated the Uygurs and other Muslim communities with respect.

Besides, the government has introduced laws that prohibit ethnic and religious discrimination, guarantee proportionate representation of all ethnic groups in government jobs, and provide legal protection for indigenous customs. Indeed, Xinjiang has become a modern society.

China has eradicated abject poverty across the country including in Xinjiang, where a large number of jobs have been created. As a result, the employment level is stable.

Xinjiang's cotton industry is expected to develop further. The upgraded farming techniques, advanced mechanisms for agriculture productivity and an efficient workforce are the key factors in making China the world's biggest producer and supplier of cotton.

And despite the fierce market competition, China will continue to use its advantages to increase cotton production and supply it to other countries. Due to China's dynamic policies and development projects, many developing countries have affirmed their support for and trust in China. Therefore, the West's despicable attempts to influence people's views through lies in order to smear a state will face righteous opposition globally, from all those who value truth, equality and justice.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 601f0.html
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:57 pm

Xi Jinping turns to Mao Zedong-era system to lift millions of China’s rural poor out of poverty

President Xi Jinping has pledged to lift millions of rural poor out of poverty and he is hoping a revitalised Mao-era system will do the trick
More than 10,000 primary supply and marketing cooperatives have been set up in the past six years and funding for them is growing fast
Sidney Leng
Published: 2:02pm, 3 Feb, 2019

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Beijing is hoping a revitalised farmers’ cooperative system will help lift millions of rural residents out of poverty. Photo: Reuters

Beijing is rebooting an old state-run cooperative system to help boost the rural economy, but after years of reform some analysts are sceptical about how effective it can be in helping the country’s millions of impoverished farmers.
Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in 2013, the central government has rebuilt more than 10,000 primary supply and marketing cooperatives (SMC), taking the total across the country to nearly 32,000. About 95 per cent of towns and villages now have them, compared to just 50 per cent six years ago.
Unlike in other countries, where cooperatives are characterised by their democratic management and profit-sharing systems, in rural China – after years of dormancy and unsuccessful reform – they operate more like state-owned businesses.
While in the 1950s they served an important political role in controlling the supply and price of agri-food and consumer goods, their primary objective today is helping farmers find customers and strengthen their position in the marketplace.
According to official figures, at the end of last year China’s 32,000 cooperatives had more than 340,000 subdivisions offering all manner of services from buying fruit and vegetables, to selling seeds and fertiliser.

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At the end of 2018, China had about 32,000 cooperatives with more than 340,000 subdivisions. Photo: Xinhua

Expanding that network is a key feature of Xi’s plan to revitalise the countryside – where the Communist Party of China has its roots – and deliver on his pledge to lift millions of people out of poverty, and narrow the income gap between rural and urban dwellers.
While disposable income per capita has been growing faster in rural areas than in towns and cities, the gap between the two in absolute terms rose to 24,634 yuan (US$3,650) last year, an increase of 45 per cent from 17,038 yuan at the end of 2013, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The forgotten families in Beijing’s anti-poverty campaign
As China’s economic growth has slowed, so Beijing has been pushing primary SMCs to help boost rural consumption by building more e-commerce platforms and logistics centres.

Since 2016, the central government has significantly increased its funding for the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives – also known as China Co-op – the cabinet-level agency that oversees SMCs, and last month named Liu Shiyu, the former head of China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), as its executive director.

In 2016, funding tripled from a year earlier to more than 2.3 billion yuan (US$341 million) and continued upwards to 2.87 billion yuan in 2017 and 2.89 billion last year, although official figures for 2018 have yet to be released.
By comparison, in 2017 the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a cabinet-level think tank, received 2.34 billion yuan and the CSRC about 1.18 billion yuan.
China is making its vegetables grow bigger, faster and stronger … using electricity
Yang Huan, an associate professor specialising in rural policy at Huazhong Agricultural University in central China, said the spike in funding for the co-ops suggested Beijing was aware it had not achieved its goal of helping small farmers secure access to big markets and wanted to do more.
“SMCs have been battling to find their role in the economy for years,” she said.
“From the government’s point of view, their job now is to serve rural farmers. So it needs to expand the service network. That’s the plan.”

But the cooperatives would not have it all their own way, Yang said.
“The SMCs face competition from private marketing platforms, and suppliers of inputs for agricultural production at the local level,” she said.
“The reality is that they have to strike a balance between making a profit and providing a public service, and there could be conflict between the two.”
Forrest Zhang, an associate professor of sociology at Singapore Management University, said that another possible reason for Beijing reviving the SMCs was that traditional farmers’ cooperatives set up to pool resources for the benefit of all had not worked out very well.

As state-run SMCs lost their influence during the market reforms of the 1980s, a new kind of cooperative fever emerged in the early 2000s as grass-roots organisations sprang up across the country. Beijing promoted the movement with huge financial subsidies, and as of June last year, their number had grown to more than 2.1 million.
Despite that massive growth, the system was fundamentally flawed and soon became a breeding ground for corruption.
Between 2009 and 2016, Zhang and his colleagues interviewed members of farmers’ cooperatives in 18 provinces across China. Their findings, published a year later, were shocking.

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As head of China Co-op Liu Shiyu will have more money to spend than he did as chairman of the securities watchdog. Photo: Simon Song

Of the 50 groups they visited, just two were genuine. The rest were either private businesses controlled by individual owners rather than member farmers, or fronts for fraudulent operations set up with the sole purpose of cheating the state out of its money.
“SMCs are state-run marketing organisations that originated in the Mao [Zedong] era, while the farmers’ co-ops are a more recent development,” Zhang said.
“My guess is that the government has realised [after seeing the study’s findings] that the spontaneous farmers’ co-ops have not played the role it wanted them to in uniting producers and strengthening their positions in the market, so it is looking to revitalise the SMC system as an alternative … and that makes a lot of sense.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20210905210 ... fund-state

Graphs at link.

So then, about that'China is capitalist' thing...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 04, 2022 1:49 pm

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Demanding China’s exclusion: US blocks world access to vaccines
We are pleased to republish this very important article by Sara Flounders which originally appeared in Workers World. Sara contrasts in detail the diametrically opposite approaches to the international distribution of anti-Covid vaccines on the part of the imperialist United States and socialist China. Whilst China is now the world’s largest provider of Covid-19 vaccines, having provided over 2.1 billion doses to more than 120 countries and international organisations, accounting for one third of the vaccines administered outside China, US trade officials have announced that they will veto a global plan that would allow countries on an emergency basis to temporarily ignore patents and produce their own vaccines. This measure was first proposed by India and South Africa in 2020. The US is motivated by a desire to isolate China and to defend the mega profits of big pharma. China, meanwhile, has gone far beyond temporary intellectual property waivers for its vaccines, providing public access to the technology, along with raw materials and manufacturing ability.
Just how far is the U.S. government determined to go in the protection of corporate profits?

For the past two years the Biden administration and earlier the Trump administration have blocked every effort to make medicines for the COVID-19 virus widely available. U.S. control of the patents has been ruthlessly enforced.

U.S. trade officials have now announced that the government will veto a global plan that would allow countries on an emergency basis to temporarily ignore patents and make their own COVID-19 vaccines. The U.S. says it will block this plan unless China is explicitly excluded from the waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights. This ultimatum has created international shock waves.

Health officials globally are concerned because U.S. opposition could kill even a limited international deal. Two years of discussions in Geneva were intensified this month in the hopes of signing a final pact in June.

Corporate ownership of patents
Control of patents in technology and medicine play a crucial role in U.S. economic domination. Patents on intellectual property are a set of laws that protect legal rights of products to be privately owned. Even if essential products are developed through the common labor of hundreds of thousands of people, were developed with public funds or are based on science and technology developed over many generations, the corporations that file for the patents can claim ownership of the product and of the manufacturing process.

The idea, first presented by South Africa and India in 2020, of patent or IP waivers, was intended to boost the supply of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics equipment for the prevention, treatment or containment of COVID-19. This emergency step would help developing nations have faster access to lifesaving products. In April of 2021 the Brazilian Senate voted to suspend patents in a bid to widen access to COVID-19 vaccines. (statnews.com, April 30, 2021)

These desperate pleas for a temporary suspension of vaccine patents have become a political football tossed back and forth by the pharmaceutical industries. Politicians and corporations applauded the idea, while moving to block it from becoming a reality.

The U.S. government now says it will block the international agreement, hammered out slowly over two years of negotiations, if China is not excluded from the pact. In response, China said that it did not wish to be excluded but would voluntarily agree not to take advantage of it.

Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Maria Pagan stated that China’s offer was not good enough. Washington would not accept Beijing’s offer to voluntarily opt out of the agreement. China must be excluded in print. (Bloomberg, May 16)

An agreement planned to fail
World Trade Organization (WTO) deals are structured so that pacts must be unanimous, and any one of the 164 members can block a deal for any reason. The WTO has failed to advance any multilateral agreements for a decade.

China has objected to a key provision of the WTO agreement that will, in reality, discourage shipments of doses to poorer nations. The current proposal contains a footnote that excludes China, because it is the only developing country that has exported more than 10% of global COVID-19 vaccine doses. China was initially even excluded from the talks on vaccine access.

In fact, China has exported far more vaccines than any other country. This global contribution to health throughout the developing world is the reason for China’s exclusion.

Claiming that China would gain an unfair advantage, U.S. policymakers want to prevent China from obtaining access to any technology, including vaccine technology.

In March of 2021 India, which is a major vaccine manufacturing hub in the developing world, imposed an export ban on vaccines they produce due to their own overwhelming outbreak of COVID-19. So, India remains below the 10% eligibility threshold.

China – world’s largest producer of vaccines
China is now the world’s largest provider of COVID-19 vaccines, said Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the fifth session of the 13th National People’s Congress, at a news briefing on March 4.

In total, China has provided over 2.1 billion doses to more than 120 countries and international organizations, accounting for one-third of the total number of vaccines administered outside China. The majority have been provided to developing countries, Zhang said.

“China’s vaccines have played an important role in helping many developing countries to build immunity barriers, resume normal lives and boost their capacity, confidence and determination to beat the pandemic,” said Zhang. He added that China will continue to prioritize developing countries and make them major partners in vaccine cooperation.

President Xi Jinping announced recently that China will provide a further 1 billion doses to African countries, with 600 million to be given as donations and the other 400 million provided through joint production between Chinese companies and African countries. China will also build 10 health projects in Africa and send 1,500 health experts. (tinyurl.com/2zfntmuu)

This is the real crime that China has committed. It is providing the technology for countries to manufacture their own vaccines. The emphasis is on developing partnerships in sales and manufacturing with low- to medium-income countries. Sharing technology and raw materials while helping to develop manufacturing breaks the monopoly of the U.S. and EU pharmaceutical industries.

The extensive cooperation to scale up the manufacture of Chinese vaccines overseas has resulted in a total of 17 manufacturing agreements with 15 countries — with an anticipated production per year amounting to an additional 2 billion doses.

COVAX protects medical monopoly
Politicians in all the imperialist countries have publicly denounced vaccine inequality and pledged billions of dollars in donated vaccines.

With great publicity and as a way to head off the call to give developing countries access to vaccine technology, COVAX, a program administered by the World Health Organization (WHO), announced it would deliver vaccines developed by U.S. and EU corporations. COVAX set an initial goal of equitably distributing 2 billion donated doses of a variety of corporate-owned vaccines. These vaccines were not scheduled to be available until the end of 2021. COVAX cut its forecasts by 25% and then cut the promised delivery by more than 50%. Many vaccines were out of date when delivered, and there had been no planning for distribution networks.

Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres denounced the COVAX program as “a failure and a broken promise to the world.” Their report explained that the private-sector pharmaceutical industry had the upper hand. Vaccines were hoarded and a source of speculation and profit. The public-sector partners of the West were unwilling to challenge this power and push for conditions that might ensure broader access. The countries in need of vaccines had no say in the distribution of essential supplies. (tinyurl.com/2p95vrap)

Big pharmaceutical companies and countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, had originally opposed the waiver on patents or IP protection. Now they claim to be on board with COVAX as the global distribution structure that protects their property rights and with the limited proposal at the WTO to suspend intellectual property protections for pandemic shots. This is because WTO added provisions and clauses that make any kind of agreement an impossibility in fact.

Big pharmaceutical industry lobbyists such as PhRMA oppose, with multimillion-dollar lobbying campaigns, any measures that open patents. The corporate stockholders are more than willing to pay several million dollars to lobbyists in order to protect profits of $20 billion a year.

Moderna’s CEO said that the pharmaceutical industry wasn’t losing sleep over WTO talk of vaccine waivers, because most other countries don’t have the raw materials, the technology, the scientists or the connections to meet the array of clinical trials and authorizations needed. The investment in technology is enormous and the waiver is only temporary. It is this monopoly of power that China is challenging.

Protecting profits, not people
While global plans are being sabotaged, there is less and less media coverage of the continuing deadly toll of the COVID-19 virus in the U.S. and throughout Europe.

U.S. and EU corporate protection policy is not in the interests of working people anywhere in the world. With over 1 million COVID-19 deaths, the U.S. leads the world in this grim statistic. The toll here is still more than 2,500 deaths a week, as of May 22, 2022. (tinyurl.com/2p88xjr6)

According to the WHO, China, in the 2 ½ years from Jan. 3, 2020, to May 27, 2022, has had a total of 16,258 COVID-19 deaths. (tinyurl.com/yh79pt86)

China is protecting not only its own population; based on socialist planning, China has thrown its full weight behind the developing world. It has provided billions of vaccines. What is an even greater contribution is that it has moved far beyond temporary intellectual property waivers for its vaccines. It has provided public access to the technology, along with raw materials and manufacturing ability.

This is why China is targeted by U.S. imperialism — the world’s main defender of corporate power.

https://socialistchina.org/2022/06/02/d ... -vaccines/

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China Calls on US to End Any Kind of Exchange With Taiwan

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China urged the U.S. to stop official exchanges with Taiwan. Jun. 2, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@Hadji1006

Published 2 June 2022

On Thursday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson urged the U.S. administration to stop all sorts of interchange with Taiwan.

Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson exhorted the U.S. to fully accomplish the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communique to end the official exchanges with Taiwan.

The media has reported that on Wednesday, a deputy U.S. trade representative and Taiwan representative held a virtual meeting intended to initiate the so-called U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade.

"China firmly opposes any form of official exchanges between Taiwan and countries having diplomatic ties with China, including the negotiating and signing of agreements with sovereign implications and official nature," said Zhao during a daily press briefing.

The U.S. has been violating the one-China principle, as recently it has been carrying out moves on the Taiwan issue recently. These recent actions have included emboldening the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces and disrupting the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.


The Chinese spokesperson said that "there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. The government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China."

He highlighted the fact that these are not only negotiations made by the international community but also solemn commitments made by the U.S. government in the three China-U.S. joint communique.

The spokesperson continued to say that Washington's position to continue playing the "Taiwan card" will only result in great danger for China-U.S. relations.


He emphasized the fact that the White House should stop conducting negotiations and signing agreements with sovereign implications and official nature.

"We also have this stern warning to Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authorities: stop seeking 'Taiwan independence' by soliciting U.S. support as soon as possible. Otherwise, the higher you jump, the harder you fall," concluded Zhao.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0019.html
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 06, 2022 1:58 pm

Tiananmen Protests Reading List
JUNE 5, 2022

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The Goddess of Democracy, also known as the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom, the Spirit of Democracy, and the Goddess of Liberty (自由女神; zìyóu nǚshén[1]), was a 10-metre-tall (33 ft) statue created during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

By Qiao Collective — Jun 4, 2022
More than thirty years later, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 remain a touchstone of a Western mythology spun to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the Communist Party of China. By collapsing the diverse and often contradictory demands of protesters into a simplistic call for Western-style capitalist democracy, the West’s selective memory of June 4 continues to inform liberal platitudes to “stand with the Chinese people” against their government, reifying the universality of Western capitalism and U.S. global hegemony in the process. This reading list compiles primary sources, Chinese state documents, and media fact-checking reports to challenge the hegemonic narrative of the Tiananmen protests. Far from the Western fairy-tale, these texts understand the June 4 tragedy in the context of the erosion of actually-existing socialism in the Soviet bloc, the contradictions of the reform and opening up period, antagonisms between student protesters, urban workers, and rural peasants, and the long challenge to China’s socialist past by “reformers” seeking to replicate the Western neoliberal model. Also recommended: Read Qiao Collective’s ‘A Note on Tiananmen.’ https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/artic ... n-protests
__________________________________________

Reading List

Table of Contents:

1.Introductory Texts
2.Official Chinese Accounts
3.Corporate Media Distortion
4.Further Readings

__________________________

1. Introductory Texts

These readings provide an introduction to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, the historical context of China’s economic reforms of the 1980s, and the mythology of the Tiananmen protests as symbolic shorthand for the political illegitimacy of Chinese socialism in Western discourse.

*Sun FY and Roderic Day, “Another View of Tiananmen.” Redsails.org, March 03, 2021. https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
This crucial text surveys Western misrepresentations of the Tiananmen protests, contextualizing the right-wing tendencies of student leaders such as Chai Ling, the spurning of workers issues by the movement’s bourgeois liberal intelligentsia leadership, and admissions of media distortion from Western journalists who covered the protests.

*He Zhao, Robert K Tan, and Dennis Etler. “Notes for 30th Anniversary of Tiananmen Incident.” Medium. May 30, 2019. https://medium.com/@leohezhao/notes-for ... 98ef6efbc2
This text similarly compiles resources debunking the Western narrative of an unprovoked civilian massacre in Tiananmen Square, situating U.S. influence in the protest movement in the context of contemporaneous “color revolutions” in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union which similarly sought to weaponize idealistic students and youth in order to erode actually-existing socialism in favor of the liberal capitalist Western model.

*Kelly, Mick. “Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party.” Freedom Road Socialist Organization, May 7, 2009. https://frso.org/main-documents/looking ... -in-china/
Originally published in 1989, this account historicizes the Tiananmen protests in the context of a longstanding historical conflict between those maintaining China’s socialist path and those advocating the road of capitalist reform. Surveying the economic reforms of the 1980s, the roots of urban discontent in price inflation and the rising cost of agricultural commodities, Kelly presents an account of official Communist Party of China debates which led to the labeling of the protests as counter-revolutionary in nature.

*Li, Minqi. “Preface: My 1989″ in The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. London: Pluto Press, 2008. https://drive.google.com/file/d/117_HcI ... 4-kzZ/view
Chinese political economist Li Minqi offers a personal account of his participation in the Tiananmen protests and his “unusual…trajectory from the Right to the Left…from being a neoliberal ‘democrat’ to a revolutionary Marxist.” In particular, Li expounds on the distaste of student protesters for affiliation with workers issues: “Just weeks before, we were enthusiastically advocating ‘reform’ programs that would shut down all state factories and leave the workers unemployed. I asked myself: do these workers really know who they are supporting?”

*Polin, Thomas Hon Wing. “Tiananmen: The Empire’s Big Lie.” Counterpunch. June 6, 2017. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/06 ... s-big-lie/

*Rahman, Abdul. “The Mythmaking Around Tiananmen Square.” People’s Dispatch. June 10, 2019.https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/06/10/ ... en-square/
2. Official Chinese Accounts

In the face of a hegemonic Western discourse which presumes that an authoritarian, all-powerful Chinese state has silenced all discussion of the events leading up to June 4, this section presents a selection of official Chinese accounts detailing the Party’s assessment of the protest movement, its roots, and the aftermath of the violence of June 4. While public discussion of the Tiananmen Protests remain highly circumscribed, these accounts contradict the common myth that China has wiped the events of 1989 from its historical record.

*Deng Xiaoping, “Bourgeois Liberalization Means Taking the Capitalist Road.” May and June 1985. https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com ... list-road/
These excerpts from talks delivered in Taiwan in May and June 1985 reflect Party leadership’s recognition that an ideological trend of “bourgeois liberalization” had taken root as a consequence of the reform and opening up policy. Critiquing “people who worship Western ‘democracy,” Deng Xiaoping effectively predicted the ideological currents that would take sway during the Tiananmen protests.

*“It Is Necessary to Take a Clear-Cut Stand Against Disturbances.” 人民日报 (People’s Daily), April 26, 1989.
In April 1989, the People’s Daily denounced the “small number of people” who subverted activities mourning the death of Politburo member Hu Yaobang in order to “[call] for opposition to the leadership by the Communist Party and the socialist system.” The editorial marks the official recognition of these activities as counter-revolutionary, marking a “serious political struggle confronting the whole party and the people of all nationalities throughout the country.”

*Deng Xiaoping, “June 9 Speech to Martial Law Units.” Beijing Domestic Television Service, June 27, 1989. http://www.tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html
In his first official remarks following the events of June 4, Deng Xiaoping re-asserted the correctness of the four cardinal principles and the policy of reform and opening up. Describing the ideological trend of bourgeois liberalization, Deng insisted that due to the international climate and domestic situation, the “storm was bound to come sooner or later.”

*“Report on Stopping Unrest and Quelling Counter-Revolutionary Riots.” Chinese State Council Bulletin, June 30, 1989 (Translated by Mango Press, 2021).https://www.mango-press.com/report-on-s ... ary-riots/

*Deng Xiaoping, “Excerpts from Talks Given In Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai.” January 18 – February 21, 1992. http://www.tsquare.tv/chronology/April26ed.html

These speeches, while not addressing the events of June 4 specifically, reflect an understanding that the Tiananmen protest movement evinced the vulnerability of China’s younger generation to imperialist ideological influence. Decrying the Western push for China’s “peaceful evolution” towards capitalism, Deng called for a recommitment to political education and serving the masses in order to counteract imperialist agendas which “[placed] their hopes on the generations that will come after us.”

3. Corporate Media Distortion

While the official Chinese account of June 4 recorded 200 fatalities, including 36 college students, Western reporting at the time ran wild with reports of more than 1,000 and up to 10,000 deaths, based on rumors and unsubstantiated witness testimony. This Western media narrative depicts the Tiananmen tragedy as a brutal suppression of non-violent protesters, with images such as the infamous “tank man” photograph purporting to foreshadow the onslaught of PLA tanks into Tiananmen Square (in reality, film footage of the “tank man” moment make clear that the tanks were actually existing from the square and did not drive over the man, as often implied). These texts provide critical perspective on this manufactured narrative, highlighting several inconvenient truths contrary to the Western storyline, such as the fact that no bloodshed was recorded within Tiananmen Square proper, and the fact that factions of protesters armed with molotov cocktails had burned military vehicles, in some cases hanging the corpses of soldiers from the streets. These sources—many consisting of eye-witness accounts from Western journalists who challenge the media’s depiction of Tiananmen—reflect that the Western media “common sense” of June 4 is riddled with hyperbole and outright misinformation designed to challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese state.

*Brown, Adrian. “Reporting from Tiananmen Square in 1989: ‘I saw a lot I will never forget.” Al Jazeera. June 4, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019 ... ver-forget
Journalist Adrian Brown recounts his coverage of the Tiananmen protests, including violence on June 4 which included witnessing “a burned-out army personnel carrier and the charred corpse of a soldier inside.” Brown’s account adds important context to the nature of clashes between protesters and the Chinese military which are frequently depicted as a one-sided, unprovoked massacre.

*Clark, Gregory. “Birth of a massacre myth.” The Japan Times. July 21, 2008. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/20 ... acre-myth/

*Kanthan, Chris. “Tiananmen Square Massacre – Facts, Fiction and Propaganda.” World Affairs. June 2, 2019. https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/ti ... ganda/amp/

*Mathews, Jay. “The Myth of Tiananmen.” Columbia Journalism Review. June 4, 2010. https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_new ... jqVgZdVkak
Here, Jay Mathews—the Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post in 1989—takes to task what he calls the “mythical version” of the Tiananmen Square protests forwarded by U.S. media. Contrary to the accepted account that hundreds of peaceful students were mowed down under military fire, Mathews reviews various eyewitness reports from journalists to insist: “as far as can be determined from the available evidence, no one died that night in Tiananmen Square.” Mathews blames “reportorial laziness” for ballooning media accounts which now routinely memorial “tens of thousands” of lives lost within Tiananmen Square the night of June 4.

*Moore, Malcolm. “Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, cables claim.” The Telegraph. June 4, 2011. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldn ... claim.html
Malcolm Moore reports on cables released via Wikileaks which indicate that U.S. intelligence authorities were aware, through first-person accounts, that no massacre took place within Tiananmen Square, highlighting in particular the testimony of a Latin American diplomat who stayed with straggling student protesters within the square until their final, peaceful withdrawal.

*Roth, Richard. “There Was No Tiananmen Square Massacre.” CBS News. June 4, 2009. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was- ... -massacre/
Roth, a CBS News correspondent covering the protests in 1989, recounts his recollection of the night of June 4: “we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had recently occurred in that place.”
4. Further Readings

These texts deal with aspects of the protests not captured under the previous sections.

Chung, Erin. “Nanjing Anti-African Protests of 1988-89.” The Institute for Diasporic Studies at Northwestern University, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060215085 ... atomid=711
Missing from Western accounts of the Tiananmen protests is the fact that the protest movement was preceded—and deeply influenced—by a more unsavory form of civic unrest. In December of 1988, Hohai University in Nanjing was rocked by quarrels between African exchange students and their Chinese peers. Resentment of African students for receiving scholarships from the Chinese government, coupled with rumors of relationships between African men and Chinese women led 300 Chinese students to destroy the dormitories which housed the African students, chanting “Kill the Black Devils.” Here, Erin Chung surveys Nanjing’s anti-African protests and their overlap with calls for political reform which would spread to Beijing.
“CIA Man Misread Reaction, Sources Say.” The Vancouver Sun, September 17, 1992. https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/ ... 4TsidM/pub
While the full extent of foreign interference in the Tiananmen protest movement remains unknown, this article from the Vancouver Sun includes reports from unnamed Central Intelligence Agency sources who stated that the CIA maintained several sources among protesters, and for months had been equipping student activists to “form the anti-government” movement through the provision of typewriters and other equipment. These activities culminated in Operation Yellowbird, during which the CIA and British M16 coordinated the emigration of student protest leaders to the U.S. and UK in the aftermath of the June 4 clashes.

*“Voice of America Beams TV Signal To China.” New York Times. June 9, 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/09/worl ... china.html
New York Times coverage from 1989 details the extent to which Voice of America, an information arm of the U.S. government, broadcast television and radio signal into China at the height of the protests and their aftermath in order to exploit the conflict and seed distrust. Some present in Tiananmen Square recount VOA being played on radio receivers during the occupation.

(Qiao Collective)

https://orinocotribune.com/tiananmen-pr ... ding-list/
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 08, 2022 2:14 pm

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U.S. wants to surround China with missiles–but can’t find Asian country to host them
By Ben Norton (Posted Jun 06, 2022)

Originally published: Multipolarista on June 3, 2022 (more by Multipolarista)

The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars to surround China with missiles. But it’s having trouble finding an Asian country willing to host the offensive weapons.

The U.S. military commissioned a study from the RAND Corporation, a Pentagon-backed research group, to assess the feasibility of deploying intermediate-range missiles to the Pacific.

The study closely analyzed the U.S. government’s relations with its five treaty allies in the region: Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand.

Citing “an inability to find a willing partner,” the RAND report concluded that the chance of these nations hosting U.S. ground-based intermediate-range missiles “is very low as long as current domestic political conditions and regional security trends hold.”

The Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. This means Washington can now deploy ground-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, RAND noted.

The study refers to these weapons as ground-based intermediate-range missiles, using the acronym GBIRMs.

“Finding an ally willing to host GBIRMs is more challenging than finding allies willing to host other types of U.S. military forces, such as air bases,” RAND wrote.

RAND conceded that this opposition is logical:

There are several reasons why U.S. allies could deny access to and use of their territories, including fears that hosting such systems could intensify a regional arms race with China; the risk of the deployment being seen as provocative, sparking harsh reactions from Beijing; and fears of entrapment in a conflict between the United States and China that does not directly involve the ally.

Given this reality, the RAND report suggested other possibilities for the U.S. to militarily encircle and threaten China, including by deploying ground-based intermediate-range missiles instead to Guam, which is a U.S. colony in the Pacific.

RAND concluded that the most realistic approach would be for Washington to strengthen Japan’s military to counter China.

U.S. military to spend $27.4 billion to surround China with missiles
The major Japanese media outlet Nikkei published an article on this RAND study. It noted,

In a six-year investment plan submitted to Congress in February last year, the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command made it clear that ground-based weapons will be crucial in breaking through China’s defense systems.

In 2021, Nikkei exclusively obtained a copy of the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command submitted to Congress.

The strategy revealed that the U.S. military plans on spending $27.4 billion over six years to install precision-strike missiles on the first island chain–the first chain of islands off of the coast of East Asia, which includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

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The U.S. military proposal lamented that Beijing is challenging Washington’s hegemony in the region, writing,

Without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China is emboldened to take action in the region and globally to supplant U.S. interests.

Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, a former vice president of and lobbyist for weapons corporation Raytheon, said in 2019 that the United States sought to deploy intermediate-range missiles to the Pacific region “sooner, rather than later.”

Acknowledging that the Joe Biden administration has continued Trump’s aggressive policies against China, the RAND report emphasized,

The strategic logic that underlies this thinking did not change with the transition of administrations in Washington.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a historic speech on May 26 making it clear that the U.S. government is waging a policy of containment and siege against China, similar to the one that Washington pursued against the Soviet Union in the first cold war.

Country by country

The RAND report, which is titled “Ground-Based Intermediate-Range Missiles in the Indo-Pacific Assessing the Positions of U.S. Allies,” was commissioned by the U.S. military’s Pacific Air Forces, and was written by political scientist Jeffrey W. Hornung.

It analyzes Washington’s relations with its five treaty allies in the Pacific region, and explained why they are unlikely to host U.S. ground-based intermediate-range missiles.

RAND wrote,

It is highly unlikely that Thailand, the Philippines, or the Republic of Korea (ROK) would agree to host U.S. GBIRMs, and there is a small likelihood that Australia or Japan would do so, although the possibility that an agreement might be struck with Tokyo is only slightly greater.

Thailand

“Thailand would be highly unlikely to accept,” the RAND study conceded. It noted that the Thai “government shows a propensity to pursue closer ties with China.”

Philippines

“The Philippines is extremely unlikely to accept the deployment of U.S. GBIRMs,” RAND wrote, adding that the “U.S. alliance with the Philippines is in a state of flux, although it is improving.”

RAND continued: “While the Philippine public and elites generally support the United States and the alliance, President Rodrigo Duterte has pursued policies that negatively affect ties. Specifically, Duterte has advocated closer ties with Beijing while pursuing policies that weaken core pillars of the U.S.-Philippine alliance.”

South Korea

South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea (ROK), “retains a close relationship with China,” RAND cautioned.

The study concluded that “a general deterioration of U.S.-ROK relations suggest that it is highly unlikely that the ROK would consent to host U.S. GBIRMs.”

Australia

“The U.S. alliance with Australia is strong. Australia also remains economically close to China, but their bilateral ties have been fraying,” RAND wrote.

Yet “Australia’s historical reluctance to host permanent foreign bases, combined with the geographical distance of Australia from continental Asia, makes this possibility unlikely.”

Japan

The RAND report assessed that “Japan is the regional ally that appears most likely to host U.S. GBIRMs.”

It acknowledged, however, that this possibility “remains low, heavily caveated by the challenge of accepting any increase in U.S. presence and deploying weapons that are explicitly offensive in nature.”

https://mronline.org/2022/06/06/u-s-wan ... host-them/

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World’s largest joint naval exercise a message to China

US-led RIMPAC will comprise 26 nations, 170 aircraft and over 25,000 personnel in drills that expressly exclude China
By RICHARD JAVAD HEYDARIAN
JUNE 6, 2022

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An earlier rendition of the RIMPAC joint naval exercises. This year's version is being touted as the largest ever joint naval exercise. Image: Twitter
MANILA – Just weeks after US President Joe Biden’s maiden visit to Asia, China is testing the resolve of newly elected leaders among US allies in contested maritime waters.

Over the weekend, Australia’s Defense Department accused China of intercepting its surveillance missions in the South China Sea, which “resulted in a dangerous maneuver which posed a safety threat to the P-8 [surveillance] aircraft and its crew.” New Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his administration was deeply “concerned about this incident.”

Meanwhile, newly-elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has signaled a more assertive stance towards China amid rising tensions in the maritime area. In his first major speeches since winning last month’s presidential election, Marcos Jr has underscored his commitment to upholding the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines against China over claims to the South China Sea while vowing not to compromise the country’s “sacred” rights in the disputed waters.


Now, in a clear show of support for regional allies, the US is set to host “the world’s largest international maritime exercise” later this month. Both Australia and the Philippines will join two dozen other nations for the massive biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercises, scheduled for between June 29 to August 4 in Pacific waters reaching from the Hawaiian Islands all the way to southern California.

Maritime tensions in the region have entered a perilous new stage. US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C Aquilino warned earlier this year that China has already fully “militarized” a host of disputed land features in the South China Sea, arming them with laser and jamming equipment, fighter jets, and anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems.

China is also rapidly consolidating a large network of military bases across adjacent waters, paving the way for the imposition of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the area. China has also recently been expanding its naval exercises as well as para-military deployments across the South China Sea and other contested waters in the Indo-Pacific.

Threats to freedom of navigation and overflight have followed accordingly. For example, a recent dramatic video showed a Cathay Pacific passenger aircraft “narrowly escaping being hit by a missile” amid Chinese naval drills in the South China Sea.

According to a report by the Eurasian Times, the civilian aircraft plane was flying over the disputed waters when its pilot received an emergency alert by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) to “turn left 90 degrees immediately” to avoid being hit by a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N) missile.


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China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier during a drill in the South China Sea on April 18, 2018. Photo: AFP / Getty Images

At the same time, China is taking the fight to US allies. In late May, a PLA fighter jet reportedly intercepted The Royal Australian Air Force P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft during the latter’s “routine maritime surveillance activity” in international airspace.

The Australian defense department maintained that its surveillance missions are “in accordance with international law, exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace.”

According to Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles, the Chinese jet flew dangerously close to the RAAF aircraft and then released a “bundle of chaff” containing tiny pieces of aluminum, which were absorbed by the Australian surveillance aircraft’s engine.

“Quite obviously this is very dangerous,” Marles told local media.

During a visit to Perth, Australia’s westernmost major city, Prime Minister Albanese told reporters that his government has relayed its concerns “through appropriate channels” to Beijing. The incident came on the back of a series of incidents between the two countries.


In May, Canberra accused Beijing of deploying an intelligence-gathering vessel 50 nautical miles from a sensitive Australian defense facility. In February, Australia complained about a PLA navy vessel pointing laser at one of its maritime patrol aircraft.

The Philippines, another US treaty ally, has accused China of deploying para-military forces to Manila-claimed land features in the South China Sea. Last week, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said it was also reviewing reports on the “presence of foreign coast guard vessels around Reed Bank”, a disputed feature that falls within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Back in 2019, a suspected Chinese militia vessel sank a Filipino fishing vessel, which almost drowned its crew members in the resource-rich waters.


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This handout satellite imagery taken on March 23, 2021 and received on March 25 from Maxar Technologies shows Chinese vessels anchored at the Whitsun Reef, around 320 kilometers west of Bataraza in Palawan in the South China Sea. Photo: Handout / Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies / AFP

The Philippines has recently filed a diplomatic against Beijing’s “unilateral imposition of a three-and-half-month fishing moratorium” near the disputed Spratly group of islands. In response, the US State Department reiterated Washington’s support for its Southeast Asian ally.

“[China’s] unilateral fishing moratorium in the South China Sea is inconsistent with the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal ruling and international law,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said over Twitter. “We call upon [China] to abide by its obligations under international law.” Vietnam has also protested China’s unilateral ban.

Earlier this year, the Philippines and US conducted their largest bilateral Balikatan (Shoulder to Shoulder) exercises in recent memory, with more than 5,000 US military personnel joining their Filipino counterparts for a wide range of joint military drills. This year, the two allies are expected to conduct more than 300 joint defense activities as pro-Beijing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte steps down from office.

Later this month, the Philippines is set to join Australia and 24 other like-minded nations for the 28th edition of the RIMPAC exercises. Among other participants are Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, South Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In 2018, the US disinvited China from the exercises amid concerns about Beijing’s rising assertiveness in the South China Sea, moves that the US Pentagon said were “inconsistent with the spirit of the exercise.”

China apparently sees the drills as a direct threat, particularly in regard to the nature of Japan’s participation.

The Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Global Times said in a June 3 commentary that Japan reportedly plans to send its recently converted aircraft carrier Izumo to participate in RIMPAC, which unlike previous deployments will allow F-35B fighter jets to operate from it.

The commentary said this shows Japan is violating its pacifist constitution and that it has “found itself an excuse for overseas deployment by following the US to manipulate issues like regional security.”

The month-long drills will be hosted by the commander of the US Pacific Fleet and led by the commander of the US Third Fleet under a Combined Task Force (CTF) commander.

Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral Christopher Robinson will serve as deputy commander of the Combined Task Force (CTF) while Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Rear Admiral Toshiyuki Hirata will serve as vice commander.


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Military members from the Royal Australian Navy, Australian army, U.S. Marines, Sri Lankan navy and marines, Royal Malaysian Army, His Majesty’s Armed Forces of Brunei, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and the New Zealand army gather for a group photo on the flight deck of the landing helicopter dock ship HMAS Adelaide during a previous RIMPAC. Photo: US Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kelsey J Hockenberger

As many as 25,000 personnel, 38 surface ships, four submarines and more than 170 aircraft are expected to participate in the RIMPAC 2022 under the theme “Capable, Adaptive, Partners.”

The joint forces are expected to engage in a wide range of drills, including anti-submarine and air defense exercises as well as amphibious operations and counter-piracy operations, to enhance interoperability and joint responses to threats to peace and security in the Indo-Pacific.

“As the world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity designed to foster and sustain cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s interconnected oceans,” the US Navy said in a statement.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/06/worlds-la ... -to-china/

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US, China on Collision Course Over Taiwan
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 6, 2022
Scott Ritter

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Chinese officials have made it clear that their “One China” policy regarding Taiwan is founded on a constitutionally mandated principle of so-called “peaceful reunification.” War, Chinese officials say, is a measure of last resort, only to be employed to prevent the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China, or when possibilities for peaceful reunification have been completely exhausted. But current US policies on Taiwan appear designed to push China to the brink, raising the prospect of armed conflict.

In 2005, China adopted legislation known as the “Anti-Secession Law,” which stated firmly that Taiwan “is part of China.” The Chinese state “shall never allow the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from China under any name or by any means,” the law said. Stating that reunification through “peaceful means” best serves the fundamental interests of China, the law said China would not stand idle in the face of any effort by “Taiwan independence” secessionist forces to “cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China.” In this event, China would use “non-peaceful means and other necessary measures” to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The law was written at a time when successive US presidential administrations were implementing their policy of “strategic ambiguity.” This allowed the US to provide military sales to Taiwan to ensure its ability to defend itself from an attack or invasion, while remaining ambiguous about any US responsibility to physically come to Taiwan’s assistance.

Shift in Washington

In March 2021, the Joe Biden administration published its “interim National Security Strategy Guidance,” in which Washington established the notion of a “strategic competition” with China. The goal of this was to ensure “that America, not China, sets the international agenda, working alongside others to shape new global norms and agreements that advance our interests and reflect our values.”

This document sought to deter Chinese aggression and counter threats to the “collective security, prosperity and democratic way of life” of the US and its allies. But Washington included caveats in its Taiwan policies, noting that US support would be “in line with long-standing American commitments,” including the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which limited US military support for Taiwan to weapons of a defensive character. In short, the Biden administration fully intended to continue to adhere to the existing policy of “strategic ambiguity.”

It soon became clear, however, that the administration had a different notion of what “strategic ambiguity” meant. Nicholas Burns, the current US ambassador to China, indicated in his confirmation hearings before the US Senate in October 2021 that the policy of “strategic ambiguity” provides the US with “enormous latitude” under the Taiwan Relations Act to deepen US security assistance to Taiwan. “Our responsibility,” Burns said, “is to make Taiwan a tough nut to crack.” This was a departure from past practice, which was to de-emphasize the military aspects of the Taiwan Relations Act.

The difference in approach came to the fore on two occasions in 2021 — in August and October — when Biden appeared to assert that the US would in fact come to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked by China. In August, Biden appeared to equate US policy toward Taiwan with the rock-solid commitments the US maintained with South Korea and Japan regarding their security. Then in October, Biden answered a town hall question on whether the US would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack by declaring, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

While the White House, on both occasions, immediately walked back Biden’s statements, the Chinese were sufficiently alarmed following the October incident to issue an official statement, urging the US to “be prudent with its words and actions on the Taiwan question, and avoid sending wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces, lest it should seriously damage China-US relations.” Beijing added that, “No one should underestimate the resolve, the will and the ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Ukraine Complication

Under normal circumstances, US and Chinese diplomats should have been able to create the opportunity to resolidify strategic ambiguity as the unquestioned policy of the US. However, US concerns over Russia’s aggressive posturing toward Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2022 prompted policymakers to express concern that, if Russia were to get away with invading Ukraine free of consequence, then China might be emboldened to follow suit on Taiwan. In this context, the last thing the US wanted when signaling its concern over Taiwan to China was “ambiguity.”

For every action, however, there is a reaction. China’s concern at this toughening of the US posture was made clear when, on Jan. 28, 2022, its newly appointed ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, criticized Taiwan over “walking down the road toward independence,” adding that “if the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict.”

US-Chinese tensions over Taiwan only heightened after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” significantly increased concern among US policymakers that Washington needed to construct a proactive defense strategy, including specific military plans, before any onset of hostilities between Taiwan and China. The new US posture focused on reinforcing Taiwan’s defenses to improve their inherent deterrent value, as well as preparing US and Taiwanese military capacity to resist any potential invasion from mainland China.

In response to increasingly aggressive statements coming from the US government regarding Taiwan, China’s senior diplomat, Yang Jiechi, on May 18 contacted Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to issue a direct warning. “The US,” Yang said, “has been adopting wrongful narratives and actions that interfere with China’s domestic politics and are harmful to China’s interests.” Yang further noted that, “The recent actions taken by the US on Taiwan-related matters have been a huge contrast from their pronouncements. If the US continues to play the Taiwan card and head further on the wrong path, this will certainly lead to dangerous situations.”

Leaving no doubt, Yang added: “China will be steadfast to take actions that defend its sovereignty and security interests. We will do as we said.”

Yang’s intervention was unprecedented in recent US-Chinese relations. And yet, less than a week later, Biden, in Japan for a state visit, again turned the policy of strategic ambiguity on its head. Asked by a reporter if the US was willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, Biden answered “Yes,” adding “That’s the commitment we made.”

Mixed Messages

The White House was compelled, yet again, to walk back an alleged presidential misstatement, this time with a formal briefing by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he stated that, while the US was concerned about China’s coercive policies that seek to isolate and militarily threaten Taiwan, it was not pushing for Taiwanese independence. “We enjoy a strong unofficial relationship with Taiwan,” Blinken said, emphasizing the US commitment to the policy of “strategic ambiguity.”

Blinken’s words, however, rang hollow when US Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an influential member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, arrived in Taiwan a few days later at the head of a congressional delegation for meetings with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen about Duckworth’s bipartisan legislation, known as the “Strengthen Taiwan’s Security Act.” This legislation seeks to provide lethal military assistance to Taiwan, enhance intelligence sharing and increase critical prepositioned stocks of military equipment in the region that would be needed if US troops were deployed to Taiwan to help repel a Chinese attack. A critical part of the Duckworth-authored legislation is the advancement of a formal relationship between the US National Guard and the Taiwanese military, similar to a relationship with the Ukrainian military.

The string of policy misstatements by Biden, when combined with the aggressive legislation being pursued in the halls of the Senate by Duckworth, threatens to accomplish exactly what China has, through its 2005 law, said it will never tolerate — the emboldening of what Beijing views as a “Taiwan Independence” movement in Taiwan and abroad. The Biden administration appears to be laying the groundwork for a conflict that China claims it doesn’t want, but which the US — by accident or design — seems set to provoke.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... er-taiwan/
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 10, 2022 2:01 pm

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Cheng Enfu: Economic development in socialist countries–great achievements and future prospects
Originally published: Cheng Enfu: Economic development in socialist countries–great achievements and future prospects on June 6, 2022 by Friends of Socialist China (more by Cheng Enfu: Economic development in socialist countries–great achievements and future prospects) (Posted Jun 09, 2022)
We reproduce below the text of a speech given by Cheng Enfu–former president of the Academy of Marxism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), currently Academician of CASS, principal professor of the University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and president of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE)–at the recent book launch we co-hosted for Elias Jabbour and Alberto Gabriele’s ‘Socialist Economic Development in the 21st Century’. In his brief but comprehensive speech, Professor Cheng describes the trajectory of socialist economic development, starting with the extraordinary achievements of the Soviet Union, and continuing with China’s “three miracles”: the period of early socialist construction, which broke China out of underdevelopment and “fundamentally reversed the trend of China’s marginalization in the world system”; the Reform and Opening Up period from 1978, within which China became a major economic power; and the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era since 2013, in which China’s “scientific, technological, economic and ecological construction has jumped to a new level.” Cheng discusses the escalating New Cold War, which is the imperialist camp’s response to China’s rise and humanity’s multipolar trajectory, concluding that “bad things can also become good things” and that the socialist countries–China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and the DPRK–will continue to achieve greater economic and social development in the face of the U.S.-led onslaught.

– Friends of Socialist China Eds.
Alberto Gabriele and Elias Jabbour’s monograph on the economic development of several socialist countries in the 21st century deserves careful reading and great attention. In the following, I will address a few potentially controversial points on the subject of economic development in China and the Soviet Union, as two representative examples of socialist countries, in response to the misconceptions prevailing in the world.

The first point: the Soviet Union has made great achievements in economic and social development. This year is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Soviet Union, which is worth commemorating, but because of the betrayal and subversion of the Soviet Union by the Gorbachev and Yeltsin leadership groups, the Western world generally denies the achievements in economic and social development of the Soviet Union. In my opinion, after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Lenin, established the dictatorship of the proletariat and the centralized democratic system, carried out large-scale economic, social, educational and cultural construction, repelled the armed aggression of 14 capitalist countries, and developed a series of theories and successful practices for building socialism in one country under the siege of capitalist countries.

Guided by Lenin’s ideas, the Soviet Union saw great achievements in economy, politics, education, science and technology, culture, health, people’s livelihood, society, ecology, and national defense. Without the invasion and near destruction of the Soviet Union by fascist Germany with its monopolistic bourgeois totalitarian politics, or if the socialist Soviet Union had not been dismantled by a coup d’état, the economic strength and comprehensive national power of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 21st century would have caught up with and surpassed that of the United States, which relied on internal exploitation and external plunder.

The second point: China’s economic and social development before the reform and opening up created what is called the “first miracle.” After comparing and analyzing a large number of domestic and foreign statistics, we can make this objective judgment: during the 100 years since the First Opium War, the economic and social development of the old China was extremely slow, and in general it showed a backward, defeated and poor state with decaying society, and the gap between its economic and social development and that of the major countries in the world had been widening. In the first 30 years of the new China, despite the unfavorable conditions such as lack of experience in socialist construction, economic blockade by capitalist countries, rapid population growth, and aids to other countries, the pace of economic and social development was greatly accelerated, accompanied by a qualitative leap in the quality and structural layout of development, fundamentally reversing the trend of China’s marginalization in the world system and narrowing the economic gap with major countries in the world. The socialist market economy is not a policy because of previous failure but rather a successor stage to the previous one, with the goal of better and faster development than the traditional planned economy. As Yale professor Maurice Meissner points out, “In the post-Mao era, it has become fashionable to bloviate about the blemishes of the historical record of the Mao era and to keep quiet about the achievements of the time.” “In fact, far from being the era of economic stagnation that is now commonly perceived, Mao’s era was one of the greatest modernization in world history, comparable with the most intense industrialization in several major latecomers in modern times, such as Germany, Japan and Russia.” The “two miracles” created in the 70 years of the People’s Republic of China has been officially recognized in China.

The third point: China’s economic and social development after the reform and opening up has created its “second miracle” and China has entered the rank of the “sub-middle rich and powerful” in the world. As of 2012, China’s industrial output and foreign exchange reserves have leaped to the first place in the world, total economic volume has steadily ranked second in the world, education, science, technology and health care have developed significantly, people’s livelihood has tremendously improved from subsistence to moderately well-off, Hong Kong and Macao have successfully returned to China, and its international status has been raised.

The fourth point: the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era since 2013 is creating the “third economic miracle.” China has entered the stage of moderately rich and strong country as a “quasi-center” in the world economic system. Its scientific, technological, economic and ecological construction has jumped to a new level. Moreover, through the “Belt and Road Initiative,” “BRICS,” “Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank” and other international cooperation, it has contributed Chinese wisdom and provide Chinese solutions for human development, promoted the construction of a community of shared future for humanity, with increased international appeal and influence. I confidently predict that if China basically achieves modernization in 2035, it will become one of the countries of “sub-high wealth and power” in the “center” of the world economic system; if it achieves full modernization in 2050, it will be one of the top countries in the world economic system, which will break the monopoly of the world economic system by the old and new imperialist and developed capitalist countries.

The fifth point: the future socialist economy will develop better in the process of countering Western hegemony. Lenin’s conclusion that “imperialism is war” is not outdated. Global and regional hegemonism also easily leads to war. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a conflict triggered by the five illegal eastward expansions of NATO as an aggressive military group headed by the United States, and is the result of Russia’s being forced to counter the U.S.-Western hegemony, which will negatively affect the entire world economy and people’s livelihood, except for the U.S. military-industrial complex, which has greatly profited. Since the U.S. and Western monopoly capitalist economy cannot compete with China’s socialist economy, in recent years the U.S. and the West have intensified their ganging up around China, cobbled together the Indo-Pacific version of NATO, established the Indo-Pacific economic framework organization against China, and tried to provoke China’s civil war for the unification of Taiwan through political and military provocations in order to impose comprehensive sanctions against China and hinder China’s socialist modernization process. However, bad things can also become good things. China has implemented a new development pattern based on domestic circulation and dual (domestic and international) circulation, enhancing the degree of self-reliance, autonomy, self-sufficiency and self-improvement of the national economy, and continuously establishing and improving new scientific and technological chains, industrial chains, supply chains and economic and trade chains, which leads to better development of China’s socialist national economy and people’s livelihood.

I believe that the socialist market economies of Vietnam and Laos, and the socialist planned economies of Cuba and North Korea, which are illegally blockaded by the U.S. and the West, will all achieve greater economic and social development in the 21st century.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/09/cheng-e ... countries/

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Western Foreign Policy Created Ukraine Crisis, is Creating Crisis with China
Column: PoliticsRegion: Southeast Asia

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Two recent events, both overshadowed by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, help illustrate how the same problematic aspects of Western foreign policy driving the Ukrainian conflict are hard at work in provoking conflict with yet another global power, China.

Western complaints about an alleged naval base China is accused of building in Cambodia and an altercation between Chinese and Canadian patrol aircraft in the North Pacific reflect growing tensions between an inflexible and declining Western unipolar order and a rising China that increasingly refuses to subordinate or explain itself to the West upon the global stage.

While peaceful coexistence would not only be possible but preferable in regards to global peace, stability, and prosperity, the US-led “rules-based international order” has openly declared its intentions of inhibiting China’s rise and has demonstrated just how far in terms of disrupting global peace, stability, and prosperity the US and its allies are willing to go to achieve this.

China’s “Secret Navy Base”

The Washington Post in an article titled, “China secretly building PLA naval facility in Cambodia, Western officials say,” would claim:

China is secretly building a naval facility in Cambodia for the exclusive use of its military, with both countries denying that is the case and taking extraordinary measures to conceal the operation, Western officials said.

The Washington Post already reported that:

The establishment of a Chinese naval base in Cambodia — only its second such overseas outpost and its first in the strategically significant Indo-Pacific region — is part of Beijing’s strategy to build a network of military facilities around the world in support of its aspirations to become a true global power, the officials said.

The unnamed Western officials failed to point out just how far China actually has to go to become a “true global power” in terms of building military installations abroad. A 2021 Al Jazeera article titled, “Infographic: US military presence around the world,” noted that, “The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.”

The notion that China’s activities in Cambodia are “secret” is also questionable. Both China and Cambodia are surely aware of the full extent to which China is or isn’t involved at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base. Neither nation is required to provide an explanation to the United States whose own shores are located thousands of miles away.

While the Washington Post accuses China of using “a combination of coercion, punishment and inducements in the diplomatic, economic and military realms,” to “bend” nations to Beijing’s interests, it is actually the United States who threatens not only Cambodia, but nations throughout Southeast Asia, all of whom seek to cultivate constructive ties with China.

Late last year, according to AP in their article, “US orders arms embargo on Cambodia, cites Chinese influence,” Cambodia was openly penalized simply for its growing ties with China. The article would claim:

Beijing’s support allows Cambodia to disregard Western concerns about its poor record in human and political rights, and in turn Cambodia generally supports Beijing’s geopolitical positions on issues such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The construction of new Chinese military facilities at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base is a point of strong contention with Washington.

Clearly, US claims about Chinese foreign policy is pure projection. The US would be pressed to cite specific “punishments” China has dispensed to nations simply for cultivating ties with the US. The US, on the other hand, not only imposed various economic penalties on Cambodia’s government, Washington has also sponsored opposition forces who openly aim to overthrow the current Cambodian government.

In a 2017 Phnom Penh Post article titled, “Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear,” a senior Cambodian opposition leader – Kem Sokha – would be quoted as saying:

“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can change the dictator [Slobodan] Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

He would also claim:

“I do not do anything at my own will. There experts, professors at universities in Washington, DC, Montreal, Canada, hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the dictator leader in Cambodia.”

If Cambodia, whose constitution prohibits the presence of foreign military facilities on its territory, is willing to risk public backlash for allowing China to construct a “secret base” there, it might be as a means of preventing the country from becoming the next Ukraine.

Canada’s “Global Jurisdiction” vs Chinese Sovereignty

Also in the headlines recently is a row growing between China and Canada over the latter’s air patrols “monitoring” North Korea.

A Reuters article, “China warns Canada over air patrols monitoring North Korea sanctions busting,” would claim:

China’s foreign ministry warned Canada on Monday of potential “severe consequences” of any “risky provocation,” after Canada’s military last week accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft monitoring North Korea sanctions busting.

“The UN Security Council has never authorized any country to carry out military surveillance in the seas and airspace of other countries in the name of enforcing sanctions,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a media briefing.


And indeed, the UN has not authorized Canada or any other nation to fly air patrols to enforce sanctions on North Korea. The Canadian patrol aircraft are so far from Canada’s own territory, they are actually based in Japan throughout the duration of these “monitoring” missions.

The United States’ self-appointed role as arbiter of who can and cannot construct military bases around the globe and Canadian patrol aircraft assuming global jurisdiction including off China’s own shores and around its neighbor’s shores, are illustrations of American exceptionalism (and by extension, the exceptionalism of their closest allies).

This exceptionalism led to the crisis in Ukraine which followed the US overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014. The US began a process of militarizing the nation which shares a substantial border with the Russian Federation. Whereas the US was allowed to send its military to Ukraine to train forces for an eventual war with Russia, the US and its allies decried Russian military deployments within Russia’s own territory to put in check the growing threat Ukraine was being transformed into.

Whereas the US was able to interfere deeply in Ukraine’s internal political affairs, Russia was accused of backing separatists in the Donbas region and thus of fuelling the 8 year war that precipitated ongoing military operations in Ukraine today.

Likewise, the US is able to maintain hundreds of military bases around the globe, including those constructed as part of illegal wars of aggression and subsequent occupations. China, however, is apparently “wrong” for the potential use of part of an existing Cambodian naval facility, with Cambodia’s consent.

US allies like Canada are able to fly “patrol aircraft” thousands of miles from their own shores to “monitor” territory near Chinese shores and those of their neighbors, but China is unable to scramble its own aircraft to intercept and monitor these “patrols.”

In the past, this exceptionalism went unchecked. Because of China’s rise, there is a growing sense of balance being reintroduced into what has been until now a unipolar world order. While the US government and the Western media will complain about China’s growing ties both economically and militarily throughout the Indo-Pacific region, there is little the US can do to stop it. Its increasingly coercive and aggressive policies to punish nations seeking to do business with China may disrupt whatever balancing act many nations have been performing between East and West, driving them deeper into partnership with China and thus only succeed in isolating the US itself.

Only time will tell if the US continues down this increasingly destructive path, Ukraine being only the most recent victim of American exceptionalism, or if the US begins finding a constructive role within the emerging multipolar world.

https://journal-neo.org/2022/06/08/west ... ith-china/

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Why the Belt and Road Initiative Won’t be Derailed by the Ukraine Crisis
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 08 Jun 2022

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Chinese Ambassador to Syria Feng Biao shakes hands with Khaled Hboubati, the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), after signing an agreement for China to send food aid to Syria on Jan 16, 2022. (Credit: Xinhua)

Ukraine has been at the center of a massive geopolitical and economic whirlwind. But the turmoil caused by the U.S.-instigated conflict shouldn't cause problems for the Belt and Road Initiative.

This article was originally published on the author's blog "The Chronicles of Haiphong ."

These edited remarks were given at an event titled “The Challenges and Opportunities for BRI Under the Background of the Ukraine crisis.” The full event can be viewed here , and my pre-recording has been posted to the Left Lens YouTube Channel and be found at the end of the article.


Thank you to all the organizers of this event, including the Belt and Road Initiative Quarterly Journal, the Russian Cultural House in Ankara, the Friends of Socialist China platform which I co-edit, the Turkish Student’s Union, and Kent University. My discussion centers on the politics of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and how they ensure that the development plan won’t be derailed by the monumental crisis underway in Ukraine.

The Ukraine crisis has revealed quite starkly that there is a huge divergence between the path that’s being taken by the United States, NATO, the EU, and that of China. The former, perhaps more aptly called the Western imperialist sphere, has poured gasoline onto the fire that is the Ukraine crisis. The consequences have been enormous. Sanctions on Russia have sent shockwaves throughout the global economy. Economic growth has declined and inflation skyrocketed. The IMF’s economic forecast is dimmer now than it was prior to the Ukraine crisis and much of this is due to Western imperialist policy.

On the other hand, for China and the BRI, the situation is quite different. A commitment to peace and neutrality, cooperation, and robust and quality growth characterizes the partnerships within the BRI. It is clear that the massive trade and infrastructure project is not a prisoner of the moment. The BRI is not just about a single region or a particular country but rather an overall vision for global development that seeks to harness the present to brighten the future. The BRI does what Western-led economies such as the United States and its allies cannot and will not do, which is to offer opportunities for economic progress and true investment in all areas social and economic development.

The BRI, as Xi Jinping remarked, began in China but its achievements belong to the world. There are 140 countries and 30 international organizations that have already signed on to the BRI since 2013. Thus far, 8 trillion USD in trade and investment has been directed toward the BRI to cover the cost of more than 2,500 projects worldwide. The size and scope of the BRI demonstrates that it is not dependent upon the whims and the interests of the U.S. and the West. The BRI operates almost entirely independent of from Western imperialism, with the exception of the European countries which have accepted China’s invitation to join the project.

It is also worth noting that China is no stranger to operating in conflict zones. The world has been engaged in a war against the COVID-19 pandemic over the past several years and yet China has not only been able to extend solidarity and cooperation over this period but also advance the aims of the BRI. China has adjusted its own economic and political development in a way that takes into account the challenges of the global pandemic. That’s why China has achieved so much success in containing the pandemic and led the way in providing critical solidarity in the form of vaccines and protective equipment to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The pandemic has been a flashpoint for a people’s war to protect human life and this war is inextricably linked to the BRI’s overall vision.

China has also prioritized Belt and Road Initiative relationships with countries such as Pakistan that have been embattled with external and internal conflict. Pakistan has been subject to numerous conflicts over the past decade alone, whether in the form of the U.S.’s drone strikes killing thousands of civilians or the ongoing struggle in Kashmir. While these sensitive issues have inevitably caused economic difficulty, Pakistan and China’s cooperation in the BRI through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has only grown. The BRI has already brought about significant achievements in Pakistan such as the launch of the first transit system in Lahore in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

No matter what is happening internally in Pakistan, the BRI’s vision of development which emphasizes win-win cooperation rather than political interference or influencing the politics internally of any one country has been a major reason as to why these two nations have been able to build such a strong friendship despite internal and external threats to Pakistan’s stability. This includes a recent change in political administration just in the last few months.

The Biden administration recently completed his first trip to Asia, visiting South Korea and Japan in an attempt to organize the Southeast Asia into a conflict with China. The region has quickly become the most important flashpoint in the U.S.’s New Cold War and has been flooded with hundreds of U.S. military bases and hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel. Still, China has been able to build even stronger relations with the region that have led to remarkable achievements in the last few years alone. In 2021, the Sino-Laos high-speed railway was launched and is projected to increase economic growth for Laos by several percentage points. Laos is a country that was bombed by the U.S. more times than the entire number dropped in World War II during the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s.

In January 2022, Syria joined the BRI as a major step in its own rebuilding process from the U.S.-led war on the country. The U.S. currently occupies 30 percent of Syria’s territory. Despite being engaged in a deadly conflict that has displaced millions and killed more than 300,000 people, the Syrian government is committed to rebuild the country through the BRI.

Of course, the Ukraine crisis has indeed inflicted damage on the global economy. Mainstream media reports have emphasized disruptions in rail traffic that have slowed global trade to Europe. While these short-term challenges will delay certain aspects of the BRI, particularly the Eurasia rail link, the vision of the BRI is more than a century long and remains an incredibly attractive project for development. The Ukraine crisis does not take away from the BRI’s global advantages. In fact, the Ukraine crisis is likely to make the BRI even more attractive to countries around the world, including Ukraine.

For one, the United States and its allies offer few alternatives in the form of financial and economic arrangements to help rebuild from conflict and war. Furthermore, the United States and the West is pursuing a policy that will make the Ukraine’s economy “scream,” to paraphrase Henry Kissinger’s description of Chile in 1970s during the U.S.-backed coup there. The U.S. has provided predatory loans to Ukraine since the war began. In addition, the U.S.-sponsored lend-lease program has provided Ukraine billions in military aid, $40 billion of which was just passed in the U.S. Congress. Ukraine will be expected to pay back what it has received in conditional aid, making these arrangements detrimental to Ukraine’s long-term economic stability and growth.

The neoliberal policies of the U.S. and the West are laying the foundations for the BRI to become an even more important feature of Ukraine’s economic future. Ukraine is one of the earliest member of the BRI. China’s capacity to maintain a stable relationship with Ukraine and strengthen the Russia-China partnership at the same time has demonstrated what it means to place narrow and selfish interests to the background and the interests of humanity in the foreground. Whatever short term difficulties arise from the Ukraine crisis will not derail Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia’s desire to adhere to the BRI’s principles of creating a win-win model of infrastructure and economic development that addresses the need for real South-South cooperation, decreases extreme poverty, and reduces dependency on external lenders.

The BRI is already doing just that. The World Bank has acknowledged that the BRI offers a path forward out of extreme poverty. Monumental achievements have already come out of the BRI in countries such as Pakistan and Laos. Though the Ukraine crisis is a warning shot about the dangers of war and the neoliberal path led by Western imperialism, China’s approach to global development as manifested in the BRI will not just remain consistent but is also likely to strengthen its influence within the international order in the coming period.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-b ... ine-crisis

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Military equipment given by Japan to Ukraine being loaded in an aircraft at Yokota US Air Force Base, Japan (File photo)

Creating cold war conditions in Asia isn’t easy
By M. K. Bhadrakumar (Posted Jun 10, 2022)

Originally published: Indian Punchline on June 9, 2022 (more by Indian Punchline) |

Only three weeks remain for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Madrid, which is expected to unveil a new Strategic Concept aimed at redefining “the security challenges facing the Alliance and outline the political and military tasks that NATO will carry out to address them.”

The NATO and the European Union are in unison that the world has fundamentally changed in the past decade and strategic competition is rising, and security threats in Europe and Asia are now so deeply connected that the two continents become a “single operating system”.

The past week saw some “finishing touches” to the new cold war agenda–the U.S. President Joe Biden hosting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand; three tiny NATO countries in the Balkans blocking their air space to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to visit Serbia; and, Japan hosting the NATO Military Committee chief Rob Bauer.

The first one was about Washington stepping in to draw New Zealand, the reluctant Pacific partner standing in the shade, towards the Indo-Pacific centre stage. (Biden actually invoked memories of the landing of U.S. troops in World War II in New Zealand.) The second was an unprecedented act of diplomatic taboo, like dogs marking territory–“Serbia belongs to the West.” And Japan and NATO have messaged a new level of cooperation.

To be sure, in the U.S.’ struggle with China and Russia, Japan is emerging as the anchor sheet of its strategy in Asia. An agreement was reached in Tokyo on Tuesday during Bauer’s visit that Japan and NATO will step up military cooperation and joint exercises. (In May, Japanese Military Chief of Staff Koji Yamazaki had joined a meeting of NATO counterparts in Belgium for the first time.)

The Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said after meeting with Bauer that Japan welcomed NATO’s expanded involvement in the Indo-Pacific region. He said, “The security of Europe and Asia are closely intertwined, especially now with the international community facing serious challenges.” Bauer also spoke of “shared security challenges” for the NATO and Japan. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been invited to the NATO summit in Madrid, which would make him the first Japanese leader to do so.

Japan’s case is that Russia’s special operation in Ukraine distracts the U.S., which may embolden China to unify Taiwan with military force. In reality, though, the Biden Administration does not seem to share Japan’s paranoia. The defence ministers of the U.S. and China are slated to meet in Singapore on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La conference. The U.S. defence secretary Lloyd Austin has expressed cautious optimism that his forthcoming meeting will contribute to regional stability. Reportedly, the U.S. State Department changed its Fact Sheet over Taiwan this week, reinserting a line “We do not support Taiwan independence,” which had been removed a month earlier.

Japan’s eagerness to play an important symbolic and practical role in the West’s struggle with Russia stems from a complex set of motives. The alacrity with which Japan became one of the most active countries in implementing strong sanctions against Russia in support of Ukraine is striking. Almost overnight, Prime Minister Kishida swung to an openly negative stance towards Russia.

Within a fortnight of the Russian operation in Ukraine on February 24, Kishida stated that the “Northern Territories (Kuril Islands) are inherent territories of Japan” and on 8th March, Foreign Minister Hayashi followed up that the territories are “unlawfully occupied by Russia.” On 9th March, Kishida already referred Russia to the International Criminal Court. And on 16th March, Japan revoked Russia’s status as a “most-favoured trading nation”, froze Russian assets and excluded selected Russian banks from the SWIFT bank messaging system. Since the end of World War II, Japan had not sent military matériel to another country in the midst of fighting a war, but in in early March, the country’s Self-Defense Forces loaded up a Boeing KC-767 tanker aircraft with materials bound for the battlefields of Ukraine.

In sum, Japan eagerly demonstrated its willingness to become a proactive partner in the U.S.–Japanese alliance. Japan discarded the equity painstakingly garnered through the past four decades of negotiations to settle the territorial issue and negotiate a post-World War II peace treaty with Russia. In effect, Japan–Russia relationship has been turned into a potential flashpoint in Northeast Asia.

The U.S.-Japan mutual apprehension over the economic and military rise of China and North Korea’s increasingly capable missile and nuclear capabilities could be a motivating factor for both Washington and Tokyo, who no longer regard a split between Russia and China, as happened in the 1970s, to be a plausible near-term prospect. But, f undamentally, there is a shift in Japanese foreign policy.

Japan’s alliance with the U.S. and the emergent coupling with the NATO go far beyond a focus merely on the country’s survival, but offers vistas for Japan to transform as a leader in the Indo-Pacific region. No doubt, the understanding with the U.S. on the latter’s support in the long-standing dispute over Kuril has emboldened Japan.

Suffice to say, the Ukraine crisis has revealed that Asian states have much more diverse interests than many had been prepared to recognise. Now, this would act as a breaking mechanism on the path of the new cold war proponents in Asia. While the U.S., Australia and Japan have been at the forefront of countries opposing Russia, others have more mixed views.

A large bloc of non-aligned countries in Asia, including India and Indonesia, insist that Ukraine is quintessentially a regional conflict, notwithstanding its fallouts exacerbating global energy and food supplies. Basically, the vision of the Asian countries is of regional integration and modernisation and only a handful agreed to impose sanctions against Russia, while several–indeed, the big majority–have either openly opposed the sanctions regime or have refrained from sanctioning Russia.

The point is, Russia is a resident power in Asia and is a member of all the key bodies that constitute the region’s multilateral architecture–APEC, ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting, East Asia Summit, etc., apart from being a Dialogue Partner of the ASEAN since 1996. Russia has had an uneven engagement with Asia’s institutions, but most of the region’s participants prioritise their relations with Moscow. Unless Russia were to reduce its presence voluntarily, which is inconceivable, Asia’s multilateral architecture remains a hurdle for the U.S.’ efforts to assemble a “coalition of democracies” to isolate Russia.

The Achilles heel of the U.S.’ cold war strategy is that it lacks an inspiring economic agenda. The Biden administration dare not contemplate a return to free trade, given the entrenched protectionist sentiments in the domestic politics. Even the tariff waivers issued by the Biden Administration on Monday on some solar panels for a 2-year period from four ASEAN countries–Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam–needed to be carefully couched as part of efforts to address “the urgent crisis of a changing climate… to ensure the U.S. has access to a sufficient supply of solar modules to meet electricity generation needs while domestic manufacturing scales up.” Herein lies the contradiction: U.S.’ cold war strategy is primarily in military terms, whereas, what impresses Asian countries is economic clout.

Meanwhile, while many in the West tend to see China as firmly in Russia’s corner, the reality is more nuanced. China has sought to position itself as neither critic nor supporter of Russia, which, arguably, in the given circumstances, favours Russia, and has shown no signs of shifting its position in the face of Western criticism. Without doubt, China finds itself in an advantageous geopolitical situation.

That said, will China’s current stance hold the duration of the war in Ukraine which some predict could spill over to next year? The Russian military operation has not proceeded as successfully as Moscow would have wanted or expected. Yet, the military operation will not end without achieving the Russian objectives. And those objectives contain variables. On balance, Beijing would weigh in what the U.S.’ international standing is going to be at the end of it all, which would, of course, have great bearing on China’s future position in the world.

https://mronline.org/2022/06/10/creatin ... isnt-easy/
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 13, 2022 1:27 pm

China Rejects European Parliament’s Resolution on Xinjiang

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Chinese representatives disagree with the resolution released by the European Parliament on human rights in Xinjiang. Jun.10, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@BangkokPostNews

Published 10 June 2022

On Thursday, China's representatives rejected the document issued by the European Parliament on Xinjiang.

On Thursday, the Chinese mission spokesperson to the EU rejected the resolution released by the European Parliament, which criticized the human rights situation in Xinjiang. The parliament's document is "in total disregard of facts with fabrication and confounding black and white."

According to the spokesperson, the resolution assaults the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the Chinese government administration of the region. The Chinese official considers that the document interferes in China's internal affairs offensively; it also said that the text seriously violates international law and basic norms governing international relations.

The spokesperson said that China "strongly deplores and firmly opposes it." The official highlighted the fact that the Chinese government has taken a people-centered approach intended to protect human rights since the founding of the People's Republic of China. He said that the government has enriched its administration strategy and has developed some undertakings in Xinjiang.

The Chinese representative continued to say that human rights matter in Xinjiang has been placed on the top, offering guarantees on various rights of people of all ethnic groups, such as civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious freedom. This can be appreciated as there is one mosque for every 530 Muslims in Xinjiang.


The official said the Chinese region is in its best historical period regarding social harmony, stability, and happy, peaceful life for its people. "These are all undeniable facts," the spokesperson said.

The real matter concerning Xinjiang is fighting terrorism, extremism and separatism, not human rights or religion. Over time, violent acts were developed by the separatists, religious extremists, and terrorist groups, resulting in the death of several innocents.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0020.html

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Defense minister has stern words for US on Taiwan
By ZHAO LEI | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-06-11 08:08

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State Councilor and Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe (center right) meets United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin (center left) on the sidelines of the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on Friday. [Photo by LI XIAOWEI/FOR CHINA DAILY]

The Chinese military will resolutely smash any act to split Taiwan from China even at the cost of war, China's defense minister told his US counterpart on Friday.

State Councilor and Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe reiterated China's firm stance on Taiwan while meeting with United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, according to Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Ministry of National Defense.

Wei stressed that the People's Liberation Army will relentlessly safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, the Chinese military will definitely smash such attempts at any cost, even by going to war.

He said the US' recent announcement on arms sales to Taiwan had severely violated the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, seriously damaged China's sovereignty and security, and gravely jeopardized China-US relations as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits. Therefore, China expresses strong indignation and opposition.

On Wednesday, the US announced its latest arms sale to Taiwan-$120 million worth of spare ship parts and other equipment, the fourth arms package to Taiwan approved under US President Joe Biden.

Wei stressed to Austin that there is only one China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The one-China principle is the political foundation of the China-US relationship and attempts to play the "Taiwan card" to contain China will be in vain, he said.

The meeting between Wei and Austin was the first time the two top defense officials talked in person. Wei has been in Singapore since Wednesday to attend the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue and visit the Southeast Asian nation.

During the meeting, Wei also told Austin that the US must adopt a rational perspective toward China's development. Moreover, in order to achieve a good China-US relationship, the US should not demonize or contain China, nor should it interfere in China's domestic affairs or jeopardize China's interests.

China is willing to establish a "sound, stable great-power relationship" with the US and that should be a shared goal for both sides, Wei said.

The minister noted that stable military-to-military relations are crucial to bilateral relations and the two militaries should avoid confrontation and conflict.

During the meeting, both sides agreed that the two militaries should honor and realize the important consensuses reached by President Xi Jinping and President Biden, maintain high-level strategic communication, enhance strategic mutual trust, contain divergences and avoid turning them into confrontations or conflicts, according to a news release from the Ministry of National Defense.

Wei and Austin also exchanged views on the South China Sea, Ukraine and other regional and global issues, the news release said.

Speaking about Ukraine, Wei pointed out that China will continue working to play a constructive role in pursuing peace, but warned that the country will firmly counter any attempt to use the issue to damage China's rights and interests.

Wu Qian, the spokesman, said on Friday evening that the meeting was a "candid, constructive" strategic exchange. He said that although the meeting was short, it had "achieved good results".

Next, the two militaries will discuss communication and cooperation issues via military diplomatic channels, he said.

Senior Colonel Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher of international military relations at the PLA Academy of Military Science, said Wei's remarks indicate that China has drawn a crystal-clear red line for the US for it to deal with issues related to China's core interests.

"We demand that the US must not shout loudly that it wants 'peace and stability' on the one hand, while playing dirty tricks on the other," he said.

He added that it is of great importance for the two sides to maintain direct and regular communication.

"The two countries' interests and perspectives are very different in many fields. Without communication and exchange, both sides will be prone to regarding each other as an enemy and such antagonisms could easily slip into hostilities,"Zhao said.

"There will be no management of conflict and crisis if both sides think of each other based on the worst possible scenario."

"We must stick to talks for the long term, especially at a time when ties between the two militaries are having problems, because as long as we have mutual understanding and consensus, we will be able to control divergences and prevent our relations from falling apart," he said.

"Both sides must have been aware that knowing each other's bottom line is key to averting misjudgments," he said.

Colonel Cao Jing, a researcher of international studies at the academy, said it is in the common interests of the international community that the Chinese and US militaries maintain a stable relationship.

"Both sides should work together toward safeguarding peace and stability, rather than make trouble. Both sides could use the meeting as an opportunity to improve communication and open practical collaboration," she noted.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 620b8.html

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Solomon Islands: build up to the US war against China
We are pleased to republish this insightful article from The Socialist Correspondent about the recent imperialist hysteria surrounding the Solomon Islands’ security agreement with China. The author contextualises this manufactured crisis within the escalating US-led New Cold War and the longstanding project to encircle and contain the People’s Republic of China and to roll back the Chinese Revolution. The article goes on to note that the West’s attempts to keep the island nations of the Pacific within its ‘sphere of influence’, plus the Biden administration’s undermining of the One China principle, pose a significant danger to world peace.
The Solomon Islands nation in the Pacific – 2000 kilometres north-east of Australia – has dared to assert its own independent foreign policy after decades spent under foreign tutelage. Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare hailed an agreement between his country and China – including a security pact – as a “milestone”. He said: “We need to diversify the country’s relationship with other partners. What is wrong with that?” China was not pressuring his country into signing the pact, he insisted, adding that “the Solomon Islands themselves requested the treaty.”

The USA and Australia are nevertheless threatening military intervention to prevent the deal from being enacted.

The issue is a potential Chinese military presence in the Solomons – under an agreement that would allow Chinese ships to visit and “carry out logistical replenishment” and allow Chinese police to assist in “maintaining social order” in the country.

“We have respect for Solomon Islands’ sovereignty, but…”

Even though Sogavare assured the West that there would be no Chinese military base on the Solomon Islands, Daniel Kritenbrink, the chief US diplomat for East Asia and the Pacific, made this veiled threat: “Of course, we have respect for the Solomon Islands sovereignty, but we also wanted to let them know that if steps were taken to establish a de facto permanent military presence, power projection capabilities, or a military installation, then we would have significant concerns, and we would very naturally respond to those concerns” (Guardian, 26 April).

Australia has warned that any Chinese base on the Solomons would represent a “red line”. The new Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese and his foreign minister Penny Wong accused the previous government of committing “the worst Australian policy failure since the second world war” (Guardian, May 23) in allowing the Solomon Islands’ deal with China. Media oligarch David Llewellyn-Smith (Macrobusiness, March 25, 2022) made explicit threats: “There is no way that Australia can allow this deal to proceed. If it must, the nation should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara… If we don’t respond to this – it has to be us and Washington – then mate, it’s game over… China will have freedom of the seas with its navy throughout the South Pacific.” As the Australian newspaper put it, the deal “could hardly be more geopolitically significant for the challenge it presents to longstanding US hegemony in the region.”

The Solomons’ strategic significance

It is the Solomons’ position in the south-eastern Pacific that makes the country so strategically significant for America’s future war against China. The impoverished country of 700,000 inhabitants has several deep-water harbours and sea-lanes which Australia and the US currently control and are determined to retain. The Solomon Islands was historically colonized by the British, then the Japanese, and became a key battleground during WW2, when the US war ousted Japan from the country during the six-month Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942-43. That battle was vital to the US victory against Japan, which established US domination over the Pacific up to the present.

After the Solomons gained independence from Britain in 1978, western supervision passed predominantly to Australia, with New Zealand a junior partner. Following a low intensity civil war from 1998-2003 over demands for secession by the poorest and most populous island Malaita, Australia occupied the country with a 2,000 strong force of troops and police as ‘peacekeepers’, imposing IMF austerity on the public sector and putting down strikes. Australia’s presence from 2003-2017 only stoked the rivalries between Malaita and the main Solomon island Guadalcanal, where the capital Honiara is.

Game changer

The gamechanger occurred in 2019 when the Solomons switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China after 36 years. In response, US Republican Senator Marco Rubio threatened, during a visit, that the US would cut off the Solomons’ access to global financial markets.

The following year the US gave $25 million in so-called ‘aid’ to Malaita – a far larger amount than aid to the Solomon Islands as a whole. These US bribes to Malaita, and threats to the national government, were part of an orchestrated strategy to use Malaitian secession demands as a divide-and-rule stick to force the national government back into the western fold. Encouraged by the US, the rightwing separatist group Malaita 4 Democracy demanded the immediate expulsion of all Chinese nationals from the island.

Then in 2021 around 1,000 separatists, egged on by the Malaitian prime minister Daniel Suidani, travelled to the main island Guadalcanal, targeting Chinese retail businesses and attacking Chinese locals. The rioters flew an Israeli flag and burnt government building in what was effectively a colour revolution orchestrated by the US and Australia. But they failed to unseat the government; a later no-confidence vote in parliament was also defeated. China has since deployed around a dozen police to train local forces.

Western domination has meant poverty

Underlying the ongoing unrest in the Solomons is poverty and mass unemployment. The Solomons has the lowest Human Development Index and second lowest electrification rate of any small Pacific state, according to the World Bank. It’s no wonder that the Solomons government is attempting to free the country from western domination. Liu Ze, general secretary of Solomon Islands Chinese Business Council explained: “The economic structure of the Solomon Islands has not made any progress in the past 15 years, which made the ruling party realize that cooperating with the West did not result in development.” Now they have found an alternative major power in China that can provide a level playing field (Global Times, May 25, 2022). China is now the Solomons largest export destination, receiving 65% of the Solomon Islands’ exports, mainly timber, and Chinese investment and tourism have increased massively under the Belt and Road Initiative.

But China’s growing economic presence is being obstructed at every turn. A major contract with Huawei to lay a fibre-optic cable from the Solomons to Australia was cancelled in 2018 after Australia pushed for a no-confidence vote in the Solomons government, accusing Sogavare of corruption over the deal.

China’s development aid

Yet China’s links with the Pacific islands are advancing nonetheless, aiding development in a poor region of the world. This week, China is hoping to sign a major deal with almost a dozen Pacific island countries covering security, trade and data communication co-operation. Kiribati, a small Pacific island nation that switched diplomatic recognition to the People’s Republic of China along with the Solomons, is to sign a deal giving China special fishing rights in one of the world’s biggest marine protected areas. Vanuatu has recently signed a contract with China for the construction of a new airport runway to give access to larger aircraft.

The advantage for these countries is that China, unlike western powers, does not seek to exploit their vulnerabilities. Chen Hong, president of the Chinese Association of Australian Studies, explained: “China believes that countries, no matter big or small, should be treated equally – they are not there for anyone to win over and to control.”

Maintaining imperialism

Meanwhile, the western powers are doing all they can to stem the loss of their hegemony. On the diplomatic front they are pressing the five remaining Pacific Island states that still recognise Taiwan not to follow the Solomons’ powerful example (as the most populous and influential of the Pacific island nations) in recognising the People’s Republic of China.

The West’s moves to stifle the Solomon Islands’ independent foreign policy are one aspect of the larger struggle to maintain imperialist control over the Pacific, which includes drawing Australia more closely into the US embrace. The development of Australia as the “southern anchor” for US military power – boosted under Obama’s Pivot to Asia that saw a major US base established in Darwin, northern Australia – puts it in the frontline of a war with China.

AUKUS

The nuclearization of Australia came a dangerous step closer with the recent AUKUS deal between it, the USA and the UK. AUKUS has torn up the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty by providing nuclear weapons to Australia in the form of eight or more US built nuclear submarines and accompanying technological know-how. The $100 billion worth of submarines will have a far longer range than the French submarines Australia had agreed to purchase, and will be used to enforce a US naval blockade of the Pacific shipping lanes on which China relies for raw materials and goods. In effect, AUKUS represents an extension of NATO into the Pacific Ocean.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sogavare complained that his country and others in the region “should have been consulted to ensure that the AUKUS treaty is transparent since it will affect the Pacific family by allowing nuclear submarines in Pacific waters.” But of course they were by-passed, just as the French were deceived by their imperialist rivals.

Despite the close US-Australia alliance, it is clear that the US is unhappy with Australia’s performance as its Solomons gendarme. The closure of its embassy in the Solomons in 1993 and the outsourcing of its security to Australia has been criticised by former senior US diplomat James Carouso, who said it had been a “mistake”. Now the US is planning to re-open its embassy in the capital Honiara to regain direct control. So much for respecting national sovereignty – an idea frequently invoked to promote NATO’s proxy war against Russia.

The ‘backyard’ is “where we relieve ourselves”

Not that Australia is any better, with its frequent references to the Solomons as “our backyard” (Daily Mail, 4 May, 2022). This insulting term was condemned by Sogavare who said a backyard was a place “where rubbish is collected and burned”, and “where we relieve ourselves” (May 4, 2022). Compare this to China’s view that the Pacific Islands are “neither the backyard of any country nor an arena for great power games” (CGTN, 19 April, 2022). Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, a Solomon Islander academic at the University of Hawaii, observed that the western position was to lay down the law and say “you can’t have this kind of relationship with China. The irony is that we can and we do.”

The insistence by the western powers on retaining control over the Solomons is not some faraway problem for us in Britain; rather, it represents a clear and present danger to world peace. Biden’s recent off-the-cuff reversal (May 22) of the US’s long-held One China policy over Taiwan shows that the US is deadly serious in its intention to prevent China’s rise – and western threats to invade the Solomon Islands make that country one of the flashpoints where the US war on China could begin.

https://socialistchina.org/2022/06/07/s ... nst-china/
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 15, 2022 3:20 pm

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NATO’s expansion (as US proxy) to the east and the current Western sanctions against Russia have revealed the power structure of the contemporary world. (Graphic: Rob Dobi JHU)

Building the “New Three Rings”: China’s choice in the face of possible complete decoupling
Originally published: China Environment News on June 2, 2022 by Cheng Yawen (more by China Environment News) (Posted Jun 14, 2022)
Since the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war, Western countries have sought to decouple from China in terms of economic, technological, and people-to-people exchanges. According to Cheng Yawen, the recent Russian-Ukrainian conflict marks the end of the U.S.-led globalization wave. Facing the possibility of full decoupling by the West in the future, China urgently needs to make a new choice in its diplomatic and strategic priorities to downgrade the importance of Europe and the U.S. and to promote a new international system based on South-South cooperation.

– Chinese Voices
The following article by Professor Cheng Yawen from the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University, was published in Culture Vertical No. 3, 2022 (June), under the title: “The peace dividend is over, and China has to prepare for a full decoupling”: Reflections of a Shanghai professor. The article represents the views of the author.

Introduction

Since the change of China and the United States in 2018, the world situation has been in turmoil, and various “decoupling theories” have become popular at home and abroad. Especially since the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the international situation has become clearly camped, and the United States is targeting China from all aspects of domestic and foreign affairs. Although many people believe that globalization is irreversible and do not believe that there will be a day of full decoupling, how should we respond if full decoupling does occur in the future?

This article argues that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a landmark event in the end of U.S.-led globalization, meaning that China no longer has the peaceful external development environment it has enjoyed for the past 40 years. In the future China will have to promote a new global system, a “three-ring” international system that will guarantee China’s national security and development: the first ring is China’s neighboring East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, with which China has formed a close industrial division of labor and through which it obtains a stable energy supply and a reliable security barrier. The second ring is the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, with which China exchanges raw materials and industrial goods and assists their development; the third ring extends to the traditional industrialized countries, mainly in Europe and the United States. The “first ring” is the key to China’s construction of a “new three-ring” international system. In recent decades, a new global system has been formed among developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the solid foundation formed by developing countries in terms of economic volume, trade exchanges, and economic cooperation is not what it used to be, but in order to further enhance their economic and political autonomy, they must break away from their financial and monetary dependence on Western countries. Therefore, to build a “new three-ring” international system, developing countries should also develop higher-level and broader financial and monetary cooperation among themselves.

Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine, and the ensuing full-scale confrontation between the West and Russia, is a landmark event in the end of the globalization tide that has been underway since the 1980s. The U.S. is holding its allies hostage to impose deadly sanctions on Russia and forcing the rest of the world to choose sides between the West and Russia, which has led to a recurrence of the deadly struggle of a century ago and poses a huge challenge to China. The “end of globalization” has left China without the external development environment it has had for the past four decades, and the U.S. push to rebuild its dominant international system and “decouple” from China and Russia is likely to intensify in the future. Today’s world is characterized by a paradigm shift. Faced with the possibility of a passive and comprehensive decoupling, China needs to take the initiative to make adjustments in its foreign strategic arrangements and make new choices in its national engagement priorities in order to shape a new international system that is conducive to counteracting the negative effects of the West’s decoupling of China.

In the thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has gone from an initial active approach to the United States and the West, to a gradual alienation from them, to the current unrelentingly fierce confrontation, highlighting the political limits of globalization. Contrary to the romantic imagination of globalization, the latest round of globalization was initially an investment of U.S. hegemony, partly serving the purpose of dismantling the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, which determined that it could not be expanded indefinitely. In terms of the relationship between the leading and following countries of globalization, or between developed and developing countries, there are equal limits to international politics: when globalization backfires on its initiators and threatens their power advantage, globalization will inevitably be “reversed” and the path of operation will be redesigned. The process of globalization in recent decades and the pursuit of U.S. power dominance are the two sides of the same coin, and they are mutually conditional and mutually reinforcing. Russia’s “special military operation” against Ukraine is the result of this round of globalization, which has fully exposed its true nature of power and put an end to the U.S.-led globalization.

NATO’s expansion to the east is the main reason for Russia’s initiative. It appears to be a security issue, but in fact it is also an economic issue in the process of globalization. Peripheralization of the Soviet Union in the global system is the goal of the U.S.-initiated globalization process, and Russia’s intention to use globalization to achieve national renaissance and become a center-state clearly runs right counter to its occurrence and evolutionary logic. The interest of global capital, especially financial capital, in Russia is more focused on energy, food and minerals, which are the areas from which financial capital can make huge profits. But since Putin took power, Russia has strengthened its control over key industries that are crucial to national security and basic livelihoods, and is committed to building the Eurasian Economic Union and shaping an economic development space that is suitable for itself, something that external capital is not happy about. NATO’s expansion to the east is a manifestation of capital’s swaying politics to achieve market expansion, which continues to squeeze Russia’s development space and intensify Russia’s peripheralization. If no effective response is made, Russia will be further defined as a provider of primary products, lose its ability to participate in great power politics, and even have an internal crisis. This is what the Russian elite does not want to see.

NATO’s expansion to the east and the current Western sanctions against Russia have revealed the power structure of the contemporary world. “After the end of World War II, the European colonial system gradually collapsed, and the explicit rule of the international order since the second half of the 20th century was centered on the United Nations and international law, which embodied the principle of sovereign equality of states. However, the central-peripheral hierarchical international order under the European colonial system has not really disappeared, but has continued as a subtle rule and hidden order, except that the absolute hierarchical power relations characterized by direct drives in the past no longer exist, and have been replaced by a “common but differentiated” international order, i.e., all countries are sovereign and equal on the surface. In other words, all states are sovereign and equal, but in practice there are still differences in power. The “rule-based order” is the main expression of this order, in which all countries are required to follow the same rules, but the real meaning of these rules is not centered on the United Nations and international law, but on the Western countries.

The U.S. hegemony since the post-war period and the G-7 established after the 1970s are the main manifestations of the contemporary version of the global center-fringe order. The annual meeting of the G-7 discusses not only the affairs of seven countries, but also the affairs of the whole world, and they negotiate and then promote the transformation into global rules. The “rule-based order” is actually “an order based on the rules set by the West”, and it is the key who is the rule-maker. In a global division of labor system, rule-making, money supply and industrial goods production are the business of a few countries at the center, and if other countries want to join in, they risk dismantling the dominant position of a few countries, which is something countries that hold rule-making and monetary dominance and maintain technological superiority with intellectual property rights do not want to see. China’s unexpected economic growth in recent decades has disrupted the post-war center-periphery international order and threatened the unspoken rules centered on Western countries. The main reason for this is that China’s development has touched the cheese of the United States and other Western countries, which never envisioned that China could also “take center stage”, even if it is only “approaching” for now.

Whether it is the expansion of NATO to the east or the selection of China as a key target of the U.S. crackdown, it reflects that the U.S. and the West want to maintain and strengthen their own power advantage. The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the West’s unrelenting sanctions against Russia further highlight the fact that most of the world’s countries are in the “countryside” on the periphery, while a few are in the “city” in the center, and the United States is the “city center” in the global The “city center” of the “urban center”, the “city” does not want to see the “rural” like them The “cities” do not want to see the “countryside” become “cities” like them. The obstruction of the global “urban centers” by China and Russia lies both in their strong control over capital, which is the last two largest uncontrolled areas of capitalist globalization, and in the fact that they have become “urban centers” due to their much stronger state power compared to most countries. The two countries are also obstacles to the “urban centers” further controlling the “rural” fringes of the globe because they are much stronger than most countries. In this round of globalization, China, with its strong economic growth and overall increase in national power, has shown a tendency to move from the “rural” to the “urban” areas, and in contrast to its earlier overtures to globalization, the central countries have in recent years become “This has exposed the “common” limits of the post-war international order. The fact that China has become one of the “cities” is intolerable for the center-state.

In the first article of Selected Works of Mao Zedong, “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society,” the opening chapter poses the question: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This question is the primary question of the revolution.” Over the past 40 years, China has carried out reform and opening up, and in recent years it has initiated the building of a community of human destiny. In its international exchanges, it no longer deliberately emphasizes the distinction between enemies and friends, but hopes to promote “beauty and commonwealth” in the “beauty of each, beauty of the beauty”. But can we achieve “commonwealth”? However, whether the world can achieve “commonwealth” is not determined by China’s wish alone. With the U.S.-led Western countries showing a full-scale confrontation with Russia and China, the contemporary world can no longer be considered mechanically as “peace and development”, but needs to seriously consider “competition” or even “war”. “Even if war can be ruled out, it is no longer possible to achieve better development in a globalized system dominated by Western countries. China has to rethink the “primary question” in its foreign dealings: who are the possible partners of China now and in the future, and who are the partners that China cannot pull in?

Things come together in groups, and people are divided by groups. The same is true for countries. Countries with similar experiences, situations and aspirations are more likely to form long-lasting cooperative relationships. In contemporary international relations discourse, Western vs. non-Western countries, developed vs. developing countries, and Northern vs. Southern countries are common distinctions between types of countries, with developed countries and Northern countries being mostly Western countries and Southern countries and developing countries being non-Western countries. Unlike the distinctions of developed vs. developing countries and North vs. South countries, which are economic in nature, the distinctions of Western vs. non-Western countries also point to political and cultural dimensions, implying global power relations. Since the nineteenth century, the world has undergone a “global transformation”: the formerly discrete “centerless, pluralistic world” has shifted to a highly interconnected and hierarchical “center-marginal” global system. The “imperialism” of the late 19th century and the revolutionary era of the first half of the 20th century is a description and characterization of the relationship between this order and the highly interconnected and hierarchical “center-periphery” global international system, of which the West was the center. Imperialism and globalization from the mid-to-late 19th century to the early 20th century were two sides of the same coin: imperialism came with globalization, and globalization strengthened imperialism, both of which together set up an “iron barrel formation” for countries on the periphery, from which it was very difficult to escape. The Western countries used to be the center of the global system and the place of imperialism, from which the colonial order of the modern world and the American hegemony since the middle and second half of the 20th century came; at the same time, many revolutions since modern times, including the anti-colonial movement in the middle and second half of the 20th century, were aimed at breaking this unequal and unjust center-marginal power structure.

In the center-fringe global power structure, the center states cannot sincerely help the revolution of the peripheral states, nor will they welcome the peripheral states to join the center states on an equal footing. During the Chinese revolution in the first half of the 20th century and the consolidation of power in the second half of the 20th century, the main external forces that China relied on were from the periphery of the global system. The Communist International network, in which the Chinese Communist Party was involved, was an alliance between the non-regime forces of the colonized and oppressed peoples of the time; in the war against Japan, China took the opportunity of its participation in the world war against fascism to continue the “anti-imperialist” demands of the previous Chinese revolution and to further promote the abolition of the various unequal rights imposed on China by the imperialist countries; in 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was founded, the Chinese government was able to achieve its goal. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China attached great importance to cooperation with “Third World” countries and supported the anti-colonial movement and post-independence nation-building in Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially its active participation in the Bandung Conference in 1955 and its proposal of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which were well received by Asian, African and Latin American countries and became the basis for China’s cooperation with them. It also became an important point in the virtuous circle of relations between China and Asian, African and Latin American countries, and with the latter’s support and cooperation, China returned to the United Nations in 1971 and became a permanent member of the Security Council.

China’s mutual solidarity and assistance with Asian, African and Latin American countries in their resistance to colonial rule and nation-building have established a key feature of Chinese multilateralism in recent times, namely, the high priority given to cooperation with non-Western developing countries in defending national independence and development progress in their joint resistance to the unequal and unjust international order constructed by the central state. In its all-round diplomacy based on non-Western developing countries, China does not exclude its contacts and even the development of friendly and cooperative relations with developed Western countries and other major powers. However, it should also be noted that China’s past interactions and cooperation with the centerland countries have always been based on two premises: first, from China’s perspective, China insists on developing its foreign relations under the premise of independence, equality and reciprocity, and opposes the hierarchy of power in international relations; second, from the perspective of the centerland countries, their cooperation with China has always had a ceiling, which is not to shake the global power structure centered on the Western countries. structure. When either of these two premises changes, it will be difficult for China, as a developing country, to continue to develop cooperative relations with Western countries in depth, especially politically.

Over the past four decades, China has abandoned ideological differences and avoided differences in national systems, and has committed itself to cooperating with all countries, gradually forming a pattern of foreign relations in which “major powers are key, the periphery is primary, developing countries are fundamental, and multilateralism is an important stage. However, this pattern has encountered many obstacles when the time of “the end of globalization” comes. The “decoupling” of China’s economy, technology, knowledge, and people-to-people contacts, initiated by the U.S. with the help of other Western countries, is unlikely to be withdrawn by the war between Russia and Ukraine, but may be intensified.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it has undergone several changes in diplomatic direction, from the “one-sided” approach when the country was first established, to the “one line, one big area” and “three worlds” division in the 1970s, to the shift to reform and opening up after 1978, focusing on developing cooperation with Western countries. From the “one-sided” approach when the country was first founded, to the “one line, one big area” and “three worlds” division in the 1970s, to the shift to reform and opening up after 1978, focusing on developing cooperation with Western countries, all in response to the prevailing situation. At this time of “unprecedented changes”, Western countries are showing stronger and stronger intentions to suppress potential challengers, especially after the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has exposed the Western countries’ tendency to gather and suppress non-Western countries on all fronts, and will become a structural presence in international relations for a long time to come. China cannot help but be highly alert to the fact that the West’s omnipotent sanctions and repressive tactics against Russia will be applied to China in the future. For this reason, it is urgent to re-examine China’s past tradition of multilateralism, adjust the spatial pattern of its foreign relations, and strengthen cooperation with non-Western developing countries in order to create a new international environment conducive to safeguarding China’s national security and long-term development.

In 1974, Mao Zedong proposed the division of the “three worlds” and made an analysis of the three types of countries in the world at that time and the way China could interact with them, with the developing countries of the “third world” being the main target of China’s interaction and China itself being a member of the “third world”. “The Chinese government and people firmly supported the just struggle of all oppressed people and nations. The “three worlds” theory follows the previous experience of China’s foreign relations, which ranked the spatial priority of China’s foreign relations at that time and was an important ideological guide for China’s past participation in South-South cooperation, and it still has strong inspiration for China to reconstruct the spatial priority of its foreign relations at present. Compared to the increased emphasis on cooperation with Western countries since the reform and opening up, China will have to give prominence to promoting South-South cooperation in the future. Whether seeking diplomatic breakout, long-term development, or national rejuvenation, China’s foreign strategic arrangements will have to focus primarily on promoting the construction of a new global system based on Asia and its surrounding region for quite some time to come. The ultimate result is the formation of a “three-ring” international system to guarantee China’s national security and development: the first ring is China’s neighboring East Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, where East Asia is connected to the world’s financial resources and China has formed a close industrial division of labor with the countries in this region, and Central Asia and the Middle East are connected to the world’s resources and China has to rely on the countries in this region for a stable energy supply and a reliable security barrier. The second ring is the vast number of developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with which China exchanges raw materials and industrial products, and China’s foreign aid should be mainly directed to these countries; the third ring extends to the traditional industrialized countries, mainly Europe and the United States, with which China exchanges industrial products, technology and knowledge. This “three-ring” structure is used to prioritize and redirect foreign contacts and to redefine the direction and content of foreign contacts.

The first and key to the construction of the “new three-ring” international system is in the “first ring”, that is, the two wings of Asia: one is East Asia, the other is Central Asia, the Middle East. In order to continue to further promote the process of economic integration in East Asia and strengthen the linkage with Central Asia and the Middle East, it is necessary to enrich the issues of interaction with Asian countries as a prerequisite. Over the past years, China has devoted itself to promoting economic diplomacy with other countries, and has strongly promoted East Asian economic integration and economic cooperation with many Asian countries. The latest breakthrough in East Asian economic integration is the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) after years of negotiations, which will enter into force on January 1, 2022. However, economic exchanges among East Asian countries have been increasingly affected by extraterritorial forces and security factors in recent years. Disputes over maritime rights in the South China Sea and the U.S. “Indo-Pacific” strategy have added uncertainty to the process of East Asian economic integration. China should step out of its previous “GDP supremacy” in international relations, pay attention to political and security issues, and promote more security cooperation among Asian countries to avoid internal problems in Asia from being exploited by external forces.

The basis of international relations for China’s promotion of a “new three-ring” international system is “South-South cooperation,” an old concept that emphasizes mutual cooperation and support among non-Western “third world” countries. It is an old concept that emphasizes mutual cooperation and support among non-Western “third world” countries. In the second half of the 20th century, the meaning of South-South cooperation was more political, as developing countries were generally economically underdeveloped and technologically weak, and the trade and technology exchanges between them were of limited help to each other and had little impact on the global economy. However, in fact, South-South cooperation is building a new foundation in the new century and has become more realistic today. The main reason is that, in recent decades, developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have become industrialized or quasi-industrialized countries, following the wave of globalization and “laddering up” to a new global system in terms of global material production and circulation, and the original globalization “ladder” set up by the West has become a new global system. The original “ladder” of globalization built by the West has lost its color in their eyes. This new global system has the following main manifestations.

First, the global share of developing countries is not what it used to be: in 1980, developed countries accounted for 78.9 percent of global GDP, while developing countries accounted for only 21 percent; in 2021, developed countries’ share of global GDP falls to 57.8 percent, while developing countries’ share rises to 42.2 percent. The combined GDP share of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) plus Turkey, South Korea, and Indonesia in terms of purchasing power parity increases from 18 percent of the global economy in 1992 to 37.36 percent in 2021, while the G7 countries decline from 51 percent to 44 percent in the same period.

Second, trade exchanges and mutual investment among developing countries have also become pivotal. Trade between China and Africa increased 22.6 times between 1997 and 2010, and trade with Latin America increased 22 times; by 2021, China-Africa and China-Latin America trade will increase another 2 times and 2.5 times, respectively, compared to 2010. in 2000, China-Arab trade was only $15.2 billion, and by 2018 it reached $244.3 billion, an increase of 16 times in less than 20 years. Brazil’s trade with Arab countries increased fourfold from 2003 to 2010, while trade with Africa increased fivefold to a total of $26 billion, a figure higher than Brazil’s trade with traditional trading partners such as Germany or Japan; by 2019, Brazil’s trade with Arab countries and Africa increased 0.98 times and 0.68 times, respectively, compared to 2010. Since 2001, India’s trade with Africa has grown at an average annual rate of 17.2%, with 2.26 times more in 2021 than in 2011. India’s trade with Latin America and Middle East and North African countries has experienced similar growth. Both mutual trade and investment between emerging economies such as India and Brazil are also heating up rapidly, with trade volumes among developing countries growing faster than the global average growth rate, while trade exchanges with developed countries continue to decline, and the division of labor and cooperation among these countries in the production of primary and industrial goods replicates the historical globalized exchange of material goods.

Then again, from around China, Asia has formed a network of co-existing economic cooperation. This is demonstrated by the following.

In 1980, developing countries in Asia accounted for only 12.7% of the world’s GDP, but in 2010 it rose to 20.6%, and by 2021 it will reach 31.2%. By 2020, the 15 RCEP members will have a total population of 2.27 billion, a GDP of U.S.$26 trillion and total imports and exports of over U.S.$10 trillion, all accounting for about 30% of the global total. HSBC predicts that by 2030, the global share of economic volume of the RCEP economic circle will increase to 50%.

Second, the center of gravity of global trade and investment has also been shifting to Asia. Asia’s share in global trade increased from 15.7% in 1980 to 22.2% in 1990, 27.3% in 1995, 26.7% in 2000, 25.6% in 2001, and further rose to 36% of world trade in 2020, becoming the world’s leading trading bloc.

Third, the level of intra-Asian trade exceeds that of extraterritorial trade. between 2001 and 2020, total intra-Asian regional trade jumps from $3.2 trillion to $12.7 trillion, with an average annual nominal growth rate of 7.5%. During the same period, Asia’s share of total world trade increased from 25.6% to 36.0%, and in 2020, Asia’s intra-regional trade accounted for nearly 58.5% of foreign trade.

Fourth, the two wings of Asia are becoming one world economically, and the flow of energy from the Middle East has shifted from its previous direction mainly to Europe and the United States to East and South Asia.

To date, developing countries have initially formed a global economic system, but further economic and political unity is needed to achieve a higher degree of economic connectivity among them, as well as a stronger political influence in the international arena and freedom from the control or coercion of Western countries. Since the second decade of the 21st century, China has become the world’s largest real economy and the second largest economy, as well as the largest trading partner of most countries in the world; the global contribution of China’s manufacturing sector is close to 30% in 2021, and as the country that produces the most material goods in the world China’s global manufacturing contribution will be close to 30% by 2021, and as the world’s largest producer of material goods, it will play the role that the United States played at the end of World War II (at its peak, in 1953, the United States accounted for about 28% of global industrial output). What China can and should do is to actively promote the improvement of the global system of material exchange among developing countries in a global strategy, i.e., to truly realize South-South cooperation.

But there are still deficiencies. Current trade flows and mutual investments of developing countries still rely heavily on the financial and monetary networks provided by the West. If developing countries are to further enhance their economic and political autonomy, and if emerging economies are to gain political influence in the world system commensurate with their economic size, they must break away from their financial and monetary dependence on the West. Therefore, to build a “new three-ring” international system, it is necessary to consider not only the traditional geopolitical factors, but also the currency and information margins as important considerations. Over the past few years, China has explored this by developing currency swaps with some emerging market economies. A higher level and broader scope of financial and monetary cooperation should be developed among developing countries in general. To this end, there is a need to make good use of some existing platforms and mechanisms to take South-South cooperation to a new level, including upgrading and revamping the ADB and the BRICS Bank, and improving an autonomous and controllable international payment system; strengthening security cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and China-Russia-India-Iran cooperation under its framework, especially financial cooperation, and the need to see that Russia is also a developing country and that China and Russia are highly complementary economically. The government should further promote the economic integration of East Asia under the framework of “One Belt, One Road”, especially consolidate the achievements of RCEP; build a common energy market in Asia, so that the energy buyers’ markets in East and South Asia and the energy sellers’ markets in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia can share the same energy trading and payment network; make good use of the BRICS meeting mechanism, thus leading to the deepening of South-South cooperation; and promote the international cooperation between China and Russia. It should promote the internationalization of the RMB in the context of the diversification of the international monetary system and South-South cooperation, and provide support to the international status of the euro while hedging against the hegemony of the U.S. dollar.

One hundred years ago, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party proposed the revolutionary path of “encircling the city in the countryside. At this time of “unprecedented changes”, China and the developing countries need to break the center-periphery order of the contemporary world and the Western countries’ prevention and suppression of non-Western countries, as well as to improve solidarity and cooperation in the global “rural” areas. The emergence of a new global system and the deepening of South-South cooperation will create good conditions for China to enter the forefront of the world economy and politics, and to mobilize global resources to build a “three-ring” international system, to resolve international pressures and to break through. After more than 40 years of reform and opening up, China must adjust its understanding of “opening up” and make a new breakthrough in its thinking about foreign exchanges. Of course, China should still try to maintain its cooperation with the West as long as possible, and should not give up on working with the latter as long as they do not make the choice to be completely enemies of China.

Source:文化纵横

https://mronline.org/2022/06/14/buildin ... ree-rings/

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US warned over 'illusions' about Taiwan
By CAO DESHENG | China Daily | Updated: 2022-06-15 07:24

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Yang Jiechi (1st from right), a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan (first from left) in Luxembourg on Monday, June 13, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]

Senior diplomat stresses China's stand on safeguarding national sovereignty

Beijing has warned Washington not to make any "misjudgments" or have "illusions" in playing the "Taiwan card" to contain China, saying that the nation is determined and capable of defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In a meeting with United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Luxembourg on Monday, senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi reiterated that the Taiwan question concerns the political foundation of China-US relations which, unless handled properly, will have a subversive impact.

"The risk does not only exist, but will escalate as the United States attempts to contain China with the Taiwan question, and as the Taiwan authorities rely on the United States to seek its 'independence'," said Yang, who is a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee.

Yang stressed that China takes an unambiguous and steadfast stand in safeguarding its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

China's internal affairs brook no interference by other countries, and any attempts to thwart or undermine China's national unity are doomed to fail, he said.

Yang also stated China's solemn position on issues concerning the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Tibet autonomous region, and the South China Sea, as well as human rights and religion.

The meeting between Yang and Sullivan came three days after State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the 19th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

During that meeting, Wei also slammed the US for its wrongdoing on the Taiwan question, which is the most sensitive matter in China-US relations, saying that "the People's Liberation Army will relentlessly safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, the Chinese military will definitely smash such attempts at any cost, even by going to war".

A statement issued by the White House said that the meeting between Sullivan and Yang included candid, substantive and productive discussion of a number of regional and global security issues, as well as key issues in US-China relations.

Both sides agreed at the Luxembourg meeting that maintaining unimpeded channels for communication between the two sides is necessary and beneficial, Xinhua News Agency reported.

During his meeting with Sullivan, Yang urged the US to correct its strategic perception about China, make the right choices, and translate US President Joe Biden's commitments to President Xi Jinping during their virtual meeting in November into concrete actions.

In November, Biden had promised Xi that the US does not seek a new Cold War with China, does not aim to change China's system, does not target China with its alliances, does not support "Taiwan independence" and has no intention of seeking a conflict with China.

However, the US administration has been insisting on further containing and suppressing China in an all-around way. It has kept using the Taiwan question to provoke China by selling arms to Taiwan or elevating "official" relations with the island while urging its allies and partners to contain China.

Noting that China firmly opposes using competition to define bilateral ties, Yang said "mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation" are the correct approaches for China and the US to get along with each other.

Analysts said that in the light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the interactions between the world's two largest economies are necessary and beneficial for them to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation and properly handle their differences, and their communication about the regional and international issues is also conducive to promoting global stability.

However, they said that the US should keep in mind that the Taiwan question is a red line for China, and Washington needs to refrain from meddling in China's domestic affairs and rationally view China's development in order to ensure that the growing competition between them would not escalate into a much bigger conflict.

Zhou Wenxing, an assistant professor at the School of International Studies at Nanjing University, said that while trying to establish new guardrails in terms of its relations with Beijing, Washington is simultaneously dismantling existing and other more important guardrails.

"If Washington seeks to de-escalate rising tensions, and get its sour relations with China back to normal, it should preserve rather than destroy the guardrails they both share. The one-China principle is and will be a very significant guardrail guiding China-US ties," Zhou said.

Rabi Sankar Bosu, an Indian contributor to Chinese media outlets, said that the US, with the aim of preserving its own hegemony across the world, openly described China as a rival.

There is no doubt that the US and China bear heavy responsibilities not only to their own people but to the world at large, so the China-US relationship should still be led by mutually beneficial cooperation, and feature healthy competition and avoid confrontation, Bosu wrote in an opinion article published on the website of China Global Television Network.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 62b98.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 18, 2022 2:47 pm

Mainland sets straight U.S.' 'international waters' claim
2022-06-16 08:38:08China DailyEditor : Li YanECNS

A Chinese mainland spokesman denounced the ruling Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan for cooperating with foreign forces to hype up the assertion that the Taiwan Straits between the island and the mainland are an "international waterway".

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the move by the DPP authority was part of separatist efforts to achieve "Taiwan independence".

"It has harmed the interests of compatriots on both sides of the Straits and betrayed the interests of the Chinese nation," he said, adding that "such behavior is beneath contempt."

Ma's remarks came after the DPP administration's denial of the mainland's claim to sovereignty over the passage between the two sides. The Straits range in width from about 70 nautical miles to 220.

On Tuesday, Taiwan's "foreign affairs" spokeswoman Joanne Ou said the Straits are an "international waterway" and that the island supports the "freedom of navigation operations" conducted by the United States.

Earlier on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news conference that "Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory", adding that international maritime laws don't define international waters.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, as well as Chinese laws, the waters of the Straits, extending from both shores toward the middle of the Straits, are divided into several zones, including internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zones and an exclusive economic zone, Wang said.

"China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Straits. At the same time, it respects the lawful rights of other countries in relevant waters," Wang said.

Zhang Haiwen, director of the China Institute for Marine Affairs, said, "China's position on this question is very clear and hasn't changed."

The UNCLOS has made it clear that the provisions of high seas apply to all parts of the sea that are not included in the exclusive economic zone, territorial sea or internal waters.

However, there's no such wording of "international waters" in UNCLOS, Zhang said, stressing that such wording is used by the US as an excuse to send its warships and aircraft across the Straits.

Wang said: "It's a false claim when certain countries call the Straits 'international waters' in order to find a pretext for manipulating issues related to Taiwan and threatening China's sovereignty and security."

http://www.ecns.cn/news/politics/2022-0 ... 1397.shtml

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Trudeau Is Lying - Canadian Air Patrols Near China Are Not On 'UN Mission'
Canada falsely claims that it is implementing international law when its airplanes are in fact spying on China.

On June 2 the Canadian Globe & Mail reported of a Chinese interdiction of a Canadian reconnaissance aircraft:

Canadian military accuses Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft on North Korea sanctions mission

Canada’s military has accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft as they monitor North Korea sanction evasions, sometimes forcing Canadian planes to divert from their flight paths.
On several occasions from April 26 to May 26, aircraft of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) approached a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft, the Canadian Armed Forces said in a statement on Wednesday.
...
Such interactions are of concern and of increasing frequency, the Canadian military said, noting that the missions occur during United Nations-approved operations to implement sanctions on North Korea.

The Canadian aircraft were part of Ottawa’s “Operation NEON”, which sees military ships, aircraft and personnel deployed to identify suspected sanctions evasions at sea, including ship-to-ship transfers of fuel and other supplies banned by United Nations Security Council resolutions.


Did the United Nations really give Canada a mission or even a right to identify sanction evasions at high sea or near North Korea? I would find that astonishing.

Four days later the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about the incidents. His answers came after China had explained its position:

China’s foreign ministry is warning Canada that provoking Beijing could bring “grave consequences” after the Canadian military last week accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its aircraft, which are monitoring North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian suggested during a media briefing in Beijing on Monday that these patrols by Canadian and allied aircraft are illegal. “The UN Security Council has never authorized any country to carry out military surveillance in the seas and airspace of other countries in the name of enforcing sanctions,” he told reporters.


Trudeau's response to that is somewhat muddled:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in response, defended the patrols, which he said are part of a multinational effort to enforce UN sanctions. He warned Beijing that pilots on both sides are in danger of behind hurt or killed by China’s behaviour.
“China’s actions are irresponsible and provocative in this case, and we will continue to register strongly that they are putting people at risk while at the same time not respecting decisions by the UN to enforce UN sanctions on North Korea,” he told reporters during a press conference in Ottawa with Chile’s President on Monday.

Chinese fighter pilots have recently stepped up aggressive behaviour against Canadian military aircraft flying in international airspace near North Korea.


A "a multinational effort to enforce UN sanctions" is something different than a "United Nations-approved operations to implement sanctions on North Korea" which the Canadian military claimed.

Since 2019, Canada has from time to time dispatched a naval frigate or long-range patrol aircraft to help monitor ocean approaches to North Korea as part of a multinational approach, with the United States and other allies, to enforce sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. The area under patrol includes the contested East China Sea, above which China established an aircraft defence identification zone in 2013.

The 'multinational' behind the effort are the U.S. and its usual proxies. But if that were a UN or UN approved mission China and Russia must have agreed to it at the UN Security Council. They never did.

Still Trudeau insists on the UN smoke screen:

“Canada is participating in a UN mission designed to interdict and intercept and ensure the respect of sanctions on North Korea’s murderous regime,” the Prime Minister said. “Canada continues to stand up for the rule of law. We continue to stand up for multilateralism. We continue to stand up for the principles of the UN Charter.”

I find no news of formal paper that says the UN has ever designed or asked for any such mission.

There are a total of nine UN Security Council resolutions against North Korea. The relevant here is UNSCR 1718 from 2006. In paragraph 8 it asks member countries to implement certain sanctions:

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, and taking measures under its Article 41 ...
...
8. Decides that:
(a) All Member States shall prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK, through their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, and whether or not originating in their territories, of:

[... a list of certain weapon systems and materials.]


That paragraph restricts any measure countries can take with UNSC agreement to territory, nationals or vessels under their control. It does not authorize to do anything to other territories, nationals or to foreign flagged vessels or to act against such vessels at high sea.

Paragraph 8d, which is about financial sanctions, has similar restrictions:

d) All Member States shall, in accordance with their respective legal processes, freeze immediately the funds, other financial assets and economic resources which are on their territories at the date of the adoption of this resolution or at any time thereafter, ...

UNSC resolution 2094 from 2013 added additional sanctions but included the same territorial restrictions:

11. Decides that Member States shall, in addition to implementing their obligations pursuant to paragraphs 8 (d) and (e) of resolution 1718 (2006), prevent the provision of financial services or the transfer to, through, or from their territory, or to or by their nationals or entities organized under their laws (including branches abroad), or persons or financial institutions in their territory, ...

In fact all UNSC resolutions I am aware of, except those few which directly allow for a war, have similar restrictions. Orders or request to UN member countries for implementing sanctions or to take other measure are always restricted to those things or persons the country legally controls. The reasons for that are obvious. It would breach the rights of other countries if the UN would allow Canada or anyone else to interfere outside of their own legal realm.

The Canadian military's claim that its planes are on a "United Nations-approved operations" is false. There is no UN approval for such operations.

The Canadian Prime Minister's claim of participating in a "UN mission" is false. There is no such mission with regard to the DPRK.

The Canadian spy planes flying near the Chinese border are not implementing international law. That is simply a subterfuge of their real mission which is in fact spying on China.

Trudeau should be reminded of the 2001 incident near Hainan Island where a Chinese jet collided with a U.S. spy plane which then had to make an emergency landing in China:

The 24 crew members (21 men and 3 women) were detained for 10 days in total, and were released shortly after the U.S. issued the "letter of the two sorries" to the Chinese. The crew was only partially successful in their destruction of classified material, and some of the material they failed to destroy included cryptographic keys, signals intelligence manuals, and the names of National Security Agency employees. Some of the captured computers contained detailed information for processing PROFORMA communications from North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, China and other countries. The plane also carried information on the emitter parameters for U.S.-allied radar systems worldwide. The fact that the United States could track PLAN submarines via signal transmission was also revealed to China.

The U.S. now largely avoids such missions. It instead ordered Canada (and Australia) to do these, passing the risk to them. Pissing off China by making false claims of flying these in support of international law will only up the risk for another serious incident.

Posted by b on June 16, 2022 at 12:28 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/06/t ... .html#more

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On the continuous development of human rights in China
Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was recently interviewed on the subject of democracy and human rights for the Chinese edition of People’s Daily. We publish below the English translation.
“The Chinese government listens to the voices of the people, is committed to meeting the needs of the people, and promotes the continuous development of the cause of human rights.” Recently, British writer and political commentator Carlos Martinez said in an interview with this reporter that the Chinese Communist Party leads the Chinese people. Unprecedented progress has been made in finding a human rights development path that suits the national conditions of the country. What is important is that China breaks the narrow definition of human rights in the West, “China’s human rights protection is extensive and sufficient”.

Martinez was deeply impressed by the whole process of people’s democracy in China. He said that this concept highlights the essential difference between socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics and Western capitalist democracy. The Chinese side believes that if the people are awakened only when they vote, and then go into a hibernation period, they only listen to hype slogans during elections, they have no right to speak after the election, they are favored during canvassing, and they are left out after the election. Such a democracy is not true democracy. Martinez agrees.

“The participation of ordinary Chinese people in running society is higher than that of Western countries. In terms of representing the basic interests of ordinary people, the Chinese government has done a far better job than Western governments.” Martinez said that in the whole process of China’s development of people’s democracy, the people have always enjoyed democratic rights, not limited to elections; available to all social classes, not limited to certain groups. China’s democratic system has its own historical background. It can ensure the enjoyment of democratic rights by the broadest masses of people and provide important support and guarantee for social governance.

Martinez said that China’s achievements lie not only in achieving rapid economic growth, but also in the government’s wholehearted commitment to improving the living standards of ordinary people. The Chinese government pays attention to poverty eradication, environmental protection, education development, etc., to improve people’s lives in general. “People’s demands are reflected in the government’s work, which is the real people’s democracy.” Martinez said.

“Eliminating absolute poverty in a developing country with a population of more than 1.4 billion is an extraordinary achievement and has historical significance.” Martinez specifically mentioned that due to the impact of the new coronavirus epidemic and geopolitical factors, poverty is rising. The Chinese government has historically solved the problem of absolute poverty and made important contributions to human development and progress. He said that while carrying out targeted poverty alleviation, China has actively shared its experience with other countries and regions, participated in many poverty alleviation projects in Africa, and carried out various cooperation with developing countries, which has promoted the sustainable development of these countries and regions.

https://socialistchina.org/2022/06/14/o ... -in-china/

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China unveils its third aircraft carrier
By ZHAO LEI | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-06-17 12:12

China launched its third aircraft carrier on Friday in Shanghai, naming it after the eastern coastal province of Fujian.

Upon its completion, the gigantic ship will displace more than 80,000 metric tons of water, making it the largest and mightiest warship any Asian nation has ever built and also one of the world's biggest naval vessels of all time.

According to the People's Liberation Army Navy, the ship will use electromagnetic launch system, or electromagnetic catapult, to launch fixed-wing aircraft, which will give the carrier a much greater combat capability than its two predecessors that use a ramp to launch jets.

With a hull code of 18, the CNS Fujian is being built at China State Shipbuilding Corp's Jiangnan Shipyard Group in Shanghai.

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Photo taken on June 17, 2022 shows the launching ceremony of China's third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, in East China's Shanghai. The carrier, named after Fujian Province, was completely designed and built by the country. [Photo/Xinhua]

At a launch ceremony at the shipyard on Friday morning, the carrier was towed out of its dry dock as color stripes were fired along the dock to celebrate the moment.

In the next phase, the carrier will undergo mooring and sea trials to comprehensively test its overall capability and specific equipment, the PLA Navy said.

Currently, the PLA Navy operates two carriers – CNS Liaoning and CNS Shandong. Both of them have a standard displacement of around 50,000 tons and a conventional propulsion system, and use a ski jump mode for launching fixed-wing aircraft.

The Liaoning was refitted from the unfinished Soviet-era carrier Varyag. It was commissioned in September 2012, becoming the PLA Navy's first aircraft carrier.

The Shandong, the nation's first domestically developed aircraft carrier, has a basic design similar to that of the Liaoning but has many improvements such as larger carrying capacity of aircraft and optimized designs on the superstructure. It was unveiled in April 2017 and delivered to the PLA Navy in December 2019.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 63509.html

US may swallow bitter fruits over Huawei ban
By ZHAO JIA | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-06-18 08:10


Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday that the United States' enterprises and people will eventually have to swallow the bitter fruits brought by the US government's groundless suppression of targeted Chinese enterprises after the US Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, said the plan to strip Huawei from rural telecoms will cost billions more than estimated.

Reports said the FCC estimated that the cost of stripping Huawei and other Chinese firms from US telecom infrastructure would be as high as $5.3 billion, far exceeding the $1.9 billion budget passed by the US Congress last year.

"I have noticed comments saying that those US companies not getting compensation will get into trouble and may be forced to replace equipment at their own expense," Wang told a daily news conference in Beijing.

China firmly opposes US politicians, out of their selfish interests, to overstretch the concept of national security and use national power to suppress China's enterprises, Wang said.

Noting that US politicians run against the trend of history, Wang said their moves are doomed to fail.

The US continues to politicize, instrumentalize and weaponize economic cooperation in an attempt to forge the so-called small yard with high fences, Wang noted.

He warned that such a move will not only seriously damage Chinese enterprises' interests, but will also severely harm US interests and impact the stability of global industrial and supply chains.

Washington is also urged to stop erroneous words and deeds that harm all but benefit none, and to provide relevant Chinese enterprises with a market environment that is open, fair, just and nondiscriminatory, the spokesman added.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 63669.html

Shanghai continues to improve, hospitals resume normal operations
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-06-17 20:05

Shanghai reported one local asymptomatic COVID-19 case on Friday.

The new infection case was found in Putuo district. A total of 83 primary close contacts and 52 secondary contacts have been quarantined and tested, and the residential compound where the case was found has been locked down.

As the city's outbreak has been put under control, designated hospitals for COVID-19 treatment are returning to normal service, said Zhao Dandan, deputy director of Shanghai Health Commission. Altogether 33 out of the 45 hospitals that had been designated to treat COVID-19 patients have been closed and disinfected and are being evaluated for the resumption of receiving normal patients, Zhao said.

Two municipal-level designated hospitals and five district-level hospitals have already resumed normal operations, to be followed by another seven district-level hospitals next week, Zhao added.

To prevent a rebound of the outbreak, residents in Shanghai are required to take a least one COVID-19 test per week until July 31 as mandated by the city's health commission earlier.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202206/1 ... 635ef.html
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:20 pm

Taiwan: Red Lines and Strategic Ambiguity
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 20, 2022
Stefania Fusero

On May 5, 2022, the State Department amended its Taiwan factsheet removing the part in which it acknowledged that Taiwan is a part of China and stated that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence.

While Washington has said the update does not reflect a change in its policy, it has clearly increased both its military and political activism in the region and Biden even went so far as to say in Tokyo on May 23 that the US is ready to use military force to defend Taiwan in the event of an intervention from Beijing.

As the US-led proxy war of NATO against Russia in Ukraine continues, are we going to open a new front against another nuclear power, this time in Southeast Asia? Already our press has begun to compare the situation in Ukraine with the Taiwan issue, so we can expect that the great media circus will soon light up its spotlights to the seas of China – the narrative being likely the same as the one we have been made addicted to by now.

Will we therefore learn to recognise a glorious new flag to insert in the host of democratic countries, that of Taiwan? This will be the easy part, the harder one will be to understand what Taiwan is and why it will have become a vital issue for Western democracies. Will we once again be inundated with a thumping propaganda campaign focused on the epic struggle of democracy against autocracy, freedom against tyranny, light against darkness, good against evil?

Brief historical notes

First of all, it must be noted that Taiwan is not an independent state, in fact it is not even a state according to international law.

After the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, Taiwan returned to be an integral part of China, and as a consequence, after the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, of the People’s Republic of China.

The name of Taiwan denotes an island (+ some other islets) about 160 km from the south-eastern coast of China, surrounded by the East China Sea to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The inhabitants are about 23 million, the capital is Taipei.

Starting from the end of the 13th century groups of Chinese began to arrive from the mainland and settle on the island, but during the 17th century Taiwan, to which Portuguese explorers had given the name of Formosa, became a pole of attraction also for Europe: the Dutch colonised the south and the Spanish colonised the north.

In 1644 the Ming were defeated by the Manchus, who founded the new Qing dynasty, which would be the last in Chinese imperial history. The prince of Yanping, known in the West as Koxinga, did not recognise the authority of the new Qing dynasty, and attempted to restore the Ming. In 1661 he crossed the strait, attacked the Dutch settlers claiming the island of Taiwan as a historic property of China, and ended Dutch colonisation, which had lasted nearly 40 years. Taiwan thus became a military base from which Koxinga and later his descendants tried in vain to restore the Ming dynasty. After finally defeating them in 1683, the Qing integrated Taiwan into their empire.

England defeated the Qing in the First Opium War in 1842, ushering in the so-called “century of humiliation” for China, which became the prey of the greed of several empires. To Japan, the last newcomer to the imperial club, the dying Qing dynasty was forced with the 1895 treaty of Shimonoseki to cede the island of Taiwan, which remained a Japanese colony until October 25, 1945, when the government of China, which had been became a republic, finally regained possession of Taiwan and the Penghu archipelago, reassuming their full legitimate sovereignty.

The victory over the Japanese, however, did not mean the end of military hostilities in China, where since 1927 the civil war between the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) had been intermittently raging.

The civil war ended in 1949 with the victory of the Communists and the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek, who, just as Koxinga had done a few centuries earlier, fled the mainland and occupied Taiwan, where his regime took on the name of ROC (Republic of China), the same name adopted by the state entity born after the fall of the Qing Empire in 1912.

This is the origin of the so-called ‘Taiwan question’.

One China or two Chinas?

For its part, on the very day of its foundation, October 1, 1949, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced to the world that it “… is the sole legitimate government representing the entire people of the People’s Republic of China”. It declared to the United Nations that the KMT authorities had “lost all basis, both de jure and de facto, to represent the Chinese people” and therefore had no right to represent China. Since the founding of the PRC, a sine qua non condition for any country wishing to have relations with the PRC has been to recognise the government of the PRC as the sole legitimate authority of the whole of China, as well as to sever or refrain from establishing diplomatic relations with the Taiwanese authorities.

At least on this point did Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek agree: China is one and has only one legitimate government, which obviously for the PRC is that of Beijing and for the KMT that of Taipei.

The US, which during the civil war had gambled on the Kuomintang, supporting it militarily and economically against the Communist Party, did not resign to its victory and continued to give generous aid to the KMT.

After the start of the Korean War in June 1950, the US government not only sent troops to Taiwan, which General Mac Arthur compared to an “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, but even considered using nuclear weapons against the PRC.

From a diplomatic point of view, meanwhile, the US questioned the status of Taiwan and lobbied for “dual recognition” among the international community in order to create “two Chinas”, whereas the government of the PRC, to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the nation, staunchly supported the one China principle: there is only one China in the world, Taiwan is an integral part of it, and the PRC government is the sole legitimate government representing the whole of China.

This principle came gradually to be accepted by the international community, until on October 25, 1971, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758, which expelled the representatives of the Taiwanese regime and awarded the seat in the United Nations to the government of the PRC.

In the following year, February 1972, President Nixon’s historic visit to China led to the total revision of the official position of the US towards Taiwan. With the famous Shanghai communiqué, which was to be followed by another two in 1979 and 1982, later defined as “the three joint communiqués”, the USA relinquished the doctrine of the two Chinas, recognised the indivisibility of China, declared that Taiwan is a province of China and that the liberation of Taiwan is an internal affair of China; they also pledged to withdraw all US military forces stationed in Taiwan.

Was that the happy ending for the Taiwan issue, then? Unfortunately not, as shown by the tensions which today, while a war is still being waged in Ukraine, are intensifying around the Seas of China.

The one-China principle vs the so-called US strategic ambiguity

If from the very moment of its foundation in 1949 the position of the PRC on Taiwan has remained unequivocal and constant overtime, that of the US has instead been configuring in terms of “strategic ambiguity”.

As early as in 1979 Deng Xiaoping’s government articulated the policy of “peaceful reunification and one country, two systems”: China is committed to achieving peaceful reunification but will not rule out the use of force if any of its red lines were to be overpassed, if for example Taiwan ceased to recognise the principle that China is one and inalienable and/or proclaimed independence from the PRC or were occupied by any foreign countries.

The PRC wants to achieve reunification through peaceful negotiations and is willing to negotiate any matter except the overriding one-China principle. After reunification, the “one country, two systems” policy will be practiced: mainland China will continue with its socialist system and Taiwan will maintain its capitalist system for a long time to come. After reunification, Taiwan will enjoy a high degree of autonomy and the central government will not send troops or administrative personnel to be stationed in Taiwan.

Economic and cultural exchanges and people-to-people contacts between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have made rapid progress since the end of 1987, and economic data shows that imports from the PRC and exports to the PRC far outweigh those with all other countries. Despite these trends, the current majority party in Taipei, the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) led by Tsai Ing-wen, has increased military spending, moved closer to the US, and sharpened the hostility of its government towards the PRC.

Notwithstanding the principles solemnly stated in the three Communiqués between 1972 and 1982, the US has in fact often contradicted the spirit and the letter of them, adopting a policy toward Taiwan that they equivocally define as “strategic ambiguity”, which certainly does not favour a climate of trust and détente between the USA and the PRC.

We could give many examples to illustrate the ambiguous US policy on Taipei, such as the steady increase in arms sales to the island, the incendiary declarations of members of Congress on official visits to what the US does not even officially recognise as a nation, as well as the fact revealed in the WSJ last October 2021 that US military advisers had been present in Taiwan for at least one year, all obviously in flagrant violation of the agreements made in the three communiqués.

And what about a 2002 act that: “… Taiwan shall be treated as though it were designated a major non-NATO ally (as defined in section 644(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961?”

We can get an idea of how their policy of “strategic ambiguity” can be correctly interpreted by turning directly to official US sources. I highly recommend reading the Taiwan fact sheet on the official website of the US State Department, or rather its different versions that have appeared between 2019 and a few days ago. To facilitate comparison for anyone wishing to go through them in detail, I have prepared a PDF with the three versions in chronological order, highlighting the most significant parts (see here).

June 8, 2019: the fact sheet begins with the 1979 communiqué recognising the PRC as the sole legitimate government of one China. It also importantly states that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence.

May 8, 2022: what a twist! The sheet has dramatically changed: it begins by saying that Taiwan is a key partner of the United States in the Indo-Pacific and that the United States and Taiwan share the same values. US policy is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint US-China Communiqués and the Six Assurances (in that order).

The PRC government is well aware that a few fundamental words have gone missing from the fact sheet, i.e. “the US does not support Taiwan’s independence”. On the other hand, the so-called Six Assurances are in!

To understand the reason why the Chinese government promptly and firmly reacted to these changes, we need to say just a few words about the Taiwan Relations Act and the Six Assurances.

The Taiwan Relations Act is a pro-Taiwan lobby-inspired law passed by Congress in 1979 to offset the effects of the US government’s recognition of the PRC: “…the United States shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.”

The term ‘Six Assurances’, instead, refers to six Reagan-era security assurances unilaterally provided to Taiwan in 1982 but not formally made public, which the United States declassified in 2020, among which: the United States has not agreed to set a date for ending arms sales to Taiwan; the United States has not agreed to consult with the PRC on arms sales to Taiwan; the United States has not agreed to revise the Taiwan Relations Act.

May 28, 2022: the fact sheet, surreptitiously modified one more time, reaffirms that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence.

Playing with the Joint Communiqués as well as with laws and provisions that unilaterally regulate, in a more or less open way, relations between China and the USA, erratically emphasising either, is sufficient in itself to convey totally contradictory and obviously destabilising messages to the world.

What is China doing in the meantime? Its policy has constantly remained the same, that to foster a gradual and peaceful reunification but in the meantime, it is bracing for the worst. In fact, for the PRC Taiwan is not a pawn to be used to destabilise countries thousands of km away from its national territory, but “… it is part of the sacred territory of the People’s Republic of China. It is the sacred duty of all the Chinese people, including our fellow Chinese in Taiwan, to achieve the great reunification of the motherland.” (from the Preamble of the Constitution of the PRC)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/06/ ... ambiguity/

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NATO gathering could split Asia into hostile blocs
By WANG XU in Tokyo, CAI HONG in Beijing,CAI HONG and CHEN WEIHUA in Brussels | China Daily Global | Updated: 2022-06-22 10:50


Participation of Japan, South Korea leaders sends dangerous signal to world, expert says

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Banners displaying the NATO logo are placed at the entrance of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in this April 19, 2018 file photo. [ Photo/Agencies]

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's summit in Madrid could be a turning point in Asia's security architecture due to the attendance of Japan and South Korea, as this risks bringing on "a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, or a region split into hostile blocs," security experts said.

"As nonmember states of NATO, Japan and South Korea's participation sends a dangerous signal to the world that NATO, reneging on its promises, seeks to expand its remit beyond a European security mission," said Wang Qi, a researcher of East Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

NATO's eastward expansion has been blamed as the root cause of the Ukraine crisis, which has no immediate solution in sight and is intensifying.

The first NATO summit attended by the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, even as observers, casts a shadow on the globe and already-worsening geopolitical tensions.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Wednesday that he will attend the 30-nation military alliance's summit in Spain on June 29 and 30, and he highlighted the links between Asia's security and that of Europe. Before Kishida's announcement, South Korea's presidential office confirmed that the nation's new leader, President Yoon Suk-yeol, will also attend the summit.

Given Kishida's thinly disguised accusations leveled against China over a range of issues, including internal affairs, such as the Taiwan question, Wang said Beijing is very concerned about Tokyo's next move. If you add South Korea, whose amicable relations with Beijing are driven by economics, Wang warned that a tilt toward NATO risks upsetting the situation.

Kishida said, "Security in Europe is inseparable from security in the 'Indo-Pacific'."

Over the past few weeks, Kishida had aimed veiled barbs at Beijing when he hosted a summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of Japan, the United States, Australia and India. In a keynote speech later at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, he said that he felt a strong sense of foreboding that what is happening in Ukraine today may happen in East Asia tomorrow.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the forum: "We do not seek confrontation or conflict. And we do not seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, or a region split into hostile blocs".

However, Beijing was largely unconvinced, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying that the US was "the biggest factor fueling militarization in the Asia-Pacific" and accusing NATO of sending aircraft and warships to carry out military exercises in waters off China's coast.

"NATO has publicly stated on many occasions that it will remain a regional alliance, it does not seek a geopolitical breakthrough and it does not seek to expand to other regions. However, some NATO member states keep sending aircraft and warships to carry out military exercises in waters off China's coast, creating tensions and disputes," Wang said at a news conference.

"NATO has been transgressing in regions and fields and clamoring for a new Cold War of bloc confrontation. This gives ample reason for high vigilance and firm opposition from the international community."

Wang Qi, the CASS researcher, said that what Austin insisted is exactly what NATO risks by expanding its remit into Asia and that what is happening in Ukraine is what Kishida wants to happen in East Asia.

"Apparently, inviting NATO to step into the Asia-Pacific region solidifies Japan's role as the foremost leader in regional geopolitics. Likewise, it gives Japan a greater presence in European policy. But... (beyond) this, Japan wants to achieve its great power ambitions-creating tension and trouble in the peaceful Asia Pacific region so that it can legitimize its longtime ambition to develop military force and push for an amendment of its pacifist Constitution," she said.

As a result, Japan has promised to boost defense spending to 2 percent of its GDP, in line with NATO targets, and has been stepping up military cooperation with the transatlantic group in remarkable ways with back-to-back engagements, she added.

During a meeting with NATO Military Committee chief Rob Bauer this month, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Japan hopes to strengthen its ties with European countries and welcomes NATO's expanded involvement in the Asia-Pacific region.

Wang Guangtao, an associate professor at the Center for Japanese Studies of Fudan University, said that Japan kept increasing its defense budget to turn itself into a strong military power. That is causing suspicion that an Asia-Pacific version of NATO could emerge in which Japan would like to play a large role.

In an article published in the People's Liberation Army Daily on Friday, Guo Ruobing, president of the National Security College of the National Defense University of China' s PLA, said the US has stated it does not aim to create "an Asian NATO", but it has deliberately played up the issues of the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea, the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea.

By strengthening military alliances, Guo wrote, "The US' fundamental purpose is to create tension in the region and mobilize its allies and partners to build a small anti-China clique".

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, also opposes the initiative. "These are foolish diversions. Europeans should focus on defending Europe," he said on Thursday.

Kishida might hope to win points with US President Joe Biden's administration. But more important is fulfilling the ruling US Democratic Party's promotion of increased military outlays, which requires building domestic political support for a more active role in defending East Asian Pacific waters, wrote Bandow, who was also a special assistant to former US president Ronald Reagan.

Masanari Koike, a former member of Japan's House of Representatives, believes Japan's further involvement in NATO is not possible.

"NATO is the security alliance with an idea of collective self-defense, which the Japanese constitution basically prohibits," Koike said.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 67e12.html

COP15 event relocated, China keeps presidency
By HOU LIQIANG | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-06-22 07:41

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Kunming, Yunnan province, has been decorated with flower clusters, landscaping and lighting to welcome the opening of COP15 in October 2021. [Photo by Hu Yunlong and Xu Jun/chinadaily.com.cn]

The second phase of the United Nations' negotiations on the world's new biodiversity conservation goals through 2030, known as COP15, has been relocated from Kunming, Yunnan province, to the Canadian city of Montreal, between Dec 5 and 17, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The decision was reached following consultation among the Chinese and Canadian governments and the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, a media release from the ministry said on Tuesday. The secretariat is based in Montreal.

With the COVID-19 pandemic control situations at home and abroad fully considered, the arrangement was made to "accelerate the global biodiversity conservation process", it said.

"China will continue to work as the presidency of the COP15," it said, adding that the theme of the gathering and its logo will remain unchanged.

The Chinese government has always attached great importance to biodiversity conservation, the statement said. With consistent efforts to play its role as the host of COP15, China, together with other parties, will endeavor to see an ambitious and realistic post-2020 global biodiversity framework reached at the meeting.

Dimitri de Boer, chief China representative of environmental law organization ClientEarth, said a lot of negotiations need to be carried out at the conference and the relocation helps address the uncertainties about the second phase of COP15. "This is very practical," he added.

As the largest UN biodiversity gathering in a decade, COP15 was originally scheduled to be held in Kunming, capital of Yunnan, in October 2020.

With the theme "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth", it is tasked with elaborating on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework and identifying protection goals through 2030.

Ecological civilization is a concept promoted by President Xi Jinping for balanced and sustainable development featuring the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.

After being postponed to May 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was rescheduled in August to be held in two phases, first in October 2021 and then in the first half of this year.

The first phase was successfully held in Kunming from Oct 11 to 15, which included the opening ceremony, leaders' speeches and the issuing of the Kunming Declaration. Overseas personnel attended the meeting online.

Via video link at the conference, Xi announced China's initiative to establish the Kunming Biodiversity Fund to support biodiversity protection in developing countries.

China took the lead in investing 1.5 billion yuan ($224 million), and called for contributions from other parties to the fund.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 67ba6.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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